FactXplode

facts In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers working that shift. The plan worked: the average wait fell to eight minutes, well within industry benchmarks. But the complaints persisted.

Confused, the airport executives undertook a thorough on-site analysis of the journey from leaving the plane to collecting baggage. They discovered that it took passengers only one minute to walk from their gate to baggage claim, but seven more to collect their bags. In other words, an overwhelming majority of their journey was spent simply standing and waiting.

After discovering this, they decided on a new approach. They moved the arrival gate further away from the main terminal and then routed the bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now spend a total of six minutes walking and spend just two minutes waiting for their bags.

Complaints immediately dropped to zero.

facts Doggone it, Chewy, you're going to make us cry.

The online retailer for a variety of pet items apparently knows how to get to our feelings: There's a longstanding practice at the company to acknowledge the loss of customers' pets with flowers or, sometimes, even paintings.

That's what artist Anna Brose learned the other day when she tried to return a no-longer-needed bag of dog food to the company. As she tweeted on Wednesday: "I contacted last week to see if I could return an unopened bag of my dog's food after he died. They 1) gave me a full refund, 2) told me to donate the food to the shelter, and 3) had flowers delivered today with the gift note signed by the person I talked to??"

Her tweet has since gone viral, leading Brose to follow up with a sweet pic of her now-departed dog, Gus. "Thank you for all the kind messages and shared stories in the comments," she wrote, adding a blue heart emoji. "Gus would have been blown away!" Naturally, Chewy replied, saying, "It's the least we could do, Anna. We hope these flowers will help to keep your spirits up."

For all the cynics out there: Yes, this is a terrific bit of customer service-turned-promotion. But it also appears to be meaningful to grieving pet owners and more.

facts If your bedroom is poorly ventilated, CO2 is likely to build up in a way that makes you less comfortable and even damages your health.

Research shows that concentrations of carbon dioxide when people are sleeping are between 3 to 5 times higher in bedrooms where the window is shut.

People tend to feel that the air is fresher when they open a bedroom window or use a fan, and there's evidence that suggests they're likely to fall asleep more easily in a properly ventilated room. In the scientists' experiments, they found that ventilation helped subjects to feel better rested and more alert after their night's sleep.

Carbon dioxide is also linked to conditions like sleep apnea, and some experts now believe that CO2 triggers neurons (brain cells) that can rouse you from your sleep. If you have difficulty sleeping, it's unpleasant and upsetting to be jolted awake just as you begin to drift off.

If you think CO2 is affecting your night's rest, then it's important to get air circulating around your bedroom. Opening a window is a great way to deal with the problem. If that's likely to be too noisy, fumy, or hot, then turn on the air conditioning, open a door, install a fan, or open the vents in your central air system.

facts The scenarios you describe, which require you to evaluate incoming data and make split-second decisions, suck up a lot of mental energy. Researchers refer to this as "cognitive load." Eliminating a distraction such as sound can help with concentration by reducing the cognitive load. That's because, much like a computer, our brain's capacity to engage in multiple tasks is finite.

To understand why, it helps to appreciate the complexities of the human brain. It's made up of three major parts - the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brainstem. The largest and topmost part is the cerebrum, which is divided into the left and right hemispheres. It deals with learning, emotions, reasoning, and fine motor skills, and it interprets the flood of data from the five senses. Tucked beneath is the much smaller cerebellum, which oversees muscle movement, balance, and posture. Acting as a relay center between the two and the spinal cord is the brainstem, which also oversees the staying-alive stuff we don't think about but can't live without. This includes breath, heartbeat, swallowing, sleep cycles, and temperature control.

The three areas of the brain plus the spinal cord make up the central nervous system. It regulates movement, thought, and emotion. It's why you're able to find that new address. But while it seems as though we can concentrate on multiple things at once, the brain handles tasks sequentially. It's just making the switch so swiftly, in mere nanoseconds, that it feels like we're multi-tasking.
Once you're hunting for a street sign, though, or gauging car lengths in fast-moving traffic, all of the collecting and interpreting of data by the central nervous system reaches critical mass. That cognitive load we talked about earlier gets to be too great. Turning down the radio removes enough incoming data to make it easier to concentrate.

facts For the first time, scientists have pinpointed the area of the rat brain where ticklishness resides-the trunk of the somatosensory cortex, a region typically associated with touch.

They also observed that being open to tickling depends on mood: Stressed rats don't respond to tickling by laughing, but happy ones do, just like people.

"Tickling is one of the most poorly understood forms of touch," said study author Michael Brecht, a biologist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin back in 2016.

For example, Brecht said we still don't understand what function tickling in people may serve, why it causes us to laugh, or even why the best tickling comes at the hands of others. It may seem odd or frivolous to study the ticklishness of animals, but these interactions may well hold important secrets to human cognition.

facts Some people experience what doctors call a blackout when they drink too much alcohol and don't remember key details.

These situations can range from small, such as where a person put their keys, to large, such as forgetting what happened in the night. According to Duke University, the inability to remember anything from a night out usually occurs after a person has had five or more drinks.

Alcohol affects short-term memory by slowing down how nerves communicate with each other in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus plays a significant role in helping people form and maintain memories. When normal nerve activity slows down, short-term memory loss can occur.

facts Research done by Krista McLennan of Northampton University indicates that cows do indeed have "best friends."

For the study, cows were penned for 30-minute intervals twice, once with a preferred partner, a "best friend," and once with a cow that they did not know. During this time, the heart rates of the cows were measured.

As it turned out, when paired with their best friend, the cows' heart rates were significantly lower, and they experienced less stress overall.

These findings not only have implications for the dairy industry but also the well-being of the animals. The notion that cows have best friends indicates a great degree of personality in the species and a desire, not unlike our own, to develop deep connections with others.

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Canines sometimes employ sneezing as a form of "settling signal," indicating they need a moment to decompress, take a break, or express contentment with their current circumstances.

In certain instances, dogs will produce "artificial sneezes" to gain attention or communicate playfulness. For example, when a dog sneezes around their regular feeding times or walking schedule, this may be an intentional behavior to express their desires.

While performing these mock sneezes, dogs typically watch their human companions to confirm they've successfully gained their notice. They might even reduce the physical distance and sneeze in close proximity to a person to ensure their communication attempt is registered.

facts For nearly 20 years, researchers from

Monterey Bay Aquarium and Stanford University have fitted electronic tracking tags on adult white sharks each fall and winter along the California coast around San Francisco Bay. Each year, the tags documented a consistent migration by the sharks to a region more than 1,200 miles offshore-halfway to Hawaii-that's been considered an oceanic desert. They dubbed it the White Shark Café, guessing that opportunities to feed and to mate might be the draw.

"We've studied these sharks for nearly 20 years, and they've told us consistently that the White Shark Café is a really important place in the ocean-but we've never known why," said Dr. Salvador Jorgensen, a senior research scientist and shark research lead at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

By documenting the biology, chemistry, and physical conditions in the region-a swath of the Pacific Ocean the size of Colorado-the researchers hope to understand what makes the Café an annual offshore hot spot for one of the ocean's most charismatic predators.

"I think of it like Burning Man," Sal says. "You have all these Bay Area white sharks, and every year they head out into this White Shark Café, out into the desert of the ocean-and we're not exactly sure what they're doing out there."

facts Sleeping close to someone you love not only helps you fall asleep faster but also has many other health benefits, as per a study.

It so happens that when we sleep alone, we are by ourselves, and our mind begins to wander, which leads to overthinking. This mental activity makes it more difficult to sleep.

"This is why sleeping next to someone you love is so beneficial. They'll give you feelings of security so you begin to relax and drift off. Sleeping with your partner also stimulates the release of a cocktail of chemicals that can help you get a great night's sleep," said Tim Gray, health-optimizing biohacker, psychology specialist, entrepreneur, and global speaker earlier this year.

Dozing off close to the person you love helps in the release of oxytocin (the love hormone), serotonin (contributes to well-being and happiness, norepinephrine (helps to regulate sleep and balances stress), vasopressin (increases sleep quality & decreases cortisol) and prolactin (associated with improving the immune system & great sleep), as per Gray.

It also has been seen to reduce the chances of cardiovascular diseases. Also, skin contact sends signals to your adrenal glands to stop producing cortisol. This means reducing stress and getting better sleep.
"The University of North Carolina carried out a sleep and intimacy experiment with 59 women. They asked participants to diarize their hugs, with their oxytocin levels and blood pressure checked regularly. They found that those with the highest levels of oxytocin had the lowest blood pressure," said the expert.

facts "The work by anthropologists who work on psychiatric illness teaches us that these illnesses shift in small but important ways in different social worlds. Psychiatric scientists tend not to look at cultural variation. Someone should because it's important, and it can teach us something about psychiatric illness," said Luhrmann, an anthropologist trained in psychology. She is a Watkins University Professor at Stanford.

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Ruminating-or rehashing the same things over and over again-isn't helpful. But when you're overthinking, you might find yourself replaying a conversation or situation in your head repeatedly or imagining something bad happening many times.

Dwelling on your problems, mistakes, and shortcomings increases your risk of mental health problems, according to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

As your mental health declines, you are more likely you are to ruminate on your thoughts. It's a repetitive cycle that can be tough to break.