Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 2596

The world’s largest study on light exposure and its impact on mental health, with almost 87,000 participants, has found that increased exposure to light at night increases a person’s risk for psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, bipolar and PTSD severity as well as self-harm. Importantly, the study also found that increasing exposure to daytime light can act like a non-pharmacological means for reducing psychosis risk.

In those exposed to high amounts of light at night, the risk of depression increased by 30%—while those who were exposed to high amounts of light during the day reduced their risk of depression by 20%. Similar patterns of results were seen for self-harm behavior, psychosis, , Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD. These findings indicate that the simple practice of avoiding light at night and seeking brighter light during the day could be an effective, non-pharmacological means of reducing serious issues.

The study, led by Associate Professor Sean Cain, from the Monash School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia, is published today in the journal, Nature Mental Health.

Read more | >

Scientists at the UCL Institute for Neurology have developed new tools, based on AI language models, that can characterize subtle signatures in the speech of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The research, published in PNAS, aims to understand how the automated analysis of language could help doctors and scientists diagnose and assess .

Currently, psychiatric diagnosis is based almost entirely on talking with patients and those close to them, with only a minimal role for tests such as blood tests and .

Read more | >

Inspired by the annual growth of tree rings, researchers at Harvard University developed protein fibers that record the history of a cell as fluorescent bands carrying information about time and gene regulation.

Check out the infographic here:

https://ow.ly/nfzM50PU8aF

Meenakshi is the Editor-in-Chief at The Scientist. Her diverse science communication experience includes journalism, podcasting, and corporate content strategy. Meenakshi earned her PhD in biophysics from the University of Goettingen, Germany.

Continue reading “TS Digest Issue” | >

This is a scientifically accurate depiction of where a select few sci-fi star systems are in our galaxy. This has been an obsession of mine for the past few months to show this visually and get a feel for where these systems are around the solar system. Also, it should be noted, that the relative positions of the stars are accurate, but their size is not.

Link to the stories I mentioned:
Star Trek: Stellar Cartography — https://amzn.to/3RN4SKz.
Project Hail Mary-https://amzn.to/3RJTzm7
Contact Carl Sagan — https://amzn.to/46oV79W
Flight of the Dragonfly (Rocheworld) Robert L Forward — https://amzn.to/3S541oL

Movies and TV: avatar, deep space 9, TNG, voyager, event horizon, lost in space, babylon 5, dune, and alien.

The data used for the star positions is the HYG database, specifically the HYG 3.5. https://github.com/astronexus/HYG-Database.

Continue reading “The Locations of Star Trek and Other Sci-Fi in Real Space” | >

Wind turbines are a feat of engineering. The massive structures are visually impressive and generate vast amounts of clean energy via a natural and pollution-free source.

Because of that, you’d think they take a long time to install — especially when placed far out at sea.

However, at an offshore wind farm in Zhangpu, China, the state-owned China Three Gorges power company managed to get one up and running in just over a day, Electrek reports.

Read more | >

Researchers at MIT have created a device that may soon be able to turn seawater into drinking water for entire households using nothing but solar energy.

And, to top it off, the water produced by this device could eventually cost less than US tap water, according to a paper published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Joule.

Yang Zhong, a graduate student at MIT and an author of the September 27 paper, said this desalination device is more efficient, longer-lasting, and cheaper than previous desalination devices.

Read more | >

At the edge of the universe, billions of light years away, there’s a time when the first galaxies were just beginning to light up. Think of it as the universe’s childhood. Scientists have always been keen to study this era because it helps us understand how galaxies, like our own Milky Way, came into existence. Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), gave us an unprecedented peek into this ancient time, revealing some exciting and unexpected finds.

The JWST found a lot of really bright, big galaxies from that early era. This was surprising because we didn’t expect such large galaxies to exist so early in the universe’s history. These discoveries left astronomers with many questions. Were these bright galaxies truly from that ancient era? If they were, how did they form so quickly? And do these new findings fit with our current understanding of the universe’s history and growth?

Northwestern University researchers may have cracked the mystery. Contrary to initial beliefs, these galaxies might not be as massive as they appear. Instead, scientists say their eye-catching brightness could result from sudden, dazzling bursts of star creation.

Read more | >