smart & curious
Kashmir: A neverending lockdown
Graphic novelist Malik Sajad illustrates Kashmir’s ‘longest lockdown’ in a stunning and moving series of images. It truly deserves your attention. (New York Times)
A list of intriguing questions
- Can dogs smell covid? A new study says ‘yes’—if you let them sniff your armpits. Well, it’s better than a nose swab 🤷♀️
- Will lockdown loneliness turn us into loners? Research on ‘lonely’ zebrafish suggests ‘maybe’. When normally social zebrafish are isolated for a period of time, social interaction makes them hypersensitive to stimuli and activates areas of the brain associated with stress and anxiety.
- Can you put humans into hibernation? Scientists are certainly trying… but with mice. And they have been successful in isolating a ‘snooze’ button—a set of neurons, actually. Hibernation can help with recovery from serious surgery or illness.
- So how do humans see colour? The astonishing answer: “most people only see color in the dead center of their visual field, and not in the periphery. In other words, your sense of a rich, colorful world is inaccurate.”
- How far can you walk in a straight line without hitting a major body of water? The answer according to @amazingmap: 13,500 km between Liberia and China like so.