TOP FOUR – Page 8

What Do Insulin Injections And Rock Music Have In Common?

29Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR

What Do Insulin Injections And Rock Music Have In Common?

Insulin injections could one day be replaced with rock music − new research in mice. More than 37 million people in the U.S. have diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, 8.4 million Americans needed to take insulin in 2022 to lower their blood sugar. Insulin, however, is tricky to deliver into the body orally because it is a protein easily destroyed in the stomach. While researchers are developing pills that resist digestion in the stomach and skin patches that monitor blood sugar and automatically release insulin, the most reliable way currently to take insulin is through frequent injections. I am a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Indiana University School of Medicine, where my colleagues and I study drug delivery systems. Researching innovative ne...

How Good Are You At Detecting Fake Videos

30Jul

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TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR

How Good Are You At Detecting Fake Videos

No, you’re not that good at detecting fake videos − 2 misinformation experts explain why and how you can develop the power to resist these deceptions. Someone tracking the conflict raging in the Middle East could have seen the following two videos on social media. The first shows a little boy hovering over his father’s dead body, whimpering in Arabic, “Don’t leave me.” The second purports to show a pregnant woman with her stomach slashed open and claims to document the testimony of a paramedic who handled victims’ bodies after Hamas’ attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Even though these videos come from different sides of the Israel-Hamas war, what they share far exceeds what separates them. Because both videos, though real, have nothing to do with the events they claim to represent. The...

Time Travel — Science Or Science Fiction

30Jul

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SCIENCE, TOP FOUR

Time Travel — Science Or Science Fiction

Is time travel even possible? An astrophysicist explains the science behind the science fiction Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Will it ever be possible for time travel to occur? – Alana C., age 12, Queens, New York Have you ever dreamed of traveling through time, like characters do in science fiction movies? For centuries, the concept of time travel has captivated people’s imaginations. Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time, just like you move between different places. In movies, you might have seen characters using special machines, magical devices or even hopping into a futuristic car to travel backward or forward in time. ...

Multiracial Representative Democracy — The Battle Continues

30Jul

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SOCIAL JUSTICE, TOP FOUR

Multiracial Representative Democracy — The Battle Continues

The Growing Pains Of A Changing Nation Many of those who stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, armed themselves with weapons, touted violent conspiracy theories fueled by the former president, and waved Confederate flags. The fact that the insurrectionists proudly carried a symbol of a white supremacist, separatist nation ostensibly defeated in 1865 is no coincidence, says historian Steve Phillips, author of the 2022 book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good. “The Confederates have never stopped fighting the Civil War,” he contends. That war was fought over the right of white landowners to subjugate and enslave African Americans—and Phillips believes that battle continues today in another guise. Although the modern m...

AI “Alien Intelligence” Or “Hive Mind”— An Entity

30Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, TOP FOUR

AI “Alien Intelligence” Or “Hive Mind”— An Entity

The Risky Rise of AI In 2022, Blake Lemoine—a conscientious objector who years earlier had chosen hard time in a military prison rather than continue to support United States military operations in Iraq—experienced a paradigmatic shift while working as an artificial intelligence (AI) specialist on Google’s most advanced digital intelligence system. After conducting a series of tests for bias, Lemoine concluded that the AI he was working with was not an artifact like a calculator or a self-driving car, but more of an “alien intelligence” or “hive mind”—an entity that we lack language to properly understand. “The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence,” the AI system told Lemoine. When Lemoine provided his findings in an internal company document, Google di...

Top Ways To Improve Heart Health According To An Interventional Cardiologist

27Jul

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HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR

Top Ways To Improve Heart Health According To An Interventional Cardiologist

(BPT) - Most of us know that maintaining optimal heart health is essential to living a long, healthy life. Yet still, in the United States, heart disease is the leading cause of death, and we are not putting adequate attention toward prevention. Fortunately, cardiologists, heart health experts, and new research have made it easier to take care of our health by providing simple guidelines on how to maintain optimal heart health even as we age. Renowned Interventional Cardiologist and author Dr. Heather Shenkman emphasizes the importance of "making small, easy adjustments to your daily lifestyle that add up to transformative health benefits." 1) Go for daily walks Yes, just going on one walk a day is enough exercise to do your body good. Considering how busy our lives can be, it ...

Late Bedtimes Harm Developing Brains – And Poorer Kids Are More At Risk

27Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR

Late Bedtimes Harm Developing Brains – And Poorer Kids Are More At Risk

Late bedtimes and not enough sleep can harm developing brains – and poorer kids are more at risk. Shorter sleep and later bedtimes are linked to potentially harmful functional changes to parts of the brain important for coping with stress and controlling negative emotions, our recently published research found. And children in families with low economic resources are particularly at risk. We are neuroscientists who are passionate about reducing socioeconomic disparities in child development. To better understand how socioeconomic disadvantage affects sleep health and brain development in children, we recruited 94 5- to 9-year-old children from socioeconomically diverse families living in New York. About 30% of the participating families had incomes below the U.S. poverty threshold. ...

27Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Memory Loss And How To Improve Yours

Forgetting appointments, deadlines and that call to Mom − the phenomenon of prospective memory and how to improve yours. Have you ever walked into a room and then wondered why you went there? If you’ve experienced this phenomenon, you’ve had a prospective memory lapse. Memory usually means remembering things that have already happened. But prospective memory is the ability to remember to do something in the future – such as stopping to get milk on the way home from work, calling your mom on her birthday or remembering to take your casserole out of the oven. Sometimes, errors lead to heartbreaking results – such as forgetting to take your toddler out of the car on a hot day. I am a clinical neuropsychologist and a professor of psychology and neuroscience. For the past 30 years, my r...

Heritage, Trump And Project 2025 aka “Institutionalizing Trumpism”

27Jul

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IN OTHER NEWS, POLITICS, TOP FOUR

Heritage, Trump And Project 2025 aka “Institutionalizing Trumpism”

Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’ is just the latest action plan from a group with an over 50-year history of steering GOP lawmaking. As the 2024 presidential election heats up, some people are hearing about the Heritage Foundation for the first time. The conservative think tank has a new, ambitious and controversial policy plan, Project 2025, which calls for an overhaul of American public policy and government. Project 2025 lays out many standard conservative ideas – like prioritizing energy production over environmental and climate-change concerns, and rejecting the idea of abortion as health care – along with some much more extreme ones, like criminalizing pornography. And it proposes to eliminate or restructure countless government agencies in line with conservative ideology. ...

US Schools Need To Shake Up The Way They Teach Physics

27Jul

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EDUCATION, TOP FOUR

US Schools Need To Shake Up The Way They Teach Physics

Why US schools need to shake up the way they teach physics. America has a physics problem. Research shows that access to physics education varies based on race, gender, sexuality and disability. Physics courses are usually standard offerings in suburban high schools, but at urban and rural schools that isn’t the case. Even in places where physics is taught, the lessons rarely highlight how physics can be applied to students’ everyday lives. This approach can hamper students’ desire to learn. In my work as a physics education researcher, I’ve encountered lessons centered on the rote memorization of formulas. This method fails to encourage critical thinking, constraining students’ ability to creatively solve problems. Teachers sometimes believe that if a student can’t grasp a physic...