Gun Violence Contagion, Pregnancy Brain, and Dirty Towels

should I go before I wash my bath towel? But first, a more serious story from our own writer and editor, Eve's Jeff Cope. A study into the connections among users and victims of guns has demonstrated the gun violence is contagious like a disease. Learning more about how this violence spreads could lead to innovations in preventing it. There were nearly fifty eight thousand incidents of gun violence in the

United States. The US ranks high list comparing countries rates of gun deaths, and many of the most deadly mass shootings in the States occurred in the last several years. But despite the alarming stats, scientists claim gun violence research is under published and underfunded compared with other leading causes

of death. That's partially due to n r A backed legislative restrictions that discourage agencies like the CDC and National Institutes of Health from using public funds on gun violence research. A new study makes the case for more research by showing that gun violence is a public health issue. In the study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers from Yale and Harvard Universities found that gun violence spreads like a

contagious disease through social interactions. They examine the pool of people arrested from two thousand and six to two thousand and fourteen in Chicago, a city whose gun violence rates are above the national average. From that population, researchers identified

cases of death and injury by gunshot. By linking people who co offended or were arrested together for the same um, the study authors created a social network of over eleven thousand episodes of gun violence that affected nearly ten thousand people. Think of co offending as a vehicle for the disease,

like sex are sharing needles in other epidemics. The researchers acknowledged that because they use only co offending as a social tie without considering relationships like friendship or employment, the study is limited. Based on the social contagion model the researchers created, sixty three point one percent of the gun violence incidents in the network were influenced by infectors, who

expose others to the risk of being shot. This suggests that people are more likely to be shot after associating with the shooting victim, especially when the interaction involves an offense, and in true contagion fashion, gun violence even has an incubation period. On average, the infective subjects of gun violence were shot one hundred twenty five days after the infector was shot. The authors ruled out homophily the tendency to hang out with similar people, as an explanation for the

close social ties of people affected by gun violence. In other words, these shooting patterns didn't occur because the peers were already alike, but because one person's behavior rubbed off on the other. It may seem obvious that we influence the behaviors and opinions of people were close to, but efforts system gun violence usually focus on demographics like age, sex, and neighborhood, which puts extra pressure on disadvantaged minority communities.

In the study, a model that combines social contagion and demographics performed better at predicting gun violence subjects than the separate social contagion and demographics models. Because of this, the authors say that law enforcement and health professionals could better

predict and prevent shootings by considering both factors. This isn't the first time people have recognized firearm violence as an epidemic, though in the American Medical Association called it a public health crisis, and prior research has studied how gun violence spreads through social relationships. But as gun related crimes in the debay over stricter gun laws continue, any scientific step

for a better violence for woodsmen is invaluable. Next up, staff editor Christopher Hasiotis and our freelance writer Laurie L. Dove bring us the story behind pregnancy brain. If you've ever known or been a pregnant woman who has become a bit more forgetful than usual, there's a reason for that,

and the effects last longer than we thought. Perhaps you're familiar with the so called mom nisia that can occur during a pregnancy, not to mention the sweeping hormonal, emotional, chemical, and physical changes both external and in But a new study published in the journal Natural neuroscience contends the pregnancy alters regions of the brain for up to two years

after a woman gives birth. Why well, the changes serve an incredibly useful purpose, aiding a mother's ability to bond with and give undivided attention to a newborn and just the newborn. So what actually happened to the brain of a pregnant mother to be the changes involved the purning of the size and structure of certain areas of the brain that process social information, such as the feelings and tensions, thoughts,

or even the beliefs of others. This lets the new mom put other things on the back burner to help up the odds of the newborn survival. Using magnetic resonance imaging or m r I scanning, a team out of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain analyzed the brains of twenty first time mothers before and after their pregnancies, as well as those of nineteen of their male partners. The team also looked at a control group of twenty women who had never been pregnant, as well as seventeen

additional male partners. Over a five year period. The researchers took m R I scans of the study participants at regular intervals, and these scans revealed changes in the pregnant women's brains. Specifically, there was a reduction in gray matter in the prefrontal and temporal cortexes, which are the areas that correspond with social cognition and self focused processing. Interestingly, these deficits did not create a cognitive struggle, but actually

enhance certain functions. The changes to pregnant women's brains as shown in the scans were so prevalent and so consistent that scientists could tell whether a woman had been pregnant before just by looking at a brain scan. Scientists also could predict a mother's level of attachment to her newborn based on these brain changes and scans. According to the studies leads scientist, the findings point to an adaptive process related to the benefits of detecting the needs of the child,

such as identifying the newborn's emotional state. So if a new mother in your life seems brusque, distracted, or otherwise scatter brained, you've got the trial and error process of evolution to think. Finally, this week, senior editor Katherine Whitburn and our freelance writer Alia Hoyt delve into some bathroom science. We all know that our bath towels have limited lifespans between washes. How often is often enough For many people,

a weekly bath towel change is the norm. After all, you're cleaned from your nice, hot shower, so how bad could your towel get? Right? Well, although your body is feeling delightfully fresh, the average towel collects tens of millions of dead skin cells, as well as any fungi or bacteria that survived your scrub down. Since your private parts also come in contact with your towel, urinary and innal

secretions are also transferred to it. You worse, most toilets aren't all that far away from the shower, and droplets of toilet water have been known to reach far and wide when flushed, leaving your damp hanging towel at risk. Speaking of damp, every moment that a towel is left

out to dry, it allows germs to multiply unchecked. The humid atmosphere that's so common to bathroom areas is perfect for encouraging the growth of mildew and other undesirable stuff, So don't leave your wet towel on the floor or scrunched up on the towel bar, hang it spread out so it can dry completely. Speed up the drying cross us by opening a window or turning on the bathroom fan. And if the tallest starts to smell fonki, that means mildew is a thriving and it definitely needs to go

in the laundry. So because of all those germs, back to your and mildew, the experts say you should go no more than three uses without washing your bath towel, and you should wash it in warm or hot water, dechargent and some colors safe leach three times. That's all. Who knew that's a show for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in, especially Caroline, a fellow huffle puff. Caroline,

my patronis is apparently a Bassett Hound. Further thanks to our audio producer Dylan Fagan and our editorial liaison Alison luder Milk. Subscribe to now Now for more of the latest science news and send us links to anything you'd like to hear his cover plus a comic book, ear reading or rereading. I just got into The Walking Dead.

You can send us an email at now podcast at how stuff works dot com, and of course, for lots more stories like these, head on over to our home planet now dot how stuff works dot com MHM