Teco-teco laçado pelas guampas

Teco-Teco laçado pelas guampas

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4USMHmf3nE

Um peão de estância laçar um avião "pelas guampas", em pleno ar, parece lenda, mas é fato. Isso aconteceu em janeiro de 1952. Foi numa fazenda, nas proximidades da Base Aérea de Camobi, em Santa Maria. O autor da façanha, Euclides Guterres, então com 24 anos. O piloto do "Paulistinha", o jovem Irineu Noal, 20 anos. Ambos já falecidos.

Quando cuidava de uma novilha doente, Euclides notou que um pequeno avião dava rasantes sobre as coxilhas, aproximando-se cada vez mais de onde estava. O peão, achando que aquilo era brincadeira ou algum tipo de provocação, não teve dúvidas: armou o laço de 13 braças e quatro tentos e o atirou em direção ao bico do teco-teco, acertando o alvo.

A reconstituição montada pelo repórter fotográfico Ed KefellREPRODUÇÃO / O CRUZEIRO

Por estar preso na cincha do arreio sobre o cavalo, o laço, com o impacto, arrebentou na presilha e seguiu pendurado no avião. O piloto, assustado, tratou de pousar na pista da base aérea. Longe do hangar, retirou o laço e o escondeu no meio das macegas. No dia seguinte, um instrutor notou que a hélice do aparelho estava rachada. Pressionado, o piloto confessou o acontecido.

O peão Euclides Guterres, aos 24 anos, autor do feito que repercutiu mundialmenteREPRODUÇÃO / O CRUZEIRO

O comandante do aeroclube procurou o jornalista Cláudio Candiota (1922-2012), diretor de A Razão, e contou a história, mas pediu para não divulgá-la, "para não causar prejuízo à imagem do estabelecimento sob sua responsabilidade". O jornalista comentou: "Deixa comigo. Vou tornar este aeroclube famoso em todo o mundo". Não só deu a notícia no seu jornal como no Diário de Notícias, de Porto Alegre, e telefonou para a revista O Cruzeiro. Esta, na mesma semana, mandou seu melhor fotógrafo, o gaúcho Ed Keffel, a Santa Maria, onde reconstituiu o episódio e o estampou em cinco páginas, amplamente ilustradas. Com circulação de mais de 700 mil exemplares, a reportagem de Cláudio Candiota repercutiu na imprensa mundial. A notícia saiu até na Time americana. "Eu não fiz por maldade. Foi pura brincadeira. Para falar a verdade, não acreditava que pudesse pegar o aviãozinho pelas guampas num tiro de laço", confessou Euclides Guterres.

 

Why Do Most People Cradle Babies in Their Left Arm?

Summary: A novel study explores the curious phenomenon of why the majority of people prefer cradling a baby in the crook of their left arm. Research suggests that around 75% of individuals, regardless of their handedness, instinctively use their non-dominant arm to cradle a baby.

Several theories, including the possibility of improved heartbeat or hearing communication, have been proposed. However, the most likely explanation is the convenience of keeping the dominant hand free for multitasking while holding a baby.

Key Facts:

1. Research involving 765 participants aged 4-86 found that 75% of people cradle a doll in the crook of their non-dominant arm.
2. The prevailing theory suggests that this behavior is linked to our preference for keeping the dominant hand free for other tasks.
3. The phenomenon primarily applies to holding babies, as adults tend to use their dominant and stronger arm for carrying heavier children.

Source: NTNU

You probably haven’t ever given it much thought, but almost everyone cradles a baby in one specific arm. The vast majority of people always cradle a baby in the crook of their left arm.

Why is that?

“Researchers have been trying to explain this phenomenon,” says Audrey van der Meer, a professor of neuropsychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU’s) Department of Psychology.

One theory is that most people cradle a baby to the left so that it can hear their heartbeat better. Credit: Neuroscience News

It is undoubtedly a phenomenon and several studies confirm it; the vast majority of people prefer to cradle a baby in the crook of their left arm. Artists have also noticed this.

“The Virgin Mary is usually depicted cradling baby Jesus in the crook of her left arm,” says Professor van der Meer.

The professor has previously studied the phenomenon and has now investigated it in more detail in a review article that includes the latest empirical data and meta-analyses in the field. This work was published in Infancy, an academic journal.

Three out of four people cradle babies in their weakest arm

When van der Meer and Åsmund Husby worked together a few years ago, Husby was a psychology student. He wrote an experimental bachelor’s thesis on the phenomenon under van der Meer’s supervision.

During that year, Husby was one of 35 undergraduate students who collected cradling data from family and friends, kindergartens, schools and sports clubs. Everyone had to perform the doll test on 20 people, and at least 5 of these had to be left-handed.

They tested 765 people aged 4-86. These people were asked to cradle a doll in the crook of one arm. The researchers found that 567 of these (75 percent) cradled the doll in the crook of their non-dominant arm. They tested the subjects’ handedness using a continuous scale.

Heartbeat or hearing?

One theory is that most people cradle a baby to the left so that it can hear their heartbeat better. In almost all people, the heart is located on the left. Can the sound of a beating heart soothe a baby or connect it more closely to an adult?

Or maybe it has something to do with our hearing? Humans often perceive information in the form of sound faster with their left ear than their right. The theory is that most people cradle a baby to the left because we then use our left ear and eye to get information about the baby’s emotional state. Signals from the left are sent to the right hemisphere of the brain, which is specialised for interpreting emotions and faces.

However, perhaps the most intuitive explanation is also the most correct.

Associated with the dominant arm 

A few years ago, van der Meer published an empirical study together with researcher Åsmund Husby. This theory holds that the phenomenon is closely related to the arm we use the most.

“Interestingly, this has not been regarded as an adequate explanation, even though it intuitively seems logical,” says Professor van der Meer.

New findings have strengthened this theory.

“Nine out of 10 people in the world are right-handed. We still believe that this is the best explanation why the vast majority of people cradle babies in the crook of their left, non-dominant arm,” says van der Meer.

We are usually doing something else while holding a baby, not just posing for a picture or showing it off. So, we basically do what is most convenient.

We want our ‘best arm’ free to do other things

Most of us cradle a baby to the left in order to have our right hand free. Generally speaking, it is most natural for left-handed people to cradle a baby in the crook of their right arm.

“It is perhaps interesting to mention that there are many pictures of William, the Prince of Wales, cradling a baby in the crook of his right arm. He is left-handed,” says Professor van der Meer.

However, right-handed Kate, the Princess of Wales, cradles babies in her left arm, like most of us.

This does not mean that van der Meer uses royal preferences as proof of the phenomenon. Instead, she has taken other theories into account and focused on the empirical data, and her conclusion is clear.

“The explanation that we cradle babies in the arm we use the least is also true if other factors are taken into account,” says van der Meer.

However, the phenomenon applies only to babies. As children get bigger and heavier, most people tend to carry them using their dominant and stronger arm.

About this neuroscience and psychology research news

Author: Nancy Bazilchuk
Source: NTNU
Contact: Nancy Bazilchuk – NTNU
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original Research: Closed access.
“Handedness as a major determinant of functional cradling bias” by Audrey van der Meer et al. Infancy

---

Abstract

Handedness as a major determinant of functional cradling bias

Cradling is an interactive activity, involving a manual component that is very often an integral part of cradling. Cradling, while doing something else with the free hand, is referred to here as functional cradling.

This study examined the relationship between a person’s handedness and what arm he or she prefers to use when functionally cradling a baby doll that resembles a newborn infant.

A total of 765 participants took part in the experiment, 403 women and 362 men, between the ages of 4 and 86 years. Left- and mixed-handers were actively recruited. The sample consisted of 64.3% right-handed, 24.7% mixed-handed, and 11.0% left-handed participants.

The results showed a clear tendency for participants to cradle in their non-dominant arm (p < .001). Furthermore, this tendency increased with age and it was present in both sexes, although significantly stronger in women than in men.

On the other hand, experience with young children through younger siblings and/or being a parent did not increase the likelihood to cradle in the non-dominant arm. It is concluded that humans have a clear functional cradling preference for the non-dominant arm because this enables the dominant arm to engage in other tasks.

This might also explain why previous studies have reported a universal left cradling bias because a right-handed majority (intuitively) keeps the dominant hand free when cradling.

Chien-Shiung Wu

 How Chien-Shiung Wu changed the laws of physics

This Chinese-American pioneer, known as the First Lady of Physics, transformed nuclear science through her work on the Manhattan Project and other groundbreaking experiments.

BREAKING THE LAW OF PHYSICS

Chien-Shiung Wu assembles an electrostatic generator at Smith College physics laboratory, circa 1942.

SCIENCE SOURCE/AGE FOTOSTOCK

BYERIN BLAKEMORE

PUBLISHED MAY 4, 2023

• 10 MIN READ

In 1957 a group of the titans of physics gathered in a lecture hall at Princeton University to be addressed by a diminutive Chinese American woman. As she told the crowd about her recent experiment and its results, men like J. Robert Oppenheimer and George T. Reynolds listened in silence. Then she asked the audience if there were any questions. “The response was dead silence for two minutes,” an observer recalled afterward. “Then thunderous applause and a standing ovation.”

(For girls in science, the time is now.)

The woman was Chien-Shiung Wu, and her experiment had just demolished a long-standing pillar of her field—a concept crucial to scientists’ understanding of the world around them. Her results would skyrocket her from an already prominent career into the history books as one of the founding mothers of science. But today she is just as famous for what didn’t happen next as what did.

From China to America

Born in 1912 near Shanghai, China, Wu was influenced by her father, an engineer, and her mother, an educator. Unlike many Chinese women of her time, she received a formal education. As a young teacher in training, she excelled in school. But she was captivated by mathematics and the sciences and began studying them at night. Fascinated by new discoveries and the story of women scientists like Marie Curie, she entered National Central University as a math major in 1930. Soon she transferred to the school’s physics department and began her scientific studies in earnest.

It was a time of rapid change in both the field of physics and China. Domestic unrest and a deteriorating relationship with Japan made life at home uneasy. With the help of an uncle and her academic mentors in China, she decided to immigrate to the United States for graduate school. She would not return to China for 36 years—or ever see her parents again.

(Once, most famous scientists were men. But that’s changing.)

Wu planned to go to the University of Michigan, but a tour of the University of California, Berkeley—and word that a student center at Michigan forbade female students from entering through the front door—changed her mind. This first taste of sexism was just a preview. At the time, physics was dominated by men, and women were largely shut out of the field or shunted into supporting roles.

At Berkeley Wu was visible for her gender and race, and from the start her male colleagues commented as much on her physical appearance as her keen mind. She was “the belle of Berkeley,” historian Sharon Bertsch McGrayne writes, and Wu’s advisor, nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate Emilio Segrè, recalled in his memoir that “when she walked on campus, she was often followed by a swarm of admirers, like a queen.”

When [Wu] walked on campus, she was often followed by a swarm of admirers, like a queen.

EMILIO SEGRÈ

But Wu could hold her own in the laboratory, too. She quickly gained a reputation as a formidable experimentalist—and an expert in the newly discovered phenomenon of nuclear fission. Despite a well-received thesis and ongoing postdoctoral research into fission, though, Berkeley would not hire her after her 1940 Ph.D. Instead she headed to Smith College to teach women physics. The decision to head east with her new husband, physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, was at least partially influenced by growing anti-Asian sentiment sparked by World War II.

(The bloody history of anti-Asian violence in the West.)

Top secret

The war would provide Wu, and other female scientists, with unprecedented opportunities. As men went to fight, universities reluctantly began hiring women to teach in the sciences. Wu headed to Princeton University, where she became the physics department’s first female instructor. But shortly after her arrival, her career trajectory took an unexpected turn in 1944, when, at the insistence of physicist Enrico Fermi, War Department officials at Columbia University questioned her about aspects of her graduate dissertation on fission. She ended up joining the staff there on a top-secret research program now known as the Manhattan Project.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Wu conducted many of her studies at Columbia University in New York City, an important site in the Manhattan Project. Photographed in 1939, two professors stand near the university’s cyclotron.​

BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

(Did the U.S. plan to drop a third atomic bomb on Japan?)

“There was an immense need for skilled scientific labor,”says nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “There was a tremendous sense of urgency.” Wu quickly set to work developing radiation detectors and contributing to research on gaseous diffusion, a process used to enrich uranium that is still used today.

“Gaseous diffusion was absolutely essential for the bomb on Hiroshima,” says Wellerstein. It became the primary enrichment technology for the U.S. during the Cold War—and, says Wellerstein, the technology was so useful that the details are still largely classified today.

Though Wu was almost certainly aware of the end goal of her work on the project, she was reticent to discuss the nuclear bomb and its devastating effects later in life. Instead, in the years that followed, the scientist turned to other avenues in physics—and ended up helping overturn one of its most closely held principles.

FEMALE INFLUENCE

Labor shortages during World War II led to women working on the Manhattan Project. These technicians worked in the Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.​

CBW/ALAMY

Wu wasn't the only woman whose career was launched by the Manhattan Project, the top-secret attempt to build the first atom bomb. The war effort was paramount, and government officials “didn’t have the luxury of being as sexist or racist as they otherwise would have been,” says Wellerstein. They were desperate to add respected scientists to develop an atom bomb. Wu was one of just a handful of esteemed female physicists during World War II. “Women worked on every aspect of the Manhattan Project, except combat operations,” write Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg. Though the total number of women who contributed remains unclear, their numbers exceeded those of the women who contributed to the Apollo program during the 1960s.

(The Asian American ‘model minority’ myth masks a history of discrimination.)

Rule breaker

As a researcher at Columbia after the war (it would take until 1952 for her to become the physics department’s first tenured woman professor), she dove into the particulars of radioactive decay and began looking into the properties of subatomic particles. She worked with Tsung-Dao Lee of Columbia and Chen-Ning Yang of Princeton, two physicists who suspected that the newly discovered K-meson, also known as a kaon, violated the long-standing theories of parity and symmetry.

Most particles decayed symmetrically, emitting electrons from both ends. But the K-meson behaved unexpectedly, and Lee and Yang thought further experimentation might help solve the question of whether the law of parity conservation, which stated that physical systems act symmetrically and behave the same even when they are mirrored, was actually valid.

BREAKING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS

Chien-Shiung Wu works in the lab in an undated photograph.

SCIENCE SOURCE/AGE FOTOSTOCK

In 1956 Wu made history with an experiment that toppled the assumption that physical reactions don’t always demonstrate mirrored symmetry. The Wu Experiment, as it is now known, took place amid a scientific scramble to prove that a radioactive isotope can emit electrons asymmetrically while it decays. Wu and her colleagues did the experiment at low-temperature facilities at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. It was “a golden opportunity,” Wu later recalled—one that involved growing her own cobalt crystals, boring them with a dentist’s drill, freezing them, and aligning them in a magnetic field. Wu had just a 15-minute window to conduct the experiment, but those 15 minutes opened the door for a more modern understanding of particle physics. That was enough time for her.

It would be Wu who suggested an experiment with the radioactive isotope cobalt-60 and who carried that experiment out. Working with experimentalists at the National Institute of Standards and sleeping just four hours a night, she planned an ambitious experiment that would cool radioactive cobalt crystals near absolute zero, then align their nuclei with a powerful magnet to study whether their emissions happened on both right and left sides.

After months of experimentation, Wu finally confirmed that the nuclei emitted electrons on one side but not the other, successfully negating the law of parity. It was a groundbreaking discovery, and a celebrated one. “These are moments of exaltation and ecstasy,” Wu later said. “A glimpse of this wonder can be the reward of a lifetime.”

“These are moments of exaltation and ecstasy,” Wu later said. “A glimpse of this wonder can be the reward of a lifetime.”

Although Wu and her colleagues were toasted, and Wu became a scientific celebrity outside the field, her contribution was overlooked by the 1957 Nobel Prize committee, which awarded the theorists Lee and Yang the prize in physics for the discovery. Wu had designed and carried out an experiment that fundamentally changed the way physicists think about the universe, setting the stage for the further development of the standard model that governs particle physics. But the jury’s still out on whether sexism, political wrangling, or some other factor affected what many see as her exclusion from the prize. “Until historians are able to view the deliberations of the committee itself, the answer isn’t clear,” says Wellerstein.

To those looking back at Wu’s legacy as a founding mother of physics, though, her influence is impossible to deny. Until her retirement in 1981, she was one of the world’s most respected experimentalists, helping design other influential experiments in everything from magnetism to nuclear fluoroscopy. In 1975 she received the National Medal of Science, and in 1978, by unanimous vote, she became the first recipient of her field’s other most prestigious award, the Wolf Prize. She died in 1997, a titan of the field in her own right.

2024

10 simple ways to change your life in 2024

When you work at National Geographic, you encounter ways you can change the world and yourself almost every day. Here are our staff's most useful insights for the new year.

 Each new year brings an opportunity for self-improvement—but where do you start? Nat Geo staffers have a few ideas.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN

BYAMY MCKEEVER

PUBLISHED JANUARY 3, 2024

It’s only natural to reflect on what you can do to improve at the dawn of a new year. But at Nat Geo, we spend all year thinking—and learning—about what we can do better. Our work gives us insight into changes we can make in our own lives to become healthier, to take care of wildlife, and to protect our planet.

This year, we want to share that insight with you. As you begin to ponder your resolutions for 2024, these are the changes that my colleagues and I here at Nat Geo made in our own lives in 2023—from switching to healthier grains to unique tactics for reducing our waste. (Plus a few of our favorite tips we got from readers this year!)

(8 strategies to make your New Year's resolutions stick.)

What are your resolutions for 2024—and is there anything you did to transform your life in 2023? Let me know your story.

1. Stop eating octopus.

First a confession: As a former food writer, I’ve always found it hard to resist a garlicky dish of octopus. But my colleague David Barreda reminds me perhaps I should.

As a senior photo editor here at National Geographic, Barreda found out just how intelligent these animals really are while working on an upcoming cover story, “Secrets of the Octopus.” Not only are octopuses good at learning and remembering information—they are even known to form their own opinions.

“I pledged to never eat octopus again,” Barreda says. “And my daughter co-signed too! (She’s already a pescatarian.)”

(The world wants to eat more octopus. Is farming them ethical?)

2. Make this the year you finally start composting.

“As someone who writes about climate change and the environment, I've long known that composting was a great way to reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions,” writes digital editor Sarah Gibbens. “But it wasn't until this year that I actually tried it.” 

“I live in the middle of Washington, D.C., so for me, composting entailed storing my food scraps in a lidded countertop bucket and periodically walking them to a local community garden that maintains a large compost heap. Watching my egg shells, banana peels, and citrus rinds turn into rich, useful soil was surprisingly rewarding. Here was soggy food and dead leaves magically transforming into something that helps plants grow. It was like watching rebirth! I felt like I was making a real, albeit tiny, difference—one that was well worth the summer fruit flies in my kitchen and the startled mice flinging themselves from the compost heap.”

3. Make simple tweaks to your diet.

As our digital editorial director, Ryleigh Nucilli gets a sneak peek at our health coverage before it publishes. In the process, she’s learned a few tips for feeding her own family: 

“I’ve become interested in the micro shifts I can make in our daily habits in the interest of longevity and healthspan. Our story on whole grains made a big impact on me in this regard; it increased my literacy in the grocery aisle, and it offered me some simple changes I could make in my shopping habits in the interest of reducing my risk of a host of chronic diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cancer.

(Here's how to grocery shop to help the environment.)

“It gave me the final push to start buying steel cut oats rather than rolled, and it made me question my long-held stance that I would never make pasta that wasn’t semolina flour based. I’m trying to keep my child’s plate as exciting, colorful, and ultimately healthful as I can, helping them build a lifetime habit of positive eating. So I’m grateful to be learning about the scientific mechanisms behind granular dietary choices so that I can start habits now.”

4. Reduce waste by turning to your library…

“I resolved to take advantage of my public library in 2023,” says National Geographic managing editor David Brindley. His goal to read at least one library book a month—mostly e-books that he read on his phone—wasn’t just educational: “This cut down on the number of books I would typically buy in a year, reducing my impact on the environment.” 

Brindley surpassed his goal this year. But, even better, he persuaded a friend to join him—which extended his climate shadow, a more holistic way of measuring one’s impact on the planet. “He’s as hooked on library books as I am,” Brindley says.

5. …and your neighbors.

What are some other practical ways to actually practice those principles of reducing, reusing, and recycling? Our digital editor Allie Yang has some ideas:

“This year, I made a bigger effort to reuse before recycling. I order takeout a lot and have never saved the containers—which was such a waste! Recycling often is landfilled despite at-home sorting, and it's energy-intensive. 

(Simple ways to make your laundry routine more eco-friendly.)

“I also learned a lot on my local buy nothing group, which increases the chances stuff I no longer need will actually be reused. While organizing these handoffs is more effort for me, dropping off donations in bulk requires more labor for sorting and creates emissions from transport.”

6. Take advantage of medical breakthroughs.

One major medical breakthrough we covered this year was the long-awaited emergence of RSV vaccines. David Beard, our newsletters director, says editing that story propelled him to action.

“RSV is such a sneaky killer—striking our youngest and our oldest—that it has taken decades to get vaccines and treatment,” he says. “Now we have them, and it would be too foolhardy and la-de-dah to ignore them. On that November day, I went straight from work to the Rite Aid to take advantage of our medical breakthroughs—and protect myself. I hope many others did the same.”

7. Pay more attention to potential toxins in your kitchen.

You’ve probably heard of PFAS, short for poly and perfluoroalkyl substances. 

As Nat Geo has reported, you likely come into contact with these chemicals every day—maybe multiple times a day. But there’s growing concern about what that might mean for our health. That’s why audience development producer Golshan Jalali made a few changes in her kitchen this year.

(6 tips to make your next beach trip more sustainable.)

For one, she switched over to nontoxic cookware. “Typical nonstick cookware can be made of teflon which contains PFAS, forever chemicals, and can be carcinogenic,” she says. Instead, she relies on stainless steel pots and pans or nonstick cookware that is free from these chemicals.

Additionally, Jalali only uses glass food storage containers for hot food items. “Chemicals and microplastics can leach out of plastic and when ingested can be carcinogenic and disrupt hormones,” she says. For cold food items, she uses BPA-free plastic food containers.

8. Cut back on booze.

As for me…  Once again, I used to write about food and drinks, an occupation that gave me a not-so-healthy appreciation for bourbon. I’m not giving up Manhattans anytime soon, but our coverage this year taught me that alcohol is particularly harmful for women—and that curbing my drinking even just a little can make a big difference for my overall health.

That’s why I’ve been experimenting with no- and low-alcohol drinks, replacing my Sunday evening negroni with an Amaro Falso or a club soda with vermouth. I’m still getting used to the taste of booze-free booze, but my resolution for 2024 is to let go of my expectations of how a mocktail should taste and just appreciate it for what it is.

9. Sip water throughout the day.

You might be tempted to gulp down water on a hot day—but a story we published earlier this year explained why that’s not such a good idea. For one reader, Joel Selmeier, it made a difference:

“Forever people have told me to sip water frequently rather than gulp large amounts infrequently. Your explaining that the body doesn’t absorb large gulps as easily is the first explanation, and the first time, I finally am taking that advice seriously and will start to practice it.”

(Are you drinking water all wrong? Here's what else to know about hydrating.)

10. Practice cold plunges safely.

Ice-cold baths and polar plunges are all the rage right now but experts warn that this pastime can be risky—even deadly—if you don’t take proper precautions. Reader Delphine Lopez says this story we published about taking cold plunges in hot weather opened her eyes to those risks:

"I will now never plunge into cold water without a life vest on,” she writes. “This being said, after growing up going into the cold waters of snowmelt Lake Tahoe, I realize how as a child, I could have easily drowned from falling from a ski boat into the frigid waters. I only hope parents will realize this and protect their love ones (adults, too).”