Weird Science: What our tweeting says about us

Scientists who analysed millions of tweets believe our mode of thinking changes at different times of the day and follows a regular 24-hour pattern. Photo / 123RF

Scientists believe our mode of thinking changes at different times of the day and follows a regular 24-hour pattern.

How did they come to this conclusion?

Twitter, of course.

A team at the University of Bristol specialising in artificial intelligence (AI) and in medicine aggregated and anonymised UK Twitter content sampled every hour over the course of four years across 54 of the UK's largest cities to determine if our thinking modes change collectively.

That involved analysing seven billion words, used in some 800 million tweets.

The researchers revealed different emotional and cognitive modes in our thoughts by identifying variations in language.

The changes themselves were picked up by tracking the use of specific tweeted words which were linked with 73 psychometric indicators and could help interpret information about our thinking style.

At 6am, analytical thinking was shown to peak, and the words and language at this time were shown to correlate with a more logical way of thinking.

But in the evenings and nights, this thinking style changed to a more emotional and existential one.

Although 73 different psychometric quantities were tracked, the team found there were just two independent underlying factors that explained most of the temporal variations across the data.

The first factor, with a peak expression time starting at around 5am to 6am, linked with measures of analytical thinking through the high use of nouns, articles and prepositions.

This has previously been linked to intelligence, improved class performance and education.

This early-morning period also showed increased concern with achievement and power.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the researchers find a more impulsive, social, and emotional mode, linked with unhappy existential concerns.

The study discovered strong evidence that our language changed dramatically between night and day, reflecting changes in our concerns and underlying cognitive and emotional processes.

These shifts also occurred at times associated with major changes in neural activity and hormonal levels, suggesting possible relations with our circadian clock.

Further, the study revealed both cognitive and emotional states changed in a predictable way during the 24 hours.

"The analysis of media content, when done correctly, can reveal useful information for both social and biological sciences," said the study's leader, Professor Nello Cristianini.

"We are still trying to learn how to make the most of it."

Could a happy marriage save your heart?

A global study has found marriage may protect against the development of heart disease and stroke as well as influencing who is more likely to die of it. Photo / 123RF

Contrary to age-old jokes, a global study has found marriage may protect against the development of heart disease and stroke as well as influencing who is more likely to die of it.

The findings, from a pooled analysis of the available data, prompted the UK and Australian researchers to suggest that marital status should be included as a risk factor for heart disease/stroke and likely survival in its own right.

Most cardiovascular disease can be attributed to well known risk factors: age; sex; high blood pressure; high cholesterol; smoking; and diabetes.

But it's not clear what influences the remaining 20 per cent.

"Our work suggests that marital status should be considered in patients with or at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, and should be used alongside more traditional cardiac risk factors to identify those patients that may be at higher risk for future cardiovascular events," said study author and cardiologist Professor Mamas Mamas, of Keele University.

The findings of previous research on the impact of marital status have been somewhat mixed, so in a bid to clarify the issues, the authors trawled research databases for relevant published studies.

They drew on 34 out of a total of 225 studies, all of which had been published between 1963 and 2015, and involved more than two million people aged between 42 and 77 from Europe, Scandinavia, North America, the Middle East, and Asia.

Pooled analysis of the data revealed that, compared with people who were married, those who were not - never married, divorced, widowed - were at heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease (42 per cent) and coronary artery heart disease (16 per cent).

Not being married was also associated with a heightened risk of dying from both coronary heart disease (42 per cent) and stroke (55 per cent).

When the data were broken down further, the analysis showed that divorce was associated with a 35 per cent higher risk of developing heart disease for both men and women, while widowers of both sexes were 16 per cent more likely to have a stroke.

While there was no difference in the risk of death following a stroke between the married and the unmarried, this was not the case after a heart attack, the risk of which was significantly higher (42 per cent) among those who had never married.

"Our analysis showed that compared to married individuals, being unmarried was associated with increased coronary heart disease and both cardiovascular heart disease and stroke mortality in the general population," Macquarie University researcher Dr Anastasia Mihailidou said.

"The important message is to evaluate patients' social circumstances including marital status and consider the need for additional support as part of management."

T-Rex couldn't stick out its tongue

Dinosaurs couldn't stick out their tongues like lizards do today, scientists say. Photo / 123RF

Dinosaurs are often depicted as fierce creatures, baring their teeth, with tongues wildly stretching from their mouths like giant, deranged lizards.

But new research reveals a major problem with this classic image: dinosaurs couldn't stick out their tongues like lizards.

Instead, their tongues were probably rooted to the bottoms of their mouths in a manner akin to alligators.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Chinese Academy of Sciences made the discovery by comparing the hyoid bones - the bones that support and ground the tongue - of modern birds and crocodiles with those of their extinct dinosaur relatives.

In addition to challenging depictions of dino tongues, the research proposes a connection on the origin of flight and an increase in tongue diversity and mobility.

"Tongues are often overlooked," lead author Associate Professor Zhiheng Li said.

"But, they offer key insights into the lifestyles of extinct animals."

The researchers made their discovery by comparing the hyoid bones of extinct dinosaurs, pterosaurs and alligators to the hyoid bones and muscles of modern birds and alligator specimens.

Hyoid bones act as anchors for the tongue in most animals, but in birds these bones can extend to the tip.

Because extinct dinosaurs are related to crocodiles, pterosaurs and modern birds, comparing anatomy across these groups can help scientists understand the similarities and differences in tongue anatomy and how traits evolved through time and across different lineages.

Further research on other anatomical changes that occurred with shifts in tongue function could help improve our knowledge of the evolution of birds, giving an example of how changes in the tongues of living birds are associated with changes in the position of the opening of the windpipe.

These changes, could in turn, affect how birds breathe and vocalise.