Newsworthy Science

Samson said:
Again, I could be getting the wrong end of your stick, but my understanding of the "evolutionary logic" is that exercise tells the body where it should invest its calories. In the evolutionary environment we (almost) never had excess calories without a requirement for exercise to gather them, so we did not evolve to spend calories maintaining our cardiovascular system in the absence of demand on it. Since we do this lots these days, it can be in our interest to "fool" our body into thinking we do more exercise than we really do, so it spends more of the calories available in maintaining our heart etc. rather than storing them for a rainy day as fat.

This is probably very similar to statins, and a similar argument could be made for steroids in that we know we can depress the immune system and reduce our susceptibility to auto-immune damage with increasing our susceptibility to infectious disease.

So I would say this is the "advanced" way of managing our bodies, rather than the primitive way of actually doing what the body is used to responding to.
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Yes, I didn't refer to drugs as "primitive", indeed they are the advanced way. But (imo) an advanced reaction to a primitive system (how the human body reacts and needs triggers-through-action instead of through-thought). One wonders why a thinking-based trigger isn't more prominent - then again, from prehistory we know the split to animistic thought, so maybe that was impossible from the start (just a theory :) ).

From a distance, it can seem a bit counterintuitive that drugs (which, afaik, commonly target receptors or otherwise fool the body to do things against its tendency) are useful when thinking isn't - after all, the person whose body this is, is directly linked to it. Apparently the link isn't very direct, past some level, which is also manifested in how easily people can develop hypochondria if attempting to affect their actual somatic health through thoughts.
Probably the system of consciousness has to be quite clearly cut off from actual somatic calculations (blood circulation, digestion etc).
 
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This one seems a bit mad, I am not advocating their results just highlighting them.

Epigenetic age is the best metric that really seems to track with life expectancy. It measures particular combinations of methylation at specific regions of the genome.

This study indicates that while for the well off having good self control was coorelated with reduced epigenetic aging, for poor people it was correlated with FASTER epigenetic aging.

Most childhood outcomes pattern by socioeconomic status (SES). Children from low-SES families complete less education, have worse health, and are convicted of more crimes. To ameliorate these disparities, policymakers are incorporating character-skills training into school curricula and social services. Among other goals, these programs attempt to improve self-control, or the ability to resist temptations that interfere with long-term aspirations. However, data suggest that self-control has unforeseen consequences for the health of low-SES youth. Here, we follow 292 African American teenagers as they transition into adulthood. Among low-SES youth, self-control forecasted better psychosocial outcomes, including less depression, substance use, and aggression. However, it also forecasted more rapid immune cell aging, highlighting the potential health costs of successful adjustment for disadvantaged youth.
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pnas.1505063112fig01.jpeg

Self-control’s association with epigenetic age acceleration varies according to SES. (A) Depiction of estimated Hannum values at lower (−1.5 SD) and higher (+1.5 SD) levels of self-control and socioeconomic disadvantage. (B) Depiction of individual data points and regression slopes for subjects who are more (≥1.5 SD above sample mean) (Left), medium (−1.49 to +1.49 SD) (Center), and less (less than or equal to −1.5 SD) (Right) disadvantaged relative to the sample distribution.
 
That is...uh... interesting... somehow...?
It seems they didn't measure that the beginning though.

Aiken_Drumn said:
This thread has very odd tags. Is this normal?
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Would seem that they're auto-generated from the first post. @Birdjaguar could change them, if he wanted.
 
I wonder how many people have used that feature.. can you search historically with them?
 
I could.
 
The metaverse is rubbish

An international team of researchers conducted a study to exampine what it would be like to work in the metaverse, putting participants in VR headsets and taking an inventory of their self-reported physical and mental states throughout a five day, eight-hour-a-day period spent in headsets and a virtual "office".

Unlike a real job, participants were allowed to set their own work agendas and didn't perform standardized tasks yet even still had trouble undertaking these.

Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness and additional criteria were measured, and the results didn't surprise anyone: "The study reveals that, as expected, VR results in significantly worse ratings across most measures," the study concludes.

In particular, the study found increased frustration and anxiety, lower perceived productivity and a decrease in feelings of wellbeing. As for physical symptoms, two participants of the admittedly small study group (16 people) had to quit the study after the first day due to nausea, migraines and anxiety. Nearly half of participants that stuck with the study reported eye strain as a result of wearing a VR headset for eight hours.
​
Paper Writeup
​
5ndhdhD.png
 
Samson said:
The metaverse is rubbish

An international team of researchers conducted a study to exampine what it would be like to work in the metaverse, putting participants in VR headsets and taking an inventory of their self-reported physical and mental states throughout a five day, eight-hour-a-day period spent in headsets and a virtual "office".

Unlike a real job, participants were allowed to set their own work agendas and didn't perform standardized tasks yet even still had trouble undertaking these.

Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness and additional criteria were measured, and the results didn't surprise anyone: "The study reveals that, as expected, VR results in significantly worse ratings across most measures," the study concludes.

In particular, the study found increased frustration and anxiety, lower perceived productivity and a decrease in feelings of wellbeing. As for physical symptoms, two participants of the admittedly small study group (16 people) had to quit the study after the first day due to nausea, migraines and anxiety. Nearly half of participants that stuck with the study reported eye strain as a result of wearing a VR headset for eight hours.
​
Paper Writeup
​
5ndhdhD.png
Click to expand...

But this isn't the metaverse where you are plugged into a machine and expand as lard while living in the virtual world with your nice greek deity avatar that you've long forgotten isn't your own form ^_^
 
Samson said:
The metaverse is rubbish

An international team of researchers conducted a study to exampine what it would be like to work in the metaverse, putting participants in VR headsets and taking an inventory of their self-reported physical and mental states throughout a five day, eight-hour-a-day period spent in headsets and a virtual "office".

Unlike a real job, participants were allowed to set their own work agendas and didn't perform standardized tasks yet even still had trouble undertaking these.

Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness and additional criteria were measured, and the results didn't surprise anyone: "The study reveals that, as expected, VR results in significantly worse ratings across most measures," the study concludes.

In particular, the study found increased frustration and anxiety, lower perceived productivity and a decrease in feelings of wellbeing. As for physical symptoms, two participants of the admittedly small study group (16 people) had to quit the study after the first day due to nausea, migraines and anxiety. Nearly half of participants that stuck with the study reported eye strain as a result of wearing a VR headset for eight hours.
​
Paper Writeup
​
5ndhdhD.png
Click to expand...
I guess RL isn't that bad.
 
I might have been dreaming, I was still half asleep, but I think I heard on the radio this morning about a bacterium so big you can see it with the naked eye and pick one up with a pair of household tweezers.
 
I guess a long thin body is the best way to get around some of the issues that larger cell size comes with.
 
Interesting - I wonder how the visible segmentation at one end works with only a single cellular membrane to work with?
 
MrCynical said:
Interesting - I wonder how the visible segmentation at one end works with only a single cellular membrane to work with?
Click to expand...
They are gram-negative, so have a fairly complex cell wall that gives them structure.
Spoiler Gram negative bacterial cell wall :
1920px-Gram_negative_cell_wall.svg.png
 
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