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If I were asked to name some of the most iconic songs of all time, I'd probably throw out titles like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," or "Hey Jude." Turns out science has a different answer. Researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London put "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by Nirvana at the top of a list of 50 iconic tunes. It's followed by John Lennon's "Imagine," U2's "One," Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Computer scientist Dr. Mick Grierson looked at tracks found in seven "Best of" lists from music publications like Rolling Stone and ran them through a program that compared them by key, BPM, chord variety, lyrical content, timbral variety, and sonic variance. Grierson and his team used these findings to calculate what made the "perfect" song.

"We found the most significant thing these songs have in common is that most of them use sound in a very varied, dynamic way when compared to other records," Grierson told the Daily Mail. "This makes the sound of the record exciting, holding the [listeners'] attention. By the same token, the sounds these songs use and the way they are combined is highly unique in each case."

Nirvana's breakout track, featured on their second studio album Nevermind, boasts many of the features that the researchers identified as common in popular songs.

Grierson found that the average tempo of the most popular songs was 125BPM, with 40 percent being around 120BPM. Chord changes were relatively infrequent-the songs that fared the best boasted an average of six to eight. Of course, there are some glaring exceptions to these "rules": Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven" has twice as many beats as the average song.

Ultimately, the researchers found that no amount of number-crunching can accurately predict whether or not a song will become a classic. "My conclusion is that if you want a formula for creating great music, there is one: you just have to make something that sounds great," Grierson says.

You can see the full list of tracks over at the .

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Here Are the Most Iconic Songs Ever, According to Science

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Computer scientists tried to find the perfect song.

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Offices are notoriously bad at thermal comfort. It's either far too hot or far too cold, regardless of outside temperatures; and often, it manages to be both at the same time-too hot for some workers and too cold for others, depending on where they sit or their gender. There may be a better way to warm up at the office than sticking a space heater under your desk. Keeping your feet comfortable could be a much more effective way of dealing with thermal issues at the office, according to The Atlantic.

As reporter Sarah Zhang writes:

Feet, it turns out, are exquisitely sensitive to temperature. When you get cold, the blood vessels in your extremities are the first to constrict, which is your body's way of preventing more heat loss. "You feel uncomfortable because your feet get numb or getting close to numb," says Edward Arens, an architect at the University of Berkeley, who also studies thermal comfort. If building managers could heat or cool the feet alone, they could cut energy and costs. So at Berkeley, researchers are focusing on thermal comfort from the feet up.

The models that help engineers and office managers determine a building's air conditioning demands are based on studies of men's metabolic rates, and assume that workers will be wearing full suits and, yes, thick socks and shoes. Meanwhile, women might come to the office in the summer in dresses and strappy sandals. No wonder it feels so chilly.

Arens is developing a foot warmer to keep people warm with an eye toward efficiency. In 2013, he and his team estimated that their Personal Comfort System could cut electricity use by 30 percent. One of Berkeley's assistant professors of architecture, Stefano Schiavon, is studying how putting ventilation in floors rather than in ceilings could make buildings more comfortable. To test these systems, he monitors research subjects working in flip-flops-ankles, it turns out, are very sensitive to cold air blowing at them.

It may be a while before your office gets state-of-the-art foot-warming devices or in-floor cooling systems, but knowing how easily the temperatures around your feet affect your overall comfort, a high-tech solution isn't strictly necessary to make cubicle life a little easier. Just change your shoes.

As I write this, my feet and ankles are going numb in the office tundra. Excuse me while I go change into some woolen work socks.

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If Your Office Temperature Is Uncomfortable, Look at Your Footwear

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One researcher thinks foot comfort could be the key to making office temperatures more bearable.

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Researchers in Japan Accidentally Created Melt-Resistant Ice Cream

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The sweet treats contain polyphenol liquid extracted from strawberries, which helps them retain their shape.

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While waiting in line outside bookstores for the sixth Harry Potter novel to be distributed in 2005, fans of the boy wizard began to hear cries of "Snape kills Dumbledore!" Some readers who had seen leaked scans of advance copies online decided to drive around and shout spoilers at people who hadn't even gotten their hands on the title.

It was cruel. There may have been tears. But was it actually spoiling the experience of reading the book?

For the journal Psychological Science, psychologists Jonathan Leavitt and Nicholas Christenfeld published a study in 2011 examining how the enjoyment of stories can be influenced by how much a reader knows about the plot in advance. The authors took 819 subjects from the University of California, San Diego and had them read short stories broken into three distinct categories: stories with "twist" endings in the O. Henry mold, mysteries, and narratives that were more focused on internal character development and literary flourish than big plot turns.

Each reader got three stories by established authors like Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. Some had an introductory paragraph spoiling the outcome; others had a paragraph that appeared to be part of the story spoiling it; a third was presented as-is with no additions. The subjects were asked to rate their enjoyment on a scale of 1 to 10.

Readers tended to rate spoiled stories no differently than unspoiled ones-in fact, they were rated slightly higher. "In all three story types, incorporating spoiler text into stories had no effect on how much they were liked," the authors wrote.

They speculated that knowing outcomes in advance created a different kind of suspense for the reader-one in which they had more information than the characters did. In a follow-up study [ PDF], Leavitt and Christenfeld argued that "fluency," or a familiarity with a story's beats, can allow the reader to pay more attention to other details. If you've watched Star Wars 12 times, the movie has obviously been "spoiled"-but that allows you to focus your attention on the creature designs or background characters.

The authors admit the studies don't account for the kind of anticipatory thrill that comes with the release of an "event" movie or book-a months-long (or even years-long) sustained suspense that can sometimes be more satisfying than the fiction itself. While science might insist spoilers don't really matter, shouting them to kids in line at a Harry Potter release party is probably not the best way to test that theory.

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Research Argues Spoilers Make Stories Better

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While waiting in line outside bookstores for the sixth Harry Potter novel to be distributed in 2005, fans of the boy wizard began to hear cries of "Snape kills Dumbledore!" Some readers who had seen leaked scans of advance copies online decided to drive around and shout spoilers at people who hadn't even gotten their hands on the title.

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Why did humans start making music? Some say it was a sort of mating call. Others suggest we used rhythm and loud noise to scare off predators. But a new study found songs from all over the world share many common features, like rhythm and pitch, lending some validity to another theory: music developed as a way to bring communities together.

"It may be a little bit of a no-brainer, but for a long time, I think, people had this idea of music being an individual expression," says Pat Savage, a PhD student from the Tokyo University of the Arts and the lead author of the new study. "But throughout the world, it's almost always in groups and seems to almost always be about bonding these groups together."

Using the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, an online repository for global music research, Savage listened to and scrutinized 304 very different songs from nine regions: Africa, South America, east Asia, south Asia, southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Oceania. He classified each song based on 32 musical features, including the number of beats, the kind of singing voice, and even the sex of the performers. This had to be done manually. "Technology has a long way to go," Savage says. "It's not anywhere near as good as human ear."

Savage identified 18 features that are predominant throughout the world's songs. These include discrete pitches (where each note is expressed individually, rather than sliding from one note to another) and equally timed beats.

Listen to an example: a Palestinian line dance called "Sahjih" contains all of these features. And on the other end of the spectrum, here's a song from Papua New Guinea that is an extreme outlier because it has no discrete pitch or timed beat.

Male performers tend to dominate throughout the world, the research showed, reflecting the restrictions on women in many cultures. "We don't think this is biological or wired into our genes that women can't make music," Savage explains. "Certainly women are great at making music when they're allowed to. It's a cultural thing."

Savage also found 10 features that appear together. "These individual features themselves are not always there, but when they are, they appear in tandem," he says. For example, dance doesn't appear frequently, but when it does, it's almost always accompanied by simple repetitive phrases, percussion, a regular beat, and group performance.

"The results show that the most common features seen in music around the world relate to things that allow people to coordinate their actions," says co-author Thomas Currie, of the University of Exeter, "and suggest that the main function of music is to bring people together and bond social groups. It can be a kind of social glue."

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Music Developed to Bring Us Together, Says New Study

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Why did humans start making music? Some say it was a sort of mating call. Others suggest we used rhythm and loud noise to scare off predators. But a new study found songs from all over the world share many common features, like rhythm and pitch, lending some validity to another theory: music developed as a way to bring communities together.

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Feeling especially resentful toward your boss today? Before firing off that passive-aggressive email, get up and check the nearest thermostat. Scientists writing in the European Journal of Social Psychology say being in the heat makes people crankier, less cooperative, and less likely to help others.

Researchers Liuba Y. Belkin and Maryam Kouchaki, from Lehigh University and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management respectively, conducted three experiments to test the effects of heat-related discomfort on human emotions and behavior.

For the first part, the researchers pulled data from a summer 2010 study conducted in Russian shopping malls. (Bear with us-this will make sense.) The original study had collected data from secret shoppers visiting a popular chain of handbag and luggage stores. As with any secret shoppers, the study participants' job was to record and report their experience with the store and its staff. It would have been an ordinary gig-except that many of the stores were stiflingly hot. Moscow was experiencing a " mega-heatwave" that summer, and many malls lacked air conditioning.

Store employees really seemed to be feeling the heat. The data showed that they were 59 percent less likely that summer to ask customers if they needed help, make suggestions, volunteer assistance, or show signs of active listening. They just couldn't be bothered. Interestingly, they weren't entirely slacking off; for instance, the stores were as clean as they always had been. The mall workers just had trouble with the human relations part of the job.

In the second experiment, the researchers recruited 160 participants to take an online trivia quiz. Before starting the quiz, half the participants were instructed to imagine themselves in an uncomfortably warm setting. Then they answered a few questions about their feelings, and then they took the quiz. After that, they were asked if they'd be willing to complete a short survey about their experience.

The trivia quiz was essentially a ruse; it was the post-quiz survey the researchers were after. More specifically, they wanted to see if anybody took the survey at all.

A lot of people did. But people who'd had to think about being hot were significantly less likely than others (44 percent versus 77 percent) to agree to do it. They also reported feeling more tired and less happy than everyone else.

The final experiment involved 73 of Belkin's college students. She taught the same class on organizational management in two sessions-once in a stuffy room (80°F) and once in air conditioning. At the end of each session, each student was asked to complete a 100-question survey to support a nonprofit that helped underprivileged children.

You already know where this is going. Students in the hot room answered far fewer survey questions than those sitting comfortably in air conditioning (6 versus 35). Were they ditching the survey in order to could escape the room? It seems likely, Belkin told Quartz, "but whatever the reason, it affected their behavior."

"The point of our study is that ambient temperature affects individual states that shape emotional and behavioral reactions," she said, "so people help less in an uncomfortable environment, whatever the reason they come up with to justify why they cannot do" certain things.

Belkin says these findings carry over into the workplace, and warns employers to keep their employees, like zoo animals, at a safe and comfortable temperature. Sweat them long enough, she says, and they'll quit. "We know that money matters," she said, "but only to a point."

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Science Confirms That Summer Heat Makes Us Grumpy

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Scientists say feeling too warm can make people less likely to cooperate with or help others.

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As an orbiting laboratory, the International Space Station (ISS) offers researchers around the world the unique opportunity to perform experiments in microgravity and under the rigors of the space environment. Scientists have used the station for everything from testing technology for future space exploration to studying human health. Sometimes their work involves some pretty unusual experiments. Here are 12 cool ones.

On Earth, flatworms can regenerate their own cells, replacing them as they age or are damaged. Scientists cut the heads or tails off of flatworms and sent them to the station in September 2014 to study whether the cell signaling mechanisms behind this regeneration work the same way in space as they do on Earth. The results should provide insight into how gravity affects tissue regeneration and the rebuilding of damaged organs and nerves, which is important for understanding how wounds heal-both in space and on the ground.

For humans to explore deep space or live on other planets, we must learn how to deal with the effects of long-term exposure to potent space radiation, which can cause cancer and gene mutations, affecting subsequent generations. Lab mice are important tools for studying radiation effects, but currently, mice can't go to the station. So instead, this investigation will send frozen mouse embryos for a ride in space and implant them into surrogate mothers on their return to Earth. Scientists will use these space mice to study longevity, cancer development, and gene mutations.

In 2012, Astronaut Don Pettit wrote blog posts on behalf of a zucchini plant that was grown from a seed on the space station, one of many investigations on growing greenery in space. The ultimate goal is using plants to provide oxygen and fresh produce for crews on long-term space missions. Gravity plays an important role in normal plant growth and development, though, and not only is gravity nearly nonexistent in space, but plants also are affected by radiation, changes in light, and other factors of the space environment. The anthropomorphic Zucchini and its blog were a way to engage students with space-based research and encourage the next generation of space station scientists.

Fire behaves differently in space, thanks to complicated interactions of fuel vaporization, radiative heat loss, and chemical kinetics. Effectively extinguishing flames in space depends on understanding those interactions. This investigation, performed earlier this month, tested various fire suppressants in microgravity. Researchers found that flames in space burn with a lower temperature, at a slower rate, and with less oxygen than in normal gravity, meaning higher concentrations of materials must be used to put them out. The most surprising discovery was the way heptane droplets seemed to continue to burn under certain conditions even after the initial fire was extinguished. This phenomenon is called "cool-flame extinction." Those who understand conventional theories of droplet combustion say those theories don't explain this behavior, making the cool flames a unique observation with significant theoretical and practical implications.

This two-armed humanoid robot torso mounted in the station can manipulate hardware and work in high risk environments to give crewmembers a break. Robonaut is operated via remote control and can be directed by ground operators through cabin video and telemetry. The half-a-mechanical astronaut also can be controlled by a crewmember wearing a vest, specialized gloves, and a 3D visor. Through this technology, Robonaut mimics the wearer's movements in Wii-like fashion. In the future, the torso will be given legs and used to perform tasks both inside and outside the ISS.

The publicly-accessible, online Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth contains photographs from space beginning with the early 1960s up to recent days. A million-plus of these images were taken from the space station, approximately 30 percent of them at night. These photographs are the highest-resolution night imagery available from orbit, thanks to a motorized tripod that compensates for the station's speed-approximately 17,500 mph-and the motion of the Earth below. Scientists are asking for help cataloging the images through a crowd-source project called Cities at Night. It includes three components: Dark Skies of ISS, which asks people to sort images into cities, stars, and other categories (something computers aren't good at); Night Cities, which relies on people to match the images to positions on maps; and Lost at Night, which seeks to identify cities within 310-mile-diameter images. Ultimately, the data generated could help save energy, contribute to better human health and safety, and improve our understanding of atmospheric chemistry.

Famous explorers kept journals that give us insight into what it took to survive extreme missions, such as reaching the South Pole. Spending months confined in cramped quarters orbiting the earth is one of today's extreme missions, and for this study, researchers asked 10 crew members aboard the station to keep journals. Crew members wrote on a laptop at least three times a week, and investigators identified 24 major categories of entries with behavioral implications. Ten of those categories accounted for 88 percent of the text: work, outside communications, adjustment, group interaction, recreation/leisure, equipment, events, organization/management, sleep, and food. Men and women from various specialties such as science and engineering and both military and civilians participated. Studying small groups living and working in isolation and confinement is like studying social issues with a microscope, scientists say.

This project evaluated funky footwear designed to measure exercise load. NASA developed the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device, which supplies resistance through the power of vacuum cylinders, to give crew members the ability to do weight-bearing exercise in space. Weight-bearing exercise is critical to helping reduce the loss of bone density and skeletal muscle strength that astronauts experience during spaceflight. Four crew members exercised while wearing the high-tech, spring-bottomed sandals, which, like a kind of enhanced bathroom scale, measured the loads and the torque, or twisting force, they applied. The data will help determine the best exercise regimens for safe and effective bone and muscle strength maintenance during spaceflight.

Hawaiian bobtail squids and their symbiotic luminescent bacterium take a ride to the space station. Rather than the start of a joke, this was part of an experiment, performed in September, to look at the effect of microgravity on microbe-dependent animal development and its implications for human health. The squid were inoculated with their symbiotic bacteria once in orbit on the space station and allowed to develop for approximately 24 hours. Researchers closely examined them and found that the bacteria were able to colonize squid tissue in microgravity conditions. The experiment also illustrated the feasibility of using these animals as subjects for microgravity research, so expect to see more squid in space in the future.

For this project, people collected swabs of micro-organisms from museums, historical monuments, football stadiums, and weird places like Sue the T. Rex at Chicago's Field Museum, the set of the Today Show, and the Liberty Bell. Scientists at University of California - Davis transferred those samples to Petri dishes, incubated them to see which grew into colonies, and identified 48 to send to the space station. Scientists need to know how various microbes behave in space before we seal up people and their microbes in a spacecraft for a long trip together to Mars. The 48 samples and identical cultures on Earth will be analyzed to see how their growth differs between microgravity and the ground. Each microbe has an online trading card that tells where it was collected, how well it grows, and some interesting facts about it.

In space, liquids move differently than they do on earth, but the physics of this motion are not well understood. Researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA's Kennedy Space Center performed a series of experiments on slosh dynamics in the station using robotic, free-floating satellites that can independently navigate and re-orient themselves. Researchers hope to design an externally mounted fuel tank that is driven from inside the station by two of these devices to simulate a launch vehicle upper-stage propellant tank and the maneuvers of real vehicles. The experiments will improve computer models of how liquid fuel behaves to make rockets safer.

This investigation compared the behavior of groups of ants in normal gravity and in microgravity and measured how interactions among ants depend on the number of ants in a given area. Eight ant habitats with approximately 100 residents each launched to the space station, where scientists used cameras and software to analyze their movement patterns and interaction rates. Ant colony behavior is a combination of responses by individual ants to local cues, and previous studies suggest ants use the rate at which an individual meets other ants to determine how many of them are in the area. This estimation of group density is needed in many different situations, such as searching for food. When there are many ants in a small space, each ant moves round and round in roughly the same place, but when density is low, each ant walks a straighter path to cover more ground. Data on the ant colony's adaptations can be used to build various algorithms, or sets of steps followed in order to solve a mathematical problem. For example, ant-based algorithms could help scientists develop cheaper, more efficient strategies for robot-based searching and exploration.

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12 Cool Experiments Done on the International Space Station

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A restaurant's menu is more than just a random list of dishes. It has likely been strategically tailored at the hands of a menu engineer or consultant to ensure it's on-brand, easy to read, and most importantly, profitable. Here are a few ways restaurants use their menus to influence what you're having for dinner.

The best menus account for the psychological theory known as the " paradox of choice," which says that the more options we have, the more anxiety we feel. The golden number? Seven options per food category, tops (seven appetizers, seven entrees, etc.). "When we include over seven items, a guest will be overwhelmed and confused, and when they get confused they'll typically default to an item they've had before," says menu engineer Gregg Rapp. No shame in sticking with what you know, but a well-designed menu might entice you to try something a bit different (and a bit more expensive).

Some restaurants have lost sight of this rule. For example, McDonald's initially served just a few items but now offers more than 140. Yet the chain's revenue fell by 11 percent in the first quarter of 2015. "As we complicate menus, what we're actually doing is tormenting the guest," says restaurant consultant Aaron Allen. "When the guest leaves they feel less satiated, and part of it comes down to a perception that they might have made the wrong choice." If you leave with a bad taste in your mouth, you're less likely to come back. And in an industry where repeat customers account for about 70 percent of sales, getting diners to return is the ultimate goal.

Including a nice-looking picture alongside a food item increases sales by 30 percent, according to Rapp.

In one Iowa State University study, researchers tested a digital display of a salad on kids at a YMCA camp. Campers who saw the salad photo were up to 70 percent more likely to order a salad for lunch. "You respond to the image on the display like you would respond to a plate in front of you," said Brian Mennecke, an associate professor of information systems. "If you're hungry you respond by saying, 'I'll have what's in that picture.'" This effect is even more powerful when it comes to digital signs that move or rotate, which fast food restaurants are beginning to implement. "The more vivid the image, in terms of movement, color and accuracy of representation, the more realistic, the more it's going to stimulate your response to it," Mennecke said.

Of course, you can have too much of a good thing. "If you crowd too many photos, it starts to cheapen the perception of the food," Allen says. "The more items that are photographed on the menu, the guest perception is of a lower quality." Most high-end restaurants avoid photos to maintain a perceived level of fanciness.

One way to encourage you to spend more money is by making price tags as inconspicuous as possible. "We get rid of dollar signs because that's a pain point," says Allen. "They remind people they're spending money." Instead of $12.00 for that club sandwich, you're likely to see it listed as 12.00, or even just 12. One Cornell University study found that written-out prices ("twelve dollars") also encourage guests to spend more. "Your pricing format will set the tone of the restaurant," says Rapp. "So $9.95 I've found is a friendlier price than a $10, which has attitude to it."

Dotted lines leading from the menu item to its price are a cardinal sin of menu design. "That menu was introduced before modern typesetting," says Allen. "It was a way of keeping the page looking properly formatted, but what happens is the guest reads down the right side of the menu and then looks to the left to see what the lower price point can afford them." The solution? "Nested" pricing, or listing the price discretely after the meal description in the same size font, so your eyes just glide right over it.

On menus, perspective is everything. One trick is to include an incredibly expensive item near the top of the menu, which makes everything else seem reasonably priced. Your server never expects you to actually order that $300 lobster, but it sure makes the $70 steak look positively thrifty, doesn't it?

Slightly more expensive items (so long as they still fall within the boundaries of what the customer is willing to pay) also suggest the food is of higher quality. This pricing structure can literally make customers feel more satisfied when they leave. For example, one study gave participants an $8 buffet or a $4 buffet. While the food was exactly the same, the $8 buffet was rated as tastier.

Just like supermarkets put profitable items at eye level, restaurants design their menus to make the most of your gaze. The upper right corner is prime real estate, Rapp explains. "The upper right is where a person will go on a blank sheet of paper or in a magazine," he says. That's where the most profitable items usually go. "Then we build the appetizers on the upper left and salads underneath that. You want to keep the menu flowing well."

Another trick is to create space around high-profit items by putting them in boxes or otherwise separating them from the rest of the options. "When you put in a pocket of negative space, you pull the eye there," writes Allen. "Putting negative space around an item can call attention to it and help you sell it."

According to Allen, different colors help conjure feelings and "motivate" behavior. "Blue is a very soothing color, so often times it is used to create a calming effect," he says. And have you ever noticed the number of restaurants that utilize red and yellow in their branding? Conclusive evidence on how color affects our mood is hard to find, but one review suggests that red stimulates the appetite, while yellow draws in our attention. "The two combined are the best food coloring pairings," Allen says.

Longer, more detailed descriptions sell more food. Nearly 30 percent more, according to one Cornell study. "The more copy you write on the menu item, the less it costs in a customer's mind because you're giving them more for their money," explains Rapp. So plain old "chocolate pudding" becomes "satin chocolate pudding." Customers also rated the more thoroughly described food as tasting better.

"People taste what you tell them they're tasting," Rapp says. Consider this: In another study, researchers presented two different groups with the same red wine but with different labels. One label said North Dakota (do they even make wine there?), the other said California. In taste tests, the "California" wine squarely defeated the "North Dakota" wine even though both groups' glasses were filled with "Two-Buck Chuck". Also, "those who believed they had been drinking California wine ate 12% more of their meal than those who instead believed they drank North Dakota wine."

Adjectives like "line-caught," "farm-raised," or "locally-sourced" are big turn-ons for customers. "These things all help increase perception of quality of the item," Allen says. This verbiage is so effective that many states have "Truth in Menu" laws designed to prevent restaurants from lying about things like how a piece of meat was raised or where it originated.

We all have that one meal that takes us back to childhood. Restaurants know this tendency, and they use it to their advantage. "Alluding to past time periods can trigger happy memories of family, tradition, and nationalism," one study says. "Customers sometimes like the feeling of tasting something wholesome and traditional because 'They sure don't make 'em like they used to.'" Keep that in mind the next time you're tempted to order "Grandma's Chicken Soup."

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8 Psychological Tricks of Restaurant Menus

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Here are some ways restaurants use their menus to influence what you're having for dinner.

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Trying to fake your way to success seems dubious at best and delusional at worst. And yet, there is plenty of science that proves you can actually fool yourself and others into becoming more successful, finding love, and increasing your happiness. Researchers have found that "acting" a certain way allows your brain to "rehearse" a new way of thinking and can set off a desired chain of events in the future. Here are eight scientifically-backed strategies for "faking" your way to a better job, relationship, and mood.

1. SAY CHEESE.

Scientists have found that if you want to lift your mood, you should force yourself to smile. A 2012 study published in the journal Psychological Science trained 169 university students to hold chopsticks in their mouths in order to force particular facial expressions (one neutral, one a standard smile, and one a genuine smile, which engages the eye muscles as well as the mouth muscles). Once the participants learned the correct expression, they were given stressful multitasking activities to complete, such as tracing a star with their non-dominant hand while looking at a reflection of said star in a mirror. The researchers found that the subjects with both the genuine and the standard smiles had lower heart rates after performing the task than those with the neutral expression, indicating they were less stressed.

According to Psychology Today, a similar study that asked participants to either "raise their cheeks" (forcing them to smile) or "contract their eyebrows" (making them frown) while judging images of neutral, happy, and angry faces found people had a more positive reaction to the images when smiling. What's more, the positive benefits of these forced smiles lasted for four minutes.

2. STRIKE A POWERFUL POSE.

In her much-publicized 2012 TED talk, Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School social psychologist, shared her findings that adopting a powerful posture can affect your body chemistry. In her study, she had subjects adopt either a power stance-with their chest and head lifted and arms propped on their hips-or a meeker pose-hunched over with their arms crossed-for two minutes. The people who maintained power poses showed a decrease is the stress hormone cortisol and an increase in testosterone, a hormone related to dominance and confidence. "Our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves," Cuddy concluded. "Our bodies change our minds."

3. PRETEND YOU KNOW THE ANSWER.

A 2012 study published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology found that expecting to know correct answers can actually improve our test-taking abilities. Psychologists asked two groups of participants to answer a set of questions on a computer. One group was told the answers would briefly flash on their screens before each question-too quickly for them to read the answer, but supposedly slow enough for their subconscious to register it. In reality, the flashing "answers" were a random series of letters and numbers. Meanwhile, the other group was told the flashing screen simply signaled the next question. In the end, the group that thought they were seeing the answers got the most questions right. This advantage may have evolved from our primitive survival tactics, reasons Scientific American, as expectation of a change in the environment "triggers physiological changes that prepare the body for the impending confrontation even before the predator comes into sight."

4. DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WANT.

Researchers at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management found that wearing particular clothes associated with certain positive qualities helped improve the wearer's performance. In the 2012 study, individuals were instructed to don white coats described either as "lab coats" (the kind worn by doctors and scientists) or as "artistic painters' coats" (which were actually identical to the lab coats) while they performed a task; in order to demonstrate that the coat had to actually be worn to make a difference, a third group was merely shown a lab coat before being asked to perform the task [ PDF].

The three groups were asked to examine four sets of two pictures for differences and write what they found down, a test that was designed to test their sustained attention. The researchers found that people wearing the "lab coat" found significantly more differences in the same amount of time than the "artists," meaning that their attention was heightened while wearing the coat. This lead the researchers to conclude that dressing for success "depends on both the symbolic meaning and the physical experience of wearing the clothes."

5. LISTEN TO HAPPY MUSIC.

When you're in a funk, probably the last thing you want to do is turn on some Pharrell. But recent research found that forcing yourself to listen to happy music and consciously trying to become happier can actually lift your mood. In a 2012 study published in t he Journal of Positive Psychology, 167 college students were asked to listen to 12 minutes of "happy" music. One group was told to try to actively boost their mood while listening, while the second group was instructed to listen without trying to alter their mood. The first group reported much higher levels of positive mood after listening.

A tandem study by the same researchers had 68 students listen to happy music during five lab visits over the course of two weeks. Again, half the group was told to try to become happier during this time, while the other half was told not to attempt to change their mood. The students who made an effort to be happy reported higher mood levels than those who just listened to the happy music. "These studies demonstrate that listening to positive music may be an effective way to improve happiness, particularly when it is combined with an intention to become happier," the researchers conclude.

6. MIMIC GOOD LEADERS.

Say you've just been promoted to a position with job requirements that are outside of your skill set. New research shows that the best thing you can do is mimic someone else around you who displays the required skill sets, even if your first inclination is to worry about appearing like a fraud. Of her research, professor of organizational behavior Herminia Ibarra writes in the Business Review, "By viewing ourselves as works in progress, we multiply our capacity to learn, avoid being pigeonholed, and ultimately become better leaders. We're never too experienced to fake it till we learn it."

7. FEIGN ROMANTIC INTEREST.

Richard Wiseman, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K., split roughly 100 participants at a speed dating event in Edinburgh in 2012 into two groups to test what he calls the " As If Principle" (if you act "as if" you are a certain way, you'll come to feel that way). One group was instructed to behave as they normally would on their dates, while another was told to pretend they were already in love by gazing into each other's eyes, touching hands, and whispering secrets. All participants were then asked how close they felt to their various partners (on a scale of one to seven) and whether they would like to see each other again. On average, those faking romantic interest reported that they felt one point more intimate with their partners. Forty-five percent of this group also said they would like to see the other person again, while only 20 percent of the "normal" speed dating group reported the same. Wiseman told the Telegraph of his study, "The assumption was that the emotion leads to the action or behaviour but this shows it can happen the other way around, action can lead to emotions."

8. FAKE CONFIDENCE TO GAIN INFLUENCE.

It turns out that in group dynamics, early assertiveness becomes self-enforcing. In a 2013 study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers randomly assigned three groups of college students the task of writing two paragraphs on either their job ambitions, their duties and obligations, or their commutes. They then formed same-sex teams using students from each of the three groups and instructed them to brainstorm a hypothetical startup company. Afterwards, everyone took a survey in which they rated the extent they respected and admired the other members of their team. The researchers found that the individuals who had written about their ambitions enjoyed a higher rank in the group pecking order and were perceived as being more assertive and proactive than those who had focused on their job duties or commutes. By just shifting your thoughts to your goals, the research suggests, you can project a more capable, confident persona.

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8 "Fake It 'Til You Make It" Strategies Backed by Science

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Trying to fake your way to success seems dubious at best and delusional at worst. And yet, there is plenty of science that proves you can actually fool yourself and others into becoming more successful, finding love, and increasing your happiness.

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Why Reading Aloud Helps You Remember More Information

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A new study suggests that reading information and hearing yourself speak it aloud is a more effective memory technique than reading silently or listening to someone else read.

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Constantly feel like you're short on time? You're not alone. There's a popular perception that life has gotten more hectic and harried in recent years, with longer work hours and less time for recreation. But time use researchers have found that while we may feel more rushed these days, we might not actually be much busier.

According to Scientific American, experts at the Centre for Time Use Research at the University of Oxford, UK, have collected thousands of time use diaries dating back more than five decades. Since the journals were collected from a variety of sources-including a BBC television study from 1961 that consisted of 2363 diaries-researchers use a numerical categorization system developed in the 1980s to break down and standardize the thousands of entries. Gardening for instance is recorded as a nine, sleeping is 16, and general relaxation is 36.

After comparing time use statistics across several decades, the researchers found that the number of hours worked per week (including both paid and unpaid work) hasn't changed significantly for most countries in the developed world since the 1980s. The amount of time spent performing specific tasks, however has shifted slightly: They found that men today spend slightly more time on domestic tasks than they did in the past, while women spend more time doing paid work. They found that, if anything, men may even be slightly less busy. According to Scientific American, "Men had reduced the number of hours they spent on paid work, increased those in unpaid work and overall came out ahead, with just under 50 minutes more free time per day."

Why, then, do we feel so busy? Researchers aren't sure-though they have several theories. The Centre's founder, John Gershuny, explained to Scientific American that attitudes toward work and leisure have shifted over the last century: While having leisure time was once a sign of upper class status, now the opposite is true. Being busy, nowadays, is often worn as a "badge of honor." Gershuny notes that people may exaggerate how busy they are for the sake of appearances, explaining that, in fact, it's common for people to over-report the number of hours they work by 5 to 10 percent.

He also explains that while overall people may not work more than in the '80s, there are two groups that do have less free time than in the past: employed, single parents, and well-educated professionals, especially those with young children. Since the latter demographic encompasses journalists and academics, Gershuny proposes that some of our feeling of being overworked may come from their reporting-they are, after all, "the people in society with a loud voice."

However, Gershuny notes, we may also be busier than some of the time journals indicate, since they're not great at recording multi-tasking. Plus, people may be doing work on phones and other mobile devices without even thinking of it as work. For instance, if you compose an email during your morning bus ride to work, would you categorize that as "commute" time or "work" time? Technological shifts have opened up the possibility of working without fully realizing it, adding to our feeling of being constantly rushed.

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Research Shows We Might Not Be As Busy As We Think We Are

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Though we may feel more rushed, for the most part, things haven't changed much over the past five decades.

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Before we start, what you need to realize is that dinosaurs were definitely large, but not so large. You probably know the numbers: the largest land mammals ever are around 6-8 meters long (19-26 feet), while the largest dinosaurs were ... is it 40 meters (131 feet)?

Damn, what a number!

However, numbers can be veeeery misleading. Look at the second-largest land mammal ever, Indricotherium, and one of the largest dinosaurs, Brachiosaurus, here.

The difference seems to be incomparable ...

Those are two entirely different body shapes: most of the brachiosaur's length is used up by its enormous neck and tail. To make it fair, I want you to use your two thumbs: place one over the dinosaur's neck, and the other over the tail (hopefully, you are not reading this from a touchscreen).

And suddenly, enormous becomes quite ... normous. Obviously, Brachiosaurus is still larger than Indricotherium, but it's not four times larger like the numbers would suggest. The real, fair difference between the two is roughly the same as the difference between an elephant and a hippo:

Moral of the story: don't let the body shape mislead you.

So here's the answer to the "so large" part of your question: because they weren't.

However, there is still some "true" difference in size to account for. And at least two factors could've contributed to it:
1) Different rules of herbivory.
In the age of mammals, the most effective strategy of herbivory is grazing.

Grasslands are super-effective. The two most productive mammal-dominated ecosystems ever are savannas and (now gone) mammoth steppes: both can feed enormous numbers of huge mammals. With grasses growing at insane rates everywhere, no other food source on Earth can provide for such high mammalian biomasses.

Moral of the story: if you want to grow up big and full, eat grasses.

However, it wasn't always so. In times of dinosaurs, grasses didn't exist. So, the largest animals then were forced to resort to the second-best herbivory strategy: browsing.

Tree foliage doesn't grow like grasses, yet still there's usually a considerable amount of it per area unit, because it overlaps vertically many times.

Dinosaurs that fed from canopies could afford to grow large: for thermoregulation or defense from predators-usual reasons.

Any animal that grows too big inevitably experiences difficulties with food. At present, any herbivore that became too large would likely just move onto grasses. But dinosaurs couldn't. Hence, the only solution that they had was to grow necks even longer to get even more foliage. But if you grow a larger neck, you also need a larger tail (for balance). Then, you also need broader and thicker bones for all those muscles to attach, stronger legs to support the extra tons of weight, and so on and so on.

Effectively, it was a dead loop: dinosaurs became large, then they grew longer necks to support the growing need for food, which in turn made them become even larger, which in turn further increased their need for food. Browsing herbivory was likely the driving force of sauropod size, and in the end, the only limiting factor was probably the height of the highest canopy.
2) Reproductive limitations
This one doesn't really answer the " why sauropods were large?," but the " why mammals aren't that large?".

A typical sauropod was, effectively, a reproductive frog. It laid dozens if not hundreds of small eggs that hatched into very small babies that had little to do with adults: they occupied very different niches and fed on different food. For sauropods, it killed two problems: firstly, it made pregnancies easy and unnoticeable (which is a factor when you weighed 60 metric tons), and secondly, it removed competition for food between adults and babies.

In other words, sauropods could afford to become as large as necessary without worrying much about how it would affect their pregnancy and reproduction.

On the contrary, being a pregnant 60-tonne (66-ton) mammal is a nightmare-of a real and deadly kind.

All (placental) mammals bear relatively large offspring. However, if you weighed 60 tonnes, that would be ... what, 2 tonnes (4400 pounds) heavy offspring? Carrying extra 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of weight at the peak of pregnancy is difficult enough for humans, but having to carry 10 extra tonnes (22,000 pounds) is just impossible, unless you are a whale and swim.

Not to mention that it would be a very long pregnancy.

Not to mention that pregnant females require even more food.

Not to mention that the young must be fed, only to grow up to compete with you for the same food later.

Moral of the story: children are expensive ... unless you are a frog or a sauropod.
Q: How about livebearing smaller babies?
There are two problems with this. Firstly, it just doesn't happen. There are relatively small newborns in some placental mammals, but nothing like the difference between sauropod adults and babies.

Secondly, if babies are too small, then they become unavailable for social interactions: in fact, they are better to stay away from parents immediately to avoid being stomped on. Social behavior and learning are the backbone of mammalian success. Trying to get rid of it just isn't worth it.

So in the end, dinosaurs that weren't so large were large because they bred like frogs and because their kitchen was ... a little underrepresented.
This post originally appeared on Quora. Click here to view.

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Before we start, what you need to realize is that dinosaurs were definitely large, but not so large. You probably know the numbers: the largest land mammals ever are around 6-8 meters long (19-26 feet), while the largest dinosaurs were ... is it 40 meters (131 feet)? Damn, what a number!

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The existence of paranormal phenomena is one of those things you're usually either heartily for or against. In case you're on the fence about the subject, here's a list of 13 of the most prominent university sanctioned (and unsanctioned) odysseys into paranormal research, and what they found.

1. Stanford University (1972 - 1980s)

Stanford University has many claims to fame when it comes to paranormal research: For starters, the esteemed university can rightfully assert itself as the first academic institution in the United States to study extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK) on an official basis. In 1911, John Edgar Coover began conducting experiments into ESP. Other claims to fame include a rigorous scientific exploration of the purported psychic abilities of the famous "spoon bender" Uri Geller (there is no spoon!), which were studied intensively at the affiliated Stanford Research Institute (SRI) over a five week period during the 1970s.

Maybe even more exciting and curious than the possibility of bending metal with one's mind was the CIA-sponsored Stargate Project, which took place at SRI in the 1970s. This secretive project was an effort by the CIA to explore the practical applications of Remote Viewing. Unfortunately, during the mid-90s, Stargate Project research officially ceased due to claims that the project failed to yield useful applications and intended objectives-but word on the street is that claims of failure were overexaggerated, and that research merely continued unofficially under the popular radar.

2. Duke University: Parapsychology Laboratory (1935 - 1965)

In 1935, Duke researchers J.B. Rhine and William McDougall made that university the second in the nation to officially enter into paranormal research when, after an exceptionally fascinating lecture by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the possibility of communication with the dead, the men formed the Parapsychology Laboratory as part of the university's main psychology department. Laboratory research focused mainly on the critical study of extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK).

To this day, Rhine is commonly accepted to be the father of parapsychology, not only for having coined the term with the help of his trailblazing partner McDougall, but also for having almost singlehandedly established parapsychology itself as a field of scientific and academic inquiry. While the Rhine name is no longer associated with Duke University directly, J.B. Rhine's purported success in the vein of paranormal inquiry lives on at the Rhine Research Center.

3. Princeton University: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (1979 - 2007)

From 1979 to 2007, the tiny basement of Princeton University's engineering building was home to the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) project, which aimed to determine whether there was factual basis for theories in mind/matter interaction-or in layman's terms, extrasensory perception (ESP) and telekinesis (TK). While officially expressed by university administration to be an embarrassment, the program claimed success when it was all said and done: Over the project's 28-year run it was determined by PEAR researchers that compounded data from the many trials did in fact reflect highly significant statistical deviation from what one could expect from chance alone. In other words, minds intelligent enough to teach at Princeton believe that ESP and PK exist.

4. Harvard University (1990s - 2008)

Not everyone conducts paranormal research with the hope of finally harnessing proof of its existence. Recently, a team of Harvard scientists set out to disprove the existence of ESP, and even introduced a new method of research into the mix in order to do it.

To conduct their research, the Harvard duo included use of brain scanning with the aim of deciphering whether individuals have knowledge which cannot be explained through "normal" means (AKA the five senses). While researchers admit that technically the project's results do not disprove the existence of ESP, they assert that findings from their experiment provide the most persuasive evidence to date against the existence of ESP. Professional skeptic James Randi is beaming with pride, I'm sure.

5. University of Virginia: Division of Perceptual Studies (1967 - Present)

With six years of research in the area of past lives (reincarnation) already under its belt, UVA's Division of Perceptual Studies (DPS), a research unit within the Department of Psychiatric Medicine, was established by Dr. Ian Stevenson in 1967. The division is still kicking today, holding the field of Parapsychology afloat in North America as one of the only university-sanctioned paranormal research programs remaining in the U.S.

DPS research has explored such phenomena as reincarnation (most specifically through its focus on children who claim to remember past lives), near death experiences (NDEs), apparitions and after-death communications, altered states of consciousness, as well as many other psychic (psi) experiences. The Division credits its persistence over time with the great success it has had in substantiating claims within its reincarnation research.

6. The University of Arizona: The VERITAS (2006 - 2008) and SOPHIA (2008 - present) Research Programs

The Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona is parent to an interesting and ever-evolving body of paranormal research. The VERITAS and SOPHIA research projects at UA were created with the primary aim of exploring the possibility that human consciousness might survive the experience of physical death. From 2006 to 2008, VERITAS explored survival (existence of the personality beyond death) and mediumship, until the decision was made to create a more comprehensive body of research including broader claims of after-death communication, such as communion with discarnate entities (spirit guides, angels, divine higher power) under the program name SOPHIA.

7. The University of California, Los Angeles (1968 - 1978)

Remember that "based on actual events" movie from 1982 called ? Well, here you go: Over a ten year period, UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) was home to a "non-sanctioned entity" of paranormal research which studied clairvoyance, telepathy, haunted houses, Kirlian photography and even boasted a psi development group (1971 to 1980) which sought to help "normal people" develop latent psychic abilities. The lab operated on the fifth floor of what is now the Semel Institute, and existed by effort of a small group of passionate volunteer researchers-including Dr. Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor, the very team who conducted the real-life poltergeist investigation on which The Entity was based.

After a little over ten years of research, the toll of political tension and pressure from unapproving university administration over ongoing media attention got the best of the project, and research was forced to conclude abruptly. Today, the lab itself is a ghost of sorts: UCLA and Semel Institute officials deny that the lab ever existed-other than a few flyers advertising the parapsychology classes which were taught on campus by the researchers, no evidence of the lab or its research even exist.

8. Cornell University (2002 - 2010)

In 2010, Cornell University's Daryl Bem concluded a rigorous eight year study on the subject of precognition, which involved 1000 Cornell undergrads over nine experimental runs and resulted in unprecedented, almost incomprehensibly positive results. Through a unique "backwards" approach to psychological phenomena, Bem's experiment affirms the likelihood of "retroactive" psi effects-or in this case, the ability of a person's physiology to "predict" an upcoming event regardless of the individual's conscious awareness of its impending occurrence.

As if that wasn't wild and exciting enough, Bem's findings seems to be re-affirming theories within quantum physics. In total, an overwhelming eight of Bem's nine experiments confirmed his hypothesis that psi is a real phenomena-and, according to Bem, the odds of getting such a combined result due to chance or statistical flukes are about 1 in 74 billion.

9. University of Edinburgh (1985 - Present)

A Chair of Parapsychology was established within the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh in 1985. This entity of research is the esteemed Koestler Parapsychology Unit (KPU), which prides itself on its interdisciplinary approach to parapsychology. Scientific research at KPU examines such phenomenal claims as extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK), as well as the nature and consequences of belief in the paranormal itself.

In 2010, KPU brought research into the 21st century when it used Twitter as the platform for conducting a mass-participation research project in the area of remote viewing and ESP. While the study itself did not conclusively show evidence for remote viewing per se, it was determined that Twitter was an excellent tool for future studies conducted by the Unit.

10. Goldsmiths, University of London

Among one of the more hip experiments taking place in current paranormal research is the Mobile Telepathy Test being carried out by The Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) of the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. This Mobile Telepathy Test seeks to explore instances of possible telepathy involving individuals receiving a phone call from someone they have just thought about. Through its research and experimentation, APRU hopes to determine whether this apparent phenomena is simply a coincidence, or possibly indicative of psi phenomena such as telepathy or precognition.

Also on the menu at APRU are studies in altered states of consciousness and hypnosis, as well as a series of recently concluded projects including the Joint Telepathy Test, which aimed to determine the possibility of sensing, for instance, when individuals are looking at the same photo simultaneously.

11. University of Adelaide: Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (2003 - Present)

In 2003, a division of dedicated research was established at the University of Adelaide in South Australia in order to further the scientific and academic study of psi phenomena. This division of the university's Department of Psychology, named the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU), was the brainchild of respected parapsychologist Lance Storm and his colleague, Dr. Michael A. Thalbou. One of APRU's interesting ventures into the paranormal seeks to scientifically test the hypothesis that the blind are able to compensate for deficits in sight by naturally developing psi abilities that are statistically superior to those of individuals with normal abilities in ocular vision.

12. Lund University

The ever-progressive Lund University of Sweden is currently involved in a long-term research project, investigating states of consciousness and parapsychology. The program aims to find a correlation between hypnotic suggestibility and incidence of psi phenomena during experiments. This inquiry follows previous experiments which found that highly suggestible individuals are found to experience a high rate of anomalous experiences such as telepathy and clairvoyance.

13. Utrecht University (1953 and 2008)

The Netherlands is definitely known for its proclivity to produce open-minded thinkers. In 1953, Ultrecht University in The Netherlands definitely lived up to this reputation when it was host to the "First International Utrecht Conference on Parapsychology"-the first ever conference of its kind-from July 30 to August 5. The event, considered to be one of the most critical moments in the history of modern scientific parapsychology, brought together 78 scientists and parapsychologists from 13 countries, who lectured and held exciting roundtable discussions about current research and to plan for the future of the field. In 2008, the followup "Utrecht II" conference was held, where lectures were once again offered by a who's who of the field on subjects such as the reality of psi phenomena, ESP in dreams, field investigations of hauntings and poltergeist activity, self-organized reality, clinical parapsychology, and even physics as it applied to the field.

And the Honorable Mention goes to...

University of Amsterdam: Anomalous Cognition Section (1990s - Present)

During the 1990s, The University of Amsterdam took on an interesting project in order to hone its students' and faculty's empirical research skills: it created the Anomalous Cognition Section (ACS), which in addition to making rockstar researchers out of its pupils, sought to explore the possibility of anomalous cognitive effects (which is simply parapsychology-speak for telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition). This section was created under the oversight of the university's Psychology Department, where as early as 1982 and 1986, student-run experiments had been conducted under university sanction in order to study the possible existence of psi phenomena.
Primary image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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The existence of paranormal phenomena is one of those things you're usually either heartily for or against. In case you're on the fence about the subject, here's a list of 13 of the most prominent university sanctioned (and unsanctioned) odysseys into paranormal research, and what they found.

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Twenty years ago (yes, you're really that old) Office Spaceforever changed how we look at cubicle life. Like a much funnier Dilbert meets Beavis and Butt-head meets the then-largely misunderstood world of Silicon Valley, the comedy movie from Beavis creator Mike Judge ably skewered everything from didactic middle-management bosses to chain restaurant uniforms. And it gave us a charming Jennifer Aniston love story plus a rap mini-music video dedicated to the destruction of malfunctioning printers.

For all that and more, the 1999 film that originally performed poorly at the box office has become a widely quoted cult sensation. Here are the interesting facts and references to look for the next time you watch Office Space.

1. It was shot very, very far from Silicon Valley.

Office Space keeps its setting purposefully vague, but the opening driving shots clue a perceptive viewer into the location: Notice the sign for Preston Road on Highway 289 in the background, which indicates that we've been dropped around Plano, Texas. The movie was shot in and around Austin, where Mike Judge lives, making him something of a Hollywood outsider. But Office Space is clearly attuned to the rituals and lingo of Silicon Valley's tech scene. In fact, Judge worked as an engineer in the California area in the 1980s, which would go on to inform much of his satire, especially his popular HBO show Silicon Valley.

2. It was Mike Judge's first foray into movies ... and it didn't work out as planned.

Starting out as a self-taught animator in Texas, Judge made his name in entertainment with cartoons that aired on Saturday Night Live and, eventually, turned into his own MTV show. Beavis and Butt-headpremiered in 1993, when the cable network's scripted offerings were still in their infancy, and quickly became both a commercial hit and a cause of nationwide controversy. He went on to co-create Fox's slightly more family-friendly King of the Hill, but Office Space marked his live-action directorial debut in film (he previously helmed the movie adaptation Beavis and Butt-head Do America). Made on an estimated $10 million budget, it earned only slightly more than that at U.S. theaters. Sadly, that failure has become something of a pattern for Judge's movie work: Future efforts and Extract failed to catch on with initial audiences, though the former has also grown into a cult hit.

3. It didn't exactly make Ron Livingston a household name.

Office Space had all the makings of a breakout for its handsome, top-billed star, who was coming off a smaller part in the comedy phenomenon . But given its early commercial disappointment, he continued to seek out smaller parts and interesting, left-field projects like Adaptation. and The Cooler. He finally got his mainstream cred as the boyfriend of Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City (he's the one who broke up with her via Post-it note) with the massively popular horror flick The Conjuring. He's currently starring in two series: A Million Little Things and Loudermilk.

4. Initech has a very symbolic statue.

The statue outside the Initech office shows a square peg in a round hole. No coincidence, it's a reference to the common idiom referring to an individualist who doesn't fit into a particular social mold. That could describe Livingston's Peter, his co-worker friends, Jennifer Aniston's Joanna-or, more self-referentially, Judge himself, who has always made movies and series about outsiders.

5. You can tell a lot about Bill Lumbergh from his vanity plate.

Everything you need to know about Division V.P. Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) is established in an early shot of him pulling into his reserved parking space at Initech in a blue Porsche with a customized license plate that reads, "MY PRSHE." Low-key. (Also notice the lack of any regional designation on the license plates in the film.)

6. "TPS" has a real meaning.

Lumbergh's single-minded obsession with the details of "TPS reports" drives much of the cubicle-set humor, but what exactly is a TPS report? Potential meanings abound, especially given that companies love an abbreviation, but Judge revealed that TPS refers to Test Program Set reports, which dated back to his engineering days.

7. The food at Chotchkie's sounds less than appetizing.

A sign at the restaurant promotes its "shrimp poppers," a food name that leaves a lot to the imagination. Later, chipper server Brian highlights "pizza shooters" and "extreme fajitas." Whatever a pizza shooter is, it can't be good.

8. Diedrich Bader had a very specific look in mind for Lawrence.

Diedrich Bader, who plays everyone's favorite beer-guzzling neighbor Lawrence, came to his Office Space role with clear inspiration. "What I really wanted to look like was somebody who loved the Allman Brothers," he told The A.V. Club in 2012. Sounds about right.

9. There's a real Milton out there.

Judge based the vengeful staffer, also the focus of several of his animated shorts, on one of his real-life co-workers when he was an engineer. Judge asked the man how he was doing, and he responded that he was going to quit his job because his desk had been moved around too many times.

10. Jennifer Aniston helped the movie get made.

The cast of Office Space has one instantly recognizable name: Jennifer Aniston, who was by then of course already a superstar for playing Rachel on NBC's . In a reunion for the film, Judge thanked Aniston just for signing on (though he added that she was great in the part), saying, "It helped us put the studio at ease a little bit-at least they had one famous person."

11. Michael Bolton has embraced the punchlines about him.

Peter's co-worker Michael Bolton (played by David Herman) hates the fact that he shares a name with a musician who is, in his words, a "no-talent ass-clown." While the real-life Bolton initially seemed peeved about the mockery, he now signs Office Space DVDs for fans.

12. Chotchkie's is a thinly veiled TGI Fridays.

The chain restaurant by the office is notable not just for its fried food but for its emphasis on "flair" worn by the servers (15 pieces of flair is the minimum). Office Space is clearly mocking TGI Fridays, whose staff used to dress with seemingly endless buttons and ornamentation. TGI Fridays actually phased out flair by 2005, supposedly as a result of the movie.

13. Y2K makes a cameo.

Peter tells Joanna while having lunch that in his job he updates software for the "2000 switch." In 1999, the impending change of the millennium was in fact a massive headache for tech companies and their programming of dates, a phenomenon that became known as Y2K.

14. The movie reintroduced red Swingline staplers.

Milton's beloved red stapler was actually painted that color by the prop department, so that it would pop on the screen. As it was one of the more hilarious throughlines in Office Space, viewers started to seek it out in real life. The brand Swingline, which had phased out red staplers, decided to bring the product back. Design-minded executive assistants everywhere can thank Judge.

15. Mike Judge is hiding in plain sight.

In an uncredited role, the writer and director plays Joanna's boss at Chotchkie's, reprimanding her about her lack of flair. (Though it's hard to recognize him under the mustache and wig.)

16. Judge is a not-so-secret hip-hop head.

Hip-hop is repeatedly played and referenced throughout Office Space, particularly gangsta rap, which was ascendant in the '90s. The famous printer-smashing sequence is set to the Geto Boys' "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta." Also notice Michael Bolton rapping along to Scarface while driving in the movie's opening. Judge has cleverly curated hip-hop in much of his work, from rap videos in Beavis and Butt-head to a collaboration with Danny Brown for Silicon Valley.

17. Milton foreshadows the climax a lot.

Milton mentions the possibility of burning down the Initech office several times before actually doing it, making it perhaps the least surprising act of arson depicted in film.

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Is Your Mobile Phone Use Bad for Your Mental Health?

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Twenty years ago (yes, you're really that old) Office Space forever changed how we look at cubicle life. Like a much funnier Dilbert meets Beavis and Butt-head meets the then-largely misunderstood world of Silicon Valley, the comedy movie from Beavis creator Mike Judge ably skewered everything from didactic middle-management bosses to chain restaurant uniforms. And it gave us a charming Jennifer Aniston love story plus a rap mini-music video dedicated to the destruction of malfunctioning printers.

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There's another way to look at this question. People tend to think in terms of supercontinents forming and then breaking up again due to convection currents in the mantle, hot material rising and causing rifts in weaker spots, possibly in old sutures where the continents were shoved together-but what is really happening is that ocean basins are opening and closing, and the ocean has an active role in subduction.

The opening and closing of an ocean basin is called a Wilson Cycle. It begins when hot material rising from the mantle stretches the overlying crust. As molten material rises, a rift is formed. The rift is widened as material continues to squeeze into it. If that rifting goes on long enough, through a broad enough swath of a continent, ocean water will eventually flow into it, and an ocean basin begins to form. The upwelling of hot material will continue to rise through that thinner area of crust, pushing the plates apart. The Atlantic Ocean is an example of a basin that is well along in the Wilson Cycle; eventually subduction is going to begin at its margins, and the whole shebang will pivot.

This will happen because at the edge of continents, sediments accumulate. The weight of those sediments, combined with the weight of the water, drives the heavier, denser edge of the oceanic plate under the continental crust, which is fatter and lighter. Eventually subduction begins, and the basin begins to close again. The Pacific Ocean is an example of a basin that's closing.

If you look at a map of the oceanic rift zones, you'll notice that the one in the Atlantic is pretty much in the middle of that ocean, but the Pacific rift zone has been pulled all the way over to North America above Central America. Subduction is actively occurring on all margins of that plate.

The simple picture is that the continents are moving toward each other across the Pacific Ocean while the Atlantic Basin continues to widen. The truth is more complicated. When plates subduct, the water in the crust lowers the melting point of those rocks, so partial melting occurs. The partially melted material begins to rise through the overlying rocks, because it's less dense, and decompression melting occurs. Eventually, the upwelling of hot material forms plutons and volcanoes above the subduction zones. Fore-arc and Back-arc [ PDF] basins can form. As the oceanic crust is pulled under the continental plate, island chains and other chunky bits get sutured to the edge of the continent along with sediments, making it larger. Our world is ~4.6 billion years old, so our continents are really large, now. They're unlikely to rift through the ancient cratons that formed their hearts.

What will happen if subduction begins on the eastern side of North America before the Pacific Basin closes? The margin next to California is a transform fault; it's not subducting. Will it eventually push itself under that part of North America again, or will the transform zone get bigger? The hot spot that was driving the ancient Farallon Plate under North America was eventually overridden by the southwestern states (Arizona, New Mexico, etc.) forming a rift zone. Will it continue to rift or poop out?

There are computer models predicting what supercontinent may form next. They will continue to change as our understanding of tectonic processes gets more accurate.
This post originally appeared on Quora. Click here to view.

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Most People Consistently Visit 25 Different Places in Their Daily Lives

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There's another way to look at this question. People tend to think in terms of supercontinents forming and then breaking up again due to convection currents in the mantle, hot material rising and causing rifts in weaker spots, possibly in old sutures where the continents were shoved together-but what is really happening is that ocean basins are opening and closing, and the ocean has an active role in subduction.

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Complex, challenging, and ambitious, video games have come a long way since the simple arcade titles of the 1970s-and evidence is mounting that the benefits of play go well beyond entertainment and improved hand-eye coordination. In honor of National Video Game Day (today), here are 15 ways games are programming better people.

1. Video games are producing better surgeons.

While you may think you want your surgeon reading up on the latest medical research instead of playing games, you might want to reconsider: a study of laparoscopic (small incision) specialists found that those who played for more than three hours per week made 32 percent fewer errors during practice procedures compared to their non-gaming counterparts.

2. Video games could help people overcome dyslexia.

Some research points to attention difficulties as being a key component of dyslexia. One study has shown dyslexics improved their reading comprehension following sessions of games heavy on action. The reason, researchers believe, is that the games have constantly changing environments that require intense focus.

3. Video games could improve your vision.

"Don't sit too close to the television" used to be a common parental refrain without a lot of science to back it up. Instead, scientists are discovering games in moderation may actually improve-not strain-your vision. In one study, 10 weeks of play was associated with a greater ability to discern between different shades of grey. Another had participants try to play games using only their "lazy" eye, with the "good" one obscured. Those players showed significant, sometimes normalized improvement in the affected eye.

4. Video games could help make you a better leader.

Because certain genres of games reward and encourage leadership traits-providing for "communities," securing their safety, etc.-researchers have noted that players can display a correlating motivation in their real-world career goals. Improvising in a game can also translate into being faster on your feet when an office crisis crops up.

5. Video games could pique your interest in history.

Many games use actual historical events to drive their stories. Those characters and places can then spark a child's interest in discovering more about the culture they're immersed in, according to researchers. Parents who have obtained books, maps, and other resources connected to games have reported their children are more engaged with learning, which can lead to a lifetime appreciation for history.

6. Video games can make kids more active.

While some games promote a whole-body level of interaction, even those requiring a simple handheld controller can lead to physical activity. Sports games that involve basketball, tennis, or even skateboarding can lead to children practicing those same skills outdoors.

7. Video games might slow down the aging process.

So-called "brain games" involving problem-solving, memory, and puzzle components have been shown to have a positive benefit on older players. In one study, just 10 hours of play led to increased cognitive functioning in participants 50 and older-improvement that lasted for several years.

8. Video games might help ease pain.

It's common to try to distract ourselves from pain by paying attention to something else or focusing on other body mechanisms, but that's not the only reason why games are a good post-injury prescription. Playing can actually produce an analgesic (pain-killing) response in our higher cortical systems. The more immersive, the better-which is why pending virtual reality systems may one day be as prevalent in hospitals as hand sanitizer.

9. Video games can help you make new social connections.

Gamers are sometimes stigmatized as being too insulated, but the opposite is actually true. The rise of multi-player experiences online has given way to a new form of socializing in which players work together to solve problems. But studies have shown games can also be the catalyst for friends to gather in person: roughly 70 percent of all players play with friends at least some of the time.

10. Video games can help improve balance in multiple sclerosis patients.

Since it is a disorder affecting multiple nerves, multiple sclerosis patients often have problems with their balance-and no medications have been conclusively proven to help. However, one study showed that MS patients who played games requiring physical interaction while standing on a balance board displayed improvement afterward.

11. They can help improve your decision-making skills.

We all know someone who seems to have a faster CPU than the rest of us, able to retrieve information or react in a split second. For some, that ability might be strengthened through gaming. Because new information is constantly being displayed during play, players are forced to adapt quickly. In one study, players who were immersed in fast-paced games were 25 percent faster in reacting to questions about an image they had just seen compared to non-players.

12. Video games can curb cravings.

Players preoccupied with indulging in overeating, smoking, or drinking might be best served by reaching for a controller instead. A university study revealed a 24 percent reduction in desire for their vice of choice after playing a puzzle game.

13. Video games can reduce stress.

While some games are thought to induce stress-especially when you see your character struck down for the umpteenth time-the opposite can be true. A major study that tracked players over six months and measured heart rate found that certain titles reduced the adrenaline response by over 50 percent.

14. Gamers might be less likely to bully.

Though the stance is controversial, some researchers have asserted that action games may reduce a bully's motivation to-well, bully. One study that had players assume the role of both the hero and villain showed that those controlling the bad guy's behaviors displayed a greater sense of remorse over their actions.

15. Video games can help address autism.

Gamers using systems that incorporate the entire body to control onscreen movement have been shown to be more engaged in celebrating victories with their peers, which runs counter to the lack of communication people with autism sometimes present. A study also showed that sharing space with multiple players can also lead to increased social interaction for those with the disorder.
This story originally ran in 2017.

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15 Surprising Benefits of Playing Video Games

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Complex, challenging, and ambitious, video games have come a long way since the simple arcade titles of the 1970s-and evidence is mounting that the benefits of play go well beyond entertainment and improved hand-eye coordination. In honor of National Video Game Day (today), here are 15 ways games are programming better people.

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There are a lot of pros to Zoom meetings: You can wear pajama pants, you can mute yourself so no one hears your music in the background, and you can even turn your video off if you're having a bad hair day. But there are also a lot of headaches. Whether your laptop video camera only works half the time or your microphone cuts out with every other word you say, the Zoom struggle is real.

To make your WFH life easier-or to help you get by in a socially distant office-we've curated a list of products that will make your Zoom experiences a little more enjoyable. Zooms may not always be as easy as in-person meetings, but at least you'll be able to (momentarily) forget that you're not sitting in the same room as all of your favorite coworkers.

1. Logitech C270 Webcam; $53

This budget-friendly webcam from Logitech is perfect for a simple camera that still gets the job done. The Logitech C270 is designed for high-definition video that, at 30 frames per second, has the ability to self-adjust to its lighting conditions, making nearly any room suitable for a Zoom call. The camera also has a noise-reducing mic that will allow your coworkers to hear you even if your background is on the noisy side (You: 1. Barking dog: 0).

2. Logitech Pro Webcam; $149

If you're doing nothing but Zoom meetings these days, you might want to try the Logitech C920 Pro. The model offers a 78-degree field of view and a 1080p HD picture that will ensure your image is crystal clear and wide enough to allow your unruly cat to make an appearance without interrupting too much. The Logitech C920 also sports two mics-one on each side-and has a frame rate of 60fps, making it an ideal choice for live video.

3. Saicoo LED Desktop Lamp; $90

If you want to look your best during your Zoom calls-even if you've just rolled out of bed-you're going to want some good lighting. This Saicco LED lamp has a touch-sensitive panel that allows you to easily control color temperature and brightness. It's also built with a special light reflection feature to reduce eye fatigue. The Saicco lamp even has a built-in charging port, so you'll be able to hop off your Zoom and onto a conference call without ever needing to check your phone battery.

4. Ubeesize Ring Light With Tripod Stand; $40

For a great light that doubles as a phone stand, you'll want to try this combination tripod and ring light from UBeesize. This set comes with three different lighting rings-warm light, cool light, and day light-which can all snap directly onto the tripod. You can adjust each ring to 11 brightness levels, and the set even comes with a remote for your smartphone that can turn your camera on without awkwardly having to adjust it before a presentation.

5. Shure MV5 Digital Condenser Mic; $100

You'll feel like an old-timey radio host (and not just like you're running through your weekly update with your boss) with this digital condenser mic from Shure. The microphone has a custom-tuned microphone to provide high-quality sound, and it has both iOS and USB connectivity to make it easy to link to whatever device you're using. There's also a Shure app that syncs with your microphone for easy recording, editing, and sharing afterward.

6. Logitech Noise-Canceling Headset; $50

A headset is a great solution for improving both sound and speaking quality, especially if you do more phone Zooms than video. This model from Logitech lets you easily adjust the volume or mute the microphone via its in-line audio control button, and it even has an LED indicator light so you'll know whether you're actually on mute during a meeting. These headphones are designed to cancel out any outside noises, but you can also easily adjust the microphone to muffle sound on your end, too (which makes it great for when you're snacking while chatting).

7. Ubeesize Phone Tripod; $14

UBeesize's portable tripod will ensure your Zoom game is always on point no matter where you are. This tripod is built to last, with flexible legs that are reinforced with a rubber coating, sturdy foam, and nonstick feet. And it comes with a remote control for your phone that can be used up to 30 feet away

8. Comfilife Gel-Enhanced Seat Cushion; $33

Whether you're working from home or commuting to the office part-time, many of us are sitting a lot more these days. To make your Zoom meeting feel more like a trip to the spa, a memory-foam seat cushion may be just what you need. This cushion is ergonomically designed to reduce pressure on your tailbone and improve your posture with each use. You can double up your back support with an additional lumbar support pillow, so you can sit up nice and tall for every meeting without discomfort.

9. Fictional Map Wall Art

For a Zoom backdrop that's much cooler than a green screen, hang up a map from your favorite novel or video game for a look that's both stylish and personal. Many of Redbubble's maps are custom-cut or custom-made to ensure that they're high quality, and some also come with tools or materials to help with framing. The independent artists over at Redbubble have maps inspired by The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Zelda, and more, so no matter what you're into, you'll be able to bring a little pizzazz everywhere you (virtually) go.

10. Vintage Travel Posters; Various

If you're more into real places, Redbubble has an incredible wealth of vintage-inspired travel posters to give you that air of prestige and culture you never knew you needed until now. With posters for locations like Cote D'Azur, the Adirondacks, Amsterdam, and Chicago, your new wall art will make you feel like you've spent the last few months on vacation (even if your longest journeys these days consist of walking from your desk to the kitchen and back again).

11. TIJN Blue Light Glasses; $16

Looking alert during meetings is always key, but it's especially important during Zooms. Give your eyes a break with these blue light glasses from TIJN. The frames can effectively block 100 percent of harmful UV rays and relieve eye fatigue, allowing you to get through any grueling conference calls without looking tired. The frames are super light and abrasion-resistant, too, and they'll be comfortable and durable enough to last you for however long virtual meetings are the norm.
This article contains affiliate links to products selected by our editors. Mental Floss may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

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The Time Australian Researchers Studied Why There Are Never Any Spoons in Your Office Kitchen

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There are a lot of pros to Zoom meetings: You can wear pajama pants, you can mute yourself so no one hears your music in the background, and you can even turn your video off if you're having a bad hair day. But there are also a lot of headaches.

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Aspiring rocket scientists and casual space enthusiasts are in luck: NASA's publicly funded research is now available online for free, the Independent reports.

The initiative comes after a push from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2013 to make NASA's research more accessible to the public. Previously, the limited information that was available online was often behind a paywall. Under the new policy, every research paper NASA funds (barring those that deal with sensitive subjects like national security) must be released online within a year of its publication. A web portal called PubSpace hosts the content, and as of now the resource is home to more than 850 articles. More are on the way.

Institutions from art museums to prestigious colleges have embraced the internet as a way of making their materials more accessible to a wider audience. According to a press release from the agency, "promoting the full and open sharing of data is a longstanding core value of NASA," and this latest move falls in line with that.

After you've finished reading about the potential for life on Titan, the impact of Moon dust on rat health, and the solar cycle, you can follow PubSpace for even more stellar (and interstellar) research to come.
Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.
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NASA's Research Is Now Freely Available Online

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Aspiring rocket scientists and casual space enthusiasts are in luck: NASA's publicly funded research is now available online for free, the Independent reports. The initiative comes after a push from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2013 to make NASA's research more accessible to the public.

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With more and more people relying on online dating to meet a partner, the act of online dating also gets studied more and more. Here are 11 revelations from recent studies.

This phenomenon was observed in a study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The researchers weighed and measured subjects in addition to checking their driver's licenses for their actual ages, then looked at their subjects' online dating profiles. Women tended to claim that they were 8.5 pounds lighter than they actually were. Men lied by less-only two pounds-but rounded up their height by a half inch more often. People lied the least when it came to age.

In 2014, dating site PlentyofFish conducted a study in which scientists examined word choice in all 1.2 million dating profiles on the site. In addition to the observation that those who used the word "love" more were more successful in finding it, the researchers discovered that men benefited from using the words "heart," "children," "romantic," and "relationship."

In 2012, the research company AnswerLab conducted a study in which they used a Tobii X1 Light Eye Tracker, which recorded the eye movements of subjects who were reading online dating profiles from Match.com and eHarmony.com. By doing this, they were able determine where men and women were actually looking while reading online dating profiles. As it happens, men spend 65 percent more time looking at the pictures in the profile than women do.

In 2014, BuzzFeed ran an experiment in which one of their writers built a mock-Tinder with stock photos. She found that when someone viewed the person in the Tinder profile picture as "working-class," they would swipe "yes" 13 percent of the time. But, when they considered the person "middle-class," they swiped "yes" between 36 and 39 percent of the time. The study also found that people preferred a potential partner to be of mixed or ambiguous race instead of a blatantly different race than their own. OkCupid co-founder, Christian Rudder, confirmed her findings. He noted, "When you're looking at how two American strangers behave in a romantic context, race is the ultimate confounding factor."

A 2014 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences does note that this phenomenon isn't as bad as it might seem. According to the researchers at the University of California San Diego, the majority of heterosexuals on OKCupid did contact people of another race or at least answer messages from them.
More Articles About Dating:
A group of U.S. psychology professors collaborated on a report, describing the faults of online dating, which was published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest in 2012. The dating sites wouldn't share their specific algorithms with the researchers, but the professors stated that the sites couldn't predict whether a relationship would last just because two people had similar interests and personalities. According to Professor Eli Finkel, who worked on the report, "We reviewed the literature and feel safe to conclude they do not [work]."

This surprising statistic comes from a survey conducted in late 2013 by the Pew Research Center. Even more surprising, this is actually a significantly lower number than it used to be. In 2005, over half of people with online dating profiles never went on an in-person date with someone they had met on the site.

PlentyOfFish put together graphics describing the most "desirable singles of 2014," based on what they observed heterosexual online daters liked in the opposite sex; the site claimed that women are more likely to get messages if they are Catholic, have a dog, earn more than $25,000, and don't have a masters degree. Men get more messages if they are Christian, brunette, high-earners, and PhDs.

This accounts for a total of 22 percent of people with online dating profiles who ask a friend "to help them create or review their profile," according to the Pew Research Center.

A recent study that claims couples who met on dating sites are less likely to get married has been getting a lot of traction on the Internet. Researchers from Stanford University and Michigan State University surveyed more than 4000 people and they learned that breakups were more common in couples who met online versus offline. They claim that the phenomenon holds true for both married and unmarried couples.

Obviously this phenomenon needs to be studied a little more. A 2013 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 35 percent of the 20,000 people who responded to a survey met their spouse online. The study also contradicts the Stanford and Michigan State study by claiming that couples who met online have a 6 percent separation and divorce rate whereas couples who met offline have an 8 percent rate. (It's worth noting that the study was funded by eHarmony.)

If you believe that people do marry sooner when they use online dating, then you can also believe that online dating saves you money. A group of researchers at ConvergEx Group calculated that couples who meet online get married after 18.5 months, on average. Couples who don't meet online, on the other hand, wait an average of 42 months before marrying. ConvergEx group factored in $130 per week for dates, making total cost $23,660 versus $12,803. If the pair is splitting bills, that's around $6400 each saved before marriage.

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11 Results from Studies About Online Dating

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With more and more people relying on online dating to meet a partner, the act of online dating also gets studied more and more. Here are 11 revelations from recent studies.

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MIT Scientists Are Building Biomedical Research Labs Out of LEGO Blocks

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The plastic toys are opening doors to cheaper, modular scientific tools.

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It has been more than 30 years since the meltdown of Reactor No. 4 in Ukraine's Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, an unprecedented manmade disaster that affected much of Europe. Radiation levels are still high, but with a Geiger counter and the right permits, visitors can safely enter the 18-mile Exclusion Zone on guided day tours. What you'll encounter is straight out of a horror movie.

When Reactor No. 4 ignited on April 26, 1986, firefighters rushed to the scene oblivious and unprepared for the meltdown. Within days, many died from acute radioactive sickness. Today, the reactor is enclosed in a massive steel and cement sarcophagus, designed to keep uranium isotopes from entering the atmosphere. The cement has already leaked radioactive lava, with the reactor still capable of fires and explosions.

A model Soviet city, Pripyat was home to 50,000 people and serviced the adjacent power plant. It was hastily abandoned after the meltdown, and has remained untouched ever since. Everything inside the city and surrounding area is contaminated. Empty and desolate, nature is reclaiming this once-thriving city.

Visiting an old school is particularly haunting.

Dolls with dead-stare eyes can be found as you approach the nursery. While visitors are strongly advised not to touch anything, some items have been arranged for maximum creep effect.

According to some reports, an estimated 6000 individuals-most of them children-have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer as a direct result of the Chernobyl meltdown.

Blackened, rusty cribs in the old nursery. You can almost hear the soft melodies of music boxes, violently disrupted with panic during evacuation. This is not the place for vivid imaginations.

It will take centuries before anything in Pripyat can safely be destroyed. During that time, the evidence of humanity will continue to break down naturally, some of it less gracefully.

Soviet-era propaganda and iconography are prominent. Pripyat was built as a model city to demonstrate the power and efficiency of the State, with the Chernobyl facility a symbol of national pride. Today it provides a fascinating glimpse into the past, and the hubris of the State's political ambitions.

The old gymnasium with its empty pool is a visitor highlight. Broken glass and cracked ceramic tiles are everywhere. You can listen to your scream echo throughout the gym and adjacent buildings.

Moss, dust and bushes might look benign, but this growth has absorbed much of the radiation. Visitors are advised to watch where they step, and to avoid moss in particular. All visitors are screened on exit for exposure to radiation, with particular attention paid to hands and footwear.

A fairground was scheduled to open just two days after the disaster. This creaking, rusted, radioactive Ferris wheel never took a single paying customer.

Portraits of Communist party leaders have been stored backstage in the community theater, along with old props and equipment. Seats are torn, and decades-old dust sits heavy on the stage.

If your visit needs a soundtrack, listen to the de-tuned strings in this abandoned piano shop. Neglect, creaking wood, and wind result in disjointed twangs and ghostly whistles.

Nature has been remarkably resilient. Moose, deer, boar, wolves, and bears have been reported in the area, breeding in large numbers. Scientists have been unable to detect any large-scale mutations. Safe from fishing rods, these giant catfish swim in the radioactive water river near the reactor.

The Chernobyl Disaster could have been much worse. Favorable winds saved thousands of lives, splitting the plume and sparing the city from the brunt of the initial radiation. The Soviet government originally planned to build the reactors just 15 miles from Ukraine's capital of Kiev, which would have devastated a concentrated population.
This story has been updated for 2019.

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Colorizing Old Photos Requires a Ton of Research

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It has been more than 30 years since the meltdown of Reactor No. 4 in Ukraine's Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, an unprecedented manmade disaster that affected much of Europe. Radiation levels are still high, but with a Geiger counter and the right permits, visitors can safely enter the 18-mile Exclusion Zone on guided day tours.

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Don't miss an episode- subscribe here! (Images and footage provided by our friends at Shutterstock. This transcript comes courtesy of Nerdfighteria Wiki.)

1. Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is mental_floss on YouTube, and did you know that in 2010 a researcher trained pigeons to tell the difference between good and bad paintings made by children? The pigeons were positively reinforced when they pecked at good paintings and after a while, they were able to determine which ones were good, even observing color and pattern cues in paintings they'd never seen before!

And that's the first of many odd scientific studies I'm going to share with you today.

2. A study was conducted at the Babraham Institute to determine whether sheep were capable of recognizing the faces of other sheep. When the study concluded in 2001, the researchers had discovered that sheep could recognize the faces of fifty sheep about 80% of the time, and they remembered them for over two years, which is much better than my own sheep facial-recognition.

3. In 2011, researchers at Albany Medical College played songs by Beethoven and Miles Davis to rats, learning that the rats preferred silence, but would rather hear Beethoven than Miles Davis. Then the researchers injected some rats with cocaine while the rats were listening to Miles Davis because, y'know, why not? At this point they weren't even conducting a study, they were just enjoying some jazz, and dosing rats with cocaine, as you do. But anyway, they learned that those rats preferred the jazz music, even after the cocaine was out of their systems.

4. Dr. Allan Walker Blair, an assistant professor of pathology and bacteriology at the University of Alabama, allowed a black widow spider to bite him in the 1930s. There was little research on the spider at the time, so he wanted to document his experience with the bite. Unsurprisingly, he discovered that it caused what he described as "excruciating pain". For the record, he lived, but he died of cardiac arrest a decade later, which was probably related to the experience.

5. Speaking of horrible experiments performed on oneself, in the '90s, veterinarian Robert Lopez took ear mites from a cat's ear and placed them in his own ear. He was trying to determine whether humans can get mites from cats. Turns out that we can, but he still repeated the experiment twice, and then got it published in the journal of American Veterinary Medical Association.

6. In the 1960s at Penn State University, an experiment was conducted on a male turkey to see how minimal a stimuli had to be for it to be considered a mate. The researchers kept removing components of a turkey until it was just a turkey head on a stick, and the male turkey still tried to mate with it.

7. A 2012 study found that human male athletes experienced increases in testosterone in their saliva while doing squats after watching short videos containing either erotic, humorous, or aggressive content.

8. In 1976, a group of researchers did a study to determine whether the speed and flow of men's urination was affected by people being too near them. And I can just tell you-yes. But anyway, in order to do this, they left an observer with a periscope in a public restroom for extended periods of time. He found that the closer a man had to pee next to another man, the longer it took for him to start urinating. He also peed, on average, less if someone was standing next to him.

9. Speaking of urine-related studies, Peter Snider, a professor of Neurology at Brown University, discovered that people who have to pee really badly actually have increased levels of cognitive impairment. That study, by the way, cost him a total of $1.25 to complete.

10. In 2012, a group of psychologists found that, quote, "leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller." Basically, when people are leaning, their ability to estimate things like quantity and size is affected because we tend to assume that smaller things go on the left and larger things go on the right. It may be a result of bias among people who read from left to right. Which we should follow up a study with people who read right to left and see what happens when they lean right-I just gave you an idea for a study, science!

11. A paper published in 2004 out of the Zoology Institution of Stockholm University is well summed up by its title, "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans." It turns out that chickens tend to peck at faces that humans also prefer and consider beautiful. It's a good thing that all those chickens live in Sweden because Swedish people are very beautiful. I'm sure the chickens just enjoy pecking their faces constantly.

12. Dr. Anna Wilkinson of the University of Lincoln in the UK trained a red-footed tortoise to yawn in order to research social cognition in tortoises. Over the course of six months in 2011, Wilkinson and her team taught the tortoise to yawn on command, but they didn't observe contagious yawning when they had the tortoise around other members of its species.

13. In 2003 the journal Polar Biology published a paper on the trajectory of penguins' projectile poop. Apparently penguins poop that way because of gastrointestinal pressure, and in case you're wondering, the poop lands an average of 40 cm away from the penguin. So watch out, Wonder Woman!

14. In the early 1900s, Romanian scientist Nicolae Minovici hung himself 12 times for up to 25 seconds with an assistant nearby. He survived and was able to observe first-hand a lot of the symptoms of hanging, like vision problems, and ringing in the ears.

15. At the University of Minnesota, in 2004, scientists discovered that it is just as easy to swim in syrup as it is to swim in water. In order to conduct the experiment, they filled a 25 meter swimming pool with a liquid made of guar gum, a liquid that is twice as thick as water, and it turns out that you can swim in it just fine!

Why did we need to know this? Well, why do we need to know anything, really?

16. In 1986, eleven Russian men spent 370 days lying down in bed. The experiment was to help with future space expeditions, because a year in bed simulated weightlessness.

17. The U.S. has conducted some dubious sleep experiments, too. In the early 1900s, Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman had six men stay awake for days to see the symptoms, but he stayed awake for longer that any of them when he forced himself to stay awake for 115 hours, causing hallucinations. He also once lived underground for six weeks trying to adjust to a 28-hour day, so y'know, he was a fun guy to hang out with I bet.

18. During the early 2000s, an argument over whether the actor Steve Buscemi was cool prompted researchers Ilan Dar-Nimrod and Ian Hansen to research what characteristics make a person cool. They surveyed 353 college students and determined some of the qualities, like being good-looking, friendly, and successful, or being the star of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire.

19. In 2013 a group of researchers joined forces and asked people at bars to rate their own attractiveness. They found that the higher the blood alcohol content of people, the higher they rated themselves on attractiveness.

20. The study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss" was published in 1990. And since I know that you're wondering, around 79% of subjects preferred waxed dental floss and around 21% unwaxed.

21. At the National University of Quilmes in 2007, scientists found that hamsters recovered 50% faster from shifts in their daily time cycles when they were given Viagra. That means that Viagra could potentially help people with jet lag.

22. In the '70s and '80s professors at Florida State University studied the reactions of men and women when a stranger approached them and asked, "Would you go to bed with me?" The majority of men said yes, whereas every single woman said no. Because, y'know, they aren't crazy. Who would say yes to that question? Like, did you ask, "Do you have chlamydia?" first?!

23. There have been multiple studies on whether owners looked like their dogs, although we all know that they do. Like in 2004, Michael Roy and Nicholas Christenfeld had participants match pictures of owners with pictures of their dogs, and the participants were right 64% of the time. Also, Roy and Christenfeld found that people had a much easier time matching purebreds with their owners, rather than mixed breeds. But if I can just make a personal comment here, both mental_floss director, Mark, and mental_floss writer, Meredith, look exactly like their dogs. I, on the other hand, in no way resemble mine.

24. And finally, I return to my salon to tell you about a similar study. During the '80s, psychologist Robert Zions discovered that married couples start to look like each other over time. To prove this, he gave participants a bunch of photographs of single faces. Twenty-four were pictures of individuals in a couple when they first got married, and twenty-four were of the same people, but 25 years later. Then he asked participants to match up pictures of men with the women who most looked like them. There was significantly more resemblance in the couples after 25 years, and participants could match them much easier. Which is good news for me because it means that I'm going to get much cuter in the next 15 years.

Anyway, thanks for watching this episode of mental_floss on YouTube which was brought to you by our friends at Geico and made with the help of all of these nice people who work so hard on the show every week so thanks to them, thanks to you for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

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Don't miss an episode- subscribe here! (Images and footage provided by our friends at Shutterstock. This transcript comes courtesy of Nerdfighteria Wiki.) 1. Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is mental_floss on YouTube, and did you know that in 2010 a researcher trained pigeons to tell the difference between good and bad paintings made by children?

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Every new technology has the potential to influence the way we communicate with others and how we see ourselves. Once our habits in the new technology get established, they are ripe for study. The social photo-sharing app Instagram is still relatively new, but research into its effect on our lives is already underway. Here are seven academic studies of Instagram, by their titles.

How is social media changing how we mourn? This study, published in Information, Communication & Society, analyzed photos shared on Instagram that were accompanied by the hashtag #funeral. Some were selfies or group photos taken at funerals. There were also pictures of objects at ceremonies like vehicles, programs, or food, but rarely of open caskets or headstones. According to the researchers, the use of this kind of social media at funerals indicates a transformation of rituals of mourning, into a less formal and more personal form. While there have long been forms of memorializing the dead on different internet platforms, Instagram memorializing is distinguished by being very "in the moment," and the "central aim of sharing funeral images is to signify and communicate presence ... mourners are sharing photographs to create a sense of proximity, connection and co-presence with friends, family and acquaintances that may not be present."

What happens when photojournalists turn to Instagram-style images? A set of photos published on the front page of The New York Times in 2010 sparked a debate on this issue. They were taken on an iPhone using the Hipstamatic filter app by a photojournalist embedded with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This paper, published in New Media & Society, examines the "technical, aesthetic, and ethical dilemmas that mobile app photography provokes about digital photojournalism." According to author Meryl Alper, the highly-stylized look of the photos may have a truth-distorting effect, one that makes war look glamorous and hip. Another problem raised by the app photos is how the style of photos the media takes imitates those that soldiers themselves take, blurring the lines between the "objective" photojournalist and the "subjective" soldier.

Where athletes' images were once at the mercy of how the media portrayed them, they now have the ability, through social media, to do their own self-presentation in the development of their public image. This study of the Instagram feeds of 27 professional athletes from a range of sports, which was published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, found that despite conventional wisdom suggesting that men are traditionally framed with closer headshots for power and women from more of a distance, in their self-presentation, both male and female athletes tended to post photos that showed their full bodies. The selfie, which usually does not show the whole body, was seldom used. The captions and hashtags that accompanied the photos were also analyzed, and categories of post types emerged that covered themes like humanitarian, family driven, dedicated athlete, and endorser.

Companies are still figuring out the best approach to public relations on social media, especially in so-called "crisis" situations. This study, published in Corporate Communications: An International Journal, looked at negative hashtags about fast food companies on Instagram to analyze how they were used by the public, and how they were responded to. The researches searched for strings like companynameFAIL, companynameSUCKS, and companynamePROBLEMS. Most posts were from customers complaining about service issues. Very few had to do with the food. (Many Starbucks complaints were about names being spelled wrong on cups.) One quarter of the negative posts were from employees complaining about their work environment. The companies in question had very little engagement with or monitoring of such posts, and are advised to "put Instagram next to Facebook and Twitter at the center of their social media strategy and crisis communication plan."

This study, published in MultiMedia Modeling, aimed to see whether the way Instagram users used filters to change the look of their photos was related to their personality traits. They had participants agree to allow access to their Instagram accounts and asked them to fill out a personality questionnaire. They analyzed the personality features against image features and found various correlations. For example, the personality trait of openness to experience was correlated with more saturated, vivid colors, and also less inclusion of faces and people in the photos; the trait of neuroticism correlated with higher brightness levels; extroversion tended to correlate with more blue and green colors, rather than red and orange.

This study, published in Computers in Human Behavior, used a survey of college students to examine the reasons why they use Instagram, and how it relates to narcissism and contextual age (a sort of measure of where you are in life with respect to life satisfaction, interpersonal relationships, and social activity). The researchers found that Instagram is used mainly for four things: "Surveillance/Knowledge about others," "Documentation," "Coolness," and "Creativity." Surveillance was the reason most correlated with the amount of time these students used Instagram. Coolness and Creativity were the reasons most correlated with amount of time editing photos. The amount of time spent editing photos was also significantly related to narcissism.

This study, published in Computers in Human Behavior, aimed to see whether image-based as opposed to text-based social media was more likely to relieve loneliness because of the greater intimacy and feeling of "realness" for pictures. Using surveys, the researchers found that image-based social media did seem to be associated with a decrease in self-reported loneliness. Loneliness was highest among those who used no image-based social media. The use of text-based social media alone did nothing to reduce loneliness: "If anything," the researchers wrote, "increased use of text-based media may exacerbate loneliness."

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The social photo-sharing app Instagram is still relatively new, but research into its effect on our lives is already underway.