Do hairpieces reduce vitamin D?
THE feature in 91av on glorious middle age (10 March, p 48) prompted reader Roger Brook to speculate that baldness in middle-aged men might be an evolved characteristic to increase vitamin D production, since the vitamin forms in skin exposed to sunlight.
The idea might seem far-fetched, but a little searching throws up a of a paper in the Medical Journal of Australia entitled “Does degree of baldness influence vitamin D status?” ().
Advertisement
The paper concludes: “The degree of baldness does not appear to influence serum 24-OHD [vitamin D] levels” – but not before the authors have admitted their data may have been skewed: “We cannot exclude the possibility of bias attributable to undisclosed use of hairpieces or ‘comb over’ techniques that might reduce scalp exposure to sunlight.”
“Travelling through “wonderful” west Canada, Jenny Narraway was disconcerted to read, on the bottom of a “flowers of Canada” tea mug, the words: “Discover Canada, made in Taiwan”
Nanoparticles: a pain in the foot
READER Ian Portman was searching online for some background information on iridium nanoparticles, having been sent some for his electron microscopy work. He came across a page headed “Natural Antibiotics Pure Colloidal Silver”.
Among all the guff there about monatomic particles and such, he noticed this: “Nanoparticles are huge and get stuck in cells’ membranes and cannot be excreted out. Because they are metallic particles, they sink to the bottom of the feet and can cause foot pain.”
Ian observes: “I’m handling many of these compounds and do indeed have foot pain. I’d previously thought it was caused by a broken bone some years ago, I’m wondering if I should take to sleeping on my head to allow the particles to even out a bit.”
Lottery promotes gamblers’ fallacy
THE includes on its opening page this statement: “To improve your chances of winning the Irish lottery we have compiled a STATS section based on previous draws.”
Terry Devlin wants to know if they have discovered some previously unknown aspect of the laws of probability.
Measuring in five minute walks
RESPONDING to Feedback’s interest in unusual units, Wendy Sheils tells us about a book she bought as a present for her brother, who she says is “a connoisseur of irrelevant trivia”. The book is (Puzzlewright, 2010) and one of the many inconsequential assertions in it is that a marathon (42.195 kilometres) is equal to 85 FMWs.
An FMW, it turns out, is a 5-minute walk, so 85 of these would be about 7 hours. We think this is a splendid unit of measurement, but Wendy points out that there are problems with it – notably, whose 5-minute walk? A marathon runner going for a stroll, she suggests, would cover a different distance in 5 minutes than Wendy herself would when she’s being “led by two desperate puppies”.
She is also at a loss to know how the book arrived at its opinion that the Straits of Dover are 68 FMWs wide. Inflatable shoes, perhaps?
AN ADVERTISEMENT in a shop in London told Stewart Morris that he could “Enjoy hydrogen rich water right from your own tap” and, what’s more, that the filtered water in question has “smaller water clusters to better cell absorption”.
Stewart has no idea what they are talking about, and neither does his wife, who has a chemistry degree, and neither do we.
HURRY is not required here. Daniel Smith ordered an Xbox Live prepaid code from an online retailer, to give him access to interactive games on the eponymous device. He received an email informing him that “You have 10000 days to accept this code before it will be offered to another customer.”
He worked out this gave him until 26 September 2038 before the code is offered to someone else – who, he suspects, “will have no idea what an Xbox is, or why it needs a code”.
A GRATE for wood fires called the WoodMiser supposedly saves on fuel “by burning 33 per cent less firewood”.
Graham Ranson was intrigued and went to to find out more, only to end up feeling thoroughly irritated. The cause was “not so much what it says, it’s what it doesn’t say”, Graham explains. In particular, the section headed “The science” says that “The science behind the way the WoodMiser is made is highly complex” – but it tells you nothing about what the science actually is.”Is that code for ‘you’re too stupid to understand’?” Graham asks. “Or is it ‘we’ve no idea how it works but other people seem to think it does, so there’.”
FINALLY, how is this for an explanation that mystifies? Norm Cleland tells us that on Friday 23 March, speaking on Channel 10 TV in Australia, Jane Lindsay of the Australian Homeopathic Association explained that “Homeopathy is to do with the quantum energy field”.