EARLY MORNING CLASSES NOT GOOD FOR STUDENTS
If you want the grades of school and junior college students to improve, ensure that classes start late. Researchers at Duke NUS Medical School in Singapore have found postponing the time of commencement of classes improves sleep time, reducing sluggishness during classes. The researchers used student Wi-Fi connection data, log-ins to university digital learning platforms and activity data from special sensing watches to conduct large-scale monitoring of class attendance and sleep behaviour of students. The researchers found that early class start times were associated with lower attendance.
THOUGHT-CONTROLLED DEVICES ON CARDS
Soon, you could be operating devices merely through thought control — just plain and simple thought control. Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have designed a biosensor technology that will enable this capability based on an advanced brain-computer interface in collaboration with the Australian Army and Defence Innovation Hub. The sensors, hexagonally shaped, are placed over the back of the scalp, to detect brain waves from the visual cortex of the brain. The user has to wear a head-mounted augmented reality lens displaying flickering squares By concentrating on a particular square, the brainwaves of the operator are picked up by the biosensor, and a decoder translates the signal into commands that are issued to the console installed on the object that needs to be controlled, be it a wheelchair or even a robot. The study showed graphene sensors to be conductive, easy to use and robust.
PUTTING ON WEIGHT EVEN AFTER A DIET PERIOD? BLAME THE BRAIN
If you have completed a stint of dieting and found a few days later that you have been putting on more weight than before, blame it on your brain. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research and Harvard Medical School have found through studies conducted on mice that while dieting communication among nerve cells changes. These cells carry hunger signals during the diet. But after the dieting period is completed, these cells begin receiving relatively stronger hunger signals, which makes the individual eat more, in turn causing more weight gain post the diet period. The researchers focused on neurons in the hypothalamus, the AgRP neurons. These control the feeling of hunger. The neuronal pathways that stimulate AgRP neurons sent increased signals when the mice were on a diet. This profound change in the brain could be detected for a long time after the diet, luring the individual to binge eat, and put on weight. Having identified the neurons, the researchers hope their findings would lead to developing a drug treatment that could control the hunger pangs even after dieting to keep food consumption under restriction, so reduced body weight is maintained.