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In the summer of 1942, Edward Adolph, a physiologist at the University of Rochester in New York state, wanted to find out how people could live and work efficiently in the desert and how to get the best out of them. (…)

Stripping to T-shirt and shorts, for instance, is not the best way to cope with dehydrating conditions. Long sleeves and long trousers may feel hotter, but they’ll slow the loss of water. Nor is there any point in rationing water when supplies are low. Putting off drinking it merely makes you unhappier sooner. “It is better,” wrote Adolph, “to have the water inside you than to carry it.” (…)

Adolph tested the old assumptions by splitting his soldiers into two groups. Both marched through the desert for up to 8 hours during the time of year when the average afternoon high was 42°C. The soldiers in one group were allowed to drink as much water as they wanted and the others weren’t allowed any. The results were clear: the drinkers outperformed the non-drinkers.

His findings stayed secret until 1947, when he was allowed to publish his pioneering Physiology of Man in the Desert. It went almost entirely unnoticed. In the late 1960s, marathon runners were still advised not to drink during races and until 1977, runners in international competitions were banned from taking water in the first 11 kilometres and after that were allowed water only every 5 kilometres.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading | via Overcoming Bias }

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A study of Massachusetts teens demonstrates that students who score higher on tests of physical fitness also score better on standardized tests of academic achievement.

Exercise fans might be quick to point out that personal experience suggests that mental clarity is enhanced by regular physical activity and that as result such a finding is not unexpected. I’m inclined to think that kids with the luxury of participating in organized sports and thus exercising regularly are also those from higher-income, more stable homes and that SES thus drives this relationship more than anything else.

{ Kevin Beck/ScienceBlogs | Continue reading }

I opened my web browser today and noticed a story about a man in Oregon who was snorkeling in a river and got shot in the head because some other guy thought he was a rodent.

There is nothing funny about being shot in the head. Unless you were snorkeling in a river and someone thought you were a rodent. Fortunately, the snorkeler is recovering well. Apparently the bullet hit the densest part of his skull and shattered.

To reiterate, there is nothing funny about being shot in the head. Unless you were snorkeling in a river, someone thought you were a rodent, and your skull is so dense it can stop a bullet.

The shooter mistook the snorkeler for a nutria. That’s a rat-looking thing that swims. Apparently the river has a lot of swimming rodents in it. I don’t think I have to tell you that the very best place you can snorkel is a river that’s full of swimming rats. It is good scenery and good friends all in one.

The snorkeler said he was in the river looking for different species of fish. There was no mention in the story about whether he saw any, thus making the entire thing worthwhile. I admire the snorkeler’s sense of adventure, and apparent lack of plane fare. I wish I had the kind of spirit where I could wake up in the morning, turn to my wife and say, “Honey, I can’t spend time with you and the kids today. I’m going to go snorkel in a rodent-infested river and look for fish the hard way.”

{ Scott Adams | feb. 2007 }

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A new study on media coverage of the presidential race suggests “that the press is in the tank for Barack Obama,” the Boston Globe reported yesterday. (…) John McCain, according to a story in Thursday’s Guardian, “didn’t even give the press a chance, trashing it on the assumption that it would be in the tank for Obama.” How did in the tank come to mean supportive?

Aquatics by way of pugilism. In the 19th century, Americans called swimming pools “tanks” and thus “go into the tank” was synonymous with “to dive.” As far back as the 1920s, the phrase “go into the tank” became associated with intentionally losing a boxing match by diving onto the canvas and pretending you’ve been knocked out—a sense perfectly illustrated by this sentence from a 1928 New York Times article: “Pansy came out of jail and his manager, thinking him ‘all washed up,’ signed him up to ‘take a dive,’ or, more technically, ‘to go into the tank’ for a bird named Sailor Gray.”

By the mid-20th century, go into the tank, in the sense of rolling over for someone in a rigged contest, extended into political usage. Thus in 1960, syndicated columnist Bob Ruark set up a boxing metaphor to describe the run-up to that year’s presidential conventions: “I am having a tiny touch of difficulty with the American news lately, having gotten it slightly mixed up with the prize-fighting business. But if I read it right, the presidential nomination conventions have been bagged in advance … with all the other competitors rigged to go into the tank for Jolting Jack Kennedy and Richard the Ripper Nixon.”

While taking a dive still refers to self-sabotage, the meaning of go into the tank gradually shifted toward working on someone’s behalf, often with the hint of backroom deals or at least inappropriate devotion.

{ Slate | Continue reading }

photo { Sugar Ray Leonard }

Biomechanical research reveals a surprising key to the survival of our species: Humans are built to outrun nearly every other animal on the planet over long distances. (…)

The standard explanation among physical anthropologists has long been that early hominids left life in the trees to forage on the open savanna and that walking upright was the key to surviving in that new environment. Bramble and Lieberman do not dispute this general theory, but they have identified a suite of traits in the human anatomy that add a dramatic twist to the story line.

The traits appear to be specifically adapted for running—and for jogging for long distances. So Bramble and Lieberman were not at all surprised that a man won the Man Versus Horse Marathon. It fits their hypothesis. Unlike many mammals, not to mention primates, people are astonishingly successful endurance runners, “and I don’t think it’s just a fluke,” Lieberman says. He and Bramble argue that not only can humans outlast horses, but over long distances and under the right conditions, they can also outrun just about any other animal on the planet—including dogs, wolves, hyenas, and antelope, the other great endurance runners.

{ Discovery Magazine | Continue reading }

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