LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
BINGO!!! I knew Virgil would post a reply to this article!
Poor sleep clouds moral judgement
A couple of sleepless nights can cloud a person's moral judgement, study findings suggest. Army researchers found soldiers struggled to make snap decisions in emotionally charged situations after being deprived of sleep for two nights.
The authors say this could be important for other professions, including doctors, who have broken sleep and need to make quick decisions in a crisis.
The US work is published in the latest edition of the journal Sleep.
Lack of shut-eye
It is well established that poor sleep can impair many functions, including concentration and memory.
Some people say they need as little as three hours of sleep in every 24 hours to feel rested, while others need 11 hours.
Experts generally advise people get about eight hours of solid sleep per night to be on top form.
Lead researcher Dr William Killgore, of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, stressed that the findings did not mean that sleep deprivation leads to a decline in "morality" or in the quality of moral beliefs.
"Our results simply suggest that when sleep deprived, individuals appear to be selectively slower in their deliberations about moral personal dilemmas relative to other types of dilemmas," he said.
Sluggish judgement
The dilemmas used in the study were hypothetical scenarios, rather than actual events.
The researchers asked 26 healthy soldiers to judge whether a given course of action would be "appropriate" or "inappropriate" in each of the test situations, ranging from minor inconsequential ones to serious dilemmas where the decision could theoretically harm another person.
In general, the soldiers found it harder to perform the task when they were sleep deprived and had been awake continuously for 53 hours.
Some even changed their view of what was morally acceptable after they had been awake for two days.
The US military currently is investigating how little sleep soldiers can safely get by on and whether drugs can help them to stay alert for longer without sleep.
Unsafe
Neil Stanley of the British Sleep Society said: "We know that being tired impairs judgement generally. This work suggests it affects moral judgement too.
"You react differently and situations can escalate. Your emotions can be out of kilter and you are either close to tears or a zombie."
He said there was a worrying trend towards a 24-hour society, with people burning the candle at both ends.
"We should not accept tiredness as a normal state," he said.
He said the longest stint ever recorded was a person who went 11.5 days without sleep.
Sleep deprivation is exceedingly common, not just among shift workers.
Allen Davey, director of the British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Association, estimates at least a quarter of people in the UK do not get enough sleep because a family member snores.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6453247.stm
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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You know me too well now.![]()
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Now this sounds like something worth studying.Poor sleep clouds moral judgement
A couple of sleepless nights can cloud a person's moral judgement, study findings suggest. Army researchers found soldiers struggled to make snap decisions in emotionally charged situations after being deprived of sleep for two nights.
The authors say this could be important for other professions, including doctors, who have broken sleep and need to make quick decisions in a crisis.
The US work is published in the latest edition of the journal Sleep...
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
Two sniffer dogs have been so successful hunting pirated films in Malaysia that crime bosses have put a price on their head, officials say. The black Labradors, Lucky and Flo, made dangerous enemies this week after their first bust, discovering about a million pirated DVDs and CDs.
Authorities say there is now a bounty on offer to anyone who eliminates the dogs, though the amount is not known.
The animals are being kept in a secret location with increased security.
"The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them," Firdaus Zakaria, enforcement director at the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, told the New Straits Times.
Piracy hub
Six people were arrested when the dogs led handlers to a stash of pirated material, thought to be worth up to $3m (£1.5m), in Malaysia's southern city of Johor Baru on Monday.
The animals were trained in Northern Ireland to identify the smell of polycarbonates - chemicals used in the disc manufacturing process.
Malaysia is one of the hubs of Asia's huge trade in pirated films, music and games.
The Motion Picture Association of America says big entertainment studios lost $1.2bn (£600m) to movie piracy in the region last year.
A spokesman for the MPAA said Malaysia is the first country in the world to use dogs to detect fake discs.
The dogs are being loaned to Malaysian police on a one-month trial from the MPAA, which is ramping up efforts to fight counterfeiting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/6478235.stm
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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Many parents may regard it as a deafening din, but liking heavy metal may be a sign of intelligence in youngsters.
New research suggests clever teenagers listen to it as a way of coping with the pressures of being talented.
A study of 1000 of the country's brightest adolescents revealed "metalheads" are often extremely bright.
"There is a perception of gifted and talented students as being into classical music and spending a lot of time reading," Stuart Cadwallader, from Warwick University, said.
"There is literature that links heavy metal to poor academic performance and delinquency, but we found a group that contradicts that.
"We are looking at a group with lower than average self-esteem that does not feel quite so well adjusted.
"They feel more stressed out and turn to heavy metal as a way of relieving that stress."
The study revealed those who enjoyed heavy metal often had more difficuilties in their relationships with family and friends.
One of those questioned in the survey said: "It's the general thrashiness of it.
"You can't really jump your anger into the floor and listen to your music at the same time with other types of music."
Being brainy is not limited to the music's fans though.
Iron Maiden's lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, is a history graduate as well as being a novelist and qualified commercial pilot.
:: The survey involved 1,057 members of the National Academy for Gifted and talented Youth.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...256804,00.html
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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The theory that short men end up as more aggressive than taller ones has been dismissed by a scientific study. The University of Central Lancashire research for the BBC found taller men were more likely to lose their temper.
Men of different heights duelled with wooden sticks but one of the subjects deliberately provoked the other by rapping them across the knuckles.
Heart monitors revealed it was the taller men who flew off the handle more quickly and hit back.
Chopstick Game
The research was designed to test Short Man Syndrome - or "Napoleon complex" - the theory that shorter men are more aggressive to dominate those who are taller than them.
The experiment - called the Chopstick Game - involved 10 men of average height and the same number below 5ft 5ins.
The subject who did the provoking had been briefed to do so by the scientists.
The other men were under the impression they were being tested for physical attributes, reaction times and eye-hand co-ordination.
Obvious attribute
Dr Mike Eslea said the study suggested it made no more sense to say diminutive footballer Dennis Wise was aggressive on the pitch because he was small, than it was to say Robbie Savage was likewise because he was blond.
Dr Eslea said: "The results were consistent with the view that Small Man Syndrome is a myth.
"When people see a short man being aggressive, they are likely to think it is due to his size simply because that attribute is obvious and grabs their attention."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6501633.stm
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
A French high-speed train (TGV) has smashed the world record for a train on conventional rails by a big margin, reaching 574.8km/h (356mph).
The previous TGV record was 515km/h (320mph), set in 1990.
The record attempt by a modified TGV took place on a track between Paris and the eastern city of Strasbourg.
More
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
The Indian civil service is dropping part of a new appraisal form requiring female employees to detail their menstrual cycles, a top official says. The ministry of personnel says that the decision to delete the controversial part of the form was taken following an intervention by the prime minister.
Some female civil servants described the form as grossly insensitive.
The questions were reported to have been put in the 2007 appraisal on advice from the health ministry.
MORE
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
There once was a scotsman named Drew
Who put too much wine in his stew
He felt a bit drunk
And fell off his bunk
And landed smack into his shoe ~(C) Ms Niamh Anne King
That's not entirely true - it is occasionally useful to know, if only for self-defense purposes. Of course, having the impertinence to ask is often self-defeating, anyway...
Por una cabeza
Si ella me olvida
Qué importa perderme
Mil veces la vida
Para qué vivir
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