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Speaker 1: How do refrigerators keep food cold? Who really invented the radio?

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Speaker 1: What was the worst video game of all time? On

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Speaker 1: tex Stuff, we answer these questions and more. You can

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Speaker 1: get brand new episodes of tech Stuff every Wednesday on Spotify,

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Speaker 1: Google Play, iTunes, and anywhere else you get podcasts. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to House to Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren voc Obaum,

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Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here it has to Works. Every week,

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Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the

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Speaker 1: weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.

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Speaker 1: This week, studies have shown that the way you walk

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Speaker 1: can predict your personality and even your behavior, and unrelated

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Speaker 1: courses have officially joined the ranks of non human animals

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Speaker 1: that can communicate with us using simple symbols. But First,

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Speaker 1: Senior writer Jonathan Strickland brings us new research into whether

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Speaker 1: bicycle helmets equipped with air bags are really safer than

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Speaker 1: traditional helmets. At Stanford put them to the test. Let's

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Speaker 1: see how they held up. First. In case you aren't aware,

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Speaker 1: there are bike helmet airbags. Typically, they're packed inside a

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Speaker 1: pouch that you wear around your neck. The pouch has

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Speaker 1: sensors on it to detect changes in orientation and acceleration

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Speaker 1: to indicate a crash. At that point, a triggering mechanism

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Speaker 1: inflates the bag, which swoops up over the back of

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Speaker 1: your head to protect you. An early bike helmet airbag

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Speaker 1: called hoof Ding received support from a Swedish insurance company

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Speaker 1: called Folksom, which said, according to their studies, the air

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Speaker 1: bag was by far more effective than traditional bike helmets

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Speaker 1: at preventing traumatic brain injuries. Stanford's results support this conclusion.

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Speaker 1: Researchers suspended mannequin heads containing sensory equipment upside down and

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Speaker 1: then dropped them onto a hard surface. Some of the

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Speaker 1: mannequins were wearing deployed air bag helmets, while others wore

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Speaker 1: traditional bike helmets. According to researcher David Amarillo, the air

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Speaker 1: bag version had quote the potential to reduce the acceleration

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Speaker 1: of impact by a factor of five end quote. Further,

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Speaker 1: the study says that airbag helmets can achieve up to

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Speaker 1: an eight fold reduction in the risk of concussion compared

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Speaker 1: to standard helmets. Airbags are softer and larger than normal

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Speaker 1: bike helmets and can absorb energy more effectively, distributing the

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Speaker 1: impact in a TED talk in April two thousand sixteen,

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Speaker 1: Camarilla said that more kids got a concussion from cycling

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Speaker 1: accidents than through any other sports activity. According to the CDC,

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Speaker 1: this is true, though you have to keep in mind

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Speaker 1: that more kids ride bicycles than play contact sports. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that cycling is more dangerous than full

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Speaker 1: contact football. But Camarilla's point was that kids do sometimes

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Speaker 1: receive concussions in bike accidents, and that, more importantly, traditional

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Speaker 1: bike helmets don't do a good job at preventing concussions.

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Speaker 1: Camarilla said that the purpose of bike helmets is to

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Speaker 1: prevent skull fractures, which is the same thing as a concussion.

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Speaker 1: A concussion occurs when an accelerative force makes the brain stretch, twist,

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Speaker 1: or bump into the inside of the skull. It's an

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Speaker 1: internal injury that results in chemical changes in the brain,

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Speaker 1: and it can have serious effects. So a traditional helmet

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Speaker 1: couldn't protect your skull from breaking while failing to prevent

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Speaker 1: a concussion. The way we test bike helmets in the

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Speaker 1: US is within the context of skull fractures. If we

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Speaker 1: take concussions into consideration, airbags suddenly look much more attractive,

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Speaker 1: but they're triggy to test. Not only do you need

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Speaker 1: to prove they're better at preventing cyclists from receiving concussions,

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Speaker 1: but also that the triggering mechanism will deploy the air

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Speaker 1: bag quickly, safely, and under the right circumstances. It's still

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Speaker 1: a long road ahead before we see bike helmet airbags

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Speaker 1: as a legal alternative to standard helmets. Next up, staff

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Speaker 1: editor Christopher Hassiotis has a story for us that he

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Speaker 1: worked on with one of our freelance writers, jess Lyn Shields.

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Speaker 1: It turns out that horses can be taught to communicate

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Speaker 1: with us using symbols more easily, even than the researchers

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Speaker 1: involved had hoped. Humans and horses have lived and worked

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Speaker 1: together for thousands of years. Although we've succeeded in teaching

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Speaker 1: these creatures to take direction from us while we ride

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Speaker 1: on their backs, carry us into battle like it's no

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Speaker 1: big deal, and drag farm machinery around behind them, horses

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Speaker 1: have never been considered among the smarter animals. This is

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Speaker 1: due in part to our notion that another animal's intelligence

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Speaker 1: can be demonstrated through how readily it learns to communicate

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Speaker 1: with us about what it wants. But between humans and horses,

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Speaker 1: communication has traditionally been viewed as one sided. You tell

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Speaker 1: the horse to turn left, the horse turns left or

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Speaker 1: runs back to the barn with you on its back

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Speaker 1: if it doesn't feel like turning left, and that's not

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Speaker 1: really a conversation. However, a new study published in the

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Speaker 1: journal Applied Animal Behavior Science finds that horses actually can

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Speaker 1: be trained to use symbols in order to tell humans

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Speaker 1: what they want, a cognitive step beyond knowing that a

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Speaker 1: nuzzle might get them an apple or a carrot. A

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Speaker 1: group of Norwegian researchers worked with twenty three horses, all

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Speaker 1: accustomed to wearing blankets in the cold. The horses, not

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Speaker 1: the researchers. These researchers trained them to indicate whether they

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Speaker 1: like their blanket put on or removed by pointing to

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Speaker 1: one of three different symbol boards posted on a fence.

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Speaker 1: The horses were given carrot pieces as a reward for

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Speaker 1: displaying quote unquote right behavior. But unlike most horse training,

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Speaker 1: the behavior the trainers were looking for didn't involve correctly

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Speaker 1: completing humans serving tasks like stop, turn, change gate, or

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Speaker 1: come this way. Instead, the horses received rewards when they

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Speaker 1: correctly communicated to the trainers whether they were feeling hot

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Speaker 1: or cold at the moment. They could do this by

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Speaker 1: pointing with their noses to one of the three icons,

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Speaker 1: which essentially meant one, take the blanket off, to put

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Speaker 1: the blanket on, and three, please don't mess with my

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Speaker 1: current blanket situation. Everything's great at first. The researchers rewarded

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Speaker 1: the horses with carrots when they demonstrated correct behaviors, for instance,

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Speaker 1: any choice the horse made. Wrong responses, on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: were ignored, like touching the blanket on symbol when the

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Speaker 1: horse already was wearing a blanket. The horses received training

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Speaker 1: for ten to fifteen minutes a day and for no

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Speaker 1: more than fourteen days, and in this time all twenty

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Speaker 1: three horses in the study master the communication method. In fact,

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Speaker 1: on average, members of the herd learned to recognize, understand,

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Speaker 1: and choose between the symbols in just ten days. The

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Speaker 1: horses didn't outperform some of the other smarty pants animals

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Speaker 1: that can learn to communicate with us through symbolic vocabularies

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Speaker 1: and gestures, dolphins, apes, and pigeons among them, But this

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Speaker 1: study adds to what we know about how horses think,

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Speaker 1: and it could change how all of us interact with

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Speaker 1: our equine friends for the better. Finally, this week, I've

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Speaker 1: got another story for you from our freelancer Jesselyn Shields.

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Speaker 1: Had tip to Jesselyn. A couple of different teams of

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Speaker 1: researchers have posed the question, what does your walk say

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Speaker 1: about you? The answer, it turns out, is probably quite

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Speaker 1: a lot. Healing movement is complex, yet we constantly draw

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Speaker 1: pretty accurate conclusions about people based on how they move.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever, for example, watch John to volta strut

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Speaker 1: to the Bags at the end of Saturday Night Fever,

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Speaker 1: you know, the other hour and fifty seven minutes of

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Speaker 1: character development in that movie is kind of superfluous. That

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Speaker 1: walk tells you all you need to know. The act

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Speaker 1: of walking, those seemingly simple for many people, is actually

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Speaker 1: a highly coordinated series of movements that each require their

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Speaker 1: own timing and path. Not only that, everyone has a

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Speaker 1: distinct style of walking. Think about John Wayne's swagger or

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Speaker 1: Naomi Campbell's stride, and if you know someone well enough,

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Speaker 1: you can probably identify them by their movements even from

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Speaker 1: far away. Think about if your mom and sister were

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Speaker 1: walking side by side to block ahead of you, it's

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Speaker 1: likely you'd be able to tell them apart based on

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Speaker 1: movement alone. It's even possible you'd be able to discern

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Speaker 1: from that distance if your sister is in a good mood,

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Speaker 1: or if your mom is distracted by something. But science

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Speaker 1: suggests that locomotion may be able to predict something deeper

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Speaker 1: than someone's temporary mood. A new paper published in the

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Speaker 1: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior presents a technique for making assumptions

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Speaker 1: about a person's entire personality based on their walk. The researchers,

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Speaker 1: a team out of the University of Portsmouth, had twenty

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Speaker 1: nine study participants first take the Big Five Inventory, which

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Speaker 1: is a commonly used personality test that can help predict

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Speaker 1: patterns in five areas a person's thought and behavior, their conscientiousness,

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Speaker 1: their social skills or agreeableness, their propensity to worry or neuroticism,

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Speaker 1: their creativity and intellect or openness, and their extra version,

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Speaker 1: their sociability and assertiveness. They then had each participant walk

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Speaker 1: on a treadmill and they recorded and analyzed their gaits.

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Speaker 1: They found that larger movements in the upper body compared

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Speaker 1: with the lower body were a strong predictor of aggression

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Speaker 1: UH and that large amounts of pulit movement are predictors

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Speaker 1: of social traits extra version and agreeableness. But this goes

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Speaker 1: beyond knowing from a glance whether your significant other is

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Speaker 1: in a bad mood. This research helps mathematically explain previous

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Speaker 1: research or distinctive gates were helpful in predicting impending crimes

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Speaker 1: and footage from security cameras. The University of Ports with

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Speaker 1: Team proposes that of security personnel were trained in recognizing

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Speaker 1: aggressive gates, they might be able to prevent even more

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Speaker 1: crimes before they happen. Other research has also indicated the

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Speaker 1: people's behaviors can be predicted by how they move. The

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Speaker 1: journal Plos Computational Biology published a computational model that can

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Speaker 1: generally predict the path and timing of different parts of

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Speaker 1: people's movements. The model can also use a person's movements

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Speaker 1: to make educated guesses about their personality traits like aggressiveness

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Speaker 1: or mood like grouchiness. By modeling what's normal, the researchers

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Speaker 1: created a framework for identifying movements that differ from the

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Speaker 1: norm and are unique to a particular person or to

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Speaker 1: someone who's just acting really weird. In the future, could

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Speaker 1: this technology be used to prevent robberies or diffuse potentially

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Speaker 1: violent situations and would that be a good thing or

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Speaker 1: could lead to unfair targeting of innocent people whose brains

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Speaker 1: and movements happen to fall outside a norm. We'll keep

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Speaker 1: an eye out for updates. That's our show for this week.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. Subscribe now for

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Speaker 1: more of the latest and strangest science news, and send

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Speaker 1: us links to anything you'd like to hear us cover,

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Speaker 1: plus your favorite bizarre historical fact or of the sickest

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Speaker 1: burn you've ever heard from history. You can send us

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Speaker 1: an email at now podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: and of course, for lots more stories like these, head

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Speaker 1: on over to our home planet Now dot how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com