Aging Makes People Colon-Close-Parenthesis

Getting older is not a recipe for crotchetiness. Although those two cranky Muppets will always be up in their balcony, Americans in general don't become less happy with age. If anything, they get happier.

The trajectory of people's happiness over a lifetime is tricky to study, because in a given year you're capturing not only your subject's age but also the current events. You need to follow a large group of people over many years, and you need them to be all different ages when the study starts.

Angelina Sutin and her colleagues at the National Institute of Aging in Maryland had just such a dataset to work with. Called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), this project has been running for more than five decades and has gathered data on people born everywhere between 1885 and 1980. These subjects have answered questions about their happiness on many occasions—some as many as 19 times—throughout their lives.

Want to find your own happiness score? Answer the following questions on a scale from 0 to 3, where 0 is "rarely or never" and 3 is "most or all of the time." In the past week of your life, how frequent were these feelings?

     I enjoyed life

     I felt I was just as good as other people

     I felt hopeful about the future

     I was happy

Summing the four numbers will give you your well-being score. If you were in the BLSA, that score would be your data point for today.

When the researchers put all 2,267 subjects together and looked at how their happiness changed with age, they got a decidedly downward slope. A frowny face, if you will.

age = : ( 

It looked like aging made people less happy. But then the researchers tried a different tactic. Instead of lumping all their subjects together, they grouped them by when they were born. That frown turned upside down:

age = : \

Within each birth year, the results now looked like a somewhat more optimistic "meh?" face. Every group's well-being slightly (but significantly) improved with age.

The first set of results had sloped downward because people who were born earlier reached lower endpoints of well-being. In the graph, you can see that someone born in 1905 or 1925 is likely to reach a 9 or a 10 later in life; someone born in the 1960s might make it nearly to 12 (a perfect score).

Sutin thinks this could have to do with the biggest national frowny-face of all: the Great Depression. People who lived through this time, she writes, may have felt lasting psychological effects. Although their well-being still improved as they aged, the cloud of the Depression may have lingered.

(Sutin notes also that younger and older adults, according to previous studies, treat this set of well-being questions and the 0-to-3 scale similarly. This suggests the results aren't just happiness inflation—say, younger people reporting a 12 for the same feelings that older people would rate a 10.)

Aside from increasing economic prosperity in the United States, there are plenty of other reasons people may have felt happier in more recent decades. Sutin cites increased life expectancy, decreased infant mortality, better nutrition, less disease, and more women in the workplace as possible factors. The twentieth century also saw faster travel, the invention of the Internet, and the eradication in America of both the polio virus and gelatin-based entrées. There's a lot to be happy about.

Now that Sutin has found that the average American seems to have an upward trajectory of well-being, she's interested in people's individual paths: what makes one person's happiness increase more or less (or decrease) over time?

In this study, subjects who were white had higher well-being scores on average, as did those with more education. Sutin hopes to pick apart the social, economic, and health factors that affect how happiness changes with age. When everyone can feel as :) as they want, we'll really be living in the future.

Sutin, A., Terracciano, A., Milaneschi, Y., An, Y., Ferrucci, L., & Zonderman, A. (2013). The Effect of Birth Cohort on Well-Being: The Legacy of Economic Hard Times Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797612459658

Image: a 102-year-old woman, by Uppy Chatterjee (Flickr)

Will Powdered Rhino Horn Cure My E. Coli? (a quiz)

It's Inkfish's 100th post! I considered celebrating by listing my top 100 stories, but instead I'm bringing you this review of recent science news.

By the way, if you've eaten any European produce lately and are feeling unwell, please stay off of airplanes. The TSA is after you, anyway.


1. At an undisclosed location in the northeast, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is currently testing a system that will:

a. employ explosives-sniffing ferrets

b. identify people who are thinking about committing a terrorist act

c. scan travelers in 3D, so screeners (wearing 3D glasses, naturally) can get an even more accurate look at your body

d. scan your shoes without requiring you to take them off


2. As of Thursday night, the E. coli outbreak in Europe had killed 30 people and sickened more than 2,800. The culprit has now been identified as:

a. sprouts

b. cucumbers

c. broccoli

d. lettuce


3. In the Czech Republic, the world's eighth-to-last northern white rhinoceros has died of old age (she was 39). All species of rhino have been unfortunately favored by humans for their horns. Which of these is NOT a traditional use of rhinoceros horn?
a. dagger handle
b. aphrodisiac
c. treatment for fever
d. treatment for gout


4. After a delicate joint effort, scientists in China and Scotland are anxiously waiting to find out whether they've successfully mated a pair of:
a. white rhinos
b. pandas
c. cloned cats
d. giant corpse flowers


5. Seven scientists in Italy will be tried on manslaughter charges because they:
a. accidentally released a dangerous virus
b. approved defective pacemakers for implantation in humans
c. erroneously predicted a flood, causing a riot
d. failed to predict an earthquake


Bonus: Do cell phones cause brain cancer?
a. obviously
b. obviously not
c. I don't know, but I'd sure like to read about it!

Answers are in the comments.

Battle Tactics (a quiz)

Have you been following the top science news stories? Are you an excellent guesser? Find out here.

1. To deal with the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company has called in a group of:
a. Boy Scouts
b. NASA engineers
c. robots
d. dogs

2. Scientists in New Zealand who encouraged ants and wasps to battle over food observed what never-before-seen behavior?

a. The wasps picked up ants in their jaws, flew up in the air, and dropped them.

b. The wasps bit the ants' heads off.

c. Groups of ants clung to the wasps' legs, preventing them from flying away.

d. The ants and wasps chose to share the available food instead of fighting.

3. Archaeologists are abuzz over a finding in Texas confirming that:

a. Neanderthals lived in North America.

b. Humans settled in Texas about 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

c. Early North Americans ate dogs.

d. Ancient "arrowheads" were never actually attached to arrows.

4. In a major breakthrough, an MIT chemist announced this week that his team had built the first practical version of an artificial:

a. eye

b. nose

c. cloud

d. leaf

5. People behave more kindly, according to a recent social psychology study, after they:

a. ride an up escalator

b. ride a merry-go-round

c. swing on a swing

d. go through a revolving door

Answers are in the comments. Inkfish does not endorse doing battle with wasps or any other arthropod.

Keep Your Brain Healthy (a quiz)

Happy Friday! Have some sludge.

1. In honor of the Oscars this weekend, we'll start with a still from a very cool video. What is this?

a. a bioluminescent squid

b. fungus farmed in an ant colony

c. the inside of a mouse embryo

d. a model of new galaxies forming in space

(If you like videos that zoom through mysterious objects, also check out these fruit-and-vegetable MRIs.)

2. According to new research, climate change is having what effect on your allergies?

a. Allergy season has lengthened by two to four weeks in some parts of North America.

b. The ragweed population is declining due to mass die-offs of one of its major pollinators.

c. Allergy sufferers' symptoms have decreased by up to 12%, since heat represses histamine activity.

d. There's no such thing as climate change. We should keep burning fossil fuels, because carbon dioxide is good for plants.

3. Using video and chemical sampling of the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico, oceanographer Samantha Joye found:
a. almost no oil, hooray!
b. blankets of oil several inches thick
c. healthy populations of sea creatures
d. bacterial spit

4. Speaking of sludge, Indonesia could spend the next 20 to 90 years dealing with constant flow from its:
a. mud volcano
b. tar geyser
c. oil pipeline rupture
d. sewage river

5. Finally, good news (for some people). Apparently, being bilingual can:
a. reduce stress
b. make your brian bigger
c. delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease
d. prevent brain tumors

Answers are in the comments.

 Image: Ian Smyth, Monash University.

Name That Cross Section!

Scroll down through this sequence of pictures. What do you see?

If you said "an artichoke as seen by an MRI machine," you're right! (And this guy would like to talk to you.) 

Andy Ellison is an MRI technician at the Boston University School of Medicine. He first put an orange through the machine one day to make sure it was working correctly. "A problem with the scanner would show itself with most fruits and veggies," he explained to Science. But it turned out that the inside of an orange was pretty cool in its own right. So Ellison started scanning all kids of produce and posting the videos online.

You should definitely go to Ellison's blog, Inside Insides, and watch a few of the videos. Following the scanner through its vegetable odysseys is a little bit like traveling through black hole, or maybe being digested by a squid.

In the meantime, see if you can identify these produce items. Bonus points if you spot any ligament tears.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Answers are in the comments. 

All images from Andy Ellison, Insideinsides.blogspot.com. 

I'll Take Penguins in Peril for 500, Alex. (a quiz)

Which of this week's science news stories did you catch? I know Watson would ace this quiz.

1. Distressingly, a long-term study has shown that king penguins with tracking bands attached their flippers are more likely to:

a. die

b. develop infections

c. become obese

d. abandon their young

2. Testing anxiety can cause students to underperform on exams. But researchers at the University of Chicago showed that in a high-stakes test environment, both high-school and college students did better on exams when they:
a. studied less
b. wrote about their feelings for 10 minutes before the test
c. ate chocolate before the test
d. watched a film about Stephen Hawking before test




3. Daily Double!! What is this?

a. a colony of bioluminescent bacteria
b. the surface of an exoplanet
c. a picture of the universe
d. part of Fermilab's particle accelerator, which will be shut down this year






4. At a 6,000-year-old site in an Armenian cave, researchers discovered the world's oldest:
a. zoo
b. flower garden
c. bakery
d. winery


5. In February, you'll be able to watch a Jeopardy match on TV between Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-playing robot, and two humans. Who won this week's demonstration match?
a. Human champion Ken Jennings, who won 74 games in a row in 2004
b. Human champion Brad Rutter, biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy
c. The computer
d. No one, because the match was suspended when Watson froze just before Double Jeopardy




Answers are in the comments.


Image: M. Blanton and the SDSS-III

Chocolate Sea Worms (a quiz)

Sharpen those digital pencils--it's quiz day!


1. The scientists who discovered this bizarre new species (above) swimming thousands of meters under the Pacific Ocean appropriately dubbed it the:
a) squiderpillar
b) squidworm
c) Worminator
d) tentipede


2. In one of these M&M-eating studies I am somehow never invited to take part in, researchers discovered that subjects ate fewer M&Ms after they:
a) saw pictures of insects
b) ate an insect
c) imagined being obese
d) imagined eating a bunch of M&Ms


3. Back in 2003, controversial "hobbit" bones were discovered on the island of Flores, leading some scientists to believe that a miniature hominid race once lived there. Researchers have now found evidence that these hobbit people (if they existed) lived alongside:
a) dinosaurs
b) regular-sized people
c) giant storks
d) miniature elephants


4. In a meta-analysis (a study of other studies), researchers found that a person's risk of death from several common cancers can be lowered by a daily dose of:
a) aspirin
b) fish oil
c) vitamin D
d) chocolate


5. In May, Japanese researchers launched a probe called Akatsuki toward Venus. Akatsuki was supposed to spend two years orbiting Venus and sending back data about its atmosphere and weather. On Monday, the probe:
a) crashed into the surface of Venus
b) was put out of commission by space debris
c) melted in the planet's intense heat
d) missed Venus entirely






Answers are in the comments. Image: Laurence Madin/WHOI.

Big Balls (a quiz)

Do you have what it takes to conquer this special-edition, oversized quiz?

1. Data from a NASA telescope recently revealed two giant balls of:

a. ice and rock, hurtling toward Mars

b. garbage, lodged in an air-circulation chute on the International Space Station

c. energy, sandwiching the Milky Way galaxy

d. gas and dust, blocking our view of the Orion nebula

2. Using an iPhone app called Track your Happiness, researchers at Harvard found that:

a. people who daydream the most are the happiest

b. 10% of people claim to never daydream

c. focusing on the task at hand makes people unhappy

d. daydreaming makes people unhappy

3. Last week, researchers reported that ozone depletion is causing:

a. sunburned whales

b. skin cancer in penguins

c. deeper tans among Brazilians

d. a reversal of global warming

4. Researchers in Vietnam discovered a previously undocumented, all-female lizard species...

a. on a menu

b. in a pet store

c. living in their luggage

d. after running one over

5. A British team has proposed a new design for a Mars rover. Instead of rolling across the sandy terrain like Spirit and Opportunity, their rover would:

a. crawl

b. walk

c. fly

d. hop

6. Meanwhile, a new study on pterosaurs says that the 500-pound flying dinosaurs may have launched themselves into flight in a manner similar to:

a. high jumping

b. pole vaulting

c. skipping

d. trapeze-ing

7. New research has revealed which of the following about parrotfish mucus?

a. Parrotfish trap their prey in spit-bubble nets

b. Parrotfish create elaborate spit castles as part of their courtship routine

c. Parrotfish spit contains a potent antiviral agent

d. Parrotfish sleep in spit cocoons to deter bloodsucking predators

8. Scientists at MIT built a robotic tongue in order to study the physics of:

a. dogs lapping water

b. cats lapping water

c. camels spitting

d. goldfish eating

9. Haven't you ever wondered how a fruit fly larva (also called a maggot) keeps its squishy little body from shriveling in the sun while it's munching on rotten fruit? The answer, scientists recently announced, is that the maggot:

a. has tiny eyes all over its body to detect the sun

b. creates a protective spit tunnel as it chews

c. excretes urine from every part of its body

d. ...I'm sorry, I grossed myself out too much to write a fourth option.

10. With testes weighing in at almost 14% of its body mass, the title of World's Largest Testicles has been claimed by a species of:

a. lemur

b. parakeet

c. cricket

d. primitive hominid

Answers are in the comments.

Watch Out for Comets! (a quiz)

Facebook quizzes may tell you which Hogwarts house you belong in, which U.S. city is right for you, or what your Disney princess spirit color is--but only Inkfish tests your knowledge of polar research volunteers and space similes.

1. Researchers announced this week that which technology seen in the Star Wars movies is close to becoming a reality?

a. 3D holographs

b. Light sabers

c. Death stars

d. Doors that slide open when you wave your hand at them, Jedi-style

2. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a surprising statement regarding the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, going against what has been the usual policy in this country. It said that:

a. Genes should be patent-eligible.

b. Genes should not be patent-eligible.

3. A NASA spacecraft flew by a comet called Hartley 2 yesterday and returned a bunch of photos. All of the following are true about the mission EXCEPT:

a. The spacecraft is named Deep Impact--not to be confused with the movie about a comet heading toward Earth.

b. This comet is, eventually, heading toward Earth.

c. Those jets of light come from frozen materials on the comet's surface that are heated by the sun and shoot off as gases.

d. Hartley 2 was described by a NASA astronomer as "a cross between a bowling pin and a pickle."

4. Two recent studies found that this much-touted brain food did not slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer's patients; did not prevent postpartum depression when taken by pregnant women; and did not make their babies smarter.

a. Ginkgo biloba

b. Pomegranate juice

c. Fish oil

d. Snake oil

5. The Arctic waters of Baffin Bay are warming (no surprise there). To gather data on changing ocean temperatures, scientists recruited an unusual team of volunteers. They attaching their instruments to:

a. Illegal whaling ships

b. Polar bears

c. Penguins

d. Narwhals

Answers are in the comments. Image: NASA.

Goldilocks Would Never Use Banned Substances (a quiz)

It's time to find out how well you've been following the news! This week was a big one for both space and Spain.

1. Astronomers are pretty excited about a newly discovered planet called Gliese 851. The planet orbits its star in a so-called "Goldilocks zone," which means it is:

a. in close orbit to a small planet, a medium planet, and a large planet

b. just the right size for humans to be able to walk around comfortably--unlike a huge planet whose gravity would pin us down, or a tiny planet where we'd bounce around uselessly

c. just the right temperature for liquid water to exist

d. blond, with a propensity to sit in the wrong chair

2. Speaking of outer space, congress just passed a new NASA bill. Under President Obama's plan, the space organization will do all of the following EXCEPT:

a. return to the moon by 2020

b. fly to an asteroid and/or Mars

c. fund private spaceflight

d. retire the NASA shuttles for good

3. If you live in a mid-Atlantic state, you might be currently overrun by stink bugs. What makes these triangular brown fellows such formidable opponents?

a. They have a sulfurous odor that becomes overwhelming when they're in large groups.

b. They were introduced from Asia and have no natural predators here.

c. They have a fondness for biting people's ankles and fingers.

d. They are impervious to pesticides.

4. Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, who's won the Tour de France three times, was suspended this week over a positive test for the banned substance clenbuterol. He insists the drug came from a contaminated steak. (Though if it's true that plastic residues were also found in his blood--suggesting a blood transfusion from a plastic bag--the steak excuse is not going to get him very far.) In addition to cheating cyclists, other users of clenbuterol include all of the following EXCEPT:

a. horses

b. asthmatics

c. farmed fish

d. Hollywood types trying to lose weight

e. cheating baseball players

5. A Spanish team took home the prize at the 2K BotPrize 2010 robotics competition this week (presumably without the help of banned substances). Contest judges played against both humans and robots in a video game, and tried to guess which avatars were which. The Spanish team had the most convincing robot, with a "humanness rating" (how often it was guessed to be human) of 31.8%. For comparison, the actual humans had humanness ratings ranging from:

a. 85-95%

b. 60-90%

c. 50-85%

d. 35-80%

Answers are in the comments.

Optimism and Pessimism (a quiz)

Does everybody have a sharpened pencil?

1. A scary new type of drug-resistant bacteria has emerged in the UK. It appears to have come from____, where British people are traveling to _____.

a. Thailand/receive experimental stem cell treatments

b. America/take advantage of the weak dollar

c. Morocco/stay in Sex-and-the-City-2-themed hotels

d. India/have cosmetic surgery

2. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has declared that the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic is:

a. now peaking in the southern hemisphere

b. leading to a secondary pneumonia pandemic

c. just a lot of hype

d. over

3. If you're home with the flu, why not occupy yourself with a Rubik's cube? After 15 years of research, a programmer has determined that any Rubik's cube can be solved in just:

a. 80 moves

b. 50 moves

c. 20 moves

d. 15 moves

4. You already knew that orangutans are bad dieters, but did you know that they're also excellent at charades? This week, scientists published an overview of pantomimes they've seen orangutans act out. Which of the following was NOT included?

a. "I'd like a haircut."

b. "Your fly is open."

c. "Hurry up and open this coconut for me."

d. "Wipe that dirt off your face."

5. Earlier this year, Stephen Hawking made the surprising assertion that we shouldn't try to contact extraterrestrials, because intelligent aliens are probably mean. This week, in another bizarre blend of scientific optimism and pessimism, he said that:

a. If we can just avoid wiping ourselves out for another 200 years or so, humans will be able to survive by colonizing other planets.

b. HIV is going to solve the planet's overpopulation problem.

c. After global warming melts the ice caps completely, the ocean will be able to absorb a lot more carbon.

d. Humans will probably invent time travel shortly before our civilization collapses, thereby allowing someone to go back in time and warn us.

Answers are in the comments.

Large-Scale Disasters (a quiz)

What with the Transformers 3 filming going on near my office building, I've seen and heard a whole lot of explosions this week. Although the fireballs were real, the disaster was not. But some fiery catastrophes are all too real.

1. BP finally got a cap on the well, which may or may not have paused the leak. But another leak, which BP couldn't plug, revealed that:

a. BP has been doctoring some of the photos it releases.

b. CEO Tony Hayward doctored his resumé before BP hired him.

c. All BP interns belong to an elaborate "hot or not"-style internal social networking site.

d. BP is at serious risk of bankruptcy.

2. Two exploded pipelines caused a large oil spill (relative to most, anyway) off the shore of:

a. Canada

b. Chile

c. China

d. Croatia

3. Dick Cheney recently had surgery that left him without:

a. a heart

b. a pulse

c. scruples

d. a spleen

4. Experts are carefully evacuating hundreds of eggs containing super-adorable baby sea turtles from the shores of the Gulf. After hatching, the turtles are released off the eastern coast of Florida. The risk in this feel-good plan is that:

a. the oil will travel around Florida and get the turtles anyway.

b. the turtles' internal navigation systems, calibrated for the Gulf, will get them lost and/or eaten.

c. high levels of Disney World-related pollution will make the turtles ill.

d. hurricane season will, um, hurricane them.

5. The state of New York is planning to "eliminate" 170,000:

a. squirrels, due to a Manhattan rabies epidemic.

b. deer, to reduce car accidents.

c. frogs, due to noise pollution.

d. Canada geese, to prevent plane crashes.

Answers are in the comments. And here are two guys who are totally unconcerned about potential disasters (unlike me, after realizing this was going on under my office window).

This dude is so relaxed, he's taking a nap.

Whalers, Watson, and One Lost Shoe

The Friday quiz returns! This time, the subject is general sciencey news stories of the past week. You can thank me if any of this comes up on "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" tomorrow.

1. The annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission is taking place this month in Morocco. The IWC will decide whether to overturn a whale-hunting ban that's been in place since 1986. Under the current laws, Japan is allowed to kill:

a. zero whales

b. one whale a month

c. enough whales to provide meat for the restaurants that are licensed to sell it

d. 1,000 whales a year for "scientific research"

2. Japan was recently accused of buying votes from other IWC member nations, in hopes of overturning the whaling ban. Which of the following was among the allegations?

a. Japan pledged aid, or gave cash payments, to officials from other countries in exchange for their support

b. Some of the countries that agreed to vote with Japan in favor of whaling are landlocked

c. Officials from other countries were provided with prostitutes on all-expenses-paid trips to Japan

d. Whalers on Japan's "research" boats steal whale meat and sell it for huge profits

3. The world's oldest shoe was discovered in a cave in Armenia! It can best be described as:

a. more of a sock, really

b. an Ugg-like slipper made from sheepskin and wool

c. a sneaker made from a single piece of leather, with leather laces

d. totally disintegrated

4. IBM has built a new artificially intelligent supercomputer named Watson. This fall, Watson will compete against a human expert in:

a. Go

b. Scrabble

c. Texas Hold 'em

d. Jeopardy

5. Remember that YouTube video that was filmed by an octopus who stole a guy's camera and swam away with it? There's a new viral videographer in the ocean; you can see a sample of its work above. The video was made by a:

a. sea turtle

b. whale

c. shark

d. manta ray

Answers and relevant links are in the comments. Photo: YouTube.

Oil and Water, Part Two

Remember last week, when all the newspapers said "top kill" was working to stop the oil leak, and I believed it? Well, I think we've all learned a lot since then.

BP Quiz (cont'd)

1. If the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history has dampened your desire to "drill baby drill," Sarah Palin has a nickname for you:

a. Eco-Maniac

b. Lefty Lucy

c. Extreme Greenie

d. Joe the Tree Hugger

2. The CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, has said all of the following things since the oil leak started. Which one did he apologize for?

a. "The environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest."

b. "I would like my life back."

c. "The oil is on the surface. There aren't any plumes."

d. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean."

3. What difficulty arose when BP sent a robot with a saw made out of diamond into the ocean?

a. The saw got stuck in a pipe

b. The saw broke

c. The robot cut itself with the saw

d. Toxic chemical dispersants got inside the robot and broke it

4. As of June 1, BP's market capitalization (what you get when you multiply the number of shares by the value of each share) had decreased by an amount equal to the entire market capitalization of what other company?

a. Chuck E. Cheese

b. Wegman's

c. KFC

d. McDonald's

5. Fox & Friends Senior Blond Analyst Gretchen Carlson criticized what aspect of the president's latest trip to the Gulf?

a. Hoity-toity-ness

b. Namby-pamby-ism

c. Spiffy shoes

d. Fancy pants

Answers are in the comments. And you can thank Doug, obviously, for explaining market capitalization to me.

Oil and Water (a quiz)

Friday is quiz day! Right? In elementary school, quizzes came on Fridays. Math quizzes: to be taken only in pencil. Spanish quizzes: filled out while kneeling on the floor and using our plastic chairs as desks. (Wait, what? Come to think of it, I guess they couldn't afford desks for all the rooms.) Spelling quizzes: at least one of my teachers had me sit in the back of the room and grade everyone else's spelling tests. That's a good way not to make friends, let me tell you.

Spelling quizzes, at least, must be out of fashion these days, judging by the letter I just read from a 12-year-old who spelled "door" D-O-R-R.

Anyway, in honor of Friday, and since the latest effort to slow down that oil gushing into the ocean might have worked (!), I wrote you a quiz.

1. Which of the following does NOT describe an attempted method of oil-spill control?

a. Setting the oil on fire

b. Underwater robots

c. 100-ton steel dome

d. "Top Hat"

e. "Junk Shot"

f. "Last Shot"

g. "Top Kill"

2. What is the best way to clean an oily seabird?

a. Scrubbing Bubbles

b. Dawn

c. Pledge

d. OxiClean

3. Of the five sea turtle species that live in the Gulf of Mexico, how many are endangered?

a. None, thank goodness

b. 2

c. 3

d. 5

4. Which of the following has NASA, watching from above, NOT used to describe the changing shape of the oil slick?

a. The letter "J"

b. The letter "U"

c. A tilde

d. A swan

5. BP (BP_America) has 7,800 followers on Twitter. A fake BP account called BPGlobalPR (most recent tweet: "What a gorgeous day! The ocean is filled with the most beautiful rainbows!" #yourewelcome #bpcares) has almost:

a. The same number of followers

b. Twice as many followers

c. Five times as many followers

d. Ten times as many followers

Answers are in the comments. (Photo credit: NASA/Goddard/MODIS Rapid Response Team)