Category Science & Technology

MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller says that our brains are “not wired to multitask well…when people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost.”

When we complete a tiny task (sending an email, answering a text message, posting a tweet), we are hit with a dose of dopamine, the reward hormone. This encourages us to keep switching between mini-tasks that give us instant gratification, creating a feedback loop that makes us feel like we’re accomplishing a lot, when we’re really not doing much at all (or at least nothing requiring much critical thinking).

Multitasking makes it more difficult to organize thoughts and filter out irrelevant information, and reduces the efficiency and quality of our work. It has also been found to increase production of cortisol, the stress hormone, and leaves us feeling mentally exhausted.

Some studies have shown that even opportunity to multitask, e.g., knowledge of an unread email in your inbox, can reduce your effective IQ by 10 points! Texting is worse, demanding even more immediacy than email.

MRI scans on the brains of individuals who spent time on multiple devices at once (texting while watching TV, etc.) reveal that those who multitask more had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, the area responsible for empathy and emotional control.

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Mecysmaucheniidae spiders are tiny – the smallest has a body length of less than 0.08 inches – yet they are formidable super-fast predators. Native to New Zealand and South America, these “trap-jaw” spiders are the fastest-known arachnids so far. Compared with other spiders, their jaws, called chelicerae, are more elongated and manoeuvrable, while their frontal region, the carapace, almost appears necklike. The spiders keep their jaws open while hunting, snapping them closed when they encounter prey. The fastest could snap their jaws shut in 0.12 milliseconds; the smaller the species, the faster its jaw-snapping capabilities. It could be that the quickest spiders evolved their lightning-fast attack so that they could target speedier prey.

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Floating on a man-made lake over a collapsed coal mine, the power station in Anhui province can produce 40 megawatts of energy. Built by Sun grow Power Supply, the power plant will produce enough energy to power 15,000 homes.

Anhui province is a coal-rich region, and the plant is located on a lake that was once the site of intensive mining. But why build solar plants on top of lakes and reservoirs? Building on bodies of water, especially man-made lakes that are not ecologically sensitive, helps protect agricultural land and terrestrial ecosystems from being developed for energy use. The water also cools the electronics in the solar panels, helping them to work more efficiently.

China also boasts of the world’s largest farm – the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park hosting 4 million solar panels that produced 850 megawatts of energy. This will soon be eclipsed by a project in the Ningxia autonomous region, which will have 6 million solar panels and produce 2 gigawatts of power.

China is the leading nation in solar power, having produced 66.2 gigawatts of electricity last year. The country will invest $361 billion in renewable power by 2020, and by 2022 could produce 320 gigawatts of wind and solar power and 340 gigawatts of hydropower. Currently, renewable are responsible for 11 per cent of China’s energy and may reach 20 per cent by 2030.

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When you’re an easy target for any number of predators the ability to turn yourself into a snake is a handy one. The snake mimic caterpillar (Hameroplanes triptolemus) is also to do just that. What threatened it pulls in its legs and head and expands the front part of its body to take on the appearance of a serpent. The brown head of this ‘snake’ is actually the underside of the caterpillar. If the “deadly” costume isn’t enough to deter a predator, the caterpillar might also strike to enhance the effect.

Hemeroplanes belongs to the Sphingidae family, found in many parts of South America, Africa and Central America. Upon closer inspection, however, one will see that this ‘snake’ is abnormally short in length; and while its topside looks pretty non-descript, the Hemeroplanes caterpillar has the ability to put on a snake disguise at the moment it feels threatened.

Many animals have conspicuous eye-like spots on their body. In most animals these ‘eyespots’ are thought to intimidate predators from attacking or deflect the predator strikes away from vulnerable body parts. That ‘eyespots’ could help prey by resembling the eyes of a predator’s own enemies is thought to be particularly true for butterfly and moth caterpillars. Caterpillars with eyespots are often cited to be snake mimics that startle attacking birds which mistake them for dangerous snakes. 

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Scientists at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, have developed two anti-cancer medicines from the fruit extract of the Rampatri plant, which may help destroy tumors and receive cells damaged by radiation. The Rampatri plant, used as a spice in foods, belongs to the Myristicaceae family and is found in western coastal region of India.

BARC Radio Modifier (BRM) protects normal tissues while cancerous cells are destroyed during radiotherapy while BARC Radio Protector (BRP) will help reverse the effect of radiations if a ‘nuclear accident’ takes place.

The scientists tested the medicine on mice and found that they may help in treating lung cancer and neuroblastoma, a rare cancer found in children. In neuroblastoma, cancer cells grow in nerve cells of adrenal glands, neck, chest and spinal cord.

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New research suggests that blind people’s brains may be able to adapt regions usually used for sight to help solve math problems.

“Across all humans, numerical thinking is supported by similar areas in the brain,” says Shipra Kanjlia, a graduate student in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. We are taught to solve math problems from an early age using visuals. Does this brain usage change for people who have never “seen the number of people at a party or the number of flowers in a field?”

Kanjlia asked 17 people born blind and 19 sighted people wearing blindfolds to solve math problems while monitored by MRI. When they worked out the solutions, the standard parts of the brain lit up with activity. But in the blind-since-birth participants, another region lit up: part of the visual cortex. The harder the blind volunteers thought about the algebra problems, the stronger the visual cortex shone. The same region remained dark for sighted participants, even though blindfolded. It appeared that the brains of blind participants had repurposed the unused region to assist in number processing.

Previously, researchers found that the visual cortex can be rewired to handle other sensory input, such as hearing and touch. The ability to do algebra, however, suggests that brain can adjust the visual cortex to handle more tasks.

So are people who are born blind better at math? No, but the findings indicate that the brain is very good at resource management in attending to higher functions.

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