Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes: Scientists Have Finally Made an Everything-Repellent Coating This Is Where Most of the Lost Luggage in the US Ends Up Resonant Breathing Can Calm You Down In a Matter of Minutes
Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes:
Scientists Have Finally Made an Everything-Repellent Coating
This Is Where Most of the Lost Luggage in the US Ends Up
Resonant Breathing Can Calm You Down In a Matter of Minutes
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/everything-repellent-clothing-resonant-breathing-and-where-lost-luggage-goes
CODY GOUGH: Hi, I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today, you'll learn about an everything-repellent-coating, where most of the lost luggage in the US ends up, and a technique to help you calm down in a matter of minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, have you ever had a clothing stain disaster?
CODY GOUGH: Not a disaster but some of my clothes have been messed up from spilling.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I've got good news. Scientists have finally made an everything-repellent-coating.
CODY GOUGH: Haven't they already done that?
ASHLEY HAMER: You're probably talking about the YouTube videos that were going around of a spray or something that can repel liquids? But all of those are usually more hype than reality. They rub off quickly, they leave a residue on surfaces, and they make objects feel rough and sticky. But materials science researchers at the University of Michigan have made an industrial strength omni-phobic coating and it looks like it's the real deal.
CODY GOUGH: How do you even make a new material anyway?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, so usually scientists will take materials that already exist that have the qualities they want. And they'll mix them together then see if the final product does what they're looking for. But they don't always mix together well. So this team built the material from the ground up. They mapped out the fundamental properties of a huge variety of substances, then they mathematically predicted how any two might behave together.
One of those properties was what they called partial miscibility which is how perfectly the two substances will mix together. Better mixing means more durability even if the original substances aren't all that durable in the first place. Their goal was to make a substance that was clear visually so it would be invisible on any surface, smooth enough to repel water, oils, and alcohols, and able to stick to lots of different surfaces.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: And they did it. The perfect combo was something called fluorinated polyurethane, and a special fluid repellent molecule called p-phos. The substance is perfectly clear and can be sprayed, brushed, dipped, or spin-coated onto lots of different surfaces. We've got a video of it on curiosity.com and it's pretty cool. The team has to do some more testing to make sure it's safe, durable, and cost-effective, and then hopefully they can bring it to market.
CODY GOUGH: That would be awesome.
ASHLEY HAMER: Totally.
CODY GOUGH: No more stains.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, can you imagine that on your phone? You could just drop it in literally anything, and it would be fine.
CODY GOUGH: Well, if you're willing to reach in there and pull it out.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. [LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Although if you've got gloves and you spray it on there, hey, there you go.
ASHLEY HAMER: Perfect.
CODY GOUGH: Has an airline ever lost your luggage?
ASHLEY HAMER: Not totally lost. They've gotten it back to me pretty much every time.
CODY GOUGH: Well, have you ever been curious about what happens to unclaimed lost luggage?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, I have.
CODY GOUGH: Well, Curiosity looked into it and believe it or not, most of it ends up in a massive thrift store.
ASHLEY HAMER: One massive thrift store?
CODY GOUGH: Yes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: It is appropriately named The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama.
ASHLEY HAMER: Amazing.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. [LAUGHS] This story comes from almost 50 years ago. In 1970, a man named Doyle Owens headed to Washington, DC with a borrowed pickup truck and $300 in cash and he picked up a load of unclaimed luggage from a Greyhound Bus Station, brought it home to sell on card tables in a rented old house, and it was a massive success. He and his family soon became the owners of what is still today the only lost luggage store in the United States.
ASHLEY HAMER: How can there only be one? That's amazing.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know. [LAUGHS] But not all baggage ends up there. Airlines actually have a really lengthy process in place to reunite misplaced bags with their owners. There's a three-month tracing process. And after that, only about 7% of originally misplaced bags remain unclaimed. So at that point, the airline pays passengers an insurance claim on their lost bags and the bags head to Alabama.
And some of the weirdest stuff they've found include a 40.95 carat natural emerald, natural emerald over 40 carats, a box of human ashes, and a 4,000-year-old mummified hawk.
ASHLEY HAMER: Jeez.
CODY GOUGH: Weird stuff.
ASHLEY HAMER: So those people lost their priceless heirlooms and they just get an insurance payout and then someone else gets to just buy these priceless heirlooms.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow, I don't know how I feel about that.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Well, today, Doyle's son Brian runs the 40,000-square-foot unclaimed baggage center. 40,000 square foot and it's a popular tourist attraction with millions of visitors every year from across the country and abroad. One man's baggage is another man's treasure.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right.
CODY GOUGH: We need to take a curiosity field trip.
ASHLEY HAMER: We do.
CODY GOUGH: Then maybe you'll know how you feel about it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Then maybe I will. I think I'll feel very good about it when I can buy mummified hawks.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Gross.
ASHLEY HAMER: [LAUGHS] Yeah. Cody, have you ever done a breathing exercise to calm down?
CODY GOUGH: In college, a couple of times. But I'm so chill these days. [LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, that's nice.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] That's a lie.
ASHLEY HAMER: Good for you. Well, I do it from time to time. And Curiosity likes to help you relax, so today, we wrote about a technique called coherent breathing or resonant breathing. Researchers have said this technique is powerful enough to help patients with even the most severe mental conditions like survivors of genocides, wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other mass disasters.
And in a 2017 study, they treated people with major depressive disorder using resonant breathing and Iyengar yoga. After three months, their depression had drastically dropped as measured by a standard depression inventory test.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: So here's how to do it. You ready?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Take five breaths per minute and keep it going as long as you need to. So every inhale and every exhale will last six seconds.
CODY GOUGH: Each?
ASHLEY HAMER: Each. And that's it.
CODY GOUGH: That's it?
ASHLEY HAMER: That's really slow breathing and you really have to concentrate on it. But yeah, that's it. Make sure your breaths are gentle because the goal here is to balance two systems in your body. There's your sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for your fight or flight response, and then there's your parasympathetic nervous system which slows down your heart rate among other things. You should also avoid counting out loud or using a visual cue like a blinking light to keep track of your seconds. Because that could be too stimulating for your sympathetic nervous system.
But the best thing to do is to practice before you really need it maybe using a timer just to know what it feels like and then once you're in the moment, you can do it without.
CODY GOUGH: Got it. What happens if you miscount the breath sort of seconds?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's not a big deal. Just try to do it as slowly as you can.
CODY GOUGH: Got it. The goal is five breaths per minute.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes, yes, that's the goal.
CODY GOUGH: All right. Well, take a deep breath and read more about these stories and so much more on curiosity.com if you want to have a great relaxing afternoon, morning.
ASHLEY HAMER: Perfectly relaxing.
CODY GOUGH: Whenever you're listening to this.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
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