Action Figure Daniel

Category: Reading

  • “Piping Hot Bees & Boisterous Buzz-Runners” by Thomas D Seeley

    • All bees are basically wild
    • Bees are sensitive to carbon dioxide
    • Hives need enough space to store honey through the winter
    • Scouts “debate” over which nest site to choose
    • Anomalies help show the power of the rules
    • Workers monitor their queen’s location while flying
    • Bees fly on full stomachs
    • The ladies warm up to 95f before taking off
    • Bees do not “shop around” on waggle dances
    • Workers adjust their choosiness based on the availability of nectar
      • They know this by how long it takes to find someone to take their nectar
    • Worker bees are blind to the color red
    • Queen are shaken by nurses to encourage them to “prepare for greater activity”

  • “A Brief History of Mathematics” by Marcus Du Sautoy

    • Calculus is the math of movement
    • Symmetry is something you do to a shape not the shape itself
    • Gaussian distributions help us understand the mean from a variety of samples
    • Every number is either a prime or can be derived by multiplying two prime numbers
    • The maths enable science to answer questions

  • “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, PhD

    • Sleep disruption plays with your hormones, causing you to be more hungry, and spikes blood sugar
    • Fatigue leads to more car accidents than being intoxicated
    • We use sleep to strengthen memories
    • Most living thing have their own internal clocks
    • Even very little sun light resets our internal rhythm
    • Genetics tend to determine chrono type
      • Owls are not owls by choice
    • Melatonin kicks off sleep but does not actually cause sleep
    • Adenosine accumulate once you are awake
      • Caffeine occupies the adenosine receptors so you do not realize how tired you are
      • Decafe is not caffeine free
      • Adenosine requires sleep to draw down
    • It takes about one day to adjust per hour travelled across time zones
    • Prolonged sleep deprivation can require several days to recover from
    • All psychiatric disorders have bad sleep associated with them
      • Sleep management generally helps treatment
    • Sleep deprivation prevents learning new things
    • We replay memories during dreams at slower speeds than originally experienced
      • (Is this why we relive things in dreams and often are caught running slowly or being stuck)?
    • nREM sleep mostly happens early at night with REM happening mostly later
    • nREM sleep is mostly about pruning memories
    • Waking up early, cuts into REM sleep
    • We have “sleep spindles” that layer in “noise” to help us better ignore real noise in the environment
    • Everything with a brain sleeps
      • Only animals and birds REM sleep
    • Animals that sleep longer tend to sleep better
    • Pinnipeds sleep on land and in water, but only REM on land
    • After sleep deprivation, nREM is the most quickest to recover
    • We can never fully recover missed sleep
    • Sleep deprivation triggers more eating because the mind thinks food is scarce
    • The notion of “second sleep” seems to be more of a fashion, not biology
    • Siestas are great for humans
    • Babies moving in the womb are generally asleep
    • Infant sleep deprivation arrests brain development
    • Put your child to bed when they are drowsy, not after they are asleep
    • Any alcohol in the a woman’s blood affects in utero’s ability to sleep well
    • Teenagers need more, later sleep then adults and older children
    • “No child needs caffeine.”
    • Older adults still need as much sleep, they just struggle to get it
    • nREM helps facts memories best
    • Rocking during sleep allows for deeper sleep
    • “Practice plus sleep makes prefect”
    • People do not know how tired they are
    • Sleep deprivation literally shortens your ability to manage emotions
    • Staying awake all night only burns an extra ~140 calories
    • REM sleep + dreams are critical for healthy mind operation
    • Dreaming of emotional trauma helps dissolve emotions related to those memories
    • Dreams help tune our emotional processing centers
    • REM sleep likes to make bizarre and eclectic connections
    • Sleep deprivation kills us
    • “sleep opportunity” (having an appropriate environment) is different from actual sleep
    • Fading light and cool air control the release of melatonin
    • Sleeping cold is good
    • Sleeping pills disconnect your brain but do not enable healthful sleep
    • The original factory whistle was supposed to wake you up so you could get to work on time
    • Don’t hit the Snooze button! It is a small heart-attack multiple times in the morning
    • “REM sleep stands between rationality and lunacy”
    • Amphetamine is a power “awake drug”
    • Some ADHD are actually sleep deprived
    • A lack of sleep increasing the chances of one being unethical

  • “Jaws” by Sandra Kahn and Paul R Erhlich

    • Orthodontia focuses on aesthetics and not underlining causes
    • Malocclusion is not caused by bad genetics
    • Original American settlers were also called “black mouth” because they were mouth breathers
    • Chewing took up about half of prehistoric lives
    • Chewing tough things counts more than diet for our health
    • Mouth breathing is bad for jaw health
    • We use clothes to symbolize our connection to something bigger than ourselves
    • Weening should focus on chewing unsweetened food
    • We do not know what in tobacco smoke causes lung cancer
    • Mouth breathing bypasses nose filtration
    • Indoors often have more air pollution than outdoors

  • “Drink?” by David Nutt

    • Alcohol is very harmful to society not on an individual level but because its net affect
    • Sweeteners are there to accommodate younger people
    • The effects of alcohol are what allow us to get over the taste
    • Alcohol and Valium work on the same systems to relax us
    • “Vomiting gets rid of enough alcohol to keep you alive”
    • Anxiety and alcoholism go hand-in-hand
    • Withdrawing from alcohol spikes the cortisol
    • Prolactin manages sperm production in men
    • Brain damage from alcohol happens in the first trimester with physical issues coming later
    • Progesterone surges affect memory, “baby brain” is a real thing
    • Exercisers tends to also be drinkers
    • Sailor would soak some gun powder in their rum. If it ignited then it was at least 50% alcohol, this is where “percent proof”
    • Do not drink alcohol when thirsty because you are already dehydrated
    • Drunk harm is often mismatch with the harm people think they do
    • More people die from horse riding than Ecstasy
    • Alcohol has been getting cheaper over time leading to increased use
    • Minimum per-unit pricing trends to lower alcohol consumption, especially from supermarkets