Scientists found that sleeping considerably improves our creativity. After taking a nap people are able to think faster and put more imagination into their thinking. Besides, if we dream, the thinking abilities are improved even more.
Researchers consider that sleeping on a problem in most cases leads to elucidation(解释). They say when a person enters a phase called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) during sleep, it increases the effect. Such phase takes place right before we awake and according to scientists it helps our brain make links between unrelated subjects.
In the study, led by Professor Sara Mednick, scientists made a conclusion that the REM was "important for assimilating(消化) new information into past experience" in order to find solutions to creative problems.
Prof. Mednick is a psychiatrist at the University of California. Her study involved the analysis of 77 adults. Each participant was given several word-associated creative tasks. All tasks were given in the morning, with participants being shown a number of groups of 3 words, for example: cookie, heart and sixteen. They were asked to come up with a word that would be associated with all three given terms—like sweet. Sometime later, after some participants were allowed to sleep, they were asked to perform the same tasks and some new ones. It is worth mentioning that while some people slept, researchers used brain scans to see the type of sleep each participant entered.
When given the same tasks, participants, who took a nap, were able to give more varied solutions, some of which were much better than they gave earlier. But when given new tasks, researchers found that those who entered REM sleep had a 40 percent better result compared to the performance they showed in the morning.
HandEnergy is an ingenious apple-sized device that charges your phone anytime, anywhere. But what really makes this thing special is the fact that it uses your own personal energy to do it.
In a time where power-banks and solar-power devices have become mainstream, a device that lets you charge gadgets on the go doesn't sound very special. But while power-banks have to be charged the old fashioned way, and solar panels need the sun to store energy.
Hand Energy just needs a hand. To get this little guy to produce energy, which it then stores in built-in batteries, all you have to do is hold it in your hand and rotate your wrists.
To use Hand Energy, users start by winding a starter ring. This transmits a signal to activate the rotor, at which point they can start rotating their wrists to keep the rotor spinning. It might sound hard to believe, but the rotor inside Hand Energy spins at an average speed of 5,000 rotations per minute, transmitting mechanical power to create an electric current, and charging the built-in batteries. To charge a device, all you have to do is hook it up to HandEnergy using a USB cable.
Hand Energy was successfully crowd funded on Kickstarter, raising over $71,000 in one month, and will be available for the masses in May 2017, at a price of 99 euros. One thing is for sure – it beats paying thousands of dollars on a solar-powered gadget-charging coat.
Elephants in Uganda are starting to come close to villages near national parks. The big animals are a real danger to people.
So, the Uganda Wildlife Authority has been giving people new tools to keep the elephants away: vuvuzelas. They are plastic instruments some fans use at sports events.
The instruments make a loud sound elephants do not like. The animals leave, and no one is harmed. A spokesperson for the Uganda Wildlife Authority says vuvuzelas work because they do not threaten the elephants. That is important because an elephant that feels threatened is more likely to attack. So far, no one has reported an elephant attacking in answer to a vuvuzela.
Officials and villagers have tried other ways to stop elephants from coming near farms and houses. They have built beehives – houses for flying insects that sting. They have hung ropes covered in spicy oil. They have dug long, deep holes. And they have used guns, called A-K47s.
An official from the Uganda Wildlife Authority explains that people shoot the gun in the air to scare the elephant. But over time, the elephants have stopped being afraid of the sound of the gun. They only look at the shooter and wave their ears.
Another official for the Uganda Wildlife Authority, Gessa Simblicious, says one elephant-prevention solution will not work everywhere in Uganda. And one day, elephants may accept the vuvuzela noise, just as they do the sound of the A-K47.
But right now, vuvuzelas are an effective, non-violent and fun way to deal with a serious problem.
For Suilasaikhan, a man living in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region(IMAR)(内蒙古自治区), life was hard years ago. When the wind blew, the sand made it almost impossible for him to see anything. He had to find his way back home by following the barking of dogs.
Thankfully, things are much better today. About one third of the desert is now covered with trees, and sandstorms are less common. Ian Teh, who comes from Malaysia, came to China last year and was amazed to see people planting trees in the several deserts in northern China. "To be honest, it was hard to imagine it was ever a desert at all," he said.
These are the results of Chinas years-long efforts to deal with desertification (沙漠化). In the 1950s, this widespread problem affected the life of about 400 million people in 18 provinces and autonomous regions in China. So China started several programs to deal with it. For example, the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, saw thousands of trees planted in northern China.
In 1994, China joined the United Nations' convention (公约) against desertification and created the world's first law on sand prevention in 2001. With these efforts, the past five years have seen the area of desert in China decrease by 242,400 hectares.
Desertification isn't the problem only in China. With china's success in dealing with desertification, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) believes the country is a good example for other countries to follow. "China is one of the most successful countries in greening the desert and has lessons to share with the world." UNEP Executive Director Erik Solheim told Xinhua.
According to new research from the University of Cambridge in England, sheep are able to recognize human faces from photographs.
The farm animals, who are social and have large brains, were previously known to be able to recognize one another, as well as familiar humans. However, their ability to recognize human faces from photos alone is novel.
The recent study, the results of which were published in the journal Royal Society showed that the woolly creatures could be trained to recognize still images of human faces, including those of former President Barack Obama and actress Emma Watson.
Initially, the sheep were trained to approach certain images by being given food rewards. Later, they were able to recognize the image for which they had been rewarded. The sheep could even recognize images of faces shown at an angle, though their ability to do so declined by about 15 percent - the same rate at which a human's ability to perform the same task declines.
“Anyone who has spent time working with sheep will know that they are intelligent, individual animals who are able to recognize their handlers,” said Professor Jenny Morton, who led the Cambridge study. “We've shown with our study that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and monkeys.”
Recognizing faces is one of the most important social skills for human being, and some disorders of the brain, including Huntington's disease, affect this ability.
“Sheep are long-lived and have brains that are similar in size and complexity to those of some monkeys. That means they can be useful models to help us understand disorders of the brain, such as Huntington's disease, which develops over a long time and affects cognitive abilities. Our study gives us another way to monitor how these abilities change.” Morton said.
Antaretica's ice-white environment is going green and facing other unexpected threats. Scientists say that as temperatures go up in the polar region, invading (入侵) plants and insects, including the flies, cause a major conservation threat.
More and more of these invaders, in the form of larvae (幼虫) or seeds, are surviving in coastal areas around the South Pole, where the temperature has risen by more than 3℃ over the past three decades. Glaciers have retreated, exposing more land which has been occupied by mosses that have been found to be growing more quickly and thickly than ever before-providing potential green homes for invaders.
“The common house flies are a perfect example of the problem the Antarctic now faces from invading species,” said Dominic Hodgson of the British Antarctic Survey. “It comes in on ships, where it exists in kitchens and then at bases on the continent. It now has an increasing chance of surviving in the Antarctic as it warms up, and that is a worry. Insects like the house flies carry bacteria that could have a deadly effect on native lifeforms.”
The Antarctic has several native species of insects. Together with its native mosses, these are now coming under increased threat from three major sources: visiting scientists, increasing numbers of tourists and global warming. However, it is global warming that is the main driver of the greening of Antarctica.
In 2015, more than 38,000 tourists visited Antarctica. “These tourists are often very careful about not leaving waste or having mud. But they could carry seeds or larvae on their boots when they set foot on the Antarctic,” said Hodgson.
More and more invasive insects and plants have been found on the Antarctic and have required removal. “the insects and plants that are native to Antarctica have survived these for thousands of years,” said Hodgson. “We have got to act now if we want to save the environment.”
Hacking isn't just for computers and smart phones. According to a study, scientists have found a way to hack a plant's genes in order to make it use sunlight more quickly. Someday, the results could increase the number of food produced around the world.
Scientists used tobacco plants in the study because it is easy to change the plants' genes. Hacked plants are larger than normal plants.
Photosynthesis is the word used to describe how plants use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make their own food. Scientists say this is a very slow process. Plants use less than 1 percent of the energy. But by hacking a plant's genes, the scientists were able to increase the amount of leaf growth on plants between 14 and 20 percent. Scientists hacked the plant's protective system. Normally, this system starts when a plant gets too much sunlight. When the plant senses the light, it creates more leaves. When the plant is in shade, the protective system is turned off. But the process is slow.
The new study sped up the process by changing the plant's genes, the protective system turned on and off more quickly than normal. As a result, leaf growth on the plants scientists used in the study increased. Leaf growth on two plants increased by 20 percent, while leaf growth on a third plant increased by 14 percent. Scientists conducted the study on tobacco plants. But they think the genetic changes would produce the same results in corn and rice.
Agriculture professor Tala Awanda said the study makes sense, but cautioned the yield（产量）might not be quite so high for conventional food crops. Still, she added in an email, "this study remains a breakthrough,"
If you're DIY-minded, you can build your own solar power system. In some cases, you can even build your own solar panels (电池板), although the amount that you can effectively DIY home solar depends on how much you want to power. Making your own solar panel is a time-consuming process and requires some electrical skills. However, it can also be very rewarding-learning to build your own panel is a great way to understand how solarelectricity is generated.
Before you can build your own solar panels, you first need to understand how solar cells generate electricity. Once you've bought individual solar cells (they can be purchased online), the basic process for building your own solar panel goes like this: Prepare the backing for your panel. Many DIY solar panel builders prefer to use a wooden board as the base for their solar cell. You'll need to drill holes in the board so that the wires for each cell can pass through. Wire your solar cells together. This requires some experience with electrical work. Use a soldering iron (烙铁) to attach wire to the solar cells and then link each of the cells together. Attach cells to your backing. If possible, attach each solar cell to the backing individually. This makes it easier to replace a single cell in the event that becomes damaged or is not operating properly.
At this point you have a functional solar panel that can produce electricity when the sun shines. However, a solar panel by itself is not useful. If you are trying to generate electricity to power devices in your home, you need to pair your panel with an inverter (换流器) that will turn direct current (DC) power from the sun into the alternating current (AC) power used in most modern electronic devices.
A tiny clue found in ancient deposits has unlocked big secrets about Greenland's past and future climate. Just beyond the northwest edge of the vast Greenland Ice Sheet, researchers have discovered lake mud that have survived the last ice age. The mud, and remains of common flies in it, record two interglacial periods（间冰期）in northwest Greenland.
Although researchers have long known these two periods—the early Holocene and Last Interglacial—experienced warming in the Arctic, the mix of fly species shows that Greenland was even warmer than previously thought. "As far as we know, it has never been found in Greenland. We think this is the first time anyone has reported it in ancient deposits or modern lakes there," Axford said. "We were really surprised to see how far north it migrated (迁徙)."
This new information could help researchers better measure Greenland's sensitivity to warming, by testing and improving models of climate and ice sheet behaviour. Those models could then improve predictions of how Greenland's ice sheet might respond to man-made global warming. After all, Greenland covers 80 per cent of the Arctic country and holds enough ice to equal 20 feet of global sea level. "Northwest Greenland might feel really remote, but what happens to that ice sheet is going to matter to everyone in every coastal city around the world," said Yarrow Axford, an associate professor in the team. "One of the big uncertainties in climate science is how fast the Earth changes when it gets warmer. Geology gives us an opportunity to see what happened when the Earth was warmer than today," said Axford.
People might be surprised to see how today's Greenland looked during the last two interglacial periods. During the Last Interglacial, global sea levels increased by 15 to 30 feet, largely due to thinning of Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets. However, now researchers believe northern Greenland's ice sheet experienced stronger warming than previously thought, which could mean that Greenland is more responsible for that sea-level rise.
Finding lake deposits older than about 10,000 years, however, has been historically very difficult in Greenland. To measure these ancient temperatures, researchers look to ice cores (冰核) and lake deposits. Since ice and lake deposits form by a gradual buildup on annual layers of snow or mud, these cores contain history of the past. By looking through the layers, researchers can obtain climate clues from centuries ago.
Tired of standing in line? Wait a bit longer, and you may never have to again. Everyone from Amazon to Silicon Valley startups is trying to eliminate lines in retail (零售) stores.
Amazon has opened 24 of its Amazon Go stores, which use cameras and artificial intelligence to see what you've taken off shelves and charge you as you walk out. Some startups are closely copying Amazon's approach to using AI-powered cameras fixed in ceilings. But others are trying an entirely different way to skip the checkout: smart shopping carts. These companies have added cameras and sensors（传感器） to the carts, and are using AI to tell what you've placed in them. A built-in scale weighs items, in case you have to pay by the pound for an item. Customers pay by entering a credit card, or through an online payment system. When a customer exits the store, a green light on the shopping cart indicates that their order is complete, and they're charged.
The startups behind the smart carts, including Caper and Veeve, say it's much easier to add technology to the shopping cart than to an entire store. Amazom's Go stores rely on hundreds of cameras in the ceiling. The shelves also include sensors to tell when an item is removed. Ahmed Beshry, co-founder of Caper, believes the technology to run Go is too expensive to use in a large format grocery store. Neither Caper nor Veeve have said how much their smart shopping carts will cost, making it difficult to compare the different formats. Shariq Siddiqui, CEO of Veeve, said he's finding increased interest from retailers given Amazon's steady expansion of Go since opening the first store in Seattle in 2018. "We're always happy when Amazon is doing something," Siddiqui said. "They force retailers to get out of their old school thinking."
Each time a business uses artificial intelligence and cameras, it raises questions about customer privacy and the impact on jobs. Beshry notes that the cameras in his shopping cart point down into the cart, so only a customer's hand and part of their arm will be captured (拍摄) on camera.
Artificial intelligence (Al) technology may soon be a useful tool for doctors. It may help them better understand and treat diseases like breast cancer(癌症)in ways that were never before possible.
Rishi Rawat teaches Al at the University of Southern California's (USC) Clinical Science Center in Los Angeles. He is part of a team of scientists who are researching how Al and machine learning can more easily recognize cancerous growths in the breast. Rawat provides information about cancer cells to a computer. He says this data helps the machine learn."…You can put the data into them and they will learn the patterns and the pattern recognition. That's important to make decisions.”
David Agus is another USC researcher. He believes that "machines are not going to take the place of doctors." Computers will not treat patients, but they will help make certain decisions and look for things that the human brain can't recognize these patterns by itself." Once a confirmed cancerous growth is removed, doctors still have to treat the patient to reduce the risk of cancer returning. The form of treatment depends on the kind of cancer. Currently, researchers take a thin piece of tissue (动植物细胞的组织)，put it on a small piece of glass and add color to better see the cells .
That process could take days or even longer. Scientists say Al can do something better than just count cells. Through machine learning, it can recognize complex patterns or structures, and learn how the cells are organized. The hope is that machines will soon be able to make a quick identification of cancer that is free of human mistakes. "A11 of a sudden, we have the computing power to really do it in real time... We couldn't have done this, we didn't have the computing power to do this several years ago, but now it's all changed." Agus adds that the process could be done "for almost no cost in the developing world.” He says that having a large amount of information about patients is important for a machine to effectively do its job in medicine .
The University of Southern California researchers are now only studying breast cancer. But doctors predict Al will one day make a difference in all forms of cancer.
People have got faster at typing text messages on their phones. But how fast are we at using a smart phone compared to typing words on a traditional keyboard? A team of researchers carried out an experiment.
The researchers used an Internet-based system to test the typing speed of over 37,000 volunteers on their smart phones. The volunteers spent about six hours a day using their phones. Most of them used two thumbs to type. Both Android and iPhone users were tested. They were given 15 English sentences to type out on their phones as quickly and accurately as possible.
The research team found that people wrote about 36 words per minute. It is slower than the average rate for people using a computer keyboard. In a 2018 University of Cambridge study, the average speed for computer typists was 52 words per minute. Noting the narrowing of speed rates between smart phones and computers, the team said we have become slower at typing on keyboards over the years. 75 percent of those taking part in the study had typing speeds below 44 words per minute. But the fastest phone typists reached speeds of 80 words per minute. People using two thumbs typed 38 words per minute. Those using only one finger 29 words per minute.
According to the findings, Anna Feit, a researcher at ETH Zurich, said it makes sense that younger people have higher typing speeds because they spend a lot more time on their devices. It was found that a phone's automatic correct tool can be helpful. Users were able to type faster with it. "The given understanding is that techniques like word completion help people", Feit said. "But we found the time spent thinking about the word suggestions often outweighs the time spent typing the letters, making you slower."
The difference between typing on a smart phone and a keyboard is called "the typing gap". They say this gap will further narrow in future as people get less skilled with keyboards and as smart methods for typing on devices continue to improve.
Imagine looking at a view of mountaintops and wondering about the name of each peak. Suddenly, above each mountaintop, a name appears on the sky. The words are not written in smoke by skywriting planes. The words are actually not in the sky at all. They come from tiny computers in contact lenses (隐形眼镜)
Computers have become smaller and smaller over the decades. The first computers filled houses. Transistors (晶体管) and then chips allowed computers to become small enough to fit on a desktop, then a laptop, and finally a phone. When experimenting with further reductions in size, developers often have to deal with the limits of human eyesight, which control how small the computers can be and still present visible information.
One new solution employs microprojectors (微投影机) to create a readable display for tiny computers. These machines project computer information onto any surface. Though an impressive breakthrough, there are potential problems. Such public displays can lead to privacy concerns; Most people do not want their information displayed on a wall for everyone to see. Besides, these projectors are extremely expensive, and their screens give users headaches.
Babak Parviz, a researcher at the University of Washington, created another solution: inventing a screen visible only to a person wearing a contact lens. Parviz created a computer in a contact lens that uses the wearer's field of vision as the display. To create the display, Parviz took ordinary soft contact lenses with a wirelessly controlled system. At some point, Parviz says, it will be possible to connect the lens to a remote personal computer device such as cellphone or a laptop. By looking in a certain direction, the wearer sends the computer visual information about what he or she sees. The device then uses this information to point out the names of peaks.
These contact lenses are inserted and removed in much the same way as ordinary contact lenses. In addition, the computers in the lenses won't block the wearer's sight at all. Although now the computers are not on lenses treating eyesight problems, Parviz hopes that someday the technology will progress to that level.
Earth's tallest animal is in deep trouble. Wild giraffe populations are falling rapidly, with recent survey data showing its numbers have fallen more than 40 percent. And unlike the well-known plight (困境) of gorillas, elephants, rhinos, and other disappearing African animals, the decline of these giants has gone largely unnoticed.
Giraffes that are extreme high — adult males can stand nearly 6 meters tall — still live in 21 countries in Africa, but their habitat is being repurposed for human use, especially agriculture. Even in places where their native grasslands remain excellent, small and separate habitat caused by development elsewhere can restrict their range and prevent genetic diversity. And climate change can encourage lengthy droughts, which lead desperate giraffes to feed on farmers' crops, making them seem like pests to local communities.
Illegal hunting also contributes to the decline of the animals. Humans have a long history of hunting giraffes, seeking food as well as thick skin to make clothing and other items. But a belief that giraffes' brains and bones can cure HIV has gained wide attention in Tanzania, reportedly pushing prices for giraffes' heads and bones are as high as $140 per piece. Usually, with a single gunshot, a giraffe can be hunted. So they've become an extra income among Africa's growing groups of elephant hunters.
When humans try something risky to hunt for giraffes, however, there's evidence that they can improve the animals' fortunes. The West African giraffe, for example, was pushed to the edge of extinction in the 1990s. Down to just 50 in 1996, the subspecies won legal protection from the government of Niger, helping it grow to 250 in 2010. Conservationists have also worked with villages in Niger and planted 5,300 acacia(相思) trees since 2012, reducing the need for the giraffes to destroy crops.
That their number grows in recent years suggests that there is still time to save other giraffes, too." This stresses the value of making positive giraffe conservation and management efforts to protect critical populations across the continent,” says Arthur Muneza, East Africa speaker for the GEF. "It is high time that we increased our efforts."
① habitat loss ② serious diseases ③ people's hunting ④ climate change
The world's hottest rainforest is located not in the Amazon or anywhere else you might expect, but inside Biosphere (生物圈) 2, the experimental scientific research facility in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. A recent study of tropical trees planted there in the early 1990s reported a surprising result: They have withstood temperatures higher than any likely to be experienced by tropical forests this century.
The study adds to a growing number of findings that are giving forest scientists something that's been in short supply lately: hope. Plants may have unexpected resources that could help them survive — and perhaps even prosper — in a hotter, more carbon-rich future. And while tropical forests still face both human and natural threats, some researchers believe terrible reports of their approaching decline due to climate change may have been overstated.
"Biology is clever," says Scott Saleska, an ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson and co-leader of the Biosphere 2 study. "It's a lot smarter than our models yet represent."
The last few years have seen a flood of alarming reports about forests and climate change's effects on them. Scientists have announced that the Amazon forest is no longer a reliable carbon sink; the Amazon rainforest may be nearing a tipping point; tropical forests globally are already close to the hottest temperatures they can tolerate and climate change is killing off old trees.
One thing is certainly true: Our fossil fuel emissions are creating a climate that humans have never seen and trees haven't experienced in a very long time." We're pushing tropical forests into temperatures they've never seen since the Cretaceous — since there were dinosaurs," says Abigail Swann, an ecologist and climate scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
We all love chocolate, and most of us probably eat it every day, or at least several times a week. It is one of the most favorite kinds of food in the world, and many would say that they can't live without it. However, there are many facts about the world of chocolate that most people do not know.
Have you ever wondered where your chocolate comes from? Most of it comes from the labor of children. It is said that in Africa alone, there are about 70 million children working on chocolate farms. They lead a very hard life, and many live only on bananas and corn paste(浆糊). One child who was interviewed said that he was tricked into believing he would be earning money to help his family. But the truth is that he is treated like an animal. The child has never even had the chance to taste the chocolate he spends his life producing.
The history of chocolate pretty much begins with the Mayans(玛雅人). Cacao(可可)beans were so valuable to Mayans that they were used as money. It is said that ten beans could buy a rabbit, and one hundred beans were enough to buy a slave. People would buy everything from food to tools with the beans. Generally, only the richer people drank chocolate regularly, because drinking your money is expensive.
We know that artificial intelligence (AI) is smart enough to do a few things our minds cannot, and with incredible accuracy. And now, it seems it also has the capacity to detect loneliness in humans, which is an otherwise challenging task.
A new study, led by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, US, has shown how AI tools can predict levels of loneliness from a person's speech with an accuracy rate of 94 percent.
The study focused on 80 participants aged 66 to 94, a population particularly vulnerable to loneliness. The subjects were asked 20 questions from the UCLA Loneliness Scale, which uses a four-point rating scale (四分制评价量表) for questions such as "How often do you feel left out?" and "How often do you feel part of a group of friends?"
They were also interviewed in private conversations, which were recorded and transcribed (转 录 ) by researchers. The transcripts (文 字 记 录 ) were then examined using natural language processing tools, including IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding (WNLU) software, to quantify (量化) expressed emotions.
The interesting thing about this system is that it not only uses dictionary-based methods, such as searching for specific words that express fear, but also presents corresponding patterns by testing the words used in the response.
Varsha Badal, the first author of the study, noted that the WNLU software system uses deep learning to extract (提取) data from keywords, categories, emotions and grammar.
"Natural language processing and machine learning can systematically examine long interviews from multiple individuals and explore how subtle speech features such as emotions may indicate loneliness," Badal said. "Similar emotion analyses by humans would be open to bias ( 偏 见 ), lack consistency, and require extensive (大 量 的 ) training to standardize. "
The lonelier a person felt, the longer their responses to direct questions regarding loneliness. The system was capable of not just detecting the degree of loneliness in each subject, but also showing differences between the way men and women spoke about loneliness. The men were found to use more fearful and joyful words in their responses, while the women tended to acknowledge feeling lonely during interviews.
Co-author Dilip Jeste said that the IBM-UC San Diego Center is now exploring natural language patterns of loneliness and wisdom, which are inversely (成反比地) linked in older adults. "Speech data can be combined with our other assessments of cognition (认 知 ), mobility, sleep, physical activity and mental health to improve understanding of aging and to help contribute to successful aging," he said.
Let's face it. No one drinks diet sodas for the taste. People drink diet sodas in the hope that it will help them lose weight or at least keep them from gaining it. Yet it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Texas said those who drank two or more diet sodas a day had waist size increases that were six times greater than those who didn't drink diet sodas. "What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drank, the more weight they were likely to gain," said Sharon Fowler.
The study was based on data from 474 participants in a large, ongoing research project, where the participants were followed for nearly 10 years.
While the findings are surprising, they also offer some explanations. Nutrition expert, Melanie Rogers, who works with overweight patients in New York, has found that when patients are switched from regular to diet sodas, they don't lose weight at all. "We weren't seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us", said Rogers.
So why would diet soda cause weight gain? No one knows for sure yet, but it could be that people think they can eat more if they drink diet sodas, and so over-compensate for the missing calories.
A related study found some sweeteners (甜味剂) raised blood sugar levels in some mice. "Data from this and other potential studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners may be risky, said Helen P. Hazuda, professor at the University of Texas's school of medicine. "They may be free of calories, but not of consequences."
Bridging the gap between simple automation(自动化) and robots that can communicate with humans naturally is a big challenge, but major progress has been made in the past few years.
Research into social robots has shown that machines that respond to emotion(情感) can help the elderly and children, and could lead to robots becoming more widely socially acceptable.
Milo is both a robotic teacher and a student. Developers RoboKind created Milo to help children with autism(自闭症) learn more about emotional expression and empathy(共鸣) while collecting data on their progress to target learning and treatment. Milo's friendly face makes himself kind and the children are able to read his expressions.
Robots can also reduce stress in hospital settings. Expper Tech's Robin was designed as a robot to provide emotional support for children with medical treatment. Robin explains medical details to them, plays games and tells stories, and during treatment draws their attention away to reduce their feeling of pain.
Expper's robot uses Artificial Intelligence(AI) to create empathy, remembering expressions and conversations to build conversation for follow-up sessions. In trials at the Wigmore Medical Pediatric Clinic in Yerevan. Armenia, the team found that Robin led to a 34% weakening in stress and improve happiness of 26% in the 120 children who interacted(互动) with him at least once.
Today's simple systems are being trained to meet that demand. This includes ProxEmo, a little wheeled robot that can guess how you are feeling from the way you walk, and ENRICHME who helps older people to stay physically and mentally active. The problem is the fear that human jobs may be lost as robots become better at dealing with social situations.
Sleeping with a dim light like a television or nightlight is enough to the raise blood sugar and heart rates of healthy people, according to a new study. Light helps our body maintain an internal clock, but artificial light at night can interrupt the rest and repair that should happen during the sleep. New research suggests that even when our eyes are closed, a small amount of light can disrupt the way our bodies normally keep our blood sugar within a healthy range.
In the study published in Sciences on Monday, scientists asked 20 participants ages 19 to 36 to spend two nights in their lab. On the first night of sleep, the volunteers slept in a very dark room. For their second night of sleep, half of the group snoozed with a small light like the glow of television at night, or streetlights through a window-and half spent their second night in a dark room.
During the trial, all participants were connected to devices that measured different markers of their sleep quality. They were each connected via a special tube, allowing researchers to collect samples without waking the individual. Researchers also recorded participants' heart rates and brain waves.
When the volunteers awoke in the morning, the team tested their blood sugar and found that participants that slept in rooms with a dim light spent less time in deep sleep. In addition to having slightly worse blood sugar control, the group exposed to dim light had a higher heart rate on average. "By comparison, those that spend two nights in the dark room had little difference in their blood sugar control. They thought they slept well, but your brain knows that the lights are on, "says Zee, "you should clearly pay attention to the light in your bedroom. If you can't give up your night light, keep it dim and at floor level. "
Earlier work has linked exposure to light during sleep to an increased risk of obesity in women. Zee recommends, "make sure that you start dimming your lights at least an hour or two before you go to bed to prepare your environment for sleep."
