Curiosity Weekly Basketball Positions, Self-Healing Plastic, IQ Decline
Today you’ll learn about how fruit flies are inspiring new forms of gameplay in basketball, how IQ levels are falling around the country, and a potential solution to difficult-to-recycle plastics!
Basketball Positions
- “Physics model could optimize basketball player positioning” by Kathy Hovis
- https://phys.org/news/2023-03-physics-optimize-basketball-player-positioning.html
- “Fruit flies and electrons: Researchers use physics to predict crowd behavior” by Linda B. Glaser
- https://phys.org/news/2018-08-fruit-flies-electrons-physics-crowd.html
- “Density-functional fluctuation theory of crowds” by J. Felipe Méndez-Valderrama et al.
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05750-z#Abs1
Self-Healing Plastic
- “Researchers build hard, self-healing plastic that can be reshaped and recycled” by Wageningen University
- https://phys.org/news/2023-03-hard-self-healing-plastic-reshaped-recycled.html
- “Hard plastics can be recycled if they are constructed differently” by Maarten Smulders
- https://www.wur.nl/en/news-wur/show-home/hard-plastics-can-be-recycled-if-they-are-constructed-differently.htm
IQ Decline
- “Historic decline in IQ could stem from poor education, study shows” by Shelby Kearns
- “Looking for Flynn effects in a recent online U.S. adult sample: Examining shifts within the SAPA Project” by Elizabeth M. Dworak et al.
- “Online tests suggest IQ scores in US dropped for the first time in nearly a century” by Bob Yirka
- “IQ Scores In The US Have Recently Dropped For First Time This Century” by Tom Hale
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/basketball-positions-self-healing-plastic-iq-decline
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