This week we learn about body shape index, humor in the classroom, and squatting while pooping.
- 'Surface-based Body Shape Index', which takes into account distribution of body weight, has been found to more accurately predict mortality than the Body Mass Index (BMI).
- Teachers who use humor in their classrooms tend to get better student evaluations by their students, regardless of learning outcomes.
- Squatting down makes it quicker and easier to poop as compared to sitting down, probably because sitting upright leaves a kink in the gut that straightens out when we squat.
- Accurate science or accessible science in the media – why not both?
- Squatty Potty
Jaime Devine
Jaime K Devine is an interdisciplinary neuroscientist whose research focuses on how behavior and biology, specifically sleep and health, interact. She has a PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and a Certificate in Sleep Medicine from Harvard Medical School. She is also a dedicated science communicator, runner, working mother and nerd.
Ian Mahar
Ian is a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University, studying neuropsychiatric features of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other neurodegenerative conditions. He did his PhD in Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, doing neuropsychiatry research in the McGill Group for Suicide Studies at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. He also does science writing and outreach, and his primary interests for all three are how the brain regulates emotions, and what happens when this regulation goes awry.
