How should you sneeze when you wear a mask?

And how to make a perfect presentation at work and is the security at the airports effective? Studies of a different kind from the section "Not lightly - extraordinary studies" in Scientific American magazine

And here you have a problem common to baseball players, welders and surgeons: how to sneeze while a mask hides the face? Baseball players and welders only have to deal with the unpleasantness caused by the repeated spatter. Surgeons, on the other hand, must be careful not to inject masses of bacteria directly into the opening they have made in the body of the patient.

It's not healthy for the patient and the phrase "Oops" is one of the worst things a surgeon can say during his work ("Where's my watch?" is also bad, as is the simple and direct word "Oops..."). If so, what is the best way to avoid "Oi Wei" after Apache?

You can find the answer to this question, and other questions that science does not usually deal with, in the year-end issue of the "British Journal of Medicine". This journal is known for its abundance of unusual articles. Below are some particularly strange studies published in the issue.

And first, regarding the medical sneeze. The popular opinion is that the surgeon should sneeze while facing directly towards the surgical area, because the mask will block the spray that can come out from both sides of the mask and land away from the open wound. But two plastic surgeons from a British hospital checked the medical literature and found no real evidence that the mask actually shifted the sputum to the sides. So they saved their energy and tested the hypothesis using a high-speed camera and some ground pepper that stimulated the garaged volunteers to sneeze.

The result: very little of the spray escapes to the sides, and a little sneaks out from below towards the surgeon's chest. Most of the drops remain in the doctor's safe zone and do not contaminate the patient. But since the study does not offer a recommended direction for sneezing, the researchers conclude with this clear instruction: "Surgeons should follow their natural inclination when sneezing during surgery." This is called common sense.

The journal also publishes a survey on common medical beliefs that proves that the sleepy feeling you feel after the Thanksgiving meal is probably not caused by the tryptophan in the turkey. For years, this amino acid has gained a dubious reputation as the cause of the post-meal nap that takes over on the couch with an open belt in front of the TV trying to watch NFL games.

But it turns out that turkey meat contains the same amount of tryptophan as chicken or beef and pork or cheese contain even more. In fact, every heavy meal reduces the blood flow to the brain, and therefore also the oxygen supply, and causes sleepiness. And as the authors add, "the wine may also play a part in this."

In a study entitled "A Day in the Life of a Doctor: The PowerPoint Presentation", two British doctors came to the following conclusions:

• The main purpose of the presentation is entertainment. Academic content is an unwanted distraction.
• The more lines of text you enter on one slide, and the smaller the letter size, the lower the risk that someone will criticize the data entered by mistake.
• The number of slides you can show in the time allotted to you is inversely proportional to the number of embarrassing questions you will be asked at the end.

Another study wonders about the effectiveness and purpose of the comprehensive security scans that passengers go through at airports. The researchers, from Harvard University, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, claim that there has never been a scientific evaluation of the scanning methods used today.

They ask this sharp and short question: "Can you hide something in your shoes that you can't hide in your underwear?" They add that "the expenditure on safety at the airports ($9 per passenger) is 1,000 times higher than the expenditure at the train stations ($0.01 per passenger). This is despite the fact that the number of attacks on trains is similar to that on airplanes.

The researchers compare the budget gaps to "investing the entire mammogram budget to detect breast cancer only in the left breast." Indeed, every time I fly and see at the airport that the risk of an attack that day is defined as "high", I ask myself: "Compared to what?" But I don't say a word because I'm afraid they won't let me get on the plane.

Written by: Steve Mirsky. Published in Scientific American Israel magazine