Marshall Brain's News Roundup: May 6th, 2011

to do it. The group is called Team six, an elite unit of the already elite Navy Seals. You can google brain stuff Team six to learn more about them. It's a pretty interesting group. There's even a Team six dog that wears body armor, a camera, and is able to parachute from fifty feet like the rest of the team.

The existence of Team six wasn't that surprising, because we know that the U. S. Government has lots of secret teams, and if Team six is now known to the public, we can be sure that there's a Team seven, eight, nine, whatever, and we'll never hear about those. But the stealth helicopter was the unexpected thing. Apparently the military has created helicopters that are quiet and radar evading. According to one article, the radar evading part comes from the use of technology

like that found in the original F one seventeen. The F one seventeen was the first stealth fighter, and if you ever saw it, it really surprised you. Instead of being curvy and streamlined like a normal airplane, the F one seventeen was completely angular. Every surface of it was a flat plane. The idea was that when radio waves from a radar unit hit the F one seventeen, they would reflect off of the flat planes of the airplane at an angle, rather than reflecting back to the radar unit,

so that the radar unit could sense the plane. As far as the radar unit was concerned, the plane was completely invisible and less. One of the flat planes happened to be angled just right so it faced towards the radar unit, and then you'd get a flash from the airplane, but that was a really rare event. The Team Sex helicopter apparently used this technique as well, along with quieting technology to cut the noise from the engines and the

rotors of the helicopter. The fact that the helicopter crashed during the mission was most unfortunate. Just imagine if they hadn't killed Bin Laden, it would have been a total fiasco. You can google brain stuff Stealth Helicopter for more information on this machine. So besides the Bin Laden stuff, what was the most popular topic this week on brain Stuff? One was an article entitled Amazing Examples of Superhuman speed

and Accuracy. It's a VIDEOEO montage showing people doing things that seem impossible, sort of like what Team six was doing. One guy, for example, is able to catch arrows as they fly by. When you consider that arrows typically fly at the speed of more than a hundred feet per second, it's a pretty amazing feat. But even more amazing is the modern samurai who can slice an air soft pellet

traveling at two feet per second. An air soft pellet is a plastic sphere about the size of a p and once it's shot from the gun, there are two problems. The first is the reaction time. There just isn't that much time to draw the sword and position it. And then there's the accuracy part, getting the blade within the diameter of the pellet. I would have a problem hitting an air soft pellet with a sword, even if the

pellet was sitting still on a table. If you google Brain Stuff Superhuman Examples, you can watch all the videos in this series. Another popular topic this week has to do with learning to dunk a basketball even if you're less than six ft tall. Is this possible? Yes, it is. I found one video showing a five ft five inch guy dunking a ball, so it's definitely possible. How do they do it? The first key is light weight. You have to eliminate every bit of fat on your body

because weight reduces the height of your jump. Then you need to do weight training and exercises to develop explosive power in your legs, and then you need to practice to get the techniques down. If you want to learn to dunk, google martial Brain Dunk for details. Why do human beings have the power to reason? There's an article in Interesting Reading seven forty five that is just fascinating. It's talking about a very peculiar trap that the human

mind falls into called confirmation bias. Confirmation biases the source of all manner of superstition and human culture. The superstition discussed in the article has to do with the perception of NBA players and fans. Here's basketball again, that a player can have a shooting streak. When players statistics are analyzed, there's no statistical evidence whatsoever to support the idea of a shooting streak. The belief in streaks is pure superstition. But of fans and players believe in the idea of

shooting streaks nonetheless. So the article asks why would our brains evolve in a way that promotes confirmation bias given that it's always wrong. Let me quote one little paragraph from the article. Quote, But if you take the point of view of the argumentative theory, having a confirmation bias makes complete sense. When you're trying to convince someone, you don't want to find arguments for the other side. You want to find arguments for your side, and that's what

the confirmation bias helps you to do. End quote. Yikes, I mean, what else can you say to that. It's like, we have something built into our brains that causes us to perceive the world incorrectly, and we do it so that we can have arguments with other people. Anyway, it helps to us understand a little more about how human beings function. If you google Interesting Reading number seven forty five,

you can get the details. Also in Interesting Reading number seven forty five is a fascinating article that interviews a car salesman to better understand how consumers can deal with them. One of the questions he's asked is what's the best way to get a good deal. The answer is, quote, the best deals are really situational end quote. In other words, on any given car lot, there is a car, or there are several cars that have been sitting there for a long time. It could be something as silly as

the color that's causing the problem. People just won't buy the car because of the color. If you aren't picky, then finding those cars may get you the best deal. There are lots of other good questions in the article, for example, when is the best time to buy a car? Or what is it with dealer add ons? What can you do to avoid them? Or how much profit is in each car? Things like that. If you google Interesting Reading number seven forty five you can read more from

this car salesman. Think about your local blood bank. The blood in it has to come from generous human beings making donations, and it has to be the right type for the recipient, and it has a short shelf life. This is not a great product to have laying around on shelves. What if scientists could come up with synthetic blood, a much better product that could be made in a factory, doesn't care about blood types and lasts for years. Such a synthetic apparently save the life of a woman recently.

It's still experimental. It has a long way to go to get full approval, but it does show a lot of promise. If you google interesting Reading number seven forty five, you can learn more about the woman who was saved and the blood that saved her. Is the sodium in table salt really bad for you? We've all been educated to think so, and there's huge momentum in the marketplace right now to suck salt out of processed foods and

restaurant foods. But a new study is challenging the idea. Apparently, in some populations, lowered sodium intake actually creates more problems than it solves. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a reputable source, but it flies in the face of all prior research, so it's suspect at the moment. If you google Interesting Reading seven forty four, you can learn more about this study and

what it might mean. How might we go about detecting highly advanced civilizations of alien beings living elsewhere in our galaxy or in the universe. The SETI Project, which recently ran out of money, hasn't detected any alien signals for decades, so perhaps we need to try a different approach. What about looking for artifacts of alien life? For example, one article discusses super advanced alien cultures and how they might try tapping into the energy resources of a black hole.

In fact, they might try to create their own black holes for energy, and one way to look for artificially created black holes would be to look for black holes with a low mass. Natural black holes have a minimum mass because they're only formed in certain situations involving star death, and artificial black hole might, in theory, be lighter than a natural black hole, and since it's lighter, it might be detectable. It could be that thinking like this could

lead us to advanced civilizations. If you google interesting Reading number seven forty four, you can learn more about the technique. Are you getting the right amount of sleep? And if not, is it hurting you? Apparently sleep has a big effe act on brain function. According to one article quote around seven hours of good quality sleep is fundamental to human functioning and well being. End quote. People who get seven

hours of sleep do the best on cognitive tests. Anywhere in the range of six to eight hours of sleep seems to be fine. If you get less than that, it can cause damage, and if you get more than that, it can cause damage. As we get more and more connected to the internet, however, sleep seems to take a back seat, and that can cause cognitive problems. If you google interesting Reading number seven forty three, you can learn more about sleep patterns and the amount of sleep you

should be getting at night. What do you think is the most popular form of cosmetic surgery in the United States? Is it breast implants? Is it know his jobs as it tummy tuchs? No, it's LiPo suction NG with close to half a million LiPo section events per year. So let's say you go have liposuction. You might have some

fat sucked out of your thighs or your stomach. What happens next, Basically a year later, the fat comes back for most people, but it doesn't come back in the same place because there are now less fat cells there and there's probably been damage around that area. As far as fat cells are concerned. Instead, it comes back somewhere else. Often it comes back in the arms. But even so people can still be happy with the results of liposection. The article puts it this way. Quote. Nonetheless, the women

in the study who had liposection were happy. Dr Eco said they had hated their hips and thighs and just wanted that fat gone. End quote. Apparently it doesn't matter if the arms get heavier in that case. If you google interesting Reading number seven forty two, you can learn more about the procedure and how it affects your body afterwards. For some time, scientists have been able to create and capture antimatter, but mostly it's been anti electrons, also known

as hasitrons because they're created both naturally and artificially. Within the last decade, scientists have created anti hydrogen by combining anti protons with anti electrons, but storage times have been very short, typically less than a second. Now, scientists at CERN have created more than three hundred anti hydrogen atoms at one time, and they've kept them alive for fifteen minutes.

Why are they doing this? One reason, obviously, is because the warp drive in Star Trek is powered by antimatter, making antimatter intrinsically cool. The other reason, though, is because there's this huge unanswered question does the gravity created by matter attract or repel antimatter? As amazing as it sounds, we do not actually know which it is, but we are about to find out. If you google Interesting Reading

number seven forty two you can get the details. And finally, did you know that it's illegal for a company to leave a prerecorded message on your cell phones voicemail? Apparently it is. An article this week reports that a guy was getting a lot of harassing calls from debt collection agencies and these calls were invalid, and he managed to

sue the offending companies. According to the article, quote to make a long story short, so far, I have successfully sued three of these collection companies and settled for more than five thousand dollars out of court. All it cost me was thirty five dollars and twenty minutes per suit. End quote. It's nice when good triumphs over evil. You can google Interesting Reading number seven forty one to learn how this works, especially if you've been getting harassing phone calls.

So that's it for this week. If you would like to look up. These are a hundred other interesting articles. You can google interesting reading number seven forty one, seven forty two, seven forty three, seven forty four and seven forty five, or come to the brain stuff blog at how stuff Works. Until next time, have a rate weekend for more on this and thousands of other topics. Doesn't how stuff works dot com and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works

dot com home page. You can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain Stuff h s W. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes