Watching the World

The Physics of Traffic Jams

Have you ever wondered why after being in stop-and-go traffic for some time, you can suddenly drive at normal speed without seeing a reason for the delay? “There are empirical causes for such miseries as traffic slowing to a crawl even when there is no accident or rough pavement in sight,” notes The Wall Street Journal. “Cars behave much as molecules in a gas.” Even a brief slowing down produces “a compression wave” that works its way backward, causing cars far behind to slow  to a crawl. “By one estimate, three-quarters [75%] of traffic jams have no visible culprit,” says the paper. “The cause came and went hours ago, but its effects linger.” Changing routes to avoid jams may work when a city is relatively empty. But as the streets fill up and other drivers are doing the same, “you have no better chance of finding the fast road than of choosing the fastest line at the grocery checkout,” the article says. “Laid-back drivers actually fare better than drivers intently seeking out the fastest route.”

Early Nicotine Addiction

“The first puff on a cigarette could be enough to hook a young teenager into addiction,” reports Canada’s National Post newspaper. “The extraordinary findings upend the prevailing view about nicotine addiction being a slowly acquired process that occurs only after several years of heavy smoking.” In a study of 1,200 teenagers over approximately six years, researchers found that “physical addiction is a much stronger force than peer pressure, even among those who smoked only rarely,” the paper said. According to the study, “nicotine dependence symptoms appear in many young tobacco users between the first exposure to nicotine and the onset of daily smoking.” The researchers say that antismoking campaigns should be adapted not only to help youths resist the pressure to smoke but also to help those who have smoked to overcome nicotine dependence.

Is Squeaky Clean Too Clean?

Taking a long, hot shower or bath at the end of the day is a ritual many people enjoy. However, “meticulous cleansing could be causing many skin problems,” warns the Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph. “People are showering too often for too long and using the wrong types of products on their skin.” Explains dermatologist Dr. Megan Andrews: “We all like to feel squeaky clean but in fact, feeling squeaky clean means the skin has been damaged . . . People are feeling good but doing harm.” Why? Because overly zealous washing habits will leave your skin “stripped of natural oils, its protective barrier of micro-organisms in disarray and the body’s largest organ prone to tiny cracks and scarring,” says the paper, noting that dry winter weather “is a time of particular concern.” Andrews recommends taking no more than one brief shower a day.

Disastrous Advice

“Until the 1970s most villages in Bangladesh and West Bengal [India] had either dug shallow wells, or collected water from ponds or rivers​—and regularly suffered cholera, dysentery and other water-borne diseases,” states The Guardian Weekly. “Then the UN advised people to bore deep ‘tube wells’ into the water aquifers (bodies of highly porous and permeable water-bearing rock) for clean, pathogen-free water.” Up to 20 million tube wells were dug in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand, Nepal, China, Pakistan, Cambodia, and West Bengal, India. However, many of the wells ended in arsenic-bearing sediments that lie deep beneath the surface. The result has been arsenic poisoning on a scale that the World Health Organization calls “the world’s largest mass poisoning of a population in history.” About 150 million people have been drinking the contaminated water during the past two decades. Serious cases of arsenic poisoning number 15,000 in Bangladesh alone. Local groups, governments, and the UN have been considering the options, but a workable strategy to remedy the situation has yet to be found.

Child Suicide Alert

“Eighty percent of the children who attempt or commit suicide announce it verbally or in writing days or months in advance,” reports the newspaper Milenio of Mexico City. The main reasons why minors lose their desire to live are mistreatment (physical, emotional, or verbal), sexual abuse, family disintegration, and school-related problems. According to José Luis Vázquez, a psychiatric specialist at the Mexican Institute of Social Security, death has become such an everyday thing on television and in movies, video games, and books that children have formed a mistaken idea about the value of life. He adds that 15 of every 100 children between the ages of eight and ten have suicidal thoughts and that of those, 5 percent succeed in taking their life. The newspaper recommends paying heed when children mention suicide, instead of just brushing it off as a matter of blackmail or an attempt to get attention. It adds: “Parents should be with and play with their children, never lose communication, and always show them love.”

Rage Is Bad for You

According to Valentina D’Urso, a psychology teacher at Padua University in Italy, “rage is an ever-increasing phenomenon in our society, but it produces negative effects on the organism.” Muscles tense, heartbeat and breathing speed up, and the body enters into a state of stress. Anger can also impair a person’s ability to reason and can lessen his control over his actions. “Let’s get used to foreseeing risk situations . . . Let’s calmly say straight away ‘I don’t agree,’ and we will live much better,” suggests D’Urso.

Doctors Under Stress

The Canadian Medical Association recently surveyed 2,251 doctors across the country and “found that 45.7 per cent were in an advanced phase of burnout, characterized by emotional exhaustion, cynicism and feelings of ineffectiveness in their work,” says the Vancouver Sun newspaper. According to Dr. Paul Farnan, coordinator of the British Columbia Physician Support Program, factors that contribute to stress for many doctors include the difficulty they have in finding replacements to fill in when they want to take a vacation, an overly demanding on-call schedule, and overwhelming paperwork. Dr. Farnan encourages doctors who are stressed to find balance in their lives by spending time with their families and to involve themselves with activities that provide emotional and spiritual fulfillment.