Fact of the day
Information is the most powerful weapon.
Fact N° 2734
Bakersfield, California has the worst cell phone reception.
Time magazine teamed up with data firm OpenSignalMaps to compile a list of the top U.S. cities with the spottiest cell reception. The study found that in cities with over 250,000 residents, Sprint tended to have the best average signal readings, while T-Mobile tended to have the worst. Kicking off the list at No. 10 was Detroit, whose tall buildings and comparative lack of cell phone towers are bad for reception. Jacksonville came in at No. 8 (one of the largest U.S. cities in terms of total area) and Colorado Springs at No. 2 (where terrain interferes with signal strength). Bakersfield came in at No. 1, attributable in part to a 40% population increase in the past decade.
Fact N° 2735
Shy people read negative facial expressions more accurately.
A study at Southern Illinois University set out to investigate the perception that shy people are bad at reading facial expressions. The study surveyed 241 college students about their levels of shyness, then asked them to identify the facial expressions in 110 photos. The participants were 81% accurate overall, but shy people were more accurate at judging expressions like sadness and fear than outgoing people were.
Fact N° 2736
You can smell how old someone is.
Elderly people are often said to have a distinct smell and a study at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia set out to test the reality of that perception. Subjects of various ages slept for five nights wearing underarm pads, which were then collected and put in jars for study participants to smell. participants were much more accurate at judging the smell of older people than other age groups. Interestingly, however, the elderly smell was rated as less unpleasant than those from the other age groups (smells from other age groups were rated as both worse and more intense).
Fact N° 2737
You drink more slowly from a straight-sided glass.
According to a University of Bristol study published in the journal PLoS ONE, people drink alcohol twice as slowly out of a straight-sided glass as they do from a beer flute. Researchers theorized that people have a harder time gauging the midpoint in a curved beer flute, and are thus less likely to pace themselves; a follow-up test asked participants to gauge the fullness of different kinds of glasses and confirmed a higher error rate for curved glasses. Glassware shape had no effect on the speed with which people drank nonalcoholic beverages.
Fact N° 2738
A Tanzanian village was once overcome with contagious laughter so extensive that it shut down 14 schools.
On January 30, 1962, in the village of Kashasha, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), one group of students began laughing, and the laughter spread to more students, then beyond the school to the surrounding area, and from the area to neighboring villages. Though symptoms lasted a few hours or days, they also relapsed periodically; all in all, the episode lasted for about a year and affected several thousand people. One explanation for the incident, according to linguist Christian F. Hempelmann, is mass psychogenic illness -- a group response to constant stress, formerly dubbed mass hysteria. Similarly inexplicable group behaviors have been recorded throughout history, including the 1518 "Dancing Plague" in Strasbourg, during which dozens (and then hundreds) of people began dancing ceaselessly, some until they died of exhaustion.
Fact N° 2739
Male monkeys prefer to play with trucks; female monkeys, with dolls.
Despite the perception that society influences what kind of toy a child chooses to play with, some studies indicate that these preferences are actually influenced by exposure to hormones during gestation -- even in non-humans. A 2008 study with rhesus monkeys at the National Primate Research Center found that male monkeys tended to choose wheeled vehicles to play with, while female monkeys tended to choose either dolls or both (a 2002 study with vervet monkeys had similar findings). A 2009 study (with humans this time) found that toddlers' toy preferences were correlated with their levels of testosterone and with their digit ratio (a reliable predictor for exposure to androgen). The implication is that boys prefer masculine toys long before it's possible for society to have influenced their preferences.
Fact N° 2740
Women own more BlackBerrys and men own more Android devices.
Rebtel, the second-largest VoIP service after Skype, surveyed 753 mobile phone users for its its Labor Day Communications study. The survey found that men were approximately 50% more likely to use an Android device, while women were more likely to use an iPhone (36.2% to 32.6%) or a Blackberry (26.3% to 12.1%). The iPhone was still the most popular device used for business overall (33% of respondents used one). iPhone users were also more likely than Android users to say they owned their own business (17.3% to 11.9%). In addition, respondents overwhelmingly claimed to prefer using voice for work communication, as opposed to email (53.1% to 33.7%).