Why Curly-Haired People Are Cooler

The flood waters are contaminated with sewage waste and dead animals, which can cause waterborne diseases including cholera, diarrhea, and others, according to the UN’s relief agency. The UN’s chief aid official, Martin Griffiths, told the Associated Press that 700,000 people were in need of drinking water, and the flooding of one of the world’s most important breadbaskets will inevitably lead to lower grain exports, higher global food prices, and less for millions in need.

About 150 tons of oil products from the dam’s power plant were released and could go all the way to the Black Sea, threatening soils, vegetation, and wildlife. The Ukrainian environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, told Deutsche Welle that it was a “real ecocide” and a humanitarian catastrophe, adding that about one million people will not have freshwater. Ukrainian officials are investigating the incident as a war crime and as possible “ecocide,” or criminal environmental destruction.

The Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, an environmental NGO, said on its website that it will take a minimum of seven to ten years to restore fish stocks along the Dnipro River and the reservoir, which was habitat for more than 40 species. They also listed other possible ecosystem damage. In addition, national parks were flooded, likely causing irreparable harm to flora and fauna. The journal Nature reports that nine sites in a European-wide conservation area called the Emerald Network and also five important wetlands were flooded.  

The river is a front line of the conflict, and another threat is from mines that have been planted along the waterway and might have been swept away to other locations. It may take weeks or even years to know the full consequences from the destruction of the dam.

Reuters reports that even before the conditions started, in May, the average global sea temperature on the surface was 0.1C higher than any on record, which could supercharge extreme weather.  In May, the water under the surface of those Pacific regions was the fourth warmest since 1979, portending a strong El Niño as happened when similar high temperatures occurred in 1997 and 2015.

In the U.S. during El Niño years, it’s wetter than average from Southern California to along the Gulf Coast. However, it usually brings drier weather to the Pacific Northwest and a potentially warmer winter across northern states. El Niño is usually associated with flooding in the Philippines and Indonesia, droughts in Australia, and more hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean.

While you wouldn’t want to pop a sea cucumber into your salad, according to an exciting new study led by the University of South Australia in collaboration with Fiji National University and the University of the Sunshine Coast, eating sea cucumbers can help stave off type 2 diabetes. Researchers found that by drying sea cucumbers and processing them with salt extracts, the resulting powder inhibited the formation of compounds called advanced glycation end products or AGEs, which form in the body when proteins and/or fats combine with sugars in the bloodstream.

Elevated AGEs can increase diabetic complications and have been linked to heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, and cancer. The finding is promising because currently there are no therapeutics to prevent AGEs from forming in the body.

Sea cucumbers were already known to have a range of health benefits, including anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, and have been employed in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries.  And while they are good for our health, they are vital for the well-being of marine ecosystems, where they recycle organic matter on the seafloor and have been found to protect coral reefs.

The study was published in the journal Institute of Food Science and Technology.

Researchers at Penn State wanted to understand the role hair texture played in regulating body temperature in early humans who lived in hot equatorial Africa, where the sun was overhead for much of the day, especially as our ancestors began walking upright and their scalps took the brunt of solar rays.

In their study, the team exposed thermal manikins (human-shaped models that allow scientists to study heat transfer between human skin and the environment) with four different hair types—bald, straight hair, moderately curly hair, or tightly curled hair—to heat lamps. They found that all hair reduced solar radiation to the scalp, but tightly curled hair provided the best heat protection while minimizing the need to sweat to stay cool, which would help conserve water and avoid dehydration.

The researchers believe tightly curled hair offers more protection because it doesn’t lie flat and provides more distance between the top of the hair and the scalp. But even more fascinating, they say that tight curls also allowed early human brains to grow to sizes comparable to ours. That’s because the larger the brain, the more heat it generates, which, if excessive, risks dangerous conditions like stroke. The authors say as humans evolved and became smarter; scalp hair likely got curlier to keep those bigger heads cool.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.