The Helper
Feb
04
Over the last few decades, a wealth of evidence has accumulated to suggest that a lack of sleep is bad for mind and body. Working memory is important for keeping things in mind for briefer periods of time, which thereby facilitates reasoning and planning. A team of sleep scientists from Uppsala University now demonstrates that acute sleep loss impacts working memory differently in women and men.
In the current study from the Department of Neuroscience at Uppsala University, 24 young adults performed a working memory task in the morning following either a full night of sleep or a night of wakefulness. Half of the participants were females, and half were males. The set-up of the working memory task was to learn and remember 8-digit sequences. Contrary to expectations, males' working memory performance remained unaffected by sleep loss. In contrast, females remembered fewer digits after sleep loss than after a night of sleep. Importantly, even though their performance was reduced, females were unaware of the drop in working performance when sleep-deprived. A lack of awareness of impaired mental performance could increase the risk of accidents and mistakes, which can be dangerous in many private and occupational situations, both for the sleep-deprived person as well as for others.
"Our study suggests that particular attention should be paid to young women facing challenges in which they have to cope with both a high working memory load and a lack of sleep. However, it must...
In the current study from the Department of Neuroscience at Uppsala University, 24 young adults performed a working memory task in the morning following either a full night of sleep or a night of wakefulness. Half of the participants were females, and half were males. The set-up of the working memory task was to learn and remember 8-digit sequences. Contrary to expectations, males' working memory performance remained unaffected by sleep loss. In contrast, females remembered fewer digits after sleep loss than after a night of sleep. Importantly, even though their performance was reduced, females were unaware of the drop in working performance when sleep-deprived. A lack of awareness of impaired mental performance could increase the risk of accidents and mistakes, which can be dangerous in many private and occupational situations, both for the sleep-deprived person as well as for others.
"Our study suggests that particular attention should be paid to young women facing challenges in which they have to cope with both a high working memory load and a lack of sleep. However, it must...
Jan
24
A Saudi Arabian camel beauty contest has been rocked by controversy after twelve of the prized animals had to be disqualified after their owners tried to enhance their good looks with Botox.
Much like a human beauty content, thousands of camels paraded at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival to be judged on their shapely lips and humps.
But some owners were so desperate to win the cash prizes they turned to cosmetic procedures to enhance their camels’ beauty.
Judges were forced to step in upon discovery of the Botox and disqualify the camels.
The festival – which also features camel racing and camel milk tasting – has a combined prize money of $70.7m (£40m).
According to local media, Ali Al Mazrouei, the son of a top Emirati breeder, said the Botox was used for the lips, the nose and jaw.
"It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it's like, 'oh look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose'," he said.
Judges also examine humps, muscular physiques and leathery mouths.
The camel beauty contest was first held in 2000.
Source. (9 News Australia)
Much like a human beauty content, thousands of camels paraded at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival to be judged on their shapely lips and humps.
But some owners were so desperate to win the cash prizes they turned to cosmetic procedures to enhance their camels’ beauty.
Judges were forced to step in upon discovery of the Botox and disqualify the camels.
The festival – which also features camel racing and camel milk tasting – has a combined prize money of $70.7m (£40m).
According to local media, Ali Al Mazrouei, the son of a top Emirati breeder, said the Botox was used for the lips, the nose and jaw.
"It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it's like, 'oh look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose'," he said.
Judges also examine humps, muscular physiques and leathery mouths.
The camel beauty contest was first held in 2000.
Source. (9 News Australia)
Jan
22
Researchers from Harvard University and Hunter College find that paying for health care pushed millions below the poverty level.
WASHINGTON - Households’ payments for medical premiums, copayments and deductibles pushed more than 7 million Americans into poverty in 2014, according to a study appearing in today’s American Journal of Public Health. Such payments also dramatically worsened overall income inequality.
The researchers analyzed data on household medical payments from the Census Bureau's 2010-2015 Current Population Survey, the standard source for estimating income and poverty. First, the researchers calculated the number of people who were below the poverty level before taking into account their medical expenses. Then they compared that to the number whose income fell below the poverty level after subtracting payments for health insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses.
After taking account of households’ medical payments, the incomes of the poorest 10% of the population fell by 47.6 percent. In addition, the burden of health care spending fell steadily as income rose. Such spending cut the incomes of households at the median income by about 8 percent, while it reduced the income of the wealthiest 1 percent by only 1.3 percent.
In their analysis, the researchers found that families’ health care spending markedly increased overall income inequality. Using economists’ standard measure of income inequality, the Gini index, they found that the...
WASHINGTON - Households’ payments for medical premiums, copayments and deductibles pushed more than 7 million Americans into poverty in 2014, according to a study appearing in today’s American Journal of Public Health. Such payments also dramatically worsened overall income inequality.
The researchers analyzed data on household medical payments from the Census Bureau's 2010-2015 Current Population Survey, the standard source for estimating income and poverty. First, the researchers calculated the number of people who were below the poverty level before taking into account their medical expenses. Then they compared that to the number whose income fell below the poverty level after subtracting payments for health insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses.
After taking account of households’ medical payments, the incomes of the poorest 10% of the population fell by 47.6 percent. In addition, the burden of health care spending fell steadily as income rose. Such spending cut the incomes of households at the median income by about 8 percent, while it reduced the income of the wealthiest 1 percent by only 1.3 percent.
In their analysis, the researchers found that families’ health care spending markedly increased overall income inequality. Using economists’ standard measure of income inequality, the Gini index, they found that the...
Jan
20
NVIDIA is reportedly asking retailers to stop selling its graphics cards to miners in a bold move by the company to remedy the catastrophic GPU shortage that we’ve seen take hold for the past several months. GPUs are consistently out of stock in all major retailers on a global scale and graphics card prices have seen a two to three fold increase over original MSRPs.
The company wants its cards to go to gamers instead and it’s trying to do so by directly selling on its website and asking its retail partners to limit orders to two cards per person. When asked to comment, NVIDIA provided the following statement to ComputerBase.de
NVIDIA states that retailers have the freedom to follow or ignore its recommendations and that it can’t directly intervene in how they choose to run their businesses. This is where direct-selling by NVIDIA on its website plays a key role. The company can implement all the measures it sees fit to make sure that at least graphics cards sold directly by it, go to gamers instead of miners.
Read more here. (WCCF Tech)
The company wants its cards to go to gamers instead and it’s trying to do so by directly selling on its website and asking its retail partners to limit orders to two cards per person. When asked to comment, NVIDIA provided the following statement to ComputerBase.de
NVIDIA states that retailers have the freedom to follow or ignore its recommendations and that it can’t directly intervene in how they choose to run their businesses. This is where direct-selling by NVIDIA on its website plays a key role. The company can implement all the measures it sees fit to make sure that at least graphics cards sold directly by it, go to gamers instead of miners.
Read more here. (WCCF Tech)
Jan
20
Spanking may seem like a vestige of parenting from yesteryear, but it is still legal in the United States to spank children at home. Additionally, only 31 states have banned spanking and other forms of corporal punishment in schools.
Spanking is not physical abuse, but the distinction between what constitutes corporal punishment as opposed to bodily harm can be vague, varying on a state-by-state basis. In many cases, the terms that define the moment that legal, physical punishment crosses over into illegal abuse can be something as simple as whether a caregiver strikes a child with a closed or open fist.
While spanking remains legal in this country — it’s worth noting that last year, France became the 52nd country to make spanking illegal — a mounting body of evidence suggests that corporal punishment does more harm than good. Spanking inflicts significant emotional trauma on children and failing to be a constructive form of discipline.
The latest study on the topic of spanking reveals how disciplinary practices can even influence a child’s well-being from a permanent, developmental standpoint.
Published in the Annals of Global Health, the study analyzed growth-monitoring data from nearly 75 caregiver-child pairs who sought care at a clinic in the city of La Romana, Dominican Republic. This facility has diagnosed almost one in every ten people aged 64 or younger with a...
Spanking is not physical abuse, but the distinction between what constitutes corporal punishment as opposed to bodily harm can be vague, varying on a state-by-state basis. In many cases, the terms that define the moment that legal, physical punishment crosses over into illegal abuse can be something as simple as whether a caregiver strikes a child with a closed or open fist.
While spanking remains legal in this country — it’s worth noting that last year, France became the 52nd country to make spanking illegal — a mounting body of evidence suggests that corporal punishment does more harm than good. Spanking inflicts significant emotional trauma on children and failing to be a constructive form of discipline.
The latest study on the topic of spanking reveals how disciplinary practices can even influence a child’s well-being from a permanent, developmental standpoint.
Published in the Annals of Global Health, the study analyzed growth-monitoring data from nearly 75 caregiver-child pairs who sought care at a clinic in the city of La Romana, Dominican Republic. This facility has diagnosed almost one in every ten people aged 64 or younger with a...
Jan
16
EVEN a murder of crows has a soft side. The birds will make up or seek comfort after a fight, whether it was with a friend or a stranger.
Crows belong to a group called corvids, known for their intelligence. They form long-lasting relationships with other members of their gang.
To find out how they form new relationships, Miriam Sima at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany and her colleagues studied crows that were unfamiliar to each other. They wanted to see how the crows would react to scuffles between relative strangers.
The team kept carrion crows in a cage. When they put food in, the birds fought more when the food was limited. The food shortage caused tempers to flare.
If the crows were only mildly aggressive, the aggressor would often seek the victim out after the food was gone. It would sit close.
Source. (New Scientist)
Crows belong to a group called corvids, known for their intelligence. They form long-lasting relationships with other members of their gang.
To find out how they form new relationships, Miriam Sima at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany and her colleagues studied crows that were unfamiliar to each other. They wanted to see how the crows would react to scuffles between relative strangers.
The team kept carrion crows in a cage. When they put food in, the birds fought more when the food was limited. The food shortage caused tempers to flare.
If the crows were only mildly aggressive, the aggressor would often seek the victim out after the food was gone. It would sit close.
Source. (New Scientist)
Jan
16
Researchers Neil Gandal, JT Hamrick, Tyler Moore, and Tali Oberman have written a fascinating paper on Bitcoin price manipulation. Entitled “Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem” and appearing in the recent issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics the paper describes to what degree the Bitcoin ecosystem is controlled by bad actors.
To many it’s been obvious that the Bitcoin markets are, at the very least, being manipulated by one or two big players. “This paper identifies and analyzes the impact of suspicious trading activity on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin currency exchange, in which approximately 600,000 bitcoins (BTC) valued at $188 million were fraudulently acquired,” the researchers wrote. “During both periods, the USD-BTC exchange rate rose by an average of four percent on days when suspicious trades took place, compared to a slight decline on days without suspicious activity. Based on rigorous analysis with extensive robustness checks, the paper demonstrates that the suspicious trading activity likely caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013, when the rate jumped from around $150 to more than $1,000 in two months.”
The team found that many instances of price manipulation happened simply because the market was very thin for various cryptocurrencies including early Bitcoin. “Despite the huge increase in...
To many it’s been obvious that the Bitcoin markets are, at the very least, being manipulated by one or two big players. “This paper identifies and analyzes the impact of suspicious trading activity on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin currency exchange, in which approximately 600,000 bitcoins (BTC) valued at $188 million were fraudulently acquired,” the researchers wrote. “During both periods, the USD-BTC exchange rate rose by an average of four percent on days when suspicious trades took place, compared to a slight decline on days without suspicious activity. Based on rigorous analysis with extensive robustness checks, the paper demonstrates that the suspicious trading activity likely caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013, when the rate jumped from around $150 to more than $1,000 in two months.”
The team found that many instances of price manipulation happened simply because the market was very thin for various cryptocurrencies including early Bitcoin. “Despite the huge increase in...
Jan
10
Your false modesty isn’t fooling anyone, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Humblebragging — defined as “bragging masked by a complaint or humility” — actually makes people like you less than straight-up self-promotion, the research says. The findings were published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“It’s such a common phenomenon. All of us know some people in our lives, whether in social media or in the workplace, who do this annoying thing,” says study author Ovul Sezer, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “You think, as the humblebragger, that it’s the best of both worlds, but what we show is that sincerity is actually the key ingredient.”
Sezer and her team conducted a series of experiments to determine how common humblebragging is and how others perceive it. They found that humblebragging is everywhere: Out of 646 people surveyed, 70% could recall a humblebrag they’d heard recently.
Next, they established that there are two distinct types of humblebrags. The first falls back on a complaint (“I hate that I look so young; even a 19-year-old hit on me!”) while the second relies on humility (“Why do I always get asked to work on the most important assignment?”). About 60% of the humblebrags people remembered fell into the complaint category.
The...
Humblebragging — defined as “bragging masked by a complaint or humility” — actually makes people like you less than straight-up self-promotion, the research says. The findings were published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“It’s such a common phenomenon. All of us know some people in our lives, whether in social media or in the workplace, who do this annoying thing,” says study author Ovul Sezer, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “You think, as the humblebragger, that it’s the best of both worlds, but what we show is that sincerity is actually the key ingredient.”
Sezer and her team conducted a series of experiments to determine how common humblebragging is and how others perceive it. They found that humblebragging is everywhere: Out of 646 people surveyed, 70% could recall a humblebrag they’d heard recently.
Next, they established that there are two distinct types of humblebrags. The first falls back on a complaint (“I hate that I look so young; even a 19-year-old hit on me!”) while the second relies on humility (“Why do I always get asked to work on the most important assignment?”). About 60% of the humblebrags people remembered fell into the complaint category.
The...
Jan
09
Scientists often hope to break ground with their research. But a group of Australian researchers would likely be happy with breaking wind.
The team developed an ingestible electronic capsule to monitor gas levels in the human gut. When it’s paired with a pocket-sized receiver and a mobile phone app, the pill reports tail-wind conditions in real time as it passes from the stomach to the colon. The researchers, led by Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh of RMIT University and Peter Gibson of Monash University, reported their invention Monday in Nature Electronics.
The authors are optimistic that the capsule’s gas readings can help clear the air over the inner workings of our intricate innards and the multitudes of microbes they contain. Such fume data could clarify the conditions of each section of the gut, what microbes are up to, and which foods may cause problems in the system. Until now, collecting such data has been a challenge. Methods to bottle it involved cumbersome and invasive tubing and inconvenient whole-body calorimetry. Popping the electronic pill is a breeze in comparison. And early human trials have already hinted that the pill can provide new information about intestinal wind patterns and gaseous turbulence from different foods.
“Our pilot trial illustrated the significant potential role for electronic-based gas-sensing capsules in understanding functional aspects of the intestine and its microbiota in...
The team developed an ingestible electronic capsule to monitor gas levels in the human gut. When it’s paired with a pocket-sized receiver and a mobile phone app, the pill reports tail-wind conditions in real time as it passes from the stomach to the colon. The researchers, led by Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh of RMIT University and Peter Gibson of Monash University, reported their invention Monday in Nature Electronics.
The authors are optimistic that the capsule’s gas readings can help clear the air over the inner workings of our intricate innards and the multitudes of microbes they contain. Such fume data could clarify the conditions of each section of the gut, what microbes are up to, and which foods may cause problems in the system. Until now, collecting such data has been a challenge. Methods to bottle it involved cumbersome and invasive tubing and inconvenient whole-body calorimetry. Popping the electronic pill is a breeze in comparison. And early human trials have already hinted that the pill can provide new information about intestinal wind patterns and gaseous turbulence from different foods.
“Our pilot trial illustrated the significant potential role for electronic-based gas-sensing capsules in understanding functional aspects of the intestine and its microbiota in...
Jan
06
Netflix isn’t letting net neutrality go without a fight.
The streaming giant retweeted its support for the Internet Association’s Friday announcement it would “intervene in judicial action to preserve net neutrality protections.” The IA plans on pushing back against the FCC’s decision last month to pull back Obama-era regulations that blocked internet providers from blocking access to particular sites, as well as creating paid “fast lanes” to view content.
“In 2018, the Internet is united in defense of #NetNeutrality,” retweeted the Netflix account. “For the FCC, we will see you in court.”
In the retweeted announcement, IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman said the decision, spearheaded by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, hurts consumers and startups.
“The final version of Chairman Pai’s rule, as expected, dismantles popular net neutrality protections for consumers. This rule defies the will of a bipartisan majority of Americans and fails to preserve a free and open internet,” said Beckerman in the post. “IA intends to act as an intervenor in judicial action against this order and, along with our member companies, will continue our push to restore strong, enforceable net neutrality protections through a legislative solution.”
Read more here. (The Wrap)
The streaming giant retweeted its support for the Internet Association’s Friday announcement it would “intervene in judicial action to preserve net neutrality protections.” The IA plans on pushing back against the FCC’s decision last month to pull back Obama-era regulations that blocked internet providers from blocking access to particular sites, as well as creating paid “fast lanes” to view content.
“In 2018, the Internet is united in defense of #NetNeutrality,” retweeted the Netflix account. “For the FCC, we will see you in court.”
In the retweeted announcement, IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman said the decision, spearheaded by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, hurts consumers and startups.
“The final version of Chairman Pai’s rule, as expected, dismantles popular net neutrality protections for consumers. This rule defies the will of a bipartisan majority of Americans and fails to preserve a free and open internet,” said Beckerman in the post. “IA intends to act as an intervenor in judicial action against this order and, along with our member companies, will continue our push to restore strong, enforceable net neutrality protections through a legislative solution.”
Read more here. (The Wrap)
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