If you are trying to commit something to memory, take a nap. Even a short daytime snooze could help you learn.
A good night's sleep is known to improve people's ability to learn actions such as mirror writing. REM sleep, when most dreaming occurs, is thought to be particularly important.
The role of sleep in factual learning has been less clear. Now Matthew Tucker at The City University of New York and his colleagues have shown that even a nap with no REM sleep can help.
Volunteers were told to memorise pairs of words (a test of factual learning) and to practise tracing images in a mirror (action learning). When they were tested straight afterwards and 6 hours later, those who had been allowed a nap of up to 1 hour before the re-test scored 15 per cent better in the factual test than the non-nappers, but no better in the action test (Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, vol 86, p 241).
"Traditionally, time devoted to daytime napping has been considered counterproductive," the researchers say. It now seems sleep is "an important mechanism for memory formation".
[snaffled from The New Scientist]
It's official: monkeys are as obsessed with celebrity and pay-per-view porn as the next man.
A team from Duke University Medical Centre, led by neurobiologist Dr Michael Platt, offered 12 thirsty adult male rhesus macaque monkeys a choice between their favourite drink (Juicy Juice cherry juice, ABC News notes), and the chance to view pictures of their pack's dominant, "celebrity" monkey.
Surprisingly, the monkeys eschewed the juice in favour of a bit of celeb-watching, but had to bribed with extra refreshment to look at ordinary "rhesus riffraff". They were also willing to "pay" juice to cop an eyeful of female monkeys' hind quarters, something the team dubbed "Monkey Pay-Per-View".
And on the question of whether Paris Hilton would give up her Juicy Juice for a shufti at Angelina Jolie's hind quarters, the Duke University scientists confirmed that "celebrity" monkeys were just as interested in fellow celebs as the hoi polloi. ®
[from El Reg]
It's official: graduate women are more likely to experience an orgasm when making the beast with two backs, according to a revealing survey of 19,307 Australians.
According to "Sexual Practices at Last Heterosexual Encounter and Occurrence of Orgasm in a National Survey", carried out by researchers from the UK's Sussex University and the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, it also helps if you speak English at home, have a "higher household income" and "a managerial/professional occupation".
Those women who'd "used a sex toy in the last year" and "had sex more than twice a week in the four weeks before being interviewed" were similarly "significantly more likely" to have felt the earth move.
The likelihood of female orgasm was not, however, affected by "whether [women] had become sexually active before age 16, the length of time they had been sexually active, the number of sexual partners over the lifetime, whether they had masturbated in the last month, had deliberately visited an internet sex site in the last year, had watched an X-rated video or film in the last year, or their attitudes toward sex".
As for the blokes, well, the researchers found there "was no significant association between whether men reached orgasm during their most recent sexual encounters and language spoken at home, education, household income, occupational classification, or religious belief".
Clearly demonstrating their ability to shoot their loads without regard for their mother tongue or how fat their paypacket is, 94.8 per cent of men had an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, compared to just 68.9 per cent of the opposite sex who finished the session totally satisifed as women.
The principal reason for female frustration is, however, not due to socio-economic factors. Yup, you guessed it: lack of proper attention considerably reduced a woman's likelihood to orgasm. Specifically, "orgasm was least likely (50 per cent) among the group whose only reported practice was vaginal intercourse. Rates were higher (around 70 per cent) among those who had intercourse plus manual stimulation, or intercourse plus cunnilingus".
And, finally, the survey unsurprisingly found that "women having sex with women were more likely to reach orgasm at their last encounter (76 per cent)" - a fact which provoked UK tabloid The Sun to condense the entire report down to the delicious headline "Lesbians have more orgasms".
[ripped from El Reg]
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I guess all of that is fairly predictable, including, and perhaps especially, the part about men being worthless grunts. Hopefully more details will emerge, such as whether pondering household chores during sex affects women's ability to orgasm.
News has reached flanerie central of hypoallergenic genetically-modified cats (BBC story here). I am all for a bit of kitten action but I think the boffins have focused their efforts in the wrong area this time.
Sure, some people are allergic to cats. These people are usually allergic to a whole range of other things too. These people are a menace and should be excluded from society.
Meanwhile, cats are predisposed to be run over by cars. I used to own 50% of a cat called Biggles, and he was run over twice. I am still bitter about the money I spent rebuilding him the first time. Bastard.
So what we need are cats with genetically modified street smarts, and quickly. Those hypoallergenic cats are $4,000 each and it will only be a matter of days before one of them looks like a discarded toupe on the highway.
Four out of ten Britons would be prepared to give up sex if it meant they could live to be 100, according to a new poll.
Almost half of the women asked in the Bupa survey said they would take up celibacy to reach the milestone .
However, only 31% of men said they would be prepared to sacrifice nookie for a telegram from the Queen.
Many people - 39% - would be prepared to give up eating and drinking whatever they wanted to ensure they lived to 100, while 42% would give up travel.
But there were some things people would not give up - 94% would not be ready to give up the company of friends and family for a long life, and 74% would not sacrifice money.
The Ipsos MORI research of more than 1,000 adults reveals that if we had a choice, we only aspire to live on average to 85.
Unsurprisingly, young and old people were divided on when old age begins. The 16-24 year olds see it as starting at 61, while those 75 and over said it began at 71.
But nearly half agreed scientists should continue to keep trying to prolong people's life spans.
When asked about the main advantages of science being able to extend life, 16% said to be there for family and friends and 14% to see grandchildren grow up.
Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen, Bupa's medical director, said: "Britain is facing an ageing time bomb with major challenges presented by retirement, the desire to live longer and the increasing burden of caring for older people."
[ripped from Ananova]
LONDON: Surgeons in China who performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.
Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident.
The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it two weeks later.
"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Hu said in a report published online by the peer reviewed journal European Urology, without elaborating.
"This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human," Hu added.
Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery. He had been unable to have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred 8 months before the surgery was performed.
Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital's medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.
There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre organ being rejected by the recipient's body. But Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.
"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis" Hu added.
In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in contemporary medicine.
But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough informed consent of the patient and his family.
"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the future," Vardi added.
[found at stuff.co.nz]
There has been a vast amount of coverage in the past week and more so this year because it is five years. Five is more special than four or six. Why? No-one really knows.
A lot of the coverage has been about the terrible events of that day, and there is no doubt that they were truly terrible. The most spectacular single crime ever committed - I am discounting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also discounting crimes that cover a period of time or involve a population rather than a small and distinct group, which takes care of many examples of genocide.
Often 9/11 is described as 'The Day That Changed the World' and and I take issue with that.
The world has not changed at all.
Look at how people live their lives and almost nothing has changed. Consumerism is still the biggest religion on the planet, and continues to grow. Within consumer spending there has been no marked shift between categories. Electronics and digital services continue to grow their shares through consumer choice; oil and related products take a bigger cut due to excess demand; otherwise, little has changed.
In commerce, there have been the changes that any five year period would entail, but the biggest companies then are the biggest companies now. China continues to increase its economic power and now owns an ever larger slice of US business. Russia is riding the oil boom, Europe is drifting, Africa is failing.
In international politics, Iran has taken advantage of the falls of Afghanistan and Iraq to become the leader of radical Islam, in the case of the former, and a regional power in the case of the latter. Such power games happen in any period, although Iran got to where it wanted to be a lot faster thanks to the work of its friend and ally the USA.
None of this constitutes a fundamental change in the world. The changes in the five years since 9/11 are no more significant than the changes in the five years before.
On an individual level, somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 people have died in the ongoing wars 'justified' by 9/11. The Iraqi population is living under changed circumstances and a large part of the Afghan population is doing so too. Add those killed and injured in 9/11 itself, plus any relatives; throw in the US and allies military deaths and the families of those service people; the victims and their families caught up of the civilian attacks in Bali, Madrid and London; and if you do an vast amount of rounding up at every stage you might get to 100 million people directly affected by 9/11 and its consequences.
100 million out of 6,000 million. More people have been affected by natural disasters in the last five years, not least the tsunami.
The world hasn't changed at all. It is still a planet full of people just trying to make the best of their lives, while a few hundred individuals play power games that cause death and suffering. All that has happened is that the 20th century forgot to end.
Having a memory like a goldfish could actually be a good thing, according to a Sydney scientist who has spent 10 years proving fish are not as dumb as we think.
Fish are not the bowl-circling dimwits we imagine and could be as socially able as monkeys and elephants, Dr Culum Brown of Macquarie University says.
The biology lecturer has spent the past decade putting fish through learning and memory tests, which he says shows they are much deeper thinkers than they look.
For a start, Dr Brown says the three-second memory of goldfish is a myth: "It's completely ridiculous that an animal could survive without a memory."
Fish are so clever, Dr Brown says, that those schooled in survival skills can even teach their captivity-raised peers how to get by in the sea.
To help prove his theories, Dr Brown put rainbow fish into a tank with a mock trawler net with a single hole and watched how long it took them to find an escape route.
"Without any prior experience the fish learned where the hole was in about five runs," he says.
A year later, the same fish managed to find the hole on their first try, which Dr Brown says shows they easily recalled the skills they had learned.
In another study, Dr Brown scared intertidal gobies from a rock pool and as they dived for safety found they plopped precisely in surrounding pools.
"This suggests that fish are able to form mental maps similar to those people use when planning a route to a familiar destination," he says.
Dr Brown also studies "social learning" among fish, where fish trained to recognise predators and wild food teach captivity-bred fish how to survive.
"Fish can be trained en masse and then used to train other fish," he says.
"What we've found is the latter groups of fish learn more rapidly when ... placed with trained fish."
The research could prove useful to the aquaculture industry, Dr Brown says.
[found on stuff.co.nz]
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So I no longer have the memory of a goldfish, but not because my memory got any better.
I don't quite understand this. The point of fishing is to catch something to eat. Why else would you spend 8 hours on a river bank freezing your knackers off? For the entertainment of it?
---
A row has erupted between anglers and migrant workers who are accused of catching fish and taking them home to eat rather than returning their catch.
Local fishermen claim eastern Europeans are catching fish illegally in private lakes and rivers without a licence.
Many migrants see carp, perch and roach as part of their diet and struggle to understand the concept of fishing for pleasure without eating what you catch.
Signs in five different languages have now gone up at lakes in Southampton.
The signs, in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Latvian and Portuguese, have been put up at Little Testwood Lake and Nutsy Lake in Totton, which are reserved for members of Test Valley Angling Club.
They state that all fish must be returned to the water alive to ensure stocks are not depleted.
Andy Thomas, Environment Agency fishery officer, said problems have also been reported along the River Itchen.
He said: "We've received quite a number of reports from anglers fishing down here about certain fishing activity where course fish have been taken from the river.
"At the moment we don't have any real hard evidence that there's any environmental impact.
"For people from some countries the carp is a traditional dish so they've been quite quick to take them and unfortunately that has ruffled some feathers with our local anglers.
"From our viewpoint we have to make sure that all anglers fish legally and we want to make sure that's the case."
Barbara Storey is Polish and lives in Southampton, which has one of the biggest Polish populations in the country with more than 20,000 Poles living in the city.
Ms Storey, who is a translator and runs a helpline for Polish workers, said carp is traditionally eaten at Christmas in her home country.
"We fish for eating," she said.
"Most of the people believe that having some water and the opportunity to catch something like fish is mainly to have a good dinner when they go home.
"We believe it's quite cruel to hurt the fish, to cut the fish and then to put this poor little thing back to the water, dying there somewhere lonely.
"There is a culture difference that we have to sort out. We have to tell them [Poles] that local British people don't do it and they must know it."
[from BBC online]
Keen security personnel at Birmingham International Airport ordered a man to turn his t-shirt inside out because it bore a drawing of two crossed guns.
Staffordshire design engineer Dave Osbourne was wearing a Guns N Rollers t-shirt.
Guns N Rollers are a team in "an all-female roller derby league located in Portland Oregon", according to their website. Their logo is a tribute to that of hard rocking, hard drinking, legendarily fractious LA band Guns N Roses.
As he waited to board the flight to Newark, New Jersey, guards told Osbourne the graphic represented a security risk, and could upset other passengers. See here for a chilling picture of the deadly duds.
The 21-year-old said: "I am all for extra security, but this was just plain stupid."
Bosses at the airport apologised, admitting guards "over-reacted".
However, something altogether more sinister could be at work here. New Jersey is, of course, home to card-carrying poodle rockers Bon Jovi. We therefore suspect the airport security men working the passage to said Garden State are in their employ, discharging an old grudge against Axl Rose and Co. for putting the Golden Age of Spandex out of its misery.
[lifted from El Reg]
A jogger who took a wrong turn during a lunch-time run in Florida ended up stuck in a swamp for four days.
Volunteers searching for Eddie Meadows, 62, eventually found him 'stuck like glue' in a bog, reports The Times.
Mr Meadows calmly asked his rescuers: "Do you have a phone? I want to call my wife."
He also asked for water and chocolate, before insisting that he should finish his run, jogging a short distance before he was helped to a waiting ambulance.
Police in Orlando said Mr Meadows had survived by sipping water from the swamp and avoided sun exposure because he was under a shady tree canopy.
Mr Meadows is in training for the Baltimore Marathon and leaves his desk at the University of Central Florida's research park every lunchtime to jog around the campus.
His wife, Ardis, and two grown-up sons appeared on TV to plead for help in finding him and 50 volunteers scoured the area.
Finally, Ron Eaglin was combing woodland on a remote corner of the university campus when he heard noises.
"I heard some sloshing off in the woods, it didn't sound like a deer, so I yelled: "Hello?" and then I heard: "Help, help, help, help"," he said.
"I said: "Are you looking for Eddie Meadows?", and he said: "I AM Eddie Meadows"."
This has to rank as the most unscientific scientific research of the week. Interesting though...
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A UK scientist claims he has evidence of what he calls "telephone telepathy" - the phenomenon by which you think about someone and, lo and behold, the phone rings...
According to Reuters, Rupert Sheldrake reported on Tuesday the results of experiments which "proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even emails".
Sheldrake's guinea pigs gave researchers the names and phone numers of four relatives or friends. One of these was contacted at random and asked to give the subject a bell. Forty-five per cent guessed correctly who was on the other end of the line, Sheldrake told the annual British Association for the Advancement of Science shindig - "well above the 25 per cent you would have expected."
Sheldrake further commented: "The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."
A similar test involving email yielded the same result, although the researchers' limited pool of testees - 63 for the phone and 50 for the email - coupled to the fact that only nine subjects were filmed across the two tests, prompted "some scepticism".
Sheldrake has vowed to continue his experiments, however, to prove what he believes is the "interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping". Next up for scrutiny is text message telepathy. ®
[from El Reg]
There are many theories on how to make a good cup of tea, but it seems, statistically, there is only one right way.
Call it a storm in a teacup, if you will, but Statistics New Zealand has issued a tea-making protocol to its 500 staff in an effort to "improve human traffic flow" in the kitchens.
The "approved protocol" issued after staff moved into new offices in November includes bullet-point instructions on where to find a clean cup, when to add milk ("before the hot water"), and where to return dirty cups.
After a staff meeting, 12 days later, an "amended protocol" changed the instructions to add milk after the hot water. It also included advice that, during peak times, the first person takes milk out of fridge and leaves it on the bench, and the last person puts it back.
Food etiquette in the building near the Westpac Stadium is strictly regulated. Hot food is banned from work spaces to prevent smells spreading, and staff must go to the bottom floor to use the two microwaves provided. Food scraps are banned from desk-side rubbish bins.
Staff spoken to by The Dominion Post thought it was all laughable – but a Statistics spokeswoman said the protocol aimed to help workers settle in and provide safety guidelines. "There may have been some health and safety angles around, rather than a Public Service tea-making ritual."
[found on stuff.co.nz]
Golf is a pretty dire game in the first place. 'A good walked spoiled,' as Mark Twain allegedly had it, and not made any better by the golf bore who insists on reliving his greatest shots over a beer.
I once spent a business dinner with four golf fanatics and it set a new standard for tedium. Look here fuckwits, you spoiled your own walk, now don't spoil my dinner.
Bad though golf is, there is always someone looking to make a buck out of making it worse.
Step up to the plate LoudmouthGolf.com
For instance:
They even have a customers gallery of tedious middle aged men showing how hilarious they can be. Come the revolution, those photos will be very useful.
