TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
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31 agosto 2016
Annular Solar Eclipse over New Mexico
What is this person doing? In 2012 an annular eclipse of the Sun was visible over a narrow path that crossed the northern Pacific Ocean and several western US states. In an annular solar eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block out the entire Sun, leaving the Sun peeking out over the Moon's disk in a ring of fire. To capture this unusual solar event, an industrious photographer drove from Arizona to New Mexico to find just the right vista. After setting up and just as the eclipsed Sun was setting over a ridge about 0.5 kilometers away, a person unknowingly walked right into the shot. Although grateful for the unexpected human element, the photographer never learned the identity of the silhouetted interloper. It appears likely, though, that the person is holding a circular device that would enable them to get their own view of the eclipse. The shot was taken at sunset on 2012 May 20 at 7:36 pm local time from a park near Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Tomorrow another annular solar eclipse will become visible, this time along a path crossing Africa and Madagascar.
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Mistério rodeia ilha rotativa na Argentina
Uma ilha circular apelidada de “The Eye” conseguiu chamar muita atenção nas últimas semanas.
Situada no delta do rio Paraná, perto de Buenos Aires, esta ilha de aparência incomum aparenta flutuar dentro de um lago circular minúsculo que mede apenas 120 metros de diâmetros.
Foi descoberto por cineastas que trabalham na pré-produção de um novo filme de terror na área, que é baseado em contos reais de OVNIs, fantasmas e outros encontros paranormais.
A equipe chegou à ilha depois de passar oito horas em pântanos.
“O local era incrível e extremamente estranho”, disse o cineasta Sergio Neuspiller. “Nós descobrimos que a água é incrivelmente clara e fria, algo totalmente incomum na área.”
“A parte inferior é dura, em contraste com os pântanos pantanosos que o rodeiam. As peças do centro flutuam. Nós não sabemos o motivo, mas parecem flutuadores”.
A equipe, desde então, lançou uma campanha no Kickstarter para continuar a investigar o mistério.
“Basicamente, temos um perímetro externo que é quase circular em uma planície inundada … onde as coisas normalmente mudam e são barrentas”, disse o pesquisador Pablo Suarez.
“O que está acontecendo e por quê, e o que deu origem a esta característica incomum?”
This beautiful golden pendant has an adventurous history. It...
This beautiful golden pendant has an adventurous history. It was part of a hoard, including about 20,000 artifacts. Many of them were gold and silver. Found inside six undisturbed nomadic burials, the tombs were from the 1st century CE, built into an existing “hill.” What the mourners probably had not known was that the “hill” was actually the earth-covered remains of an even earlier archaeological site – this time a fortified Iron Age mud-brick temple. Now comes the adventurous part. The hoard was initially found by an Afghan-Russian team in 1978. But the hoard and its 20,000 artifacts disappeared following the Soviet invasion. They were feared stolen, looted, dispersed on the black market. But in fact, it had been carefully hidden away for safety during the invasion and subsequent war. The whole thing reappeared in 2004.
Women’s robe, from Central Asia in the late 1800s. From...
Women’s robe, from Central Asia in the late 1800s. From the “Arts of the Islamic World” courtesy of the Sackler Gallery.
Hurricanes Madeline and Lester
The island of Hawaii rarely takes a direct hit from a hurricane. This week, two Pacific storms are lining up to change that. This natural-color image of Hurricane Madeline and Hurricane Lester is a composite built from two overpasses by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi NPP satellite on August 29, 2016.
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30 agosto 2016
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Aurora over Icelandic Fault
Admire the beauty but fear the beast. The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization. Exactly this week in 1859, following notable auroras seen all across the globe, a pulse of charged particles from a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a solar flare impacted Earth's magnetosphere so forcefully that they created the Carrington Event. A relatively direct path between the Sun and the Earth might have been cleared by a preceding CME. What is sure is that the Carrington Event compressed the Earth's magnetic field so violently that currents were created in telegraph wires so great that many wires sparked and gave telegraph operators shocks. Were a Carrington-class event to impact the Earth today, speculation holds that damage might occur to global power grids and electronics on a scale never yet experienced. The featured aurora was imaged last week over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland, a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
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"That is the miracle of the Greek mythology - a humanized world, men freed from the paralyzing fear..."
“That is the miracle of the Greek mythology - a humanized world, men freed from the paralyzing fear of an omnipotent Unknown. The terrifying incomprehensibilities which were worshiped elsewhere and the fearsome spirits with which earth, air, and sea swarmed, were banned from Greece.”
- Edith Hamilton, Mythology
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- Edith Hamilton, Mythology
Metal coins replace barley as the item exchanged for value around 3000 to 2500 BCE in ancient Sumer.
Metal coins replace barley as the item exchanged for value around 3000 to 2500 BCE in ancient Sumer.
Good Morning From the International Space Station
Simpatia para parar de beber ou parar de fumar - Largar um vício
Sempre recebemos muitos pedidos de simpatias para largar vícios. Pois é um problema complicado, ainda mais quando a pessoa viciada não aceita ajuda.
Veja também:
Se você que está lendo este artigo é quem está sofrendo por algum vício, sinta-se consolado, pois tem casos piores. Você pelo menos está procurando resolver e já percebeu que precisa largar o seu vício. Pior são os casos que a pessoa não aceita que está se prejudicando. E é muito comum um vício acabar com a vida de uma pessoa, só para se ter uma ideia, apenas por álcool, o Brasil seria o quinto país no continente na média de mortes relacionadas com bebidas alcoólicas por habitante, como problemas no fígado, por exemplo. E outras que ninguém imagina como AVCs, o popular derrame, pessoas que consomem bebidas alcoólicas em boa quantidade podem ter a sua pressão elevada e sofrerem um mortal AVC.
Nem falamos em fumar, esse vício todo mundo já espalhou aí os infinitos problemas que o vício do cigarro pode ocasionar. Pior de tudo é quem fuma e bebe, é uma especie de trágica aposta para ver quem vai ganhar primeiro. Se vai ser o cigarro ou a bebida.
Mas vamos lá, trazer algumas simpatias para oferecer algum alento e ajuda.
Lembrando que se não derem certo, pode ser caso de buscar ajuda de especialistas, psicólogos muitas vezes são bem efetivos.
Simpatia para largar vício fácil de fazer
O mais comum é apelar para santos. Rezar, acender vela para o Anjo da Guarda da pessoa, fazer promessa. Vez ou outra um milagre pode acontecer.
Tem gente que larga a bebida ou o cigarro dessa maneira. Não custa tentar!
Esta tiramos de um livro, para parar de Beber
Colocar três gotas de leite na bebida que a pessoa costuma a tomar e dar para ela beber. Sem ela saber do que se trata.
Simpatia para largar um vício qualquer
Pegar um pedaço de papel com o nome completo da pessoa e colocar dentro de um vidro como o que a pessoa é viciada.
Se é víciada em bebida, colocar um vidro com a bebida preferida, por exemplo, cachaça. Encher o vidro de cachaça com o nome da pessoa.
Se for cigarro colocar um monte de cigarro.
Se for viciado em jogos, colocar algo relacionado aos jogo.
Fechar o vidro e enterrar em algum lugar.
Veja outras simpatias pra largar um vício, parar de beber ou fumar.
E o ano vai terminando!
O ano de 2016 já está indo embora!
Já estamos no final de agosto! Lá vem mais uma vez o mês de Setembro!
E em um piscar de olhos, já vem Outubro, Novembro, e daqui a pouco, vamos nos ver arrumando a árvore de Natal!
Aproveitando que estamos na reta final vamos recapitular o que vem por aí!
Setembro é um mês especial!
Dia 11 de Setembro é o dia das Rainhas do Egito!
No dia 22 de Setembro tem a chegada a primavera!!
27 de Setembro também é uma data importante, é dia de São Cosme e Damião!! Aproveite e veja também 7 simpatias de São Cosme e Damião.
E ainda em Setembro, no dia 29 vamos ter o dia de São Miguel Arcanjo. Confira também Simpatias para São Miguel Arcanjo!
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Já estamos no final de agosto! Lá vem mais uma vez o mês de Setembro!
E em um piscar de olhos, já vem Outubro, Novembro, e daqui a pouco, vamos nos ver arrumando a árvore de Natal!
Aproveitando que estamos na reta final vamos recapitular o que vem por aí!
Setembro é um mês especial!
Dia 11 de Setembro é o dia das Rainhas do Egito!
No dia 22 de Setembro tem a chegada a primavera!!
27 de Setembro também é uma data importante, é dia de São Cosme e Damião!! Aproveite e veja também 7 simpatias de São Cosme e Damião.
E ainda em Setembro, no dia 29 vamos ter o dia de São Miguel Arcanjo. Confira também Simpatias para São Miguel Arcanjo!
29 agosto 2016
Telescópio do SETI teria detectado sinal extraterrestre
Astrônomos usando o telescópio de rádio RATAN-600 da Rússia registraram “um sinal forte na direção de HD164595”, de acordo com Paul Gilster, da Centauri Dreams, que obteve acesso a um documento que está circulando nos bastidores.
A pesquisa não foi publicada ainda, mas de acordo com a Gilster, o sinal será discutido durante uma reunião do SETI no 67º Congresso Internacional de Astronáutica (IAC) , em Guadalajara, México, em setembro.
O sinal em questão parece ser uma explosão de rádio com uma frequência de 11 GHz foi detectado pelo observatório em 15 de Maio, 2015, vindo de HD164595, que está localizada a 95 anos-luz de distância e é conhecida por possuir um exoplaneta.
Este exoplaneta teria cerca de 4% da massa de Júpiter, com uma órbita de 40 dias. Embora o planeta seja inabitável para a vida como a conhecemos (por estar muito perto da sua estrela), podem haver outros planetas desconhecidos no sistema.
No entanto, os pesquisadores adiaram seria extremamente improvável que tenha sido gerado por alienígenas e sim por explicações mais simples, talvez pela existência de alguma “sonda militar” naquela área.
Mas antes de descartar a ideia totalmente, o SETI ajustou suas 42 antenas de rádio na Califórnia, do Allen Telescope Array, para a estrela na esperança de replicar a observação RATAN-600.
Agora somente temos que aguardar pelos próximos episódios desta história.
TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGYVisit –>...
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Young Suns of NGC 7129
Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129, some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus. While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is likely that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery some five billion years ago. Most noticeable in the sharp image are the lovely bluish dust clouds that reflect the youthful starlight. But the compact, deep red crescent shapes are also markers of energetic, young stellar objects. Known as Herbig-Haro objects, their shape and color is characteristic of glowing hydrogen gas shocked by jets streaming away from newborn stars. Paler, extended filaments of reddish emission mingling with the bluish clouds are caused by dust grains effectively converting the invisible ultraviolet starlight to visible red light through photoluminesence. Ultimately the natal gas and dust in the region will be dispersed, the stars drifting apart as the loose cluster orbits the center of the Galaxy. The processing of this remarkable composite image has revealed the faint red strands of emission at the upper right. They are recently recognized as a likely supernova remnant and are currently being analyzed by Bo Reipurth (Univ. Hawaii) who obtained the image data at the Subaru telescope. At the estimated distance of NGC 7129, this telescopic view spans over 40 light-years.
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"In the middle of the 1930s Mayor LaGuardia was faced with a very difficult problem. A high-ranking..."
“
- from “Speaker’s Treasury of Anecdotes About the Famous”, by James Hume
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In the middle of the 1930s Mayor LaGuardia was faced with a very difficult problem. A high-ranking German diplomat was due for a state visit in New York. Shocked and angered by the recent anti-Jewish laws of the Nazis, a great number of New Yorkers threatened to do bodily harm to the diplomat. The mayor himself abhorred the Nazis, but it was his sworn duty to prevent violence.
He solved the problem by surrounding the Nazi representative with a bodyguard of police. They all had one thing in common – they were Jewish. The joke embarrassed the Nazis and caused enormous laughter. But it also resolved a potentially dangerous situation.
”- from “Speaker’s Treasury of Anecdotes About the Famous”, by James Hume
An Age-defying Star
An age-defying star designated as IRAS 19312+1950 (arrow) exhibits features characteristic of a very young star and a very old star. The object stands out as extremely bright inside a large, chemically rich cloud of material, as shown in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
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For his debut novel, this author was rejected thirty-one times. That novel went on to win an Edgar...
For his debut novel, this author was rejected thirty-one times. That novel went on to win an Edgar award for Best First Novel. And that author, James Patterson, is now the record holder for most books total to be on the NY Times bestseller list.
28 agosto 2016
TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGYVisit –>...
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Abell 370: Galaxy Cluster Gravitational Lens
What is that strange arc? While imaging the cluster of galaxies Abell 370, astronomers had noted an unusual arc to the right of many cluster galaxies. Although curious, one initial response was to avoid commenting on the arc because nothing like it had ever been noted before. In the mid-1980s, however, better images allowed astronomers to identify the arc as a prototype of a new kind of astrophysical phenomenon -- the gravitational lens effect of entire cluster of galaxies on background galaxies. Today, we know that this arc actually consists of two distorted images of a fairly normal galaxy that happened to lie far behind the huge cluster. Abell 370's gravity caused the background galaxies' light -- and others -- to spread out and come to the observer along multiple paths, not unlike a distant light appears through the stem of a wine glass. In mid-July of 2009, astronomers used the then just-upgraded Hubble Space Telescope to image Abell 370 and its gravitational lens images in unprecedented detail. Almost all of the yellow images featured here are galaxies in the Abell 370 cluster. An astute eye can pick up many strange arcs and distorted arclets, however, that are actually images of more distant galaxies. Studying Abell 370 and its images gives astronomers a unique window into the distribution of normal and dark matter in galaxy clusters and the universe.
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Mother and daughter taking a walk in New York City. 1970.
Mother and daughter taking a walk in New York City. 1970.
Although Hammurabi often gets credit for the “first” law code,...
Although Hammurabi often gets credit for the “first” law code, the title should actually go to another, earlier king. An otherwise obscure Sumerian king called Ur-Nammu wrote the first known law code 300 years earlier. Unfortunately for Ur-Nammu’s reputation, much of his code is unreadable, and it has survived only in fragments. Hammurabi’s code is complete. Poor Ur-Nammu remains obscure, while every schoolchild knows the name Hammurabi.
vox: Did you know? The most dangerous drugs in America are...
vox:
Did you know? The most dangerous drugs in America are perfectly legal.
As German Lopez writes, “There’s one aspect of the war on drugs that remains perplexingly contradictory: some of the most dangerous drugs in the US are perfectly legal.” This chart uses data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make a counterintuitive point: the deadliest drugs in America are legal. In some cases, those drugs are deadlier because their legal status makes them more widely available. If heroin were as easy to get as tobacco, more people would surely die from it each year. But that’s not true in all cases. Alcohol is much more dangerous than marijuana, but marijuana is illegal in most states, while alcohol is legal for those over age 21.
27 agosto 2016
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Lunar Orbiter Earthset
August 10th was the 50th anniversary of the launch of Lunar Orbiter 1. It was the first of five Lunar Orbiters intended to photograph the Moon's surface to aid in the selection of future landing sites. That spacecraft's camera captured the data used in this restored, high-resolution version of its historic first image of Earth from the Moon on August 23, 1966 while on its 16th lunar orbit. Hanging almost stationary in the sky when viewed from the lunar surface, Earth appears to be setting beyond the rugged lunar horizon from the perspective of the orbiting spacecraft. Two years later, the Apollo 8 crew would record a more famous scene in color: Earthrise from lunar orbit.
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Speeding Towards Jupiter's Pole
Jupiter's north polar region is coming into view as NASA's Juno spacecraft approaches the giant planet. This view of Jupiter was taken on August 27, when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away. The Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter.
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Sparta Was Really Run By Women
Because Sparta’s male citizens were required to devote their lives to the military and other forms of public service, Sparta’s matrons ran the estates of their husbands. This meant that Spartan wives controlled the family wealth – and, in effect, the entire Spartan agricultural economy. A Spartan citizen was dependent on his wife’s efficiency to pay his dues to his dining club and his son’s agoge fees. This economic power is in particularly sharp contrast to cities such as Athens, where it was illegal for a woman to control more money than she needed to buy a bushel of grain.
Public Health turned 6 today!Thanks to the 35,173 followers that...
Public Health turned 6 today!
Thanks to the 35,173 followers that have made this possible!
vox: Berkeley put a tiny tax on soda. Consumption plummeted by...
vox:
Berkeley put a tiny tax on soda. Consumption plummeted by 21 percent.
In March 2015, Berkeley, California, became the first US jurisdiction to implement a 1 cent per ounce tax on soda.
Now, research is mounting that suggests these taxes do seem to work
When humans “domesticated” fire 400,000 years ago they made the right combination of...
When humans “domesticated” fire 400,000 years ago they made the right combination of conditions – longer periods with close human contact, plus smoke-damaged lungs – for tuberculosis to mutate from a harmless soil bacterium into our number one bacterial killer, according to new research.
frontlinepbs: The American economy is recovering, but not...
The American economy is recovering, but not everyone has felt it equally. The wealth gap between black and white households has grown dramatically, and is now the widest it’s been in nearly three decades.
Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal explains why, in the latest video for our “How the Deck Is Stacked” collaboration with @marketplaceapm and @newshour.
WATCH: The recovery’s racial divide
WATCH: Poverty-stricken past and present in the Mississippi Delta
READ/LISTEN: Far from convention lights, life in Cleveland, Mississippi
READ/LISTEN: The other Cleveland: Crossing the divide
nychealthyneighborhoods: Attention all Brooklyn bikers! The 3rd...
Attention all Brooklyn bikers! The 3rd annual #BikeEast is event is back! Join us at 10 a.m. this Saturday, August 27 at Linden/Gershwin Park for a free bike tour and concert. For event details and registration, please visit http://bit.ly/BikeEast16. We can’t wait to see you!
26 agosto 2016
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The Milky Way Sets
Under dark skies the setting of the Milky Way can be a dramatic sight. Stretching nearly parallel to the horizon, this rich, edge-on vista of our galaxy above the dusty Namibian desert stretches from bright, southern Centaurus (left) to Cepheus in the north (right). From early August, the digitally stitched, panoramic night skyscape captures the Milky Way's congeries of stars and rivers of cosmic dust, along with colors of nebulae not readily seen with the eye. Mars, Saturn, and Antares, visible even in more luminous night skies, form the the bright celestial triangle just touching the trees below the galaxy's central bulge. Of course, our own galaxy is not the only galaxy in the scene. Two other major members of our local group, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy, lie near the right edge of the frame, beyond the arc of the setting Milky Way.
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"When on high the heaven had not been named Firm ground below had not been called by..."
“When on high the heaven had not been named
Firm ground below had not been called by name…
…When sweet and bitter
mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes muddied the water.
The gods were nameless, natureless, futureless.”
- from Enuma Elish, The Babylonian Creation.
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Firm ground below had not been called by name…
…When sweet and bitter
mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes muddied the water.
The gods were nameless, natureless, futureless.”
- from Enuma Elish, The Babylonian Creation.
Katherine Johnson at NASA Langley Research Center
NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at Langley Research Center. Born on Aug. 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, WV, Johnson worked at Langley from 1953 until her retirement in 1986, making critical technical contributions which included calculating the trajectory of Alan Shepard's historic 1961 flight.
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Medieval Scandinavians would bury salmon and herrings in holes in the ground to ferment. This...
Medieval Scandinavians would bury salmon and herrings in holes in the ground to ferment. This would preserve the fish, for eating over the winter. Danes and Norwegians called it “laks,” to the Germans it was “lachs,” and you probably know the Yiddish name, “lox.” Of course today it is simply cured in a fridge, with salt and a dash of sugar.
HPV vaccination is the best way to prevent many types of...
HPV vaccination is the best way to prevent many types of cancer.
Nationwide, 6 out of 10 girls have started the HPV vaccine series; 5 out of 10 boys have started the HPV vaccine series.
(From CDC)
25 agosto 2016
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Closest Star has Potentially Habitable Planet
The star closest to the Sun has a planet similar to the Earth. As announced yesterday, recent observations confirmed that this planet not only exists but inhabits a zone where its surface temperature could allow liquid water, a key ingredient for life on Earth. It is not yet known if this planet, Proxima b, has any life. Even if not, its potential ability to sustain liquid water might make it a good first hop for humanity's future trips out into the Milky Way Galaxy. Although the planet's parent star, Proxima Centauri, is cooler and redder than our Sun, one of the other two stars in the Alpha Centauri star system is very similar to our Sun. The featured image shows the sky location of Proxima Centauri in southern skies behind the telescope that made many of the discovery observations: ESO's 3.6-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile. The discovered planet orbits close in -- so close one year there takes only 11 days on Earth. The planet was discovered by the ESO's Pale Red Dot collaboration. Although seemingly unlikely, if Proxima b does have intelligent life, at 4.25 light years distance it is close enough to Earth for two-way communication.
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Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen, founded a college...
Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen, founded a college at Cambridge in 1448. When Henry VI lost his crown to Edward IV, the college fell on hard times. Enter Elizabeth of Woodville, Edward’s queen. In 1465 she refounded the college, and gave it its first statutes 10 years later. It is often said that the placement of the apostrophe in Queens’ reflects the fact that two queens founded the college, but the college disputes that story. Even if Elizabeth can’t claim credit for the placement of an apostrophe, her portrait hangs in the college.
Sleep ‘resets’ brain connections crucial for memory...
Sleep ‘resets’ brain connections crucial for memory and learning
Discovery that sleeplessness causes neurons to become ‘muddled’ with electrical activity could help develop new treatments for mental health disorders
For Jules Verne it was the friend who keeps us waiting. For Edgar Allan Poe so many little slices of death. But though the reason we spend a third of our lives asleep has so far resisted scientific explanation, research into the impact of sleepless nights on brain function has shed fresh light on the mystery - and also offered intriguing clues to potential treatments for depression.
In a study published, researchers show for the first time that sleep resets the steady build-up of connectivity in the human brain which takes place in our waking hours. The process appears to be crucial for our brains to remember and learn so we can adapt to the world around us.
The loss of a single night’s sleep was enough to block the brain’s natural reset mechanism, the scientists found. Deprived of rest, the brain’s neurons seemingly became over-connected and so muddled with electrical activity that new memories could not be properly laid down.
But Christoph Nissen, a psychiatrist who led the study at the University of Freiburg, is also excited about the potential for helping people with mental health disorders. One radical treatment for major depression is therapeutic sleep deprivation, which Nissen believes works through changing the patient’s brain connectivity. The new research offers a deeper understanding of the phenomenon which could be adapted to produce more practical treatments.
“Why we sleep is a fundamental question. Why do we spend so much of our lives in this brain state? This work shows us that sleep is a highly active brain process and not a waste of time. It’s required for healthy brain function,” said Nissen.
The results are a boost for what is called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis of sleep, which was developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. It explains why our brains need to rest after a day spent absorbing all manner of information, from the morning news and the state of the weather, to a chat over lunch and what we must buy for tea.
Known more simply as SHY, the hypothesis states that when we are awake, the synapses that form connections between our brain cells strengthen more and more as we learn and eventually saturate our brains with information. The process requires a lot of energy, but sleep allows the brain to wind down its activity, consolidate our memories, and be ready to start again the next morning.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Nissen describes a series of tests that 11 men and nine women aged 19 to 25 took part in, either after a good night’s sleep, or after a night without sleep. On the sleepless night, participants played games, went for walks and cooked food, but were not allowed caffeine. Staff watched them throughout to make sure they stayed awake.
In the first round of experiments, Nissen used magnetic pulses to make neurons fire in the volunteers’ brains and cause a muscle in the left hand to twitch. When sleep deprived, far weaker pulses were sufficient to make the muscles move. This implied that sleepless brains are in a more excitable state, with their neurons more strongly connected than they are after a good night’s sleep.
Nissen next turned to another form of brain stimulation to mimic the way neurons fire when memories are laid down. He found it harder to get the neurons to respond in sleep-deprived people, a sign that the process of writing memories was impaired by sleep loss.
Taken together, the results suggest that sleep allows the brain to calm its activity so memories can be written down. In contrast, the sleep-deprived brain becomes noisy with electrical activity and so feeble at laying down memories that the process is all but blocked. The consequences of sleep loss were clear in a simple memory test, with tired volunteers faring worse than those who were well-rested.
Teasing out how sleep affects brain connections could do more than answer why we snooze so much. Shift workers and military personnel that have to cope with sleep deprivation could benefit from new drugs or countermeasures that restore normal brain connectivity. Blood samples taken from volunteers in the study showed that sleep deprivation lowered levels of a molecule called BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which regulates synaptic connections in the brain.
But Nissen is more excited about the study’s implications for understanding therapeutic sleep deprivation and its impact on depression. “If you deprive people with major depression of sleep for one night, about 60% show a substantial improvement in mood, motivation and cognitive function. We think it works by shifting these patients into a more favourable state,” he said.
Though striking when it works, therapeutic sleep deprivation is not much use because many patients relapse after the subsequent night’s sleep. But that is not the point, Nissen says. “It proves that it’s possible to shift a person’s mood from one state to another within hours. The idea is that we use sleep and sleep deprivation to understand the brain and develop new treatments. If you think about antidepressants or psychotherapy, it can take weeks or months to see any effects.”
Giulio Tononi, a professor of sleep medicine who first proposed SHY at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the new study was “truly elegant and powerful” and confirmed experiments that until now had only been performed in animals.
“Sleep is essential, and one main reason is that it allows the brain to learn new things every day while preserving and consolidating the old memories,” Tononi said. “Learning and memory require synaptic activity, which is very energetically expensive and prone to saturation. Sleep allows the brain to renormalize this synaptic activity after it increases in the waking day.”
Lars Westlye, a psychologist at University of Oslo, called the study “wonderful” and said the results could throw light on links between the biology of sleep, more complex brain functions, and severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. Like Nissen he believes that a clearer understanding of brain connectivity might explain why sleep deprivation can be so effective in people with depression, and plans to study the effect in patients.
“These new results should strongly motivate further studies in patient groups, both to learn more about the roots of the disorders and how to treat them,” Westlye said.
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Source: Guardian Neuroscience (by Ian Sample)
nprglobalhealth: Twin girls infected with Zika at nine weeks of...
Twin girls infected with Zika at nine weeks of gestation. Both were born with extremely small heads, shrunken spinal cords and extra folds of skin around the skull. Scientists think this extra skin forms when the skull collapses onto itself after the brain, but not the skull, stops growing in the uterus. The images of the girls’ heads were constructed on the computer using CT scans.
Space Station View of Grand Canyon National Park
To celebrate the centennial of the U.S National Park Service, Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA has taken hundreds of images of national parks from his vantage point in low Earth orbit, aboard the International Space Station. Here, a series of Williams' photographs are assembled into this composite image of the Grand Canyon.
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Hopi woman, dressing the hair of an unmarried Hopi girl....
Hopi woman, dressing the hair of an unmarried Hopi girl. 1900.
There's something we can do to ease the burden of an ageing population
There's something we can do to ease the burden of an ageing population:
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Sharing my new blog on the World Economic Forum Agenda! Vaccines are not just for kids. Adults, especially the elderly, need vaccines too!
What makes St. George so unusual, for a saint?
To clarify, because I’m reading confusion about this post: It is a multiple-choice question. Only one of the answers is correct. Make a guess, then go to the link and see if you were right!
24 agosto 2016
TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGYVisit –>...
TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
Visit –> all-about-psychology.com for free psychology information and resources.
Machu Picchu was the residence of Incan emperor Pachacútec,...
Machu Picchu was the residence of Incan emperor Pachacútec, and a religious temple. It was considered one of the three sacred(er) peaks of the empire. When inhabited historians believe Machu Picchu’s population was somewhere around 300 to 1,000 Incas. According to current scholarship, all the residents were considered elites. They were supported by farming the terraces which surround the village and helped hold up some of the houses.
Jose Cuervo is still produced on land granted to the family by the King of Spain. In 1758, Don...
Jose Cuervo is still produced on land granted to the family by the King of Spain. In 1758, Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo was issued a land grant by King Ferdinand VI of Spain in the town of Tequila. And the rest is history: the Cuervo family was the first business to receive a license to produce tequila (named after the town, not the other way around) and is the oldest family run business in Mexico.
New NASA Record Holder For Cumulative Days in Space
On Aug. 24, 2016, Station Commander Jeff Williams passed astronaut Scott Kelly, also a former station commander, for most cumulative days living and working in space by a NASA astronaut (520 days and counting). Williams is scheduled to land Sept. 6, 2016, for a record total of 534 days in space.
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23 agosto 2016
TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGYVisit –>...
TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
Visit –> all-about-psychology.com for free psychology information and resources.
Bolhas de metano surgem no solo da Sibéria
O clima excepcionalmente quente parece ter criado um efeito adverso sobre o permafrost da Sibéria.
Na sequência da sua recente onda de crateras gigantes, a selva remota da Sibéria agora se tornou o lar de um fenômeno inteiramente diferente – manchas de solo que saltam como um trampolim.
O problema é melhor demonstrado pelo vídeo abaixo, que mostra um homem pisando repetidamente em um bolha no solo, uma vez que treme para cima e para baixo como algo flutuando em um colchão d’água.
Este movimento peculiar, como se vê, é devido ao descongelamento do permafrost e bolhas de gás metano saltando para fora.
Os cientistas que investigam o fenômeno dizem que há uma dúzia de manchas separadas e que metano e dióxido de carbono tem sido liberado ao ser perfurado.
Embora aparentemente inofensivo, este espetáculo estranho é um sinal de alerta de que o aumento das temperaturas estão tendo um efeito cada vez mais negativo sobre o ambiente.
Vídeo mostra ‘fantasma’ seguindo homem até um táxi
Imagens de um circuito interno no Japão mostra uma figura misteriosa chegando próximo em um táxi atrás de um passageiro desavisado.
O vídeo, que se tornou viral depois de aparecer online pouco mais de uma semana atrás, teria sido filmado em uma rua no Japão.
Detalhes específicos ainda não são conhecidos mas está claro que ele foi filmado pelo responsável por publicá-lo online.
A filmagem mostra um homem em uma camisa branca que pode ser visto caminhando da esquerda para a direita antes de parar próximo a um táxi.
Enquanto ele caminha até o veículo, no entanto, uma segunda figura, que se parece com uma mulher, pode ser vista andando diretamente atrás dele.
Ao entrar no táxi, a figura misteriosa parece segui-lo para dentro antes de desaparecer quando a porta se fecha e o táxi vai embora.
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