Perfume Facts

Here are some facts about scents to think about when buying a new perfume.

• Citrus and mint scents stimulate the trigeminal nerve that boosts energy. The classic is pink grapefruit.
• Inhale rosemary for a memory boost; research at Northumbria Univeristy has found it works in the same way as demnetia drugs.
• Scent receptors in the skin may explain how fragrance boosts its appearance. Rose absolute, found in many anti-aging creams, improves skin texture. White sandalore, a subsitute used in perfume for sandalwood, is linked to faster healing.
• Men are aroused by sweet scents like vanilla; if that does not appeal to you, use a scent from the past that conjures up feelings of shared good times.

Good Housekeeping, December 2015

Grapes as Ice Cubes

Frozen grapes make an easy healthy snack, and they are ideal dropped into a glass of wine to chill it without diluting.

In Good Housekeeping, October 2015

Menopause

Fat cells of men and women are, and act, differently. Women’s fat cells are:

• 5 times larger
• Have twice the number of fat-storing (lipogenic) enzymes
• Have half the number of fat-releasing (lipolytic) enzymes

Puberty - fat levels to support menstruation and survive famine.

Pregnancy - fat levels to protect and cushion foetus.

Menopause - fat cells produce oestrogen to ease transitio.

Around 35: oestrogen levels begin to dip, increase in weight, larger breasts.
Around 45: calorie needs drop by up to 400 calories per day.
Around 55: fat cells show some decrease in size; food 'cravings' tend to favour protein and vegetables.

Some mid-life weight gain is healthy (between 5 and 15 lbs). Fitness not thinness is key to long life.

The fat cells at waistline are better equipped to produce oestrogen than those at hips, buttocks or thighs. Post-menopause, fat cells in thighs, buttocks, waist and arms shrink somewhat, but those in the breasts do not.

Menopause is occurring earlier, and taking longer, probably due to a combination of factors; not having children, having few children at a later age (35+), oral contraceptive use, stress, earlier puberty and dieting.

Dieting during the menopause is unlikely to be successfull; the body sees this as famine, so the fat cells store more. It is not realistic to weigh what you did at age 20, or before you had children. Dieting thins the hair, muscle, skin, bones and thinking capacity.

Take a patchwork approach to exercise:

• Aerobic - 4 hours per week. Walking, cycling, swimming. Stimulates fat release.
• Strength - 1 hour per week. Gardening, cleaning, weight lifting, dancing, walking, jogging. Speeds up metabolism and conditions muscles to burn released fat.

Exercise also stimulates muscles to manufacture c.25% of the oestrogen you need after the menopause.

Eat smaller meals and eat more often. Try 5 meals a day. Largest meal at lunch, smallest in evening as metabolism dips at 6pm.

When you ignore hunger, after c.30 mins the body intensifies hunger signals. After a further 30 mins survival mechanism kicks in and slows metabolism, releases glucase from muscles and stimultes fat storage enzymes for when you do eat.

Your stomach is the size of your fist. A good-sized handful of food, when chewed, is about a fistful. Eat a healthy, balanced, mixed diet. All fruit and vegetables contain some phyto-oestrogens.

Source: Menopause Without Weight Gain by Debra Waterhouse. Thorsons, 1999. ISBN:0-7225-3449-3

Chilli Tips

If you've ever rubbed your eyes after cutting chillis, you'll know how eyewatering they can be.

Rub some oil into your hands before slicing and chopping, then wash with warm, soapy water when you've finished.

The oil stops the chilli from permeating your skin.

In Good Housekeeping, October 2015

Make Experiences Count

Children learn fast if something affects them and everyday experiences can be useful teaching aids.

Arithmetic seems abstract until you need to add up the cost of items to decide if you can afford them out of your pocket money.

Before a birthday party, set the maximum spend. List what different items cost, e.g. food and drink, plates, napkins, bouncy castle, take-home bags, party game prizes, a magician, tickets for an outing. Let them help decide how to save on some things to make something else affordable.

Get them involved in home projects - helping prepare for a barbecue, revamping the garden or a room - identify what needs to be done, what needs to be bought, what order things need to be done in. Let them help organise a sleepover. Cooking needs accurate measurement to avoid disaster.

For a day out they can check websites for useful information and downloadable activity packs. Before a journey show them the route on a map, then use the map to see where they are. Tell them the approximate time for the journey and they can use their watch to see how long they still have to go.

At the allotment, working out how many seeds or plants to buy, helping grow the plants and then cooking them.


Main source: Make Your Child Brilliant by Bernadette Tynon. Quadrille, 2008 (ISBN 978-184400-579-6)

Waste Disposal Facts

Some items should never be thrown out with normal rubbish because they contain toxic substances and can be a health hazard.

Take to the local council waste/recycling centre to be disposed of safely:

• Solvent-based paint (any that need to be cleaned with white spirit).
• White spirit.
• Car batteries.
• Engine oil and petrol.
• De-icing fluid.
• Large quantities of cooking oil.
• Gas cylinders. 
• Energy saving light bulbs (when it eventually fails, most of it can be recycled).
• Electrical and electronic equipment.

Hand in to any pharmacy:

• Medicines and tablets.

Pass on to charities who can make money from them:

• Old mobile phones, batteries and chargers.
• Spent printer ink cartridges.
• Unwanted CDs.

Send to reprocessing companies:

• Unwanted CDs. [They can be recycled into injection-moulding products for industry (Polymer Reprocessors) or ground into granules for the plastics moulding industry (Keymood UK)]
• CD cases can be recycled into polystyrene to make insulating foam.

Various sources.

Renewable Energy Technology

Renewable technologies remain (2011) expensive to install but can be cheaper over the long term.

• Solar thermal technology: Harnesses the sun's power to create heating and hot water. In the UK, where the sun is not so strong, it is less effective in terms of heating space but can provide up to 60% of a household's hot water needs.
• Solar energy: Photovoltaic panels generate electricity. They harness light but don't need direct sunlight, though this is more efficient. (They can actually lose efficiency if they get too hot - e.g. in the south of Spain). Excess energy can be fed into the National Grid. Energy companies are offering to rent your roof area to install these panels.
• Air source heat pumps: Take heat from the air (even when it is minus 3 degrees outside) to boil refrigerant and then compress the gas that is formed, creating heat. To cool the house down, the process can be reversed, so the refrigerant absorbs heat inside the house and the pump pushes it outside. Heat pumps use electricity to run their gas compressors but as their efficiency has increased, now a heat pump might give out 4kW of heat for every 1kW of electricity used, making it 400% efficient. But if you already have a condensing boiler, you should not rip this out and install a heat pump instead as you would not see any savings. Air source heat pumps are easy to fit onto existing systems. (2011: Start at around £700.)
• Ground source heat pumps: Take heat from the ground. They need either ground collectors or bore holes, which is likely to make installation cost prohibitive for homeowners and small businesses. Cost is less of a factor for new builds where drainage work is also required.

Other ways of cutting energy

• Insulation: Around half the heat loss in a typical house is through the walls and the loft. Recommended depth of loft insulation is 270mm (2011). For houses with solid walls, there is now a special 10mm thick wallpaper that reduces heat loss by around 30%.
• Boilers: Band G (lowest efficiency) are typically over 15 years old and 60% to 70% efficient. Band A condensing boilers are at least 90% efficient.

2011: Eco supplement, Daily Telegraph

The Origin of Wealth

The Origin of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker [Random House, 2007]

I found this a really useful introduction to economics and the various theories and models that have been used in the past, together with new insight drawing on other disciplines.

Traditional Economics: Wealth is created when people take raw materials from their environment and turn them into things people want. The more items made in a certain time period, the richer their creator will be. Division of labour and specialisation of tasks increases productivity. Best to put resources to the most efficient use; wasting resources is morally unjust; achievable through a combination of self-interest and a competitive market. Later theories: Overpopulation and starvation would adjust food production and prices. Diminishing Returns (a) over-used land eventually becomes exhausted and (b) at some point you have enough of an item for your needs.

All theories and models rely on people being logical and consistent in their behaviours and most ignore the time factor. Supply and Demand is only approximate. Firms keep back stock to increase demand while service businesses (e.g. lawyers) use staff at less than 100% of their time in order to manage fluctuations in demand. One Price is an approximation that often breaks down. Different prices in various countries are not solely down to transportation costs and trade barriers.

Traditional economics has (a) performed poorly in predicting growth and recession and in explaining events and (b) misused metaphors and misapplied theories from other sciences. Economies are complex adaptive systems, and not closed systems with a predictable end state as the models assume. Computer modelling and simulations and insights from psychological and scientific experiments give new insight into economics.

Sugarscape: the computer island is a 50x50 square grid, with single resource (sugar) in different amounts per square; two sugar mountains in diagonally opposite corners and a low or no sugar region between. Each agent (person) only able to look for, move and eat sugar; at each turn in game can (a) scan for closest unoccupied square with most sugar within field of vision; (b) move to that square and eat the sugar; (c) sugar eaten not needed by metabolism = body fat/’savings’; (d) use more metabolism than eaten, ‘starve’ and die. Agents have pre-set life span, randomly set differing levels of vision (how many squares they can see), and metabolic rates. Eaten sugar regrows at one unit per time period. Initially chaotic; agents in the low/no sugar areas die off and rest quickly move to a sugar rich areas leaving central plain empty. Each ‘tribe’ efficiently grazes its sugar crop. Initially fairly egalitarian distribution with large middle class, but then skews to a few super-rich agents, long-tail of ‘upper-middle class’, shrinking ‘middle class’ and big growing underclass of poor agents. This Pareto curve distribution is an emergent property of the system: no simple cause-and-effect relationship driving poverty and inequality.

Tag agents as male or female, and allocate a child-bearing age and a fertile period; agents in adjacent squares have a baby, with random selection of abilities from each parent. Baby born in a square next to parents so starts life in either sugar rich or sugar poor environment. Result: (a) least fit agents die off, (b) population swings and (c) gap between rich and poor widens further.

Add new item, spice, in two ‘no sugar’ corners. Agents now need both items to survive, in varying amounts, but can also trade any surplus; this made society richer but still wealth variations and geographic clustering in trading networks. Combination of geography and population dynamics (a) creates heavily trafficked trading routes, (b) prices never reach equilibrium but fluctuate and (c) more trading volume than strictly required by logistics, as in the real world. Time and geographical proximity affected all outcomes, which emerge bottom up, from the simple starting rules. 

The economy is a complex non-linear dynamic system, sensitive to initial conditions and path dependent (history matters). In dynamic systems, stock levels and item flows subject to feedback (positive reinforces connections; negative damps them down) which is affected by time delays, leading to oscillation round a point. Boom and bust cycles in many commodities, but their cyclical swings in prices and industry capacity more volatile than swings in underlying demand or in economy overall; cycles neither quite regular nor quite random. Responses to demand (increase production and/or raise prices) have inbuilt time factors.

Economic decisions are based on the information used and types of decision made. People not always rational or consistent in decision making (take information available and do the best we can). Our sense of fairness and reciprocity prompt us to punish people who treat us unfairly and reward people who help us and give us things – we are conditional co-operators and altruistic punishers.

People also make mistakes. How a question is framed can affect our response. Draw big conclusions from small and biased samples. Make decisions on easily available information instead of finding the important data. Most people find it difficult to assess probabilities and risks. Tend to look for the most proximate causes and often confuse random chance and cause and effect. Traditional economics treats all money the same but people tend to put money into different mental compartments.

Human mind not brilliant at calculating long equations but we are great storytellers and story listeners and excel at two aspects of pattern recognition (a) relating new experiences to old patterns through metaphor and analogy and (b) very good pattern completers, filling in gaps of missing information. We develop rules of thumb to move from current state to desired one, keep track of success, use historically successful rules more than unsuccessful ones, and learn over time.

A simulated trading environment set up with single stock paying a random dividend. One hundred agents could buy and sell stock, basing decisions on (a) historical price pattern, (b) historical dividend pay-out and (c) a risk-free interest rate. Each agent had 1 rule of thumb, later increased to 100 rules. Single rule simulation results close to traditional economics equilibrium prediction but 100 rule simulation showed big increases in trading volume and volatility, with bubbles and crashes, reflecting actual financial markets much more closely. 

Networks essential in any complex adaptive system but glossed over by traditional economics. [E.g. A thousand buttons scattered on floor. Randomly join two buttons with thread. At first lots of two-way connections, then networks, and later at ‘tipping point’, super-networks.] Two opposing forces in organisations: informational economies of scale from node growth and diseconomies of scale from build-up of conflicting constraints. Hierarchies can enable networks to reach larger sizes before diseconomies of scale set in.

Depressions, recessions and inflation are not exclusively modern phenomena; irregular historical patterns of little use in predicting economic behaviour. Complexity economics sees economic patterns as emergent phenomena that arise out of interactions within the system. Oscillations are a common feature of complex adaptive systems. Stock markets are much more volatile than traditional economics predicts; the volatility follows the pattern of a power law. [There is no typical earthquake size; they occur across all size scales, but the bigger they are, the rarer they are.]

Prisoners Dilemma: two suspects in separate cells each told that if they testify against the other, they will be released, provided the other does not testify against them. If both testify, each gets reduced sentence. If both refuse to testify, neither faces jail as evidence not strong enough. While last option is the best, typically both testify as they cannot communicate with each other. Various simulations have explored variations on this and the Game of Life.

Cheaters (mostly) never win and winners (mostly) never cheat. Humans started with cooperative hunting bands, but big change came with settled agriculture. The need to divide the resultant wealth led to ‘Big Man Society’ with a political leader; he would organise work, and specialisations, and take a cut of the outcomes for his contribution ending up with better housing, food and clothing. As societies got larger, the Big Man needed others to take on some tasks, typically allocating them to kin. Trading networks tend to develop first and most strongly within tribal, ethnic and religious groups. The ugly side of this is discrimination: classifying some as outsiders. The rule of law enabled strangers to cooperate, assisted by language as a means of communication. Market economies took over from Big Men about 300 years ago. Market-oriented societies are not perfect but their strength is in enabling innovation and growth. 

The absolute level of wealth has an impact on happiness but not in a linear way. The poor and struggling for survival tend to be less happy, but once basic needs are met, the correlation between wealth and happiness decreases.

What it means for business and society. All competitive advantage is temporary, albeit with varying time spans. There is no such thing as a safe, stable industry. The best you can do is to run faster than the competition. Companies are Big Men hierarchies and markets are evolutionary machines. In business, build a portfolio of strategic options. Rigid leaders do best when less frequent but abrupt changes occur; flexible leaders perform better in volatile situations.

Market simulation rules: Agent A follows buy low, sell high; Agent B follows trends and buys rising and sells falling (this amplifies fluctuations); Agent C is a seasonal trader, and buys and sells on an alternating pattern; Agent D is a technical trader, with a set strategy to follow. Initially technical traders did not affect price much, but they soon picked up the oscillating patterns and made money. As they made bigger trades, they dampened the price fluctuations. Then volatility suddenly exploded as the large trades introduced their own movements into the pattern. There are no magic formulas to getting rich.

Politics and policy: complexity approach to economics has the potential to make the historical framing of politics obsolete. While the Left views humans as intrinsically altruistic, and the Right that they are intrinsically self-regarding, they are actually conditional co-operators and altruistic punishers. Cultures that live for today (or are mired in the past) have problems (low work ethic, inability to cooperate and low levels of innovation) while cultures with an ethic of investing for tomorrow value work, have high intergenerational savings rates, and high levels of cooperation

Income redistribution does not address any behavioural issues (genetic or cultural) and a laissez faire attitude dooms many to a lifetime of poverty. We should instead ask ourselves the question ‘If we did not know anything about our draw in the birth-lottery, what kind of system would we want?’ The answer is a system that combines equality of upside opportunity with a downside social safety net. It is a challenge for countries with large immigrant populations to engender trust and cooperation in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. The ideal is a common layer of strong norms broadly shared by the society, alongside a further range of norms, traditions and beliefs.

END

Women and Science (part 2)

Marie Curie (1867-1934): The first woman to win a Nobel Prize (for Physics in 1903) and she won a second Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. Despite her achievements, Curie was never admitted to the French Academy of Science - they did not start to accepting women until 1979. She discovered radium, the first hope for cancer sufferers, and her work on radioactivity led to the development of X-rays and radiotherapy.

Alice Hamilton (1869-1970): US doctor and social reformer, who founded occupational medicine. her work on ill health caused by workplace hazards, such as lead, was so influential that Harvard engaged her as Assistant Porfessor of Industrial Medicine, three decades before they accepted women as medical students. She received many honours, including a listing in Men of Science (1944) but Harvard never made her up to full professor. Even when she was 90, the FBI considered her peace campaigning to be a subversive activity.

Lise Meitner (1878-1968): Austrian Physicist who experimentally explained the process of nuclear fission, only to see the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944, which should have been hers, awarded to her junior, Otto Hahn. The only room Meitner was allowed to use in Berlin's Chemistry Institute was a workman's store - if she needed the toilet, she had to go to a nearby hotel. When she gave a lecture entitled 'The Problems of Cosmic Physics' in berlin, it was reported in the papers as a lecture on 'cosmetic physics'! Years after her death and in final recognition of her achievements, the elelment meitnerium was named after her.

Alice Evans (1881-1975): US biologist whose work led to recognition of the dangers of unpasteurised milk.

Emmy Noether (1882-1935): Described by Einstein as 'the most significant mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began', Noether was nevertheless denied a lectureship at the University of Gottingen where she had an honorary (i.e. unpaid) position. Noether was expelled from germany by the Nazis in 1933 and went to work in the US with Einstein. Her work underpins quantum physics adn Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956): A Nobel prize winner like her mother Marie Curie, who also died from leukaemia after being exposed to radioactivity. Joliot-Curie's work on radio isotopes has been essential in the fields of medicine, science and industry.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (nee Payne, 1900-1979): A British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were primarily composed of hydrogen and helium. Initially rejected as it contradicted scientific wisdom of the time and Henry Norris Russell (director of Princeton University observatory) stated this was "clearly impossible" but four years later confirmed she was correct. Sadly he was the one to get the credit for the discovery. In 1976 the American Astronomical Society gave her a lifetime award - ironically named the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship.

Barbara McClintock (1902-1992): Decades ahead of her time in scientific terms, during the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered gene transposition and used it to demonstrate that genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on and off. She developed theories to explain the suppression and expression of genetic information from one generation of maize plants to the next. She persevered despite male prejudice and scientific rejection, leaving one university where she was demied a research post because they were reserved for men. Due to skepticism of her research and its implications, she stopped publishing her data in 1953. She was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983 for  her work.

Grace Hopper (1906-1992): Computer programmer and the oldest person to serve on active duty with the US Navy, Hopper coined the term 'computer bug' and verified the computer language COBOL.

Rita Levi Mantalcini (1909-2012): Winner of a Nobel Prize in 1986 for her discovery of nerve growth factor, which plays a vital role in understanding degenerative disease and nerve repair after injury.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994): Despite crippling arthritis, Hodgkin made a series of brillaint breakthroughs that showed the structure of medically important molecules including penicillin and vitamin B12. In 1964 she became the first British woman to receive a Nobel Prize. (The Dail Mail's headline was 'British wife wins Nobel Prize'!) Margaret Thatcher was one of her students.

Mary Leakey (1913-1996): In 1978, fossil hunter Leakey discovered human footprints 3.75 million years old, firmly establishing Africa as the cradle of the human race.

Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000): Better known as a film star, Lamarr patented a 'secret communication system'. It formed the basis of spread spectrum communications and was the forerunner of the modern digital cellular phone technology.

Gertrude Elion (1918-1999): American pharmacologist forced to teach high school  chemistry because she couldn't get a job as a researcher. She joined the Burroughs Wellcome Laboratories, developing many drugs, including the anti-viral acyclovir and the AIDs drug AZT. She shared the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1988.

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958). Studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. Worked in Paris on the structure of coal and developed a specialist skill in X-ray diffaction. She joined King's College, London to work on the structure of DNA in 1951. She was close to finding the structure but refused to jump to conclusions prematurely. Crick and Watson of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge saw her unpublished data and diffraction photographs and identified it as a double helix. Franklin then did four years of outstanding work on virus structure at Birkbeck before her death from ovarian cancer in 1958. [Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine in 1962; the Nobel committee does not award prizes posthumously, otherwise it is likely that Franklin would have shared the prize.]

Rosalyn Yalow (1921-2011): Her technique for studying insulin allowed minute quantities of some of the substances in body tissues and fluids to be measured and is used extensively in medicine today. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977.

Vera Rubin (1928-2016): The only astronomy major to graduate from prestigious women's college Vassar in 1948. Refused entry to Princeton (women not allowed in the university's graduate astronomy programme until 1975), studied physics at Cornell University, and earned her doctorate at Georgetown University in 1954. Later worked at the Carnegie Institute of Washington. Awarded US National Medal of Science in 1993. Her pioneering work in astronomy led to the discovery of dark matter. In 1974, Rubin helped provide further convincing evidence that the stars at the edges of galaxies moved faster than expected from gravity calculations using only visible matter. To reconcile her observations with the law of gravity, scientists proposed there was matter we cannot see and called it dark matter.

Christiane Nusslein-Volhard (1942- ) - still alive 31 March 2016: German geneticist whose work on the genetics of the fruit fly led to major insights into birth defects in humans and earned her the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1995.