Kickstart: Everyone poops: Lego edition

For everyone who has a kid — or was a kid — you already know that children mistakenly swallow things they shouldn't. But five researchers in Australia willingly swallowed something not designed for consumption: a Lego head. And they did it for science.

In the journal article "Everything is awesome: Don't forget the Lego," the five pediatric specialists recruited for the study note that the idea was to show that most items accidentally swallowed by children pass through the digestive system without causing harm. (The exception being button batteries, which can damage the esophagus.) So they recruited a team willing to swallow a Lego head, then search for it in the following days.

"Participation was open to health care professionals working in the field of pediatric hospital care, with exclusion criteria being previous gastrointestinal surgery, inability to ingest foreign objects or an aversion to searching through fecal matter," they wrote.

A Lego head was chosen because it is a standard toy found in most households.

And yes, all the participants successfully passed the head as expected.

Of course it wasn't wholly done for science. The team wanted to have fun by getting published in the Christmas issue of BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), which is known for a "goofy" end-of-the-year issue. This explains why aspects of the test — such as the time interval between swallowing the head and its emerging — were given very appropriate names, like the Found and Retrieved Time, or FART, score.

You can hear more from NPR's Short Wave podcast.

Whirlpool Corp. made headlines when it cited slowing demand as part of the reason for cutting its sales outlook in 2022. Now it's making headlines with a profit forecast for 2023 that is higher than general expectations.

Part of the reason, CEO Marc Bitzer said in a Jan. 31 conference call with analysts, is lower materials prices and expected increases in demand as consumers replace their appliances.

"From a raw materials perspective, we see raw material costs easing throughout the year," Bitzer said. That includes steel, resins and freight costs.

In terms of consumer demand, he said the company expects higher interest rates that are impacting new home construction also are leading to people investing more in existing homes purchased during times when interest rates were low.

"In the short term, consumers may be reluctant to buy a new house, but they will use their strong balance sheet to remodel their home," he said.

A resin and silicone "hyperealistic" statue of a crying baby, with an audio track of a crying baby to accompany it, has been placed in Madrid to urge lawmakers to ensure that nursing mothers have a legal right to breastfeed in public spaces.

Nonprofit group Teta & Teta worked with sculptor Cristina Jobs and advertising group Lola MullenLowe on the campaign, our sister paper Advertising Age writes.

The statue was placed at Reina Sofia Museum Square, and backers say the baby is programmed to cry 24/7 until a Breastfeeding in Public Spaces law is passed.

You can see — and hear — video of the sculpture here.