Earth to get a Mini-Moon for 56 days

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In this newsletter

• Earth to get a Mini-Moon for 56 days

• Sick employees cost companies billions of dollars

• Father-son duo discover why liquids glug

• Cannabis use rises in the US but not among teens

Earth to get a Mini-Moon for 56 days

On August 7, astronomers Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos at the Complutense University of Madrid discovered an asteroid, later dubbed 2024 PT5, that is heading toward Earth but won’t smash into it. 

Instead, the asteroid will remain in Earth’s orbit for exactly 56.6 days before being pulled back into an orbit around the Sun. During this period, Earth will have a mini-Moon. 

Mini because PT 5 is only 33 feet (10 m) in diameter and won’t even be visible on an amateur telescope. Astronomers suspect that PT 5 could be a fragment of the Moon when it was first formed 4.5 billion years ago and continues to visit the Earth from time to time. 

The next time PT 5 will visit again will be January 2025 but the visit after that will happen only in 2055.

Sick employees cost companies billions of dollars

According to new research from the University of South Florida, employees who report to work even when they are not feeling well cost companies billions of dollars. 

While companies have focused on reducing ‘absenteeism’—employees missing work—another phenomenon is on the rise: ‘presenteeism’. 

According to the study, employees go to work even when they are sick because of pressure from their workplace, which typically normalizes working when even sick. This has been dubbed ‘presenteeism pressure’. 

When employees feel this pressure, they also view their organization negatively as one not bothered about employee well-being. This causes more unproductive behavior from staff than would have occurred if the employee was absent. 

In addition to wanting to quit, employees engage in deviant behavior, such as mistreating their coworkers and even stealing from the company. Presenteeism is estimated to cost as much as $150 billion annually. 

The research findings were published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

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Father-son duo discover why liquids glug

An unlikely pair of researchers working in a not-so-sophisticated laboratory setup have published their first paper together explaining why liquids ‘glug’ sounds when poured. The father, Sachin Velankar, is a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and the son, Rohit, is a high school student. 

Everybody has noticed the glugging sounds when pouring juice from a bottle, but Rohit took it up as a topic for a science fair project, asking if the elasticity of the container influenced the sounds generated. 

Beyond the science fair, the father-son duo set up some experiments in their home's basement and found that the glug sounds occur because the exiting fluid reduces pressure inside the container. 

If the container is highly flexible, such as a bag that holds IV fluids, the liquid pours out without any glugging sounds. The research duo then made their own acrylic bottles with rubber lids and placed a sensor to measure the pressure oscillation when the glug occurred. 

By adjusting the diameter of the hole, the team was able to drain the bottle faster but with fewer or no glugs. 

The research findings were published in Physics of Fluids. 

Cannabis use rises in the US but not among teens

In an interesting finding published this week, cannabis use has increased in the US between 2013-2022 but has remained fairly stagnant among teens. Instead, usage has increased among those who have a college degree and households that have an income of $75,000 and above. 

The study used data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and researchers involved suggest that legalization by the states might be contributing to reducing cannabis usage among teens. The pandemic also played a role as teenagers spent more time at home than with their peers, which was also reflected in the decrease in the usage of illicit substances by teenagers in general. 

Legalization has also changed how people perceive cannabis, with the increase seen in people with a college degree and higher incomes. Older adults are also using cannabis to combat pain. 

The research findings were published in Drug Alcohol Dependence Reports.

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Thanks for reading.
Until next time,
Ameya