Basketball Positions, Self-Healing Plastic, IQ Decline

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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
- https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=21483
“Looking for Flynn effects in a recent online U.S. adult sample: Examining shifts within the SAPA Project” by Elizabeth M. Dworak et al.
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156#f0005
“Online tests suggest IQ scores in US dropped for the first time in nearly a century” by Bob Yirka
- https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html
“IQ Scores In The US Have Recently Dropped For First Time This Century” by Tom Hale
- https://www.iflscience.com/iq-scores-in-the-us-have-recently-dropped-for-first-time-this-century-67907

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery.
0:08.6	Time flies when you're learning super cool stuff.
0:10.6	I'm Nate.
0:11.6	And I'm Callie. If you're dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you're a loyal listener, welcome back.
0:19.0	Today, you'll learn about how fruit flies are inspiring new forms of gameplay in basketball, how IQ levels are
0:26.1	falling around the country, and a potential solution to difficult to recycle hard plastics.
0:31.7	Without further ado, let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:35.5	All right, Nate, I know you're a big sports guy.
0:39.9	But actually, if you want to figure out
0:41.8	how to play the best moves in basketball,
0:43.7	then you should probably pay attention to those renowned little Titans of sport,
0:48.4	the fruit flies.
0:50.0	Am I missing?
0:51.0	Is that a new NBA team that I don't know? That's a terrible name, frankly, for a team.
0:56.7	Does not inspire fear.
0:58.0	Nope, I am actually talking about Drosophila Melanagaster. That is the common fruit fly. A new study dropped that says it's figured out the best way to place every player on a
1:06.6	basketball court and incidentally it comes from an older physics theory about how
1:11.0	fruit flies and molecules are going to move around at any
1:14.0	given time. Okay, hold on a sec what does this have to do with basketball? Like we're not
1:19.5	telling fruit flies where to go or telling molecules how to move, right?
1:23.2	No, but the mathematical models used in the study come from methods created by a man
1:27.2	named Professor Thomas Arias from the Department of Physics at Cornell University.
	...

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