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Bullying Study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4304582/
"Coroner records were reviewed for all 🤬 deaths in youth aged between 10 and 19 in the city of Toronto from 1998 to 2011. Data abstracted were recent stressors (including bullying), clinical variables, such as the presence of mental illness, demographics, and methods of 🤬."

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In a carefully controlled two-part experiment, scientists began by collecting nightly sleep data on 164 healthy individuals for 1 week. Participants were asked to record the times at which they went to bed and woke up. They also wore small watchlike devices that use a technique called wrist actigraphy to monitor movement (much like a Fitbit tracks activity) while they slept. a team of scientists reports that they have locked down the link experimentally, showing that sleep-deprived individuals are more than four times more likely to catch a cold than those who are well-rested.

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Moms and sleep researchers alike have stressed the importance of solid shuteye for years, especially when it comes to fighting off the common cold. Their stance is a sensible one-skimping on sleep weakens the body's natural defense system, leaving it more vulnerable to viruses. But the connection relied largely on self-reported, subjective surveys-until now. For the first time, a team of scientists reports that they have locked down the link experimentally, showing that sleep-deprived individuals are more than four times more likely to catch a cold than those who are well-rested.

"It's very nice to see an experiment looking at sleep as an important regulator for specific antiviral immune responses," says Michael Irwin, a psychoneuroimmunologist at University of California (UC), Los Angeles, who is not involved with the study. "In this particular case, there's a hard clinical outcome showing [sleep deprivation] and susceptibility to the common cold."

In a carefully controlled two-part experiment, scientists began by collecting nightly sleep data on 164 healthy individuals for 1 week. Participants were asked to record the times at which they went to bed and woke up. They also wore small watchlike devices that use a technique called wrist actigraphy to monitor movement (much like a Fitbit tracks activity) while they slept. Aric Prather, lead author of the study and a sleep researcher at UC San Francisco, says that he and his colleagues associate the wrist actigraphy data with being awake-if during a reported sleep period, the wrist band records movement, they take that as an indication of wakefulness, and subtract the time spent moving from the hours asleep.

Then came part two: the cold infections. Scientists quarantined participants in a hotel and gave them nose drops containing rhinovirus-the virus responsible for the common cold. They then closed off the hotel floor for 5 days, letting the hosts' immune system do the rest. To ensure the most accurate results, researchers drew participants' blood before the viral exposure to test for levels of rhinovirus antibody, a defensive agent in the immune system that recognizes and attacks rhinovirus. If they found high, preexisting levels of the protective protein, they removed the participant from the study so that prior immunity would not bias the infection rates of the group.

In order to officially register as "sick," participants had to exhibit one "objective sign of illness" and one other immune response. Signs of illness revolved around mucus production. After viral exposure, scientists collected used tissues daily and, essentially, weighed the snot. Ten grams or more counted as a sign of illness. They also looked at congestion. The researchers dripped a harmless dye into participants' noses and waited to see how long it took to reach the back of their throats; longer than 35 minutes tallied as a sign of illness. A valid immune response required one of two things: A mucus sample flushed from a participant's nasal passage had to show signs of viral replication or blood work needed to show new levels of the rhinovirus-fighting antibody.

Of the 164 participants, 124 received the actual virus instead of the control, and 48 of them got sick. By checking the sleep duration of the sick participants, researchers report in the current issue of SLEEP that individuals who slept fewer than 5 hours a night were 4.5 times more likely to get sick than those who slept 7 hours or more. Those who slept 5 to 6 hours were 4.2 times more likely to get sick, but those who slept 6 to 7 hours per night were at no greater risk of catching the cold than those who slept 7 hours or more, suggesting that there's a sleep threshold for potent immune defense.

"Sleep often takes a back seat to other health behaviors like nutrition and exercise," Prather says. "I think this [experiment] provides some really clear evidence for those people who get less than 5 or 6 hours of sleep-there really is a clear biological cost."

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Lack of sleep puts you at higher risk for colds, first experimental study finds

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Moms and sleep researchers alike have stressed the importance of solid shuteye for years, especially when it comes to fighting off the common cold. Their stance is a sensible one-skimping on sleep weakens the body's natural defense system, leaving it more vulnerable to viruses. But the connection relied largely on self-reported, subjective surveys-until now.

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When you were a teenager, did you regularly find yourself sleeping until noon? Being a night owl during your adolescence is not uncommon, as biological sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during this time, making it tough for teens to fall asleep before, say, 11:00 p.m.

Additionally, teenagers require about eight to 10 hours of sleep per night. These factors combined with early start times at schools mean that many teens are chronically sleep-deprived.

Now, research published in the journal Scientific Reports shows that college students whose circadian rhythms were out of sync with their class schedules got worse grades because of "social jet lag," meaning that peak alertness times are out of sync with the times that people need to be at work or school.

Getty Images | Peter Macdiarmid

The finding was true for three types of circadian rhythms, including so-called "night owls," "daytime finches" and "morning larks," meaning that those whose peak productivity was in the morning also suffered bad grades when they took classes later at night.

The key to correcting this problem is to keep a consistent schedule throughout the week. That's why sleep experts say it's not such a great idea to sleep in on the weekends. Although students from all three categories were affected by social jet lag, the effect was most pronounced among night owls.

Flickr | Jellaluna

"Our research indicates that if a student can structure a consistent schedule in which class days resemble non-class days, they are more likely to achieve academic success," study co-lead author Aaron Schirmer, an associate professor of biology at Northeastern Illinois University, told Science Daily.

Although you can shift your body clock with behavioral changes, turning a true "night owl" into a "morning lark" may be a lot easier said than done. For students, the research indicates that education should be individualized so that students with different circadian rhythms can all benefit from learning at a time when they are most alert.

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Scientists Have Linked Bad Grades With Class Times That Don't Match Students' Biological Clocks

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When you were a teenager, did you regularly find yourself sleeping until noon? Being a night owl during your adolescence is not uncommon, as biological sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during this time, making it tough for teens to fall asleep before, say, 11:00 p.m.

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A STATISTICAL STUDY ON THE TRENDS OF FAST FOOD CONSUMPTION

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A Statistical study to compare the trends of fast food consumption among students according to gender, age, residential status etc., which is the most preferre...

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"Coffee Drinkers Live Longer"
"These are observational studies, not controlled clinical trials. So while they demonstrate an association, they don’t prove cause and effect"

Sumner

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These are observational studies, so they don't prove cause and effect. But at the least, researchers said, the latest evidence reinforces a large body of previous reports indicating there's no harm from coffee - and that it might very well benefit people's health.

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Coffee drinkers live longer, according to two large-scale studies released Monday that add to extensive research indicating coffee consumption is associated with better health.

The studies examined the health histories of hundreds of thousands of people who were tracked over many years. They found that coffee-drinking reduced the risk of various diseases among people from several ethnicities, and this effect was seen in drinkers of regular or decaffeinated coffee. And the more coffee consumed, the greater the benefit.

These are observational studies, not controlled clinical trials. So while they demonstrate an association, they don't prove cause and effect. But at the least, researchers said the latest evidence reinforces a large body of previous reports indicating there's no harm from coffee - and that it might very well benefit people's health.

Both of the new studies were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They asked participants about whether they drank coffee, and if so, how much. Participants were also asked about habits that influence health, such as smoking, exercise and heart disease.

One study was led by Veronica Setiawan of the University of Southern California. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, it examined coffee-drinking habits among more than 180,000 whites, African Americans, Latinos, Japanese Americans and Native Hawaiians. They were followed for an average 16 years.

The other was performed by European scientists from Imperial College London and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, led by Marc Gunter of the International Agency for the Research on Cancer (IARC). It examined coffee-drinking among more than 520,000 adults from 10 European countries.

The study led by Setiawan found those drinking one cup of coffee daily had a 12 percent lower risk of death from heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, respiratory and kidney disease. For those drinking three cups a day, the risk reduction rose to 18 percent.

In previous studies, the great majority of those examined were white, meaning that environmental and lifestyle differences among ethnicities could have confounded the results. But her study found these benefits to occur regardless of the ethnicity studied.

The study led by Gunter likewise found a lower death risk from various ailments, including digestive, circulatory and liver disease. The relationship was the same regardless of country, the study found. It was funded by the European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Consumers and the IARC.

The studies make a significant contribution to knowledge about coffee and health, said Peter Adams, professor of the Tumor Initiation and Maintenance Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.

"It's good to know that not everything that gives you a buzz is bad for you," Adams said by email.

"As the authors note, coffee is a complex concoction, and caffeine itself does not seem to be responsible. Coffee does contain many other candidate molecules, for example antioxidants."

"However, recent studies have challenged the view that antioxidants are always beneficial. Oxidants may not cause aging as previously thought, and antioxidants can even help cancer cells to survive!"

"So until we figure out how it works, you can keep drinking coffee and stay off the expensive antioxidants from the pharmacy," he said.

Coffee is most renowned for its stimulant effect, provided by caffeine. However, individuals respond differently based on their genetics. Some people are metabolically fast at breaking down caffeine, others metabolize it more slowly.

This has health consequences. One of the few studies that showed some harm in coffee found that slow metabolizers who drank four or more cups of regular coffee a day experience a 36 percent greater risk of nonfatal heart attacks.

However, fast metabolizers who drank that much coffee had a lower risk of heart attacks. The presumptive explanation is that the noncaffeine components of coffee exert beneficial effects, and fast metabolizers clear caffeine quickly enough to avoid harm from an excessive dose.

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Coffee drinkers live longer, healthier lives, new studies say

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These are observational studies, so they don't prove cause and effect. But at the least, researchers said, the latest evidence reinforces a large body of previous reports indicating there's no harm from coffee - and that it might very well benefit people's health.

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"Mattress company Amerisleep polled 1,001 Americans to gauge people's sleep habits while on the clock. More than half of respondents (51.8 percent) admitted to getting shut eye during business hours"

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If you ever dream of squeezing in a siesta at work, you're not alone. In fact, snoozing on the job is actually pretty common, according to a new survey.

Mattress company Amerisleep polled 1,001 Americans to gauge people's sleep habits while on the clock. More than half of respondents (51.8 percent) admitted to getting shut eye during business hours, but factors like industry and salary play a role in how much they doze.

So who is doing all this sleeping?

A full 70 percent of survey respondents who work in tech admit to sleeping during work hours (the most of any industry), followed by 68.2 percent of people in the construction industry, 63.5 percent of people in government and public administration, 58.9 percent of people in finance and insurance and 58 percent of people in information services and data processing.

And for the most part, the more money people made, the less they slept during work. Those making $100,000 or more a year took an average of 2.4 naps per month while at work, while people who made less than $10,000 took an average of 4 naps per month at work, the most of any income level.

And, it turns out, employees in some fields of work nap for a sizable chunk of their day.

The survey revealed that people who work in the medical or healthcare field report napping for nearly 17 percent of their workday, while people in education reported sleeping roughly 13 percent of their workday and people in tech snooze for 11 percent.

So where are these tired employees catching some shut eye?

Amerisleep's survey found that popular spots for on-the-clock naps include at a desk or in a cubicle or meeting room. Nappers in the education, medical and health care and government and public administration industries also opted for sleeping in a vehicle.

Amerisleep's survey also looked at whether napping during work hours was considered acceptable.

It found that many people think sleeping at work is not cool: Almost 80 percent of people who had never slept at work felt it was not ok, and almost 34 of people who had slept during work hours also felt it was unacceptable.

Research has found, however, that naps provide a plethora of mental and physical benefits.

One study, published in 2015, found that nappers were able to tolerate frustration significantly longer than those who didn't nap and also reported feeling less impulsive after a 60 minute nap. And yet another study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found that a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep, and that naps may even be good for the immune system.

And while Amerisleep's survey found that many people nap at work even when it's prohibited (including almost 66 percent of people who work in construction and a little over 62 percent of people who work in tech), there are many companies who have adopted policies that allow for - and even encourage - re-charging with a power nap.

It's been reported that companies including Google, Ben & Jerry's, Cisco, Zappos, Uber and Nike allow for napping.

And media mogul Arianna Huffington is a big advocate for sleep, penning several books on the topic. Huffington told Architectural Digest she turned a closet in the offices of her new company, Thrive Global, into a room that employees can use for naps or meditation.

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If you ever dream of squeezing in a siesta at work, you're not alone. In fact, snoozing on the job is actually pretty common, according to a new survey. Mattress company Amerisleep polled 1,001 Americans to gauge people's sleep habits while on the clock.

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Seven-in-ten American adults (72%) have read a book within the past year, whether in whole or in part and in any format, according to a survey conducted in March and April. That figure has fallen from 79% who said in 2011 they had read a book in the previous year, but is statistically in line with survey findings starting in 2012.

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The number of book readers has dipped a bit from the previous year and the number of e-book readers has remained flat, according to new survey findings from Pew Research Center.

Seven-in-ten American adults (72%) have read a book within the past year, whether in whole or in part and in any format, according to a survey conducted in March and April. That figure has fallen from 79% who said in 2011 they had read a book in the previous year, but is statistically in line with survey findings starting in 2012.

Many book publishers, researchers and retailers have wondered whether the introduction of e-books would impact book reading overall or lead to a decline in the number of books read in print. This year's data show a slight decline in the number of American adults who read print books: 63% of American adults say they read at least one book in print in the past year, compared with 69% who said the same the year before and 71% in 2011.

The survey data - which measure who has read at least one book in whole or in part in the previous year, how many they read and what formats they use - come as industry data out last month indicate that Americans remain hybrid consumers. Digital sales, which comprise about 20% of the market, have slowed sharply, while print sales have stayed relatively strong, according to the Association of American Publishers.

Several years of Pew Research Center survey data indicate there has been little change in the share of adults consuming e-books or audio books. The new survey shows that 27% of Americans read an e-book in the past 12 months - up from 17% in 2011. But that figure is statistically similar to the size of the e-book reader population captured in a Pew Research survey in 2014. Audio book consumption has remained stable, with 12% of Americans saying they listened to a book that way.

The data reveal a somewhat surprising generational pattern in book reading. Young adults - those ages 18 to 29 - are more likely than their elders to have read a book in the past 12 months. Fully 80% of young adults read a book, compared with 71% of those ages 30 to 49, 68% of those 50 to 64 and 69% of those 65 and older.

Among all Americans, the average (mean) number of books read in the previous year was 12 and the median (midpoint) number of books read was four. Some 27% of adults said they hadn't read any books over the past year, while 1% said they did not know or refused to answer.

Both the mean and median book-reading figures have fluctuated over the years, and there is no indication that the intensity of book reading over the years has permanently shifted in one direction or another, according to the Pew Research surveys and similar polls by Gallup.

In the most recent survey, those most likely to be book readers included women; young adults (those ages 18-29); those with higher levels of education and higher household income; and whites. These patterns largely hold for overall book reading and for the different reading platforms - printed books and e-books.

The average woman read 14 books in the past 12 months, compared with the nine books read by the average man, a statistically significant difference. The median number of books read by women was five, compared with a median of three for men, which was not statistically significant.

Those with higher levels of education were more likely to have read multiple books than those with high school diplomas or less. The typical college graduate or someone with an advanced degree read an average of 17 books in the previous year, compared with nine for high school grads and three for those who did not graduate from high school.
This report is based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Topics: E-reading

Lee Rainie is director of internet and technology research at Pew Research Center.

Andrew Perrin is a research analyst focusing on internet and technology at Pew Research Center.

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Slightly fewer Americans are reading print books, new survey finds

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The number of book readers has dipped a bit from the previous year and the number of e-book readers has remained flat, according to new survey findings from Pew Research Center. Seven-in-ten American adults (72%) have read a book within the past year, whether in whole or in part and in any format, according to a survey conducted in March and April.

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"Consumers feel more comfortable with fingerprint scanning than with other types of biometric technology, including face, eye, voice and other biometric measurement"

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AUSTIN, Texas - Consumers feel more comfortable with fingerprint scanning than with other types of biometric technology, including face, eye, voice and other biometric measurements, according to a survey from the Center for Identity at The University of Texas at Austin.

The findings are part of a two-part research report concerning biometric authentication technology. Part One of the report, titled " Current Biometric Applications and Trends," offers a comprehensive look at the existing applications for biometric technology in the marketplace, and Part Two, " Consumer Attitudes About Biometric Authentication," surveys how consumers regard this emerging technology and its impact on privacy.

The report, one of the largest ever conducted on the subject, includes responses from 1,000 consumers from across the U.S., with demographic characteristics described by region, age, gender, political opinion, and more.

"Each day and many times a day, people must prove they are who they say they are. Managing one's identity credentials from passwords to driver's licenses to loyalty cards can be a real hassle," said Suzanne Barber, director of the Center for Identity. "This project shows that organizations are finding a wide range of uses for biometric technology, and users are embracing the convenience."

The report finds 58 percent of those surveyed say they feel very comfortable with fingerprint scanning biometrics. Only about a third reported feeling very comfortable with any other biometric type. Survey respondents were most unsure about facial recognition technology, with 13 percent feeling "not at all comfortable," a full 10 percent more than any other type of biometrics. Likely due to the increasing prevalence of biometric applications in the marketplace, the survey also reports that users are more comfortable with private-sector applications than law enforcement initiatives.

The rapid growth of biometrics across industries is widely expected to continue during the next several years, and acceptance for biometric technology appears to be growing, with 92 percent saying they feel "more" or "about the same" level of comfort using biometrics today as they felt two years ago. Fewer than 8 percent reported feeling less comfortable. However, the privacy implications continue to be a significant source of concern for those who say they are uncomfortable about biometrics, with 43 percent citing it as the reason that best describes their discomfort.

"This research offers a long-awaited look at the trends for biometric applications and consumer adoption. The full potential and wide-spread adoption has not been reached, which motivates us to continue to explore how the future of biometrics unfolds," Barber said.

The Center for Identity works closely with its public-private partners including corporations, state and federal government agencies and law enforcement to deliver innovations for consumers, businesses and government that help them to better protect people's identities. As a critical component of its mission, the center conducts research to better understand how emerging technology such as biometrics affects consumers and organizations alike, and how standards and expectations of privacy are evolving.

This research was funded with a grant from TransUnion.

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New Survey on Biometric Technology Shows Consumers Are OK With Some Forms and Wary of Others

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AUSTIN, Texas - Consumers feel more comfortable with fingerprint scanning than with other types of biometric technology, including face, eye, voice and other biometric measurements, according to a survey from the Center for Identity at The University of Texas at Austin. The findings are part of a two-part research report concerning biometric authentication technology.

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A team of scientists undertakes an ambitious experiment which could change thinking about welfare

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FEDERAL Hill House is a squat building in central Providence, within earshot of the city's main highway. On a recent rainy Monday, a school holiday, the building was full. Older children lounged in front of a film, while toddlers roamed around the soft play area. Some regularly spend more than ten hours a day here, on top of school hours, while their parents work. The charity provides essential support for low-income families: it picks up children from home before school starts, and looks after them long after it ends. It accomplishes a lot on a tight budget. In several places, the ceiling lets through water from the grey Rhode Island sky.

The youngest group of children at Federal Hill House are between 18 months and five years old. There are 12 of them, with a waiting list to join. The executive director, Kimberly Fernandez, says some cannot name any colours when they first arrive. Some come to the centre hungry (it provides meals) or speaking no English. Others arrive with behaviour problems. Parents' work schedules are often so inflexible that Federal Hill must cover basic logistics beyond school pick-up and drop-off. Ms Fernandez says she had to use her own car after some children took the wrong bus home from school and wound up stranded at the depot. Their mother was unable to leave work to fetch them.
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Plenty of evidence suggests that growing up poor, living through these kinds of scrapes, has a detrimental impact on child development. Children from rich families tend to have better language and memory skills than those from poor families. More affluent children usually perform better in school, and are less likely to end up in jail. Growing up poor risks the development of a smaller cerebral cortex. But these are associations between poverty and development, not evidence that poverty causes these bad outcomes, says Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York. She is part of a team of researchers running a three-year experiment which will, for the first time, search for causal links between parental income level and a child's early development.

The team will start recruiting the first of 1,000 low-income mothers next week. They will be invited to join the study, which is called Baby's First Years, shortly after giving birth at one of ten hospitals in four cities across the United States (to avoid influencing the experiment, the researchers asked The Economist not to publish details about the cities). Of that 1,000, roughly half will be randomly selected to receive an unconditional $333 a month, while the others will form a control group that will receive $20. The money, which is completely unconditional, will be loaded onto a pre-paid debit card every month for 40 months, on the date of the child's birthday. The hypothesis is that this steady stream of payments will make a positive difference in the cognitive and emotional development of the children whose mothers receive it.

The first data gathered will be baseline interviews with the mothers just after recruitment. This will reveal the various backgrounds from which the mothers come (all will have incomes below the poverty line, roughly $23,000 for a family of three). The researchers will conduct phone interviews with all 1,000 mothers around their child's first birthday, then visit them in their homes when their children turn two. When they turn three, they will be invited with their mothers to a research lab in their city, where their child's cognitive skills will be tested and the electrical activity of their brains studied.

Living experiment

The interviews will also measure mothers' stress, mental health and employment patterns. They will ask how the amount of time mothers spend with their child is changing, and gather data on the quality and cost of child care and other child-related expenses. The researchers will also have a record of transactions made with the debit card. The unconditional nature of the cash transfer is inviolable: even if mothers choose not to take part in the follow-up studies, for which they are paid extra, they will still get the income for 40 months. The 1,000 mothers, minus potential dropouts, will provide enough statistical power to detect effects equivalent to two months' worth of development in early childhood, says Greg Duncan, an economist on the team from the University of California, Irvine.

A real-world experiment of this magnitude comes with challenges. It has been six years in the making, and the team has spent years raising some $15m for it. About $5.8m will be given away over the next four years, to which must be added the cost of recruiting and monitoring 1,000 people over that time. The researchers worked to get new legislation passed in two states in which the experiment will be carried out, in order to make sure that those taking part remain eligible for public benefits while they receive the extra income. The entire experiment has been assessed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Columbia University's Teachers' College, with separate IRB boards at all nine hospitals either verifying those terms, or drawing up their own, before the experiment starts. Ethical approval has been particularly complex, since mothers will be both research subjects and medical patients recovering from childbirth when they sign up.

The experiment is unique in two aspects. One is its exclusive focus on the impacts of income, unrelated to employment. The other is its focus on the first three years of a child's life. "We know virtually nothing about the causal effects of income in years zero to three," says Lisa Gennetian, who studies the psychology of poverty at New York University.

Ms Gennetian, one of several collaborators on Baby's First Years, says its closest analogues were carried out in Minnesota in the 1990s. There parents were randomly assigned to a different mix of welfare policies which altered their incomes, and their children's development was monitored. The Minnesota studies suggested that about $4,000 a year is enough to see significant effects on a child's development, but because the extra money was connected to parents' work, they did not control for other factors that might also have influenced the children's development. In contrast, mothers in the new experiment are free to leave their jobs to look after their new child, if they want to.

How to spend it

Dr Noble, Ms Gennetian and their colleagues are not alone in their ambition to study the impact of cash on well-being. Y Combinator, a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, has formed a research arm to investigate the more general impacts of direct cash gifts of this kind. That experiment, which has not yet started, plans to give $1,000 a month to a randomly selected third of 3,000 people from two American states, monitoring any changes in health, time-use and crime induced by the cash.

Part of the Baby's First Years study will be about seeing how the extra cash is spent, but signs already suggest where it might go. In a pilot study of just 30 mothers, run in New York in 2014 to work out the logistics of handing out cash, the money was usually spent within three days of receipt, mostly at supermarkets and department stores. Ms Fernandez says nappies are a particular problem for new mothers on low incomes, as they often cannot afford the upfront membership fees required to shop at large discount supermarkets in the suburbs, or the costs of travelling to get there, and so have no way around paying a premium at nearby corner shops. "Food, diapers and travel," says Ms Fernandez, is what this money will go towards. "You know what you do when you can't afford to buy diapers? You change your baby less often. You let them walk around in a dirty diaper," says Katherine Magnuson, the team's poverty expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ms Fernandez suggests that the experimental money will not so much transform new mothers' lives, as make it possible for them to take advantage of what they already have. For example, many young parents would like to rely on their own parents for child care, but cannot afford the travel costs to drop their children off. In American cities, where public transport is often scarce and connections are slow, having the money for an extra tank of fuel, or even a lease on a cheap car, might save new parents tens of hours every week. That extra time might be spent with their children, earning extra money, or just improving an otherwise stressful life.

The results of the experiment will take years to arrive. If the researchers' hypothesis, that the unconditional handout will have a positive impact on early child development, is confirmed, then old arguments about welfare will get a new evidentiary kick. It would mean that no amount of reflexive bootstrap-tugging could make up for the disadvantages that poverty casts over a child's developing brain. In the meantime, families like those at Federal Hill will keep struggling to get by.

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Does growing up poor harm brain development?

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FEDERAL Hill House is a squat building in central Providence, within earshot of the city's main highway. On a recent rainy Monday, a school holiday, the building was full. Older children lounged in front of a film, while toddlers roamed around the soft play area.

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"According to the National Survey of Student Engagement’s findings, the average student spends about 17 hours each week preparing for classes. Preparation for classes includes homework, reading and any other assignments."
"Zayna Williams, a sophomore pre-nursing major at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, says that she studies at least 15 hours every week at this point, which is just below the average of 17 hours for health majors, according to the NSSE’s study."

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A recent study may be putting the "you should study three hours per credit hour" motto to rest.

According to the National Survey of Student Engagement's findings, the average student spends about 17 hours each week preparing for classes. Preparation for classes includes homework, reading and any other assignments.

"There's the reality of how much students study," says Roger Mancastroppa, associate director at the Academic Skills Center at the University of Richmond.

He says the classes a student is passionate about may not require as much time as others, but the reality is that students are not necessarily studying 45 hours a week. Mancastroppa says this is because coming out of high school, students have been taught that memorization is the best way to achieve success.

Mancastroppa's helps students start thinking and studying using more of a critical thinking model rather than memorization.

Zayna Williams, a sophomore pre-nursing major at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, says that she studies at least 15 hours every week at this point, which is just below the average of 17 hours for health majors, according to the NSSE's study.

"Coming from high school studying was memorization," Williams says. "In college you sit and memorize things, but you realize that memorization won't help."

She says she realized she needed to learn the material long-term, rather than just learning it to pass an exam.
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Carl Thum, director of the Academic Skills Program at Dartmouth College, disagrees with the general rule of thumb of studying three hours per credit hour.

"You shouldn't be paying attention to 'If I put in this much time then I'll do well,'" Thum says. "A much better question is 'What are you doing before and after class to prepare for class?'"

The study also included how students spent the rest of their time outside of studying through extracurricular activities, jobs or service in the community.

Seana Mohr, a senior social work major at the University of Central Florida, says she spends about 12 hours per week doing work outside of the classroom, below the average of 14.4 hours. She says most of that is writing papers, not traditional studying. She disagrees with the study's findings that those majoring in social services "spend less time doing volunteer work than you might expect."

Mohr says that some of her classes require a set amount of volunteer hours for the semester. This past spring, she spent her time outside of the classroom working 30 hours and volunteering 20 hours each week.

Both Thum and Mancastroppa agree that extracurricular activities and organizations outside of school are essential to the college experience.

"College isn't a preparation for life," Thum says. "College is life."

Thum says learning how to study, deal with roommates and navigate campus are all important aspects of being a college student. He says maximizing the experience includes learning to work with other people, whether it's athletically or artistically is important.
RELATED: Princeton Review: 5 colleges with the happiest students
"For many students, learning how to balance your time and your commitments is part of growing up," Thum says.

Amanda Baughan, a junior at the University of Miami majoring in Spanish and computer science, says she spends about two hours studying and doing work for each of her classes, falling under the average of 18.2 hours per week for computer science majors.

"I spend more time on computer science because I find myself getting tutors and going to study groups because it's challenging material," Baughan says.

She has managed to find a balance with her schoolwork and extracurricular activities. She says she spends between four and five hours doing her activities and her sorority takes up more time because of its requirements.

"I wouldn't say that taking computer science classes mean that I have no life outside of studying," she says. "I definitely feel like I have a very good study-life balance."

Mancastroppa says that it all comes down to time management and being able to schedule whatever needs to be done so that you can be present in whatever the current activity is.

Thum suggests that students do their work earlier in the day and review material every day to make sure that they are really learning and applying the material.

"We all know things well not because we did them once. It's because we did them repeatedly."

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Ramsey Touchberry, University of Florida

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How much do you study? Apparently 17 hours a week is the norm

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A recent study may be putting the "you should study three hours per credit hour" motto to rest. According to the National Survey of Student Engagement's findings, the average student spends about 17 hours each week preparing for classes. Preparation for classes includes homework, reading and any other assignments.

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https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4450775-CATO-Illegal-Immigration-and-Crime-in-Texas.html
" 56 percent fewer criminal convictions of illegal immigrants than native-born Americans in Texas in 2015"

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"In an observational study, decisions to use specific 🤬 are made by local physicians, according to their perceptions of the risks and benefits for particular patients."

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"Can you “hear” visual motion? If so, you’re hardly alone. There’s a huge community of 114,000-plus people who post and discuss silent videos that have the illusion of making noise."

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Can you "hear" visual motion? If so, you're hardly alone. There's a huge Reddit community of 114,000-plus people who post and discuss silent videos that have the illusion of making noise.

And now a new study in the journal finds around 20 to 30 percent of people will experience an auditory sensation when they view moving, energetic - but silent - GIFs like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Psychologist Chris Fassnidge, the lead author of the Cortex study, calls this weirdly common phenomenon vEAR, or "visually evoked auditory response." He and his co-authors believe it may be a new form of synesthesia, the rare neurological phenomenon wherein different sensory experiences are connected.

Even if it's not precisely synesthesia, vEAR may be a window onto a better way to understand how all our senses are complexly connected. It's possible that just like we combine taste and smell to get a complete experience of flavor, we may in part hear with our eyes.

"The more we learn about the brain," says Fassnidge, who recently completed his PhD at City University of London, "the more we learn it's a very multisensory organ and that the senses can influence one another."

What is synesthesia?

In people with synesthesia, activation of one sense triggers perception of another. The classic example is people who see a different color for different letters of the alphabet or for different numbers. In others, sounds will take on color.

There's a form of synesthesia where certain sounds produce physical sensations on the skin and in the body. It's believed these crossovers happen because neurons from one area of the brain are highly connected to another, or because the connections between the brain areas are easily triggered. And it's pretty rare: Around 3 percent of people have these forms of synesthesia.

Similarly, vEAR could be a crossover of the visual and auditory systems of the brain. And the experience of it "varies from person to person," Fassnidge says. "Some people describe it as a buzzing sound in their head. For other people, it's kind of like a white noise. And then other people say it varies depending on what it is they are looking at."

There are only a handful of studies on vEAR; the first one was published in 2008. Though the work is early, the published papers on vEAR suggest it's a common phenomenon, with around 20 to 30 percent of people reporting hearing silent images.

"A lot of people don't realize they have this thing until you start testing for it in the laboratory," Fassnidge says. In the study in Cortex, the scientists had participants view 24 GIFs and rate if they noticed an auditory sensation on a scale of 0 to 5. Those who rated more than half of the GIFs at a level of 3 or above were considered to have experienced vEAR.

We may not think about the sound visual motion makes because sound and motion co-occur all the time. "Maybe because they co-occur so frequently you either aren't aware of the mental sound until you strip away everything else," Fassnidge says.

In the GIF above depicting the transmission towers jumping rope, I noticed a slight thudding sound. At first, I thought I was just noticing my heartbeat. But then I counted: The power line is jumping at 52 beats per minute; my heart is going at 72. "It would be odd that your heartbeat would be syncing with what you are seeing so closely," he says. For me, the experience is weirder than the normal experience of hearing. It's somewhere at the hazy intersection between a real sensation and imagination. (I don't hear anything with the other GIFs.)

The rising popularity of GIFs (which are really just silent slices of film) seems to have made many people aware of the sensation for the first time. The Reddit forum /r/noisygifs is filled with people posting and discussing the GIFs that fill their heads with sounds. It's part of a growing trend: The internet is proving to be an intriguing space for people to gather and discuss the peculiarities of human perception. There are millions of people who watch YouTube ASMR videos to experience a mysterious tingling sensation. In the past, these people perhaps would have just kept their unusual experience to themselves. Today, they can share.

How do I know if I have vEAR?

You can test yourself for vEAR with this survey here. It's similar to what Fassnidge and his PhD adviser Elliot Freeman used in their new study in Cortex. The survey shows you GIFs, and all you have to do is rate how much of an auditory sensation each one elicits.

With data from more than 4,100 participants (some volunteer, some paid; it's not a representative sample), the pair found that the experience of vEAR is very common. But they also found certain moving images provoke the experience more than others.

GIFs that predicted sounds (like the power line towers jumping rope above) were more likely to produce vEAR. So were GIFs that had a higher intensity of motion, like this glittering disco ball (Freeman says in an email this GIF produced one of the strongest responses in the survey).

People who report getting pieces of music stuck in their heads often (a.k.a. earworms) are also more likely to experience vEAR. "It might be that their auditory cortex is more excitable,; it doesn't stop working," Fassnidge says. It's also more common in people who have other forms of synesthesia, suggesting something similar is going on.

Why would people "hear" what they see?

As with any new field of scientific study, there are a few alternative hypotheses to explain vEAR.

Fassnidge admits that his survey may be "observing several different effects at once," and that there are overlapping explanations for why a person might hear a silent GIF.

For some people, the experience might be a true synesthesia that they can't turn off. Other people might just be highly suggestible and using their imaginations to hear the sounds (or people who sense something in the realm between noise and imagination). It's also possible that some of the people in the survey were just being agreeable and responding with what they thought the researchers wanted to hear.

Another part of the effect can be the result of learning: We've learned to expect certain sounds when we see certain objects in motion. We expect a ball bouncing on a court to make a bouncy noise, and so when we see it happen, our imaginations fill in the gaps. But even when Fassnidge and Freeman strip GIFs of all real-world connotations, and just show participants simple blinking lights, around 20 percent of study participants will say they hear something.

The follow GIF mimics the vibration pattern in the jumping power cable GIF but has no real-world images. Do you still hear anything? I don't.

In another study of people who self-reported experiencing vEAR, Fassnidge and Freeman played faint audio while the participants watched flashes of light. The flashes of light, they thought, would be the simplest visual cue to provoke the vEAR, and the least weighed down with connections to things that make noise in the real world. "The people who reported being able to hear the visual events were more inclined to miss the auditory sound if it coincided with the flash," Fassnidge says. "The imagined sound masks the real sound." That makes them suspect vEAR is indeed working on the auditory system in the brain.

Is this really synesthesia?

There are a few clues that vEAR may not be exactly the same thing as other types of synesthesia. Other types tend to have very specific pairings, like the letter A being linked with the color red. "It's hard to get that level of specificity with the auditory sensations," Fassnidge says. More work needs to be done to try to pin down the phenomenon and trace how it works in the brain.

But at the very least, the phenomenon does illustrate how deeply the areas of the brain are connected.

Consider how blind people can achieve a certain sense of vision restored with special electrodes that attach to their tongue. These sensory substitution devices, as they are called, translate the visual world into small zaps of electricity users can feel on a grid placed on their tongue. Studies suggest these devices actually stimulate the visual areas of the brain. "It's not biological vision as we know it, but it's visual information conveyed to the visual cortex," Fassnidge says.

Similarly, if electrical stimulation from the eyes happens to stimulate the auditory center of our brains, "it becomes more a philosophical question: Is that hearing?" Fassnidge says. Maybe.

And the research could perhaps help us explain why art forms that work upon many of our senses, like dance, are so appealing. In dance, music is timed with motion. "Why is that so pleasing to us as a species? is it because it is ticking all these neurological boxes?" Fassnidge wonders.

There are so many little curiosities about how we perceive the world. I've sworn that my eyes see slightly different variations of color. There are people who claim to have no internal eye, no ability to imagine physical objects that aren't in front of them. Other people have trouble memorizing faces. Perception is our interface with the world, and the peculiarities of it make for fascinating research.

"Everyone has a strange thing about how they perceive the world," Fassnidge says. "It gets people engaged in a way that a lot of other neuroscience topics don't. It fires up their imaginations."

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Can you hear these silent GIFs? You may have a new form of synesthesia.

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Can you "hear" visual motion? If so, you're hardly alone. There's a huge Reddit community of 114,000-plus people who post and discuss silent videos that have the illusion of making noise.

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The study published Thursday in the Lancet analyzed data from 600,000 people who drink zero to more than 350 grams of alcohol per week. It found that people who drank more than 100 grams of alcohol per week, the equivalent of about six glasses of wine, had increased risk of stroke, heart disease, heart failure, fatal hypertensive disease and fatal aortic aneurysm.

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When it comes to how alcohol affects your health, guidance - from how drinking affects pregnancy to whether sipping red wine helps your heart - is all over the map.

Now, a new major multinational study has another piece of advice: People who consume more than about six drinks per week have a greater risk of premature death.

People who consume more than about six drinks per week have a greater risk of premature death, according to a new study.

The study published Thursday in the Lancet analyzed data from 600,000 people who drink zero to more than 350 grams of alcohol per week. It found that people who drank more than 100 grams of alcohol per week, the equivalent of about six glasses of wine, had increased risk of stroke, heart disease, heart failure, fatal hypertensive disease and fatal aortic aneurysm.

What exactly does that mean?
Look at it this way. If a 40-year-old man reduced his weekly alcohol intake from 196 grams (the current alcohol guideline for men in the United States) to 100 grams, he could expect to live as much as two years longer, the study says.

Some studies have suggested drinking moderate amounts of red wine is good for cardiovascular health, but what does moderate mean? That's one question Angela Wood, who studies epidemiology and lectures at the University of Cambridge, and her team tried to figure out.

It's a question that's also long been debated among alcohol researchers. It's hard to develop a one-size-fits-all recommendation because how alcohol affects the body can vary from one person to another. In certain studies, "moderate" is one drink a day; in others, it's as many as three or four a day, researchers at Harvard's School of Public Health have pointed out.

People who drank the equivalent of about six glasses of wine a week had increased risk of stroke, heart disease, heart failure, fatal hypertensive disease, and fatal aortic aneurysm, the study found

The bottom line: "Any supposed benefits in health should be balanced against that shortened life expectancy," Wood said.

The research: To land on the magic number of 100 grams a week, researchers analyzed 83 studies on alcohol consumption pulled from the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration, European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition and the UK BioBank.

They spanned nearly 50 years and 19 high-income countries where alcohol drinking guidelines vary greatly, especially in the United States, Portugal and Spain. This allowed researchers "to characterize risk thresholds for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease subtypes in current drinkers of alcohol," the authors wrote.

Still, the study had its limitations, including potential bias from self-reported survey data from people who about how much alcohol they drank, the authors said. And because they did not have more data from all stages of each survey participant's life, the authors conceded that they "probably under-estimated potential benefits associated with lowering alcohol consumption."
How do these findings match up with current guidance?
Researchers in a 2016 study from Stanford said "that what constitutes a 'standard drink' in each country is far from standard," yet "in many cases these guidelines are adopted as public health policy and even printed onto alcoholic beverages without knowing whether people read them, understand them or change their behavior as a result."

For instance, Australia doesn't offer different alcohol guidance to men and women, while many other countries do. And "the upper weekly limit for men in Poland is substantially higher, at 280 grams per week," the Stanford study found.

"Inconsistent guidelines are also likely to increase skepticism among the public about their accuracy. It is not possible that every country is correct; maybe they are all wrong," researchers wrote.

In 2016, the United Kingdom lowered its alcohol drinking guidelines to 14 units of alcohol (or five pints of beer) per week, but Wood said it is too soon know what effect, if any, that change has had on the country's overall public health.

According to the latest U.S. dietary guidelines, updated every five years and again in 2020, women should drink no more than one serving of alcohol per day; men can drink up to two. Those guidelines have defined moderate alcohol consumption for more than two decades, said Samir Zakhari, a former scientist from the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism who now oversees scientific affairs for the Distilled Spirits Council, an industry lobbying group.

The study could prompt public health experts to rethink how alcohol fits in the American diet and what it means to drink in moderation.

"These guidelines form the basis of federal nutrition policy and programs and help guide local, state, and national health promotion and disease prevention initiatives," he said in an email to the NewsHour.

But recent research has suggested that Americans need to reassess how much they drink. In January, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine produced a report that explored ways the United States could lower death and injuries linked to alcohol-impaired driving. The report, produced in part by Tim Naimi, an associate professor of medicine who studies public health and alcohol at the Boston University School of Medicine and Public Health, said the U.S. has kept taxes on alcohol low and poorly enforces laws governing alcohol consumption.

The United States should lower the legal blood-alcohol concentration from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent, the committee suggested.

Two decades ago, the nation lowered the legal driving limit for blood-alcohol concentrations from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent. At that time, nearly 16,000 people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents, amounting to more than a third of all traffic fatalities. Iny 2016, with a lower legal limit, alcohol played a role in 10,400 people's deaths.

What's next?
"Even among alcohol researchers, there's no universally accepted standard drink definition," researchers at Harvard say. It's unclear what impact this study will have. But the U.S. dietary guidelines are set to be updated again after 2020. The study could prompt U.S. public health experts to rethink how alcohol fits in the American diet and what it means to drink in moderation, Naimi said.

"We need to do a lot better," Naimi said. "People's health and the wellbeing of communities is in the balance."

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How much alcohol is too much? A new study says it's found the number

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When it comes to how alcohol affects your health, guidance - from how drinking affects pregnancy to whether sipping red wine helps your heart - is all over the map. Now, a new major multinational study has another piece of advice: People who consume more than about six drinks per week have a greater risk of premature death.

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“We emailed the freshman class a completely anonymous survey,” Crimson President and undergraduate Robert S. Samuels told NBC News. “We took great lengths (to assure anonymity).”

The Crimson discovered that recruited athletes were more likely to admit to cheating: 20 percent of freshman athletes admitted to cheating on an exam, compared to nine percent of students who were not recruited to play a varsity sport; and 26 percent of recruited athletes said they had cheated on a paper or take-home assignment, compared to 16 percent of non-recruits, the paper reported.

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Some of Harvard's newest members are already guilty of academic dishonesty, according to a recent survey.

Ten percent of Harvard's incoming freshman class recently admitted to cheating on exams prior to heading to the Ivy League institution, and another 42 percent admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set, the university's school newspaper, The Crimson, reported Thursday.

"We emailed the freshman class a completely anonymous survey," Crimson President and undergraduate Robert S. Samuels told NBC News. "We took great lengths (to assure anonymity)."

The Crimson discovered that recruited athletes were more likely to admit to cheating: 20 percent of freshman athletes admitted to cheating on an exam, compared to nine percent of students who were not recruited to play a varsity sport; and 26 percent of recruited athletes said they had cheated on a paper or take-home assignment, compared to 16 percent of non-recruits, the paper reported.

Samuels said more than 1,600 freshman from the class of 2017 were emailed the 10-minute, 60-question survey last month. An estimated 80 percent responded to the survey, he said.

"We were lucky to have a very high response rate," Samuels added.

The school newspaper discovered that the incoming class reported higher rates of cheating than Harvard's class of 2013, as determined by a Crimson senior survey conducted last spring.

The survey also discovered that men were more likely than women to report having cheated, according to The Crimson's website.

This recent data collection is the first part of a series The Crimson is releasing, Samuels said. Parts one and two were released earlier this week and delve into the demographics of Harvard's incoming freshmen with regard to sexual preference, post-graduate expectations and family income.

Samuels said he has yet to hear from university administrators with regard to the survey.

In an email to NBC News, Jeff Neal, Harvard's senior communications officer, said the university has established a committee made up of faculty, staff and students to address the issue of cheating, which "is a national problem in American education," he wrote.

"While the vast majority of Harvard and other students do their work honestly, beginning this year Harvard College has implemented a new, more robust strategy of communicating with all students, particularly first-year students, about the importance - and the ways to achieve - academic integrity," Neal wrote.

Neal declared that Harvard continues "to beat national averages in reports of cheating" and that the university aspires to strengthen their "culture of integrity."

A 2012 cheating scandal at Harvard sent shockwaves through the academic world after an investigation revealed dozens of students swapped and plagiarized answers on an exam for a course called "Introduction to Congress."

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Survey: 42 percent of Harvard's incoming freshman class cheated on homework

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Some of Harvard's newest members are already guilty of academic dishonesty, according to a recent survey. Ten percent of Harvard's incoming freshman class recently admitted to cheating on exams prior to heading to the Ivy League institution, and another 42 percent admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set, the university's school newspaper, The Crimson, reported Thursday.

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"Lack of sleep puts you at higher risk for colds, first experimental study finds."

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Moms and sleep researchers alike have stressed the importance of solid shuteye for years, especially when it comes to fighting off the common cold. Their stance is a sensible one-skimping on sleep weakens the body's natural defense system, leaving it more vulnerable to viruses. But the connection relied largely on self-reported, subjective surveys-until now. For the first time, a team of scientists reports that they have locked down the link experimentally, showing that sleep-deprived individuals are more than four times more likely to catch a cold than those who are well-rested.

"It's very nice to see an experiment looking at sleep as an important regulator for specific antiviral immune responses," says Michael Irwin, a psychoneuroimmunologist at University of California (UC), Los Angeles, who is not involved with the study. "In this particular case, there's a hard clinical outcome showing [sleep deprivation] and susceptibility to the common cold."

In a carefully controlled two-part experiment, scientists began by collecting nightly sleep data on 164 healthy individuals for 1 week. Participants were asked to record the times at which they went to bed and woke up. They also wore small watchlike devices that use a technique called wrist actigraphy to monitor movement (much like a Fitbit tracks activity) while they slept. Aric Prather, lead author of the study and a sleep researcher at UC San Francisco, says that he and his colleagues associate the wrist actigraphy data with being awake-if during a reported sleep period, the wrist band records movement, they take that as an indication of wakefulness, and subtract the time spent moving from the hours asleep.

Then came part two: the cold infections. Scientists quarantined participants in a hotel and gave them nose drops containing rhinovirus-the virus responsible for the common cold. They then closed off the hotel floor for 5 days, letting the hosts' immune system do the rest. To ensure the most accurate results, researchers drew participants' blood before the viral exposure to test for levels of rhinovirus antibody, a defensive agent in the immune system that recognizes and attacks rhinovirus. If they found high, preexisting levels of the protective protein, they removed the participant from the study so that prior immunity would not bias the infection rates of the group.

In order to officially register as "sick," participants had to exhibit one "objective sign of illness" and one other immune response. Signs of illness revolved around mucus production. After viral exposure, scientists collected used tissues daily and, essentially, weighed the snot. Ten grams or more counted as a sign of illness. They also looked at congestion. The researchers dripped a harmless dye into participants' noses and waited to see how long it took to reach the back of their throats; longer than 35 minutes tallied as a sign of illness. A valid immune response required one of two things: A mucus sample flushed from a participant's nasal passage had to show signs of viral replication or blood work needed to show new levels of the rhinovirus-fighting antibody.

Of the 164 participants, 124 received the actual virus instead of the control, and 48 of them got sick. By checking the sleep duration of the sick participants, researchers report in the current issue of SLEEP that individuals who slept fewer than 5 hours a night were 4.5 times more likely to get sick than those who slept 7 hours or more. Those who slept 5 to 6 hours were 4.2 times more likely to get sick, but those who slept 6 to 7 hours per night were at no greater risk of catching the cold than those who slept 7 hours or more, suggesting that there's a sleep threshold for potent immune defense.

"Sleep often takes a back seat to other health behaviors like nutrition and exercise," Prather says. "I think this [experiment] provides some really clear evidence for those people who get less than 5 or 6 hours of sleep-there really is a clear biological cost."

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Lack of sleep puts you at higher risk for colds, first experimental study finds

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Moms and sleep researchers alike have stressed the importance of solid shuteye for years, especially when it comes to fighting off the common cold. Their stance is a sensible one-skimping on sleep weakens the body's natural defense system, leaving it more vulnerable to viruses. But the connection relied largely on self-reported, subjective surveys-until now.

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In one study, a heart benefit for chocolate.
"The scientists followed 1,169 non-diabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack. Each filled out a standardized health questionnaire that included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months."
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15choc.html

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For this observational clinical study, questionnaires were sent to 1,000 randomly selected patients diagnosed with cancer between 2003 and 2007 in one cancer center. Data were statistically analyzed to determine the likelihood of a patient quitting smoking after being diagnosed with cancer.

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In order to access this website, please configure your browser to support cookies.

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"In the case when stressors (for example, strong light or mechanical damage) only act on certain parts of the plant organism, special stress signals propagate in the plant. One of the primary responses of the plant to local stressors is to generate and propagate electrical stress signals, in particular, the variation potential."

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Electrical signals in plants affect photosynthetic activity

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Plants are constantly exposed to various stressors, including drought, fluctuations in temperature and light intensity, attacks by insects, etc. Since plants have an attached lifestyle, the only way to survive the impact of the stress factor is to quickly adapt their metabolism to the changing conditions.

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After Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his concern about food wastage last week, the NDA government is preparing to fix portion sizes of dishes served in star hotels and restaurants. While the Prime Minister is worried about food habits, people don't seem to be too bothered about what and how much they eat or how it affects their life in the long run.

Dheera weighed 92 kg and found it difficult to walk, forget hitting the gym for a tough workout. She never realised that over the years, her gorging on burgers, parathas, aaloo tikki, oily food and aerated drinks would slowly but surely make her obese and endanger her life. In just five to six years, a 45 kg Dheera shot up to 92 kg. She was just 18.

"Those years were a nightmare for me. Because of my weight-related complex, I gradually lost my friends. I couldn't face relatives who would comment on my weight. Obesity restricted my physical activities and disturbed my menstruation cycle. I used to be embarrassed, depressed and totally isolated," says Dheera.

She is not alone. Nikhil from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh weighed 145 kg when he was 17. "I consumed a litre of cold drinks every day. Burgers, pizzas and fried potatoes were my favourite food," he says. Nikhil's obesity caused him respiratory problems, joint pain and borderline diabetes.

Fortunately for Dheera and Nikhil, there was hope. They underwent bariatric surgeries to cut their fat. Dheera lost 35 kg while Nikhil now weighs 84 kg.

Bariatric surgery was also a life changer for Egyptian Eman Ahmed Abdulati, once the world's heaviest woman weighing 490 kg. Since her arrival in Mumbai on February 9, she has lost 242 kg after a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy-removal of
75 per cent of her stomach to limit her food intake-after which her weight dropped to 340 kg. She now weighs 248 kg.
Medical journal Lancet stated in a recent article that India is the third most obese country in the world. Here, 46 million people suffer from obesity, which in turn causes lifestyle diseases. According to World Health Organization, obesity in India rose one-and-a-half times in the last quarter-century. Heart diseases and diabetes together result in 28 per cent of all deaths in India.

A March 2017 study by the Cognitive Neuroscience Society says that continuous sleep deprivation makes the brain more sensitive to food smells. People with such sleeping patterns are more likely to eat unhealthy snacks and junk foods-such as pizza, chocolate, packaged cookies, ice cream, French fries, cheeseburgers, soda, cake, cheese, bacon, fried chicken, rolls and popcorn-which have been found to be the most addictive high-calorie foods by the National Centre for Biotechnology information, the US.
For the study-which was shared at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society's annual meeting in San Francisco-researchers analysed adults who had slept just four hours a day. When tired (sleep deprived), participants showed greater brain activity in two areas involved in olfaction (the sense of smell) in response to food smells. When they were rested, this activity diminished.

"Dheera and Nikhil were not the only ones who had suffered being overweight and had problems due to unhealthy food habits. This problem is part and parcel of the masses, especially amongst the adolescent and middle-aged," says Dr Pradeep Choubey, head, Department of Bariatric Surgery, Max Hospital, Delhi. "In the last five years, the number of adolescent cases in the age group of 11-18 years has increased by 15-20 per cent. More than 50 per cent of cases coming for surgery are in the age bracket of 40-50 years. Bariatric surgery cases have increased 12-fold in the last decade in our hospital. Nearly 87,000 bariatric surgeries have been performed across in the same period. In 60 per cent of cases, unhealthy food habits are the main contributing factors."

Experts believe more people are eating unhealthy food. Over the years, food habits have also changed. Instead of dal-sabzi, people prefer to eat pizzas, burgers or spicy chicken at food outlets. Complex carbs have been replaced by refined foods and oil. Water intake has been replaced by beverages rich in sugar and chemicals. People are eating less cereals, replacing them with more fat and snacks," says Ritika Majumdar, head, Nutrition Department, Max Hospital.
Higher consumption of alcohol and aerated beverages is another major factor for obesity.
Doctors advise concentrating on a balanced diet with moderate regular exercise instead of spending more time in the gym. "Burning off a barfi after a meal needs 30 minutes of brisk walking," says Dr Majumdar.

Just one pizza along with an aerated drink and a couple of sweets fulfils the requirement of total calories required per day.
"People who lead a light and sedentary lifestyle category require 1,500 to 1,800 calories per day. Those who are in field jobs and exercise require 2,000 to 2,200 calories per day, and people who are into heavier work such as rickshaw pullers or construction workers need at least 3,000 to 3,200 calories," says Sonia Narang, a senior dietician in Delhi.
Fast and processed food contain lots of salt, sugar and saturated unhealthy fats. Regular and over-
consumption of this food makes us fat and prone to diseases.

Proteins, considered the body's building block and a repair agent, should be consumed at about 1 gm/kg of a person's weight. Indians consume excess starch and fat but less protein. "Around 50-60 per cent of vegetarians and 10 per cent of non-vegetarian patients coming to us for dietary counselling have protein deficiency. They are aged 25-47. About 40 per cent of patients suffer from deficiency of micro nutrients such as potassium, zinc, iron, magnesium and vitamins," says Dr Majumdar.

A consumer survey conducted by Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) across seven major cities says that nine out of 10 Indians consume less than adequate proteins daily. It added 91 per cent of vegetarians and 85 per cent of non-vegetarians were found deficient. Protein intake of 88 per cent people was less than the ideal amount, indicating a huge gap in protein requirements and consumption for each individual. The survey added that Mumbai had the lowest protein gap of 68 per cent, in contrast to Delhi's high gap of 99 per cent. They interviewed 1,260 respondents, which included males and females between the age of 30 and 55 years.
"There has been a drastic change in our dietary pattern over the years. On one hand we are eating unhealthy food, and on the other, we have sedentary lives, which directly increases lifestyle diseases," says Dr T Lomgava, director, National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad. "Due to this, we are struggling with the problem of under nutrition (38 per cent among children) and over nutrition among children."

A few years ago, a study conducted by AIIMS, Delhi, revealed that children from the elite class suffer from over nutrition. They eat more fats and calories in the form of fast and processed food, but their intake of vitamins and micro nutrients are far less than required. A study in Vadodara's elite schools revealed that dietary practices and physical activities were found unhealthy among these children, who were overnourished. Another study stated that overnutrition is emerging as an epidemic in the country and may increase the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases when these children turn adults.
A consumer survey conducted by IMRB broke the myth that vegetarians are healthier than non-vegetarian. Almost half the participants surveyed were lifelong vegetarians, and yet the rates of obesity and cardiac disease were found similar to those among non-vegetarians. More vegetarians than non-vegetarians were diabetic. This was because vegetarians eat large amounts of high-glycaemic carbohydrates, potatoes and fried food, and frequently reuse cooking oil.

Their diet does not include enough raw foods, salads and fruits, considered essential to a good vegetarian diet.

Another study by the World Health Organization (WHO) says Indian consumers across all income groups are consuming less than the recommended quantity of at least 400 gm (or five daily servings with an average serving size of 80 gm, recommended by WHO) of fruits and vegetables. People, especially youngsters, are resorting to cheap and unhealthy food options that are mostly snacks. On an average, the Indian diet pattern is skewed towards cereals, and fruits and vegetables account for only 9 per cent of the total calorie intake (NSSO 2014).

Their lifestyle is the topmost reason for their inability to meet the recommendation, the WHO study says. Lifestyle is a key reason for low consumption across all age groups but more so among the younger lot (18-35 years).

Losing 5-10 per cent of weight can reduce chances of developing heart disease and having a stroke. Increasing cases of diabetes, knee and joint problems are also directly linked to being overweight. Few know that consumption of fast food also hits our brain functioning. Excess consumption of trans fats in fried and processed foods can send mixed signals to the brain, which makes it difficult to process what and how much you have eaten and how hungry you are.

Studies indicate that eating foods high in sugar and fat changes the chemical activity of the brain, making it more dependent on such foods. When these foods are discontinued, it creates withdrawal symptoms, which can lead to inability in dealing with stress and make you depressed. It has also been proved that eating junk food for five days per week regularly can deteriorate memory.

Too much fatty food and sweets can substantially increase insulin levels and cause Type 2 Diabetes. With higher insulin levels, the brain stops responding to this hormone and becomes resistant to it. This can restrict our ability to think, recall or create memories.

"With an increasing per capita income, people have more purchasing power and now opt for easy and quick food. Opening of a number of fast food chains also provides easy options to have junk food. People new in cities prefer fast food; so do working couples," adds Dr Lomgava.
India's fast food industry has doubled between 2013 and 2016, and is estimated to be worth $1.12 billion. Unlike China, which saw a decline in fast food sales last year, India's market is expected to grow due to changing consumer preferences and large young population.
Experts say Indians need to change and improve their food habits. According to them, snacking is one of India's biggest health problems. While the world sits down for dinner in the evening after work, most urban Indians reach home between 6 and 8 p.m. and having tea with snacks.

A survey by global information, data, and measurement company A C Nielsen reported that the highest consumption of unhealthy snacks such as biscuits, chips and namkeens takes place pre-dinner in India. The aftermath of eating high-carbohydrate and large meals late at night puts us at a hormonal disadvantage and favours easy fat deposition. Each tea break increases the consumption of added sugars. Snacks are low in protective nutrients such as minerals, vitamins and antioxidants; this increases our risk of developing metabolic abnormalities and obesity.

The right foundation to good health is to choose food products rich in nutrients with a balanced amount of nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates and a little bit of fat as well.

Unfortunately, the concept has been changing. "Over the years, there is transmission in nutritional values. It's time to address problems related to our food habits and changing food patterns of food," says Dr G S Toteja, head, Department of Nutrition at Indian Council of Medical Research. "We need proper scientific data on food changing patterns in Indians to persuade the government to make strict rules on unhealthy food." In July 2014, the government increased taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages by 5 per cent to reduce their consumption.

To combat unhealthy eating habits, the government is considering raising taxes on junk food and sugary drinks through a 'fat tax'. An 11-member team constituted by the government has suggested that the money collected from these taxes should go to the health services. "FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) is working on mechanisms to regulate consumption of junk food," says Health Secretary C K Mishra, who is part of the team.
Indians are eating their way into death, blissfully unaware of the ticking bomb in them. They need to act fast on cutting down 'bad' food before they jump from the frying pan into the fire of deadly diseases.

Bariatric Surgery
A surgical option for overweight people to lose weight. The surgery is of four types: Laparoscopic Gastric Band surgery, Laparoscopic Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy Gastric Bypass, and Bilopancreatric Diversion with Duodenal Switch. Weight loss is achieved by reducing the size of the stomach with a gastric band or through removal of a portion of the stomach (sleeve gastrectomy or biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch) or by resecting and re-routing the small intestine to a small stomach pouch (gastric bypass surgery).

Balanced Diet
In which the required intake of calories is in fixed proportions, of which 50-60 per cent calories should come from complexed carbs such as wheat, ragi, oats, etc., and 15-20 per cent from proteins such as dal, curd, paneer, milk. For non-vegetarians, egg, chicken, mutton and fish should comprise 20-25 per cent.
Meals should include fruits.

Nikhil, now 84 kg
From Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Nikhil weighed 145 kg when he was 17. "I consumed a litre of cold drinks every day. Burgers, pizzas and fried potatoes were my favourite foods," he says. Nikhil's obesity caused him respiratory problems, joint pain and borderline diabetes.

Dheera, now 57 kg
She weighed 92 kg and found it difficult to walk. She never realised that her gorging on burgers, parathas, aaloo tikki, oily food and sodas would slowly but surely make her obese and endanger her life. In just five to six years, a 45 kg Dheera shot up to 92 kg. She was just 18.

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After Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his concern about food wastage last week, the NDA government is preparing to fix portion sizes of dishes served in star hotels and restaurants. While the Prime Minister is worried about food habits, people don't seem to be too bothered about what and how much they eat or how it affects their life in the long run.

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"A new study led by anthropology professor Zaneta Thayer ’08 has found that humans and other vertebrate species that are exposed to prenatal stress tend to produce higher..."

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by Sunny Drescher | 4/23/18 2:30am

Be it animals or humans, stress is thought to be a part of life, but what if that started before birth?

A new study led by anthropology professor Zaneta Thayer '08 has found that humans and other vertebrate species that are exposed to prenatal stress tend to produce higher stress hormones after birth. Emory University anthropology professor Adrian Jaeggi, Northwestern University doctoral candidate Andrew Kim, Thayer and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign doctoral candidate Meredith Wilson conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of prenatal stress on stress hormone production in offspring. Their analysis, which was published in Scientific Reports, covered 114 results from 39 observational and experimental studies across 14 vertebrates.

The study focused on the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis across species, which is the physiological system that produces stress hormones in all vertebrates. The researchers tested the strength of the effect of prenatal stress on offspring hormone levels for a variety of characteristics, according to Thayer. These characteristics included sex of offspring, age of offspring, whether the species were mammals and other temporal factors relating to the gestation period.

The study found that the effect size was similar across species, which indicates that researchers may be able to study animals' stress responses and apply those findings to human research. This is particularly beneficial for studying maternal stress in humans because of potential ethical complications that could arise from experimental tests conducted on humans, Wilson said.

"Being able to know that we can apply animal models, and that these animal models are actually representing something very similar that is happening in humans, is very important for future research," Wilson said.

Additionally, the study found that experimental research designs showed stronger effects than purely observational studies. While observational studies sometimes offer a more "volatile approach," they are often the only source of information available to researchers, according to Jaeggi.

The combination of these two main findings indicates that experimental studies of other vertebrates may be effective methods for researching prenatal stress and subsequent responses in humans, Wilson noted.

Kim said that this study provides "a more granular understanding of the severity of prenatal stress exposure and to what extent it is really going to impact the offspring."

The study developed from Thayer's ongoing interest in prenatal environments and how they influence offspring growth, development and later life health, she said. She worked on related projects while on Dartmouth's anthropology foreign study program in New Zealand when she was an undergraduate at the College.

Existing literature on prenatal stress has historically interpreted stress hormones in offspring as an adaptive response where offspring's increased stress hormones help them be vigilant and avoid predators, Thayer said. These increased stress hormones additionally increase risk for developing poor health outcomes later in life. Thayer described the "trade-off" between increased chances of survival and decreased immune, metabolic and reproductive functions as a result of stress hormones.

Thayer said she wanted to try "to understand whether this kind of pattern is consistent across species," so she initially conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the literature with Kim and Wilson.

After seeing her present the results of her literature review at the annual American Anthropological Association in 2015, Jaeggi said he approached Thayer to suggest that her study could undertake more quantitative components and become an empirical meta-analysis.

The purpose of meta-analyses is "to survey and synthesize the state of a field," Jaeggi said. He said he saw potential for Thayer's study to quantitatively measure the strength of the effect of prenatal stress on offspring stress hormones and combine the effects from different studies into an overall measure.

Wilson said that in addition to yielding substantive results, the study also produced novel quantitative data and information about the function and feedback of the hypothalamus and pituitary and adrenal glands that researchers can use in the future.

Though the study shows generally positive effects of prenatal stress on offspring stress hormone levels, Jaeggi noted that more work is still necessary to evaluate the effect of prenatal stress on later life response.

Beyond the study's evolutionary and biological implications, Thayer added that there is room for more research to be done on the factors that influence stress.

"What this kind of research suggests is that some individuals might be predisposed to developing poor health in adulthood based on stress experiences in their moms before they're even born," Thayer said.

She said that she is interested next in researching what factors may mitigate "the impact of stress on biology," because not everyone experiences stress in the same way.

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Study shows exposure to stress before birth could have long-lasting effects

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by Sunny Drescher | 4/23/18 2:30am Be it animals or humans, stress is thought to be a part of life, but what if that started before birth? A new study led by anthropology professor Zaneta Thayer '08 has found that humans and other vertebrate species that are exposed to prenatal stress tend to produce higher stress hormones after birth.

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"the main objective of our study could be undertaken, namely the reduction of intergroup friction

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Classics in the History of Psychology -- Sherif (1954/1961) Chapter7

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At this stage of the experiment, the main objective of our study could be undertaken, namely the reduction of intergroup friction. There are now two distinct groups in an unmistakable state of friction with one another. The groups exhibited in word and deed repeated hostility toward one another; they standardized unflattering attitudes and stereotypes toward one another.

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The between-subjects experimental study design was adapted from that developed by Henriksen et al. [4]. Within each classroom, participants were randomly exposed to one of the three point-of-sale conditions under the guise of pre-testing a news story written for teenagers.

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experimental study of effects on schoolchildren of exposure to point-of-sale cigarette advertising and pack displays | Health Education Research | Oxford Academic

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As usual avenues for tobacco advertising have become increasingly unavailable, the visual presence of the cigarette pack and the in-store pack display has become an essential means of communicating brand imagery for tobacco companies [ 1, 2].

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"In an observational study, decisions to use specific 🤬 are made by local physicians, according to their perceptions of the risks and benefits for particular patients."

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"Retail’s brick-and-mortar woes are taking a toll on the workforce, a new survey confirms. Employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, which provides outplacement services to laid-off employees, found that of the 36,081 jobs that companies announced plans to cut in April, 7,844 were in retail, far surpassing all other industries."

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Retail's brick-and-mortar woes are taking a toll on the workforce, a new survey confirms. Employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, which provides outplacement services to laid-off employees, found that of the 36,081 jobs that companies announced plans to cut in April, 7,844 were in retail, far surpassing all other industries.

The latest figures are consistent with the trend so far this year: Retail accounts for 64,370, or more than a third, of the 176,460 job cuts announced in 2018. (The next-closest industry, health care, has cut just 17,450 by comparison.) Challenger blames the changing brick-and-mortar landscape for the slashed workforce, having tracked nearly 2,500 store closures this year so far, on top of the 9,241 announced in 2017. And declines haven't shown signs of slowing down; retail's cuts are up 28.4 percent from the same period last year.

While overall, the job market is strong, with rising wages at the high and low end of the pay scale and near-maximum employment, department stores, general merchandise, and clothing and accessories stores have bucked the trend. As automation and e-commerce become increasingly central to the industry, traditional sales floor positions are losing out to warehouse jobs and technology-focused roles, while consumers are spending more on experiential categories like dining and travel.

And while retail bankruptcies and downsizing are of course significant factors in the job cuts, another analysis this week found that sales associates are losing their jobs up to twice as fast as stores are shuttering, thanks to a rise in small-format shops in place of sprawling department stores, and the advent of self-checkout.

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Retail Leads All Sectors in Job Cuts This Year, Survey Finds

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Retail's brick-and-mortar woes are taking a toll on the workforce, a new survey confirms. Employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, which provides outplacement services to laid-off employees, found that of the 36,081 jobs that companies announced plans to cut in April, 7,844 were in retail, far surpassing all other industries.

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CNBC uses data to contract how many doughnuts the US ends up eating to show the consumption of these sweets is growing at a fast rate.

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Paul Johnson | E+ | Getty Images

Cops love them. They make just about any cup of coffee taste better. And Americans can't get enough of them, scarfing down more than half a billion dollars worth last year bought from convenience stores alone.

That's a lot of dollars to doughnuts.

Friday is National Doughnut Day, a celebration of one of America's favorite reasons to take a break. But estimates are hard to come by for just how much lost productivity can be blamed on doughnut consumption.

Doughnut data isn't easy to find, in part, because millions of them are churned out by private bakeries that produce a wide range of other goodies that aren't broken out by industry trade groups.

But convenience stores are one of the most popular places to pick up a quick bite-and offer a useful apples-to-apples comparison for American's snack-food preferences.

Read More Chipotle testing a new menu item

While doughnut sales may not have the heft of salty competitors like snack-food heavyweights potato chips or dried meat snacks, they hold their own against sweet pastries like cookies, Danish and other baked treats, according to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.

Last year, convenience stores sold some 391 million doughnuts (on an annualized basis) for sales of about $580 million, according to the latest IRI data.

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Dollars to doughnuts? US gobbles half-billion worth

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Paul Johnson | E+ | Getty Images Cops love them. They make just about any cup of coffee taste better. And Americans can't get enough of them, scarfing down more than half a billion dollars worth last year bought from convenience stores alone. That's a lot of dollars to doughnuts.

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"This was an observational study and not a randomized clinical trial, and that correlation isn’t the same as causation."

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A Harvard Study Says 5 Habits Can Help You Live Way Longer. This One Is the Most Important

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A new Harvard study identifies five healthy habits that can dramatically increase life expectancy. But this one is the most effective.

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Information from NSDUH is used to support prevention and treatment programs, monitor substance use trends, estimate the need for treatment and inform public health policy.

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What is NSDUH?

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) provides up-to-date information on tobacco, alcohol, and drug use, mental health and other health-related issues in the United States.

NSDUH began in 1971 and is conducted every year in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This year almost 70,000 people will be interviewed for this important study.

Information from NSDUH is used to support prevention and treatment programs, monitor substance use trends, estimate the need for treatment and inform public health policy.

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The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) provides up-to-date information on tobacco, alcohol, and drug use, mental health and other health-related issues in the United States. NSDUH began in 1971 and is conducted every year in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

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"In this multicenter, retrospective, observational study, researchers analyzed the different phases of lung transplants in patients with scleroderma, namely patient selection, rate of survival, and identification of prognostic factors."

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Patients with scleroderma who undergo lung transplants have similar survival rates to patients who get lung transplants due to other diseases, according to a new study.

Freedom from chronic lung allograft dysfunction - a set of pathological conditions that cause a transplanted lung to stop breathing - is also similar between the two groups of patients.

Findings were reported in the study, "Lung transplantation for scleroderma lung disease: an international, multicenter, observational cohort study," published in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation.

Scleroderma is a rare autoimmune disease affecting the skin and several internal organs. Due to its multisystemic nature, lung transplants are rarely performed in these patients. However, similar post-transplant outcomes have been reported in recent studies between scleroderma patients and patients with other causes of interstitial lung disease (ILD) - a group of diseases affecting the interstitium, the tissue and space around the air sacs of the lungs.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension ( PAH) is another major complication associated with scleroderma. It is not clear if scleroderma-associated PAH influences the outcomes of a lung transplant.

In this multicenter, retrospective, observational study, researchers analyzed the different phases of lung transplants in patients with scleroderma, namely patient selection, rate of survival, and identification of prognostic factors.

The study included 90 patients with scleroderma, all of whom had lung or heart-lung transplants between 1993 and 2016 at 14 European transplant centers. PAH diagnosis was made through right heart catheterization, based on international guidelines.

Survival rates in scleroderma patients were 81% one year after a lung transplant, 68% after three years, and 61% after five years. These survival rates were similar to those reported after lung transplants in patients with other diseases.

The frequency of major post-transplant complications in scleroderma patients, such as primary graft dysfunction (an acute lung injury that occurs within the first 72 hours after lung transplant) and chronic lung allograft dysfunction, was not higher than that reported for other lung diseases requiring transplants.

Researchers found that scleroderma patients who were female and those with PAH were associated with lower survival rates. The risk of death in female scleroderma patients with PAH was three-fold higher than in males without PAH.

"In conclusion, our study adds valuable evidence that scleroderma per se should not be considered a contraindication to lung transplant candidacy. Female gender and PAH were associated with worse survival but not to the extent that these factors should constitute contraindications," the researchers wrote.

"Further research is necessary to identify patient characteristics and modifiable risk factors allowing both standardized patient selection for lung transplantation and improvements in post-transplant outcomes," the team said.

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Lung Transplants in Scleroderma Patients Safe and Effective, Study Finds

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Patients with scleroderma who undergo lung transplants have similar survival rates to patients who get lung transplants due to other diseases, according to a new study. Freedom from chronic lung allograft dysfunction - a set of pathological conditions that cause a transplanted lung to stop breathing - is also similar between the two groups of patients.

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Noah
"Subjects improved significantly on all 11 measures. Agents improved significantly on 10 measures. A significant positive correlation was found between the amount of prayer the agents did and their scores on the five objective tests."

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An experimental study of the effects of distant, intercessory prayer on self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. - PubMed - NCBI

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Altern Ther Health Med. 1997 Nov;3(6):38-53. Clinical Trial; Randomized Controlled Trial

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"In response to a Gallup Youth Survey conducted between Jan. 22 and March 9*, one in five teenagers (20%) said they have tried 🤬 (79% said they have not), and about 3 in 10 (27%) said they have used alcohol (72% said they have not). These percentages are similar to those found last year; according to the January-February 2003 Gallup Youth Survey, 20% of teens said they had used 🤬 and 30% said they had used alcohol."

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The Intelligencer Record, a small community newspaper outside Philadelphia, recently published a story about a teenage girl who entered drug rehabilitation to end a two-year drug addiction. The addiction began when she tried prescription painkillers out of boredom and curiosity at the age of 17. She eventually ran away from the rehabilitation center and her parents have not heard from her since.

Sadly, scenes similar to this are played out all too often across the country, leaving behind a trail of agonized families, grieving friends, and anguished communities and schools. How big of a problem is alcohol and drug use among American teenagers? And what about the abuse of over-the-counter cold medications -- referred to as "skittling" among teens?

In response to a Gallup Youth Survey conducted between Jan. 22 and March 9*, one in five teenagers (20%) said they have tried marijuana (79% said they have not), and about 3 in 10 (27%) said they have used alcohol (72% said they have not). These percentages are similar to those found last year; according to the January-February 2003 Gallup Youth Survey, 20% of teens said they had used marijuana and 30% said they had used alcohol.

While only a minority of teens admit to using marijuana or alcohol, a majority are concerned about the problem of drug abuse among their friends. Seventy-two percent of teens characterize abuse of illegal drugs such as marijuana and cocaine as either a "very serious" (52%) or "somewhat serious" (20%) health issue among their teenaged friends, and 74% feel that alcohol abuse is a very serious (42%) or somewhat serious (32%) problem. In addition, about half of teens (52%) see abuse of legal, over-the-counter remedies such as cold medicine, recently identified as a growing trend among teens, as a very serious (28%) or somewhat serious (25%) health issue among their peers.
Gender, Age Affect Alcohol and Drug Use
Teenage boys are much more likely than teenage girls to say they have tried marijuana (28% compared with 12%), and older teens (16- to 17-year-olds) are nearly three times as likely as younger teens (13- to 15-year-olds) to have tried it (32% vs. 12%). Alcohol use is also greater among older teens than younger teens (37% vs. 20%).
Bottom Line
According to a report published by the American Medical Association, more than half of all American teenagers will have tried an illegal drug by the time they finish high school. But there are signs of progress; a report released last December by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) documented a decline in teen drug abuse over a two-year period (NIDA estimates that 400,000 fewer teens used drugs in 2003 than in 2001).

NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow said in a press release at the time the NIDA findings were made public: "We are confident that our concerted effort to provide students and teachers with informative, accurate information about addiction and drug abuse will contribute to further reductions in drug use." Gallup's ongoing tracking of these trends among the nation's youth will help reveal whether Volkow's optimism is justified.

* The Gallup Youth Survey is conducted via an Internet methodology provided by Knowledge Networks, using an online research panel that is designed to be representative of the entire U.S. population. Self-administered survey approaches to sensitive topics such as those covered in this report have been shown to yield more admissions of socially undesirable behavior than surveys using standard telephone interviewing methods. Seven hundred eighty-five respondents, aged 13 to 17, completed the current questionnaire, between Jan. 22 and March 9, 2004. For results based on a random sample of this size, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

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Youth Survey: Alcohol and Drug Use Among Teens

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The Intelligencer Record, a small community newspaper outside Philadelphia, recently published a story about a teenage girl who entered drug rehabilitation to end a two-year drug addiction. The addiction began when she tried prescription painkillers out of boredom and curiosity at the age of 17.

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"In a carefully controlled two-part experiment, scientists began by collecting nightly sleep data on 164 healthy individuals for 1 week."

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Moms and sleep researchers alike have stressed the importance of solid shuteye for years, especially when it comes to fighting off the common cold. Their stance is a sensible one-skimping on sleep weakens the body's natural defense system, leaving it more vulnerable to viruses. But the connection relied largely on self-reported, subjective surveys-until now. For the first time, a team of scientists reports that they have locked down the link experimentally, showing that sleep-deprived individuals are more than four times more likely to catch a cold than those who are well-rested.

"It's very nice to see an experiment looking at sleep as an important regulator for specific antiviral immune responses," says Michael Irwin, a psychoneuroimmunologist at University of California (UC), Los Angeles, who is not involved with the study. "In this particular case, there's a hard clinical outcome showing [sleep deprivation] and susceptibility to the common cold."

In a carefully controlled two-part experiment, scientists began by collecting nightly sleep data on 164 healthy individuals for 1 week. Participants were asked to record the times at which they went to bed and woke up. They also wore small watchlike devices that use a technique called wrist actigraphy to monitor movement (much like a Fitbit tracks activity) while they slept. Aric Prather, lead author of the study and a sleep researcher at UC San Francisco, says that he and his colleagues associate the wrist actigraphy data with being awake-if during a reported sleep period, the wrist band records movement, they take that as an indication of wakefulness, and subtract the time spent moving from the hours asleep.

Then came part two: the cold infections. Scientists quarantined participants in a hotel and gave them nose drops containing rhinovirus-the virus responsible for the common cold. They then closed off the hotel floor for 5 days, letting the hosts' immune system do the rest. To ensure the most accurate results, researchers drew participants' blood before the viral exposure to test for levels of rhinovirus antibody, a defensive agent in the immune system that recognizes and attacks rhinovirus. If they found high, preexisting levels of the protective protein, they removed the participant from the study so that prior immunity would not bias the infection rates of the group.

In order to officially register as "sick," participants had to exhibit one "objective sign of illness" and one other immune response. Signs of illness revolved around mucus production. After viral exposure, scientists collected used tissues daily and, essentially, weighed the snot. Ten grams or more counted as a sign of illness. They also looked at congestion. The researchers dripped a harmless dye into participants' noses and waited to see how long it took to reach the back of their throats; longer than 35 minutes tallied as a sign of illness. A valid immune response required one of two things: A mucus sample flushed from a participant's nasal passage had to show signs of viral replication or blood work needed to show new levels of the rhinovirus-fighting antibody.

Of the 164 participants, 124 received the actual virus instead of the control, and 48 of them got sick. By checking the sleep duration of the sick participants, researchers report in the current issue of SLEEP that individuals who slept fewer than 5 hours a night were 4.5 times more likely to get sick than those who slept 7 hours or more. Those who slept 5 to 6 hours were 4.2 times more likely to get sick, but those who slept 6 to 7 hours per night were at no greater risk of catching the cold than those who slept 7 hours or more, suggesting that there's a sleep threshold for potent immune defense.

"Sleep often takes a back seat to other health behaviors like nutrition and exercise," Prather says. "I think this [experiment] provides some really clear evidence for those people who get less than 5 or 6 hours of sleep-there really is a clear biological cost."

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Lack of sleep puts you at higher risk for colds, first experimental study finds

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Moms and sleep researchers alike have stressed the importance of solid shuteye for years, especially when it comes to fighting off the common cold. Their stance is a sensible one-skimping on sleep weakens the body's natural defense system, leaving it more vulnerable to viruses. But the connection relied largely on self-reported, subjective surveys-until now.

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In a 15-year follow-up study, people taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 61% less likely to suffer a stroke than those taking a sauna once a week.

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Frequent sauna bathing is associated with a reduced risk of stroke, according to a new international study. In a 15-year follow-up study, people taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 61% less likely to suffer a stroke than those taking a sauna once a week. This is the first prospective large-scale study on this topic, and the findings were reported in Neurology.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, placing a heavy human and economic burden on societies. The reduced risk associated with sauna bathing was found by a team of scientists from the Universities of Eastern Finland, Bristol, Leicester, Atlanta, Cambridge and Innsbruck.

The findings are based on the population-based Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor (KIHD) study and involved 1,628 men and women aged 53 to 74 years living in the eastern part of Finland. Based on their frequency of taking traditional Finnish sauna baths (relative humidity 10-20%), the study participants were divided into three groups: those taking a sauna once a week, those taking a sauna 2-3 times a week, and those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week.

The more frequently saunas were taken, the lower was the risk of stroke. Compared to people taking one sauna session per week, the risk was decreased by 14% among those with 2-3 sessions and 61% among those with 4-7 sessions. The association persisted even when taking into account conventional stroke risk factors, such as age, sex, diabetes, body mass index, blood lipids, alcohol consumption, physical activity and socio-economic status. The strength of association was similar in men and women.

Previous results from the KIHD study at the University of Eastern Finland have shown that frequent sauna bathing also significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. According to the researchers, mechanisms driving the association of sauna bathing with reduced stroke may include a reduction in blood pressure, stimulation of immune system, a positive impact on the autonomic nervous system, and an improved cardiovascular function. In a recent experimental study, the same group of scientists also showed that sauna bathing has acute effects on the stiffness of the arterial wall, hence influencing blood pressure and cardiac function parameters.

Journal Reference:

Setor K. Kunutsor, Hassan Khan, Francesco Zaccardi, Tanjaniina Laukkanen, Peter Willeit, Jari A. Laukkanen. Sauna bathing reduces the risk of stroke in Finnish men and women. Neurology, 2018; 10.1212/WNL.0000000000005606 DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000005606

Cite This Page:

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heart disease; stroke prevention; hypertension; elder care; caregiving; stroke; brain injury; gender difference

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Frequent sauna bathing reduces risk of stroke

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Frequent sauna bathing is associated with a reduced risk of stroke, according to a new international study. In a 15-year follow-up study, people taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 61% less likely to suffer a stroke than those taking a sauna once a week.

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One Twin gave up fat, the other sugar.

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Twins Alexander and Chris Van Tulleken set out to find out which is worse

They were allowed to eat as much as they wanted and exercised the same

Alexander couldn't have carbs and Chris was allowed only a tiny bit of fat

By avoiding mirrors and scales you can fool yourself about encroaching middle-aged spread, but it's much harder when you have an identical twin with whom you can compare yourself.

My twin Chris and I have each gained and lost a lot of weight since we qualified as doctors 11 years ago.

At my lightest, I was 9½ st - skinny for someone who's 6ft. But then I moved to the U.S., my life became sedentary and in a few years I was 17½ st.

Chris was back in England at a normal weight of 12½ st and was appalled at my transformation. I was a fat version of him - a walking cautionary tale about what he could easily become.

Weight gain and obesity can be explained by lack of willpower and self-control or by genetic and hormonal factors. But when you have one thin twin and one fat twin, it's hard to blame any of those things.

I put it down to stress and the birth of my son, but those things didn't really explain what had changed.

I managed to lose quite a bit of that weight while working in the developing world, but now we're 35 and both gluttons we have to pay some serious attention to our expanding waistlines.

But here's the problem: despite being doctors - I also have a degree in public health - neither of us knew much about losing weight and eating healthily.

These topics fall between the cracks at medical school. Yes, we understood biochemistry and food metabolism, and knew a lot about the consequences of being overweight. But which diets work, why we eat too much and why losing weight is so hard don't sit within any medical speciality.

'Take away carbohydrates and the joy goes out of meals. And remove all fruit and veg - they all have carbs - and you get constipated'

Superficially, it seems straightforward: we're all getting fat because we eat too much and don't exercise enough. Right? Well, not if you look at the debate about fat versus sugar now playing out.

For years it was thought fat was bad for you: it made you get fat, so low-fat food was good. But the 'fat is bad' dogma is being widely challenged. Carbohydrates, including sugar, are increasingly viewed as the evil, fattening, toxic ingredient.

But which really is worse for you? In a unique experiment for BBC's Horizon, Chris and I set out to find the answer by going on different diets for a month.

Identical twins like us are extremely useful in experiments because we have exactly the same genes. This means any changes we observed would be due to the diets and not genetics.

I went on a no-carbohydrate diet - essentially no sugar - and Chris went on an extremely low-fat diet.

We were allowed to eat as much as we wanted, except I couldn't have carbohydrates and Chris was allowed only the barest amount of fat - you need some fat to survive, so he restricted himself to food with less than 2 per cent fat.

However, in every other respect, including our exercise levels, our lives were similar, so any changes in our bodies at the end of the experiment would be down to the diets.

So, not only would the programme solve our weight problems, but the results - showing whether sugar or fat was worse - would solve everyone else's!

Let me tell you straight up that both of these diets were miserable. I thought I'd got the better deal: I could eat meat, fish, eggs and cheese.

But take away carbohydrates and the joy goes out of meals. And remove all fruit and veg - they all have carbs - and you get constipated. Though I was never hungry, I felt slow and tired, and my breath was terrible.

Chris on his low-fat diet didn't fare much better. He never felt full, so was constantly snacking, and like me he found that all the pleasure had gone out of meals: pasta without olive oil is boring.

There was one saving grace: each of the diets was easy to follow because they have just one simple rule. And I also had a pretty good reason to persevere: I really thought my low-carb diet would work and I'd end up slim and healthy a month later.

That's because the logic underpinning low-carb diets seems pretty convincing. The thinking is that carbohydrates raise your blood sugar and stimulate your body to produce insulin.

Insulin is the hormone needed to lower blood sugar, but it has another effect: it's a growth hormone.

It makes your body convert sugar to fat and makes that fat hard to use as a source of energy.

This can lead to what's called metabolic syndrome, a combination of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and raised cholesterol and other fats in your blood. This, in turn, raises your risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and other serious health conditions.

This insulin hypothesis - that the key cause of people getting fat is elevated insulin, caused by eating carbs - undercuts the most basic idea about weight gain: that if you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.

This is because, according to this theory, calories from carbohydrates are worse than calories from fats. They make you fatter and more likely to die of heart attacks. Conversely fat - even saturated fats - are getting a new lease of life as a superfood.

Well-respected scientists will tell you that if you cut out carbohydrates (thus lowering your insulin levels), it's almost impossible to gain weight.

These scientists believe reducing our sugar intake is the only way to solve the obesity epidemic.
But, as our results show, it's a bit more complicated than this. Chris and I each lost weight on our diets - I lost the most, a remarkable 9lb in one month - but the other results were not at all what we had expected.

One of the words you hear a lot when people talk about very low-carb diets is ketosis. This is where your body makes chemicals called ketones, which can act as fuel for the brain, which can't use fat.

'Chris on his low-fat diet didn't fare much better. He never felt full, so was constantly snacking'

But they're not great brain food. While I wasn't distracted by hunger for the month, I felt thick-headed, and this was most evident in a stock trading competition with Chris.

We started with £100,000 of fake money and he almost tripled what I earned over an hour.

The same was true for my physical performance. We spent a day with Nigel Mitchell, the head of nutrition at Team Sky Cycling.

Over a series of tests - all of which involved needles and long sessions of uphill cycling - he put us through our paces. Again Chris thrashed me in every test.

So, even though I seemed to be losing more weight, everything became harder to do.

And the tests we did to assess our levels of blood fats and risk of diabetes at the end of the diets revealed an astonishing and concerning truth about how my body had been fuelling itself in the absence of carbs.

While it was getting some energy from the protein in my diet, some was probably also coming from breaking down my own muscle.

Our experiment showed that you can lose a lot of weight, as I did, on a low-carb diet, but that isn't necessarily good for you.

You can lose weight on a low-fat diet, as Chris did - but over the long term unregulated consumption of sugar may also have negative health consequences.

The most interesting thing we found was that we were asking the wrong question. It's not which is worse for you, fat or sugar, but rather which foods are making so many of us gain weight and why?

The insulin hypothesis sounds scientific, but it doesn't explain what large, independent research studies over long periods of time have shown: low-carb diets don't work for everyone or even a majority of people.

For any diet to work you have to be able to keep it up for the rest of your life. I thought I would stick to low carbs after we finished, but having my first meal with carbs - and the boost in energy and alertness it gave me - reminded me that for a month I had been under-performing in all areas of my life, and I'd felt dreadful.

The diet industry is polarised around simple debates such as fat vs sugar because there are huge amounts of money at stake.

Farmers, food manufacturers, lobbyists, scientists and authors of diet books need to defend one or other side. Fortunately, you don't need to worry about any of that.

What we discovered is that the real reason we're all getting fatter isn't fat or sugar.

Furthermore, sugar alone isn't very addictive - only horses snack on sugar cubes and very few people gorge on boiled sweets or dry toast.

And fat isn't really addictive either: when did you last sneak a spoonful of butter from the fridge late at night?

The modern processed food industry knows this and that's why you're rarely sold the two separately - what is addictive is the combination.

We interviewed some amazing scientists who showed us that a combination of fat and sugar (such as in milk chocolate or ice cream) has a similar effect on your brain to cocaine.

Remove either and your tub of ice cream will be a lot less appetising and a lot less addictive. It'll have fewer calories, too.

What we relish is fat/sugar combinations - chocolate, ice cream, French fries. To see the effect of these combinations on the brain - and why they might be addictive like cocaine - after the diet part of our experiment finished, I had an eye scan done by Jennifer Nasser, a nutrition professor at Drexel University in the U.S.

This scan effectively detects dopamine, a neurotransmitter that activates the reward centres of the brain. I was scanned while I ate fatty, sugary foods: sure enough a huge surge of dopamine.

So, what were our conclusions? If you want to lose weight it will be much easier if you avoid processed foods made with sugar and fat. These foods affect your brain in a completely different way from natural foods and it's hard for anyone to resist eating too much.

And any diet that eliminates fat or sugar will be unpalatable, hard to sustain and probably be bad for your health, too.

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Life-changing experiment: One twin gave up sugar, the other, fat

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Twins Alexander and Chris Van Tulleken set out to find out which is worse They were allowed to eat as much as they wanted and exercised the same Alexander couldn't have carbs and Chris was allowed only a tiny bit of fat By avoiding mirrors and scales you can fool yourself about encroaching middle-aged spread, but it's much harder when you have an identical twin with whom you can compare yourself.

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Noah
" The present study was designed to quantify the number of customers who purchase fast food through drive-in windows as a means of informing legislative labelling efforts."

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An observational study of consumer use of fast-food restaurant drive-through lanes: implications for menu labelling policy. - PubMed - NCBI

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"The plan, which is an extension of a project called Tianhe or 'Sky River' developed by researchers in 2016 at China's Tsinghua university, is hoped to bring extra rain to a massive area spanning some 1.6 million square kilometres (almost 620,000 square miles)."

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China's 'Sky River' will be the largest artificial rain experiment in history, covering a land mass larger than Alaska and three times the size of Spain.

Researchers plan to install thousands of fuel-burning chambers across the Tibetan mountains to induce rainfall, in a form of weather modification called 'cloud seeding'.

Some researchers believe this experiment would threaten ecosystems, since cloud seeding doesn't actually produce more rain - instead, it redirects clouds to rain in a different location.

China is building the foundations of what will become the largest artificial rain experiment in history, in an attempt to induce extra rainfall over the Tibetan Plateau.

The project will see tens of thousands of fuel-burning chambers installed across the Tibetan mountains, with a view to boosting rainfall in the region by up to 10 billion cubic metres annually, according to reports.

The plan, which is an extension of a project called Tianhe or 'Sky River' developed by researchers in 2016 at China's Tsinghua university, is hoped to bring extra rain to a massive area spanning some 1.6 million square kilometres (almost 620,000 square miles).

For a bit of context, that's larger than Alaska, and about three times the size of Spain, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), and this immense scope means the extra rainfall expected will also be voluminous if the plan succeeds, equivalent to roughly 7 percent of China's annual water consumption.

"[Modifying the weather in Tibet] is a critical innovation to solve China's water shortage problem," said Lei Fanpei, president of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which is developing the project.

"It will make an important contribution not only to China's development and world prosperity, but also the well being of the entire human race."

While it sounds like something out of science fiction, this form of weather modification, called cloud seeding, is something scientists have been trying to pull off for decades now, and China is more deeply invested in the concept than anywhere else in the world.

In the Tibetan project, the burning chambers will produce silver iodide particles that will be carried into the atmosphere by the wind, where they are expected to seed moisture clouds capable of producing rain and snow.

"[So far,] more than 500 burners have been deployed on alpine slopes in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other areas for experimental use," one researcher working on the project told .

"The data we have collected show very promising results."

But not everybody is convinced of China's plans of creating artificial rainfall over such a wide area, especially because there's still a lot we don't know about how cloud seeding - which is usually initiated by more localized chemical agents released into the atmosphere by planes - affects broader weather patterns.

"Such weather modification does not 'produce' rain as such," geoengineering researcher Janos Pasztor from the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2) told Gizmodo.

"Rather, it makes rain happen somewhere, which means that it will not happen somewhere else. This immediately means that ecosystems and people living somewhere else where it would have rained will no longer get this rain."

If that's correct, the potential effects of China's Sky River could mean whole cloud systems covering an area the size of Alaska might be diverted to boost rainfall over the Tibetan Plateau.

It's not known when the project will be completed, but given how huge, and hugely controversial, this plan could become, we doubt we've heard the last of this.

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China is attempting the largest artificial rain experiment in history, over an area 3 times the size of Spain

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China's 'Sky River' will be the largest artificial rain experiment in history, covering a land mass larger than Alaska and three times the size of Spain. Researchers plan to install thousands of fuel-burning chambers across the Tibetan mountains to induce rainfall, in a form of weather modification called 'cloud seeding'.

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"For this observational clinical study, questionnaires were sent to 1,000 randomly selected patients diagnosed with cancer between 2003 and 2007 in one cancer center. Data were statistically analyzed to determine the likelihood of a patient quitting smoking after being diagnosed with cancer."

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In order to access this website, please configure your browser to support cookies.

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McKenzie R
"Approximately 1.9 billion adults worldwide are obese or overweight.  The negative costs to public health make it especially important to determine which public health interventions are effective."

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Originally Published By 2 Minute Medicine®. Reused on MPR with permission.

1. Researchers found that amongst nearly 300 studies reporting the impact of policies, programs, or changes in built environment on controlling and preventing obesity, most natural experiments had high risk of bias and poor handling of dropouts and withdrawals. 2. The authors suggest that these findings show the need for rigorous methodological standards to help produce data that may be beneficial for combating the obesity pandemic. Evidence Rating Level: 1 (Excellent)
Study Rundown: Approximately 1.9 billion adults worldwide are obese or overweight. The negative costs to public health make it especially important to determine which public health interventions are effective. The National Institutes of Health Pathways to Prevention Workshop suggests that more natural experiments are needed to help address the obesity pandemic. The authors of this systematic review evaluated information from multiple databases to find studies that reported the impact of policies, programs, or changes in built environment on controlling and preventing obesity. The authors found 294 experiments of diverse methodologies, including natural experiments (53%). The risk of bias was high for most natural experiments, and 63% of such studies had poor handling of dropouts and withdrawals. The authors suggest that these results indicate the necessity for better access to information for obesity researchers, an improved infrastructure for data sources, and standard reporting guidelines to help produce research of high quality and rigor.

A strength of this systematic review is that it helped to identify some of the weaknesses of current research and how improvements in future research could help to provide data that is beneficial for combating the obesity pandemic. Limitations of this study include the restriction of outcomes to measures of obesity and health behaviors, descriptions of natural experiments that lacked clarity or consistency, and inadequate methods for assessment of risk of bias for natural experiments.
Click to read the study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine
Relevant Reading: Impact of policy and built environment changes on obesity‐related outcomes: a systematic review of naturally occurring experiments

In-Depth [systematic review]: Researchers used EconLit, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and PubMed to find studies that reported the impact of policies, programs, or changes in built environment on controlling and preventing obesity. The authors selected a time frame of January 2000 to August 2017 to include studies after The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity was published. Researchers found 188 U.S. and 106 non-U.S. studies, including 156 natural experiments, 118 experimental studies, and 20 studies which lacked clarity in design. Of the U.S. data systems, 37% had linkages to another data source. Childhood weight and adult weight were reported by 112 and 32 studies, respectively. Physical activity and dietary measures were reported by 152 and 148 studies, respectively. The most frequent method (35%) used by natural experiments for analysis was the comparison of groups that were exposed or unexposed. There was strong selection bias for 28% of natural experiments. Furthermore, only 25% of experiments reported a participation rate of 80% to 100% for targeted individuals. Thirty percent of studies did not provide sufficient data to ascertain how attrition was managed or did not report dropouts or withdrawals.

©2018 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved. No works may be reproduced without expressed written consent from 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. Inquire about licensing here. No article should be construed as medical advice and is not intended as such by the authors or by 2 Minute Medicine, Inc.

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Improved research methods needed to determine effectiveness of anti-obesity public health initiatives

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Originally Published By 2 Minute Medicine® . Reused on MPR with permission. 1. Researchers found that amongst nearly 300 studies reporting the impact of policies, programs, or changes in built environment on controlling and preventing obesity, most natural experiments had high risk of bias and poor handling of dropouts and withdrawals.

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Noah
" Despite the growing number of adolescent mobile phone users, there has been limited examination of the behavioral effects of mobile phone usage on adolescents and their sleep and subsequent daytime sleepiness."

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Abstract

Background

Mobile phone use is near ubiquitous in teenagers. Paralleling the rise in mobile phone use is an equally rapid decline in the amount of time teenagers are spending asleep at night. Prior research indicates that there might be a relationship between daytime sleepiness and nocturnal mobile phone use in teenagers in a variety of countries. As such, the aim of this study was to see if there was an association between mobile phone use, especially at night, and sleepiness in a group of U.S. teenagers.

Methods

A questionnaire containing an Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) modified for use in teens and questions about qualitative and quantitative use of the mobile phone was completed by students attending Mountain View High School in Mountain View, California (n = 211).

Results

Multivariate regression analysis indicated that ESS score was significantly associated with being female, feeling a need to be accessible by mobile phone all of the time, and a past attempt to reduce mobile phone use. The number of daily texts or phone calls was not directly associated with ESS. Those individuals who felt they needed to be accessible and those who had attempted to reduce mobile phone use were also ones who stayed up later to use the mobile phone and were awakened more often at night by the mobile phone.

Conclusions

The relationship between daytime sleepiness and mobile phone use was not directly related to the volume of texting but may be related to the temporal pattern of mobile phone use.

Peer Review reports

Background

Mobile phone use has drastically increased in recent years, fueled by new technology such as 'smart phones'. In 2012, it was estimated that 78% of all Americans aged 12-17 years had a mobile phone and 37% had a smart phone [ 1]. Despite the growing number of adolescent mobile phone users, there has been limited examination of the behavioral effects of mobile phone usage on adolescents and their sleep and subsequent daytime sleepiness.

Mobile phone use in teens likely compounds the biological causes of sleep loss. With the onset of puberty, there are changes in innate circadian rhythms that lead to a delay in the habitual timing of sleep onset [ 2]. As school start times are not correspondingly later, this leads to a reduction in the time available for sleep and is consequently thought to contribute to the endemic sleepiness of teenagers. The use of mobile phones may compound this sleepiness by extending the waking hours further into the night. Munezawa and colleagues [ 3] analyzed 94,777 responses to questionnaires sent out to junior and senior high school students in Japan and found that the use of mobile phones for calling or sending text messages after they went to bed was associated with sleep disturbances such as short sleep duration, subjective poor sleep quality, excessive daytime sleepiness and insomnia symptoms. Soderqvist et al. in their study of Swedish adolescents aged 15-19 years, found that regular users of mobile phones reported health symptoms such as tiredness, stress, headache, anxiety, concentration difficulties and sleep disturbances more often than less frequent users [ 4]. Van der Bulck studied 1,656 school children in Belgium and found that prevalent mobile phone use in adolescents was related to increased levels of daytime tiredness [ 5]. Punamaki et al. studied Finnish teens and found that intensive mobile phone use lead to more health complaints and musculoskeletal symptoms in girls both directly and through deteriorated sleep, as well as increased daytime tiredness [ 6]. In one prospective study of young Swedish adults, aged 20-24, those who were high volume mobile phone users and male, but not female, were at greater risk for developing sleep disturbances a year later [ 7]. The association of mobile phone utilization and either sleep or sleepiness in teens in the United States has only been described by a telephone poll. In the 2011 National Sleep Foundation poll, 20% of those under the age of 30 reported that they were awakened by a phone call, text or e-mail message at least a few nights a week [ 8]. This type of nocturnal awakening was self-reported more frequently by those who also reported that they drove while drowsy.

As there has been limited examination of how mobile phone usage affects the behavior of young children and adolescents, none of which have addressed the effects of such usage on daytime sleepiness in U.S. teens, it seemed worthwhile to attempt a cross-sectional study of sleep and mobile phone utilization in a U.S. high school. As such, it was the purpose of this study to examine the association of mobile phone utilization and sleepiness patterns in a sample of U.S. teens. We hypothesized that an increased number of calls would be associated with increased sleepiness.

Methods

We designed a survey that contained questions concerning sleepiness and mobile phone use (see Additional file 1). Sleepiness was assessed using a version of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) [ 9] modified for use in adolescents [ 10]. The modified ESS consists of eight questions that assessed the likelihood of dozing in the following circumstances: sitting and reading, watching TV, sitting inactive in a public place, as a passenger in a car for an hour without a break, lying down to rest in the afternoon when circumstances permit, sitting and talking to someone, sitting quietly after a lunch, in a car while stopped for a few minutes in traffic. Responses were limited to a Likert-like scale using the following: no chance of dozing (0), slight chance of dozing (1), moderate chance of dozing (2), or high chance of dozing (3). This yielded total ESS scores ranging from 0 to 24, with scores over 10 being associated with clinically-significant sleepiness [ 9]. We also included a set of modified questions, originally designed by Thomée et al., that assess the subjective impact of mobile phone use [ 7]. These included the number of mobile calls made or received each day, the number of texts made or received each day, being awakened by the mobile phone at night (never/occasionally/monthly/weekly/daily), staying up late to use the mobile phone (never/occasionally/monthly/weekly/daily), expectations of accessibility by mobile phone (never/occasionally/daily/all day/around-the-clock), stressfulness of accessibility (not at all/a little bit/rather/very), use mobile phone too much (yes/no), and tried and failed to reduce mobile phone use (yes/no).

An email invitation to complete an electronic form of the survey ( http://www.surveymonkey.com) was sent to the entire student body of the Mountain View High School, located in Mountain View, California, USA, on April 5, 2012. Out of the approximately 2,000 students attending the school, a total of 211 responded by the collection date of April 23, 2012. Data analyses are described below (OrginPro8, OriginLab, Northampton MA). Summary data are provided as mean ± SD for age and ESS and as median (range) for the number of texts and/or phone calls made or received per day as these were non-normally distributed (p's <; 0.001, Kolmogorov Smirnov test). To examine the relationship between sleepiness and predictor variables, stepwise multivariate regression analyses were performed. Collinearity in the data was examined by calculating the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF). Post hoc t-tests, ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U tests, and Spearman correlations were used, as appropriate, to examine specific components of the model and their relationship to sleepiness. χ 2 tests were used to examine categorical variables. The study was done within the regulations codified by the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the administration of Mountain View High School.

Results

Sixty-eight males and 143 females responded to the survey. Most (96.7%) respondents owned a mobile phone. The remainder of the analyses presented herein is on the 202 respondents (64 male, 138 female) who indicated that they owned a mobile phone (Tables 1 and 2). The youngest participant in the survey was 14 years old and the oldest was 19 years old (16 ± 1.2 years), representative of the age range of this school. The median number of mobile phone calls made or received per day was 2 and ranged from 0 to 60. The median number of text messages sent or received per day was 22.5 and ranged from 0 to 700. While about half of the respondents (53%) had never been awakened by the mobile phone at night, 35% were occasionally awakened, 5.9% were awakened a few times a month, 5.0% were awakened a few times a week, and 1.0% were awakened almost every night. About one-quarter (27%) of respondents had never stayed awake later than a target bedtime in order to use the mobile phone, however 36% occasionally stayed awake, 19% stayed awake a few times a month, 8.5% stayed awake a few times a week, and 10% stayed awake almost every night in order to use the mobile phone. In regards to feeling an expectation of accessibility, 7.5% reported that they needed to be accessible around the clock, 26% reported that they needed to be accessible all day, 52% reported they needed to be accessible daily, 13% reported that they only needed to be accessible now and then, and 1.0% reported they never needed to be accessible. Nearly half (49%) of the survey participants viewed accessibility via mobile phones to be not at all stressful, 45% found it to be a little bit stressful, 4.5% found it rather stressful, and 1.0% found it very stressful. More than one-third (36%) reported that they or someone close to them thought that they used the mobile phone too much. Few (17%) had tried but were unable to reduce their mobile phone use.

Subjective sleepiness on the ESS ranged from 0 to 18 (6.8 ± 3.5, with higher numbers indicating greater sleepiness), with 25% of participants having ESS scores in the excessively sleepy range (ESS ≥ 10). We examined predictors of subjective sleepiness (ESS score) using stepwise multivariate regression analysis with the following independent variables: age, sex, frequency of nocturnal awakening by the phone, frequency of staying up too late to use the phone, self-perceived accessibility by phone, stressfulness of this accessibility, attempted and failed to reduce phone use, excessive phone use determined by others, number of texts per day, and number of phone calls per day. Only subjects with complete data sets were used in our modeling (n = 191 of 202). Our final model (Table 3) indicated that sex, frequency of accessibility, and a failed attempt to reduce mobile phone use were all predictive of daytime sleepiness (F 6,194 = 4.35, p <; 0.001, r 2 = 0.12). These model variables lacked collinearity (VIF's <; 3.9), indicating that they were not likely to represent the same source of variance. Despite the lack of significance in the multivariate model, given previously published data [ 4- 6], we independently tested if there was a relationship between the number of estimated texts and sleepiness, but found no such correlation (r = 0.13, p = 0.07; Spearman correlation). In examining the final model, it appears that those who felt that they needed to be accessible "around the clock" (ESS = 9.2 ± 2.9) were sleepier than all others (ESS = 6.7 ± 3.4) (p <; 0.01, post hoc t-test). The relationship between sleepiness and reporting having tried, but failed, to reduce mobile phone use was such that those who had tried to reduce phone use were more sleepy (ESS = 8.3 ± 3.6) than those who had not (ESS = 6.5 ± 3.4) (p <; 0.01, post hoc t-test). While more females had tried to reduce their mobile phone use, sex did not modify the relationship between the attempt to reduce mobile phone use and sleepiness (p = 0.32, two-way ANOVA), thus retaining attempt and failure to reduce mobile phone use as an independent modifier of ESS scores.

In an attempt to better understand the relationship between ESS and accessibility, we parsed the population into those who felt that they needed to be accessible around the clock (7.4%) and those who did not (92.6%). The most accessible group, as compared to the less accessible group, had a numerically though not statistically significantly higher texting rate (50 vs. 20 per day; p = 0.07, Mann-Whitney U test), but were awakened more at night by the phone (27% vs. 4%, weekly or daily; p <; 0.05, χ 2 test), and stayed awake later than desired more often (40% vs. 17%, weekly or daily; p <; 0.05, χ 2 test). We did a similar analysis, parsing the population into those who had attempted but failed to reduce their use of their mobile phone (17%) with those who had not (83%). Those who had attempted to reduce their mobile phone use had a higher texting rate (60 vs. 20 per day; p <; 0.01, Mann-Whitney U test) and stayed awake later than desired more often (53% vs. 11%, weekly or daily; p <; 0.01, χ 2 test), but were not awakened more at night by the phone (12% vs. 5%, weekly or daily; p = 0.26, χ 2 test).

Discussion

Given previous research on the topic, our a priori hypothesis was that teenagers who use their phone more often at night are likely to be more prone to daytime sleepiness. We did not, however, observe this simple relationship in this sample of U.S. teens. We did find that being female, perceived need to be accessible by mobile phone, and having tried but failed to reduce mobile phone usage were all predictive of daytime sleepiness, with the latter two likely being moderated by increased use of the phone at night. Previous work has shown that being female was associated with higher ESS scores [ 11]. It may be that adolescent females score higher on the ESS without being objectively sleepier, though this remains to be tested. Our analyses revealed that staying up late to use the mobile phone and being awakened by the mobile phone may be involved in the relationship between increased ESS scores and perceived need to be accessible by mobile phone and a past attempt to decrease mobile phone use. These analyses reveal some of the complexity of assessing daytime sleepiness, which is undoubtedly multifactorial. If the sheer number of text messages being sent per day is directly associated daytime sleepiness, it is likely with a small effect size. Our work, of course, is not without its limitations. Data were collected from a sample of convenience at a single, public high school in California. Only 10% of students responded to the survey and this may have introduced some response bias to the data. The data collected were cross-sectional; a longitudinal collection would have enabled a more precise analysis of moderators and mediators as well as a more accurate interpretation of causal relationships. Also, we did not objectively record the number of texts, so there may be a certain degree of bias or uncertainty associated with self-report of number of texts and calls. Several variables that might influence sleepiness both directly and indirectly through mobile phone use (e.g., socioeconomic status, comorbid sleep disorders, medication use) were not assessed. Future studies on the impact of mobile phone use on sleep and sleepiness should take into account the multifactorial and temporal nature of these behaviors.

Conclusions

The endemic sleepiness found in adolescents is multifactorial with both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Mobile phone use has been assumed to be one source of increased daytime sleepiness in adolescents. Our analyses revealed that use or perceived need of use of the mobile phone during normal sleeping hours may contribute to daytime sleepiness. As overall number of text messages did not significantly contribute to daytime sleepiness, it is possible that a temporal rearrangement of phone use (e.g., limiting phone use during prescribed sleeping hours) might help in alleviating some degree of daytime sleepiness.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the students of Mountain View High School (Mountain View, California) for participating in this study.

Author information

Affiliations

Mountain View High School, Mountain View, 3535 Truman Avenue, Mountain View, CA, 94040, USA

Nila Nathan

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 3801 Miranda Avenue (151Y), Stanford CA 94305, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

Jamie Zeitzer

Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, 3801 Miranda Avenue (151Y), Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

Jamie Zeitzer

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jamie Zeitzer.

Additional information

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors' contributions

JMZ and NN designed the study, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript. Both authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Nathan, N., Zeitzer, J. A survey study of the association between mobile phone use and daytime sleepiness in California high school students. BMC Public Health 13, 840 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-840
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A survey study of the association between mobile phone use and daytime sleepiness in California high school students - BMC Public Health

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Background Mobile phone use is near ubiquitous in teenagers. Paralleling the rise in mobile phone use is an equally rapid decline in the amount of time teenagers are spending asleep at night. Prior research indicates that there might be a relationship between daytime sleepiness and nocturnal mobile phone use in teenagers in a variety of countries.

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A new study analysing the death rates of some 900 patients admitted to Japanese emergency care with severe physical trauma found that blood types could be an important risk factor separating the fates of those who pull through from those who don't.

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In the heady chaos of the emergency room, trauma surgeons do everything they can to save lives. But for some patients, their very lifeblood might stack the odds against them.

A new study analysing the death rates of some 900 patients admitted to Japanese emergency care with severe physical trauma found that blood types could be an important risk factor separating the fates of those who pull through from those who don't.

"Loss of blood is the leading cause of death in patients with severe trauma but studies on the association between different blood types and the risk of trauma death have been scarce," explains trauma specialist Wataru Takayama Wataru Takayama from Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital.

"We wanted to test the hypothesis that trauma survival is affected by differences in blood types."

To do so, Takayama's team collected the records of 901 patients with severe trauma who attended one of two emergency care medical centres in Japan between 2013 and 2016.

For the purposes of the study, severe trauma - aka an ' Injury Severity Score' (ISS) of more than 15 - means injuries that have the potential to cause long-term disability or death.

What the team found is that patients with blood type O, which made up almost one-third (32 percent) of the patients included in the study, had a drastically greater chance of succumbing to the serious injuries they'd sustained.

The death rate among patients with type O blood was 28 percent, which was almost three times higher than the mortality of the other patients in the study with non-O blood types (just 11 percent).

That's a pretty severe contrast, but why is it happening?

Since this was an observational study, it's impossible to know for sure, but the researchers think it could be due to lower levels of a blood clotting agent that's known to be reduced in people with blood type O.

"Several studies have reported that patients with blood type O had 25-30 percent lower plasma Von Willebrand factor (vWF) levels than those with non-O blood, increasing their risk of haemorrhage," the authors explain in their paper.

"vWF plays a decisive role in primary haemostasis [the stopping of bleeding] by mediating the adhesion of blood platelets to the subendothelium of the damaged vessel walls and promoting the aggregation of activated platelets."

If that hypothesis is correct - and the researchers acknowledge there's still a lot we don't know about how different blood types contribute to haemostasis - it looks like that differentiator might outweigh the benefits of type O blood: the most common blood type, and the most suitable for emergency transfusions.

Until we know more, the team says it's vital other researchers look into this association between O and mortality - which they say has never been reported before in severe trauma cases, although blood types have been linked to other dangers, such as risk of heart attack or stroke, and even the perils of air pollution.

"Although we cannot alter the risk of blood type O itself, an adequate recognition of the risk enables us to control for the intensity of trauma critical care," they write.

"Further basic or translational research is necessary to investigate the cause of this result and may lead to the development of a therapeutic intervention."

The findings are reported in Critical Care.

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Your Blood Type Can Seriously Hurt Your Chances of Surviving a Deadly Injury

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In the heady chaos of the emergency room, trauma surgeons do everything they can to save lives. But for some patients, their very lifeblood might stack the odds against them.

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"Based off of 1500 phone calls with US adults every day"

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View Trump's weekly job approval.
Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. Daily results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

Explore President Trump's approval ratings and compare them with those of past presidents in the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center.

Get Obama's daily job approval ratings.

Buy a subscription to our database, Gallup Analytics, to access and export weekly, monthly and yearly presidential job approval ratings.

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View Trump's weekly job approval. Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. Daily results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

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"The findings are based on the population-based Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor (KIHD) study and involved 1,628 men and women aged 53 to 74 years living in the eastern part of Finland. Based on their frequency of taking traditional Finnish sauna baths (relative humidity 10-20%), the study participants were divided into three groups: those taking a sauna once a week, those taking a sauna 2-3 times a week, and those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week."

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Frequent sauna bathing is associated with a reduced risk of stroke, according to a new international study. In a 15-year follow-up study, people taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 61% less likely to suffer a stroke than those taking a sauna once a week. This is the first prospective large-scale study on this topic, and the findings were reported in Neurology.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, placing a heavy human and economic burden on societies. The reduced risk associated with sauna bathing was found by a team of scientists from the Universities of Eastern Finland, Bristol, Leicester, Atlanta, Cambridge and Innsbruck.

The findings are based on the population-based Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor (KIHD) study and involved 1,628 men and women aged 53 to 74 years living in the eastern part of Finland. Based on their frequency of taking traditional Finnish sauna baths (relative humidity 10-20%), the study participants were divided into three groups: those taking a sauna once a week, those taking a sauna 2-3 times a week, and those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week.

The more frequently saunas were taken, the lower was the risk of stroke. Compared to people taking one sauna session per week, the risk was decreased by 14% among those with 2-3 sessions and 61% among those with 4-7 sessions. The association persisted even when taking into account conventional stroke risk factors, such as age, sex, diabetes, body mass index, blood lipids, alcohol consumption, physical activity and socio-economic status. The strength of association was similar in men and women.

Previous results from the KIHD study at the University of Eastern Finland have shown that frequent sauna bathing also significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. According to the researchers, mechanisms driving the association of sauna bathing with reduced stroke may include a reduction in blood pressure, stimulation of immune system, a positive impact on the autonomic nervous system, and an improved cardiovascular function. In a recent experimental study, the same group of scientists also showed that sauna bathing has acute effects on the stiffness of the arterial wall, hence influencing blood pressure and cardiac function parameters.

Journal Reference:

Setor K. Kunutsor, Hassan Khan, Francesco Zaccardi, Tanjaniina Laukkanen, Peter Willeit, Jari A. Laukkanen. Sauna bathing reduces the risk of stroke in Finnish men and women. Neurology, 2018; 10.1212/WNL.0000000000005606 DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000005606

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heart disease; stroke prevention; hypertension; elder care; caregiving; stroke; brain injury; gender difference

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Frequent sauna bathing reduces risk of stroke

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Frequent sauna bathing is associated with a reduced risk of stroke, according to a new international study. In a 15-year follow-up study, people taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 61% less likely to suffer a stroke than those taking a sauna once a week.

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"Mattress company Amerisleep polled 1001 Americans to gauge people's sleep habits while on the clock"

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If you ever dream of squeezing in a siesta at work, you're not alone. In fact, snoozing on the job is actually pretty common, according to a new survey.

Mattress company Amerisleep polled 1,001 Americans to gauge people's sleep habits while on the clock. More than half of respondents (51.8 percent) admitted to getting shut eye during business hours, but factors like industry and salary play a role in how much they doze.

So who is doing all this sleeping?

A full 70 percent of survey respondents who work in tech admit to sleeping during work hours (the most of any industry), followed by 68.2 percent of people in the construction industry, 63.5 percent of people in government and public administration, 58.9 percent of people in finance and insurance and 58 percent of people in information services and data processing.

And for the most part, the more money people made, the less they slept during work. Those making $100,000 or more a year took an average of 2.4 naps per month while at work, while people who made less than $10,000 took an average of 4 naps per month at work, the most of any income level.

And, it turns out, employees in some fields of work nap for a sizable chunk of their day.

The survey revealed that people who work in the medical or healthcare field report napping for nearly 17 percent of their workday, while people in education reported sleeping roughly 13 percent of their workday and people in tech snooze for 11 percent.

So where are these tired employees catching some shut eye?

Amerisleep's survey found that popular spots for on-the-clock naps include at a desk or in a cubicle or meeting room. Nappers in the education, medical and health care and government and public administration industries also opted for sleeping in a vehicle.

Amerisleep's survey also looked at whether napping during work hours was considered acceptable.

It found that many people think sleeping at work is not cool: Almost 80 percent of people who had never slept at work felt it was not ok, and almost 34 of people who had slept during work hours also felt it was unacceptable.

Research has found, however, that naps provide a plethora of mental and physical benefits.

One study, published in 2015, found that nappers were able to tolerate frustration significantly longer than those who didn't nap and also reported feeling less impulsive after a 60 minute nap. And yet another study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found that a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep, and that naps may even be good for the immune system.

And while Amerisleep's survey found that many people nap at work even when it's prohibited (including almost 66 percent of people who work in construction and a little over 62 percent of people who work in tech), there are many companies who have adopted policies that allow for - and even encourage - re-charging with a power nap.

It's been reported that companies including Google, Ben & Jerry's, Cisco, Zappos, Uber and Nike allow for napping.

And media mogul Arianna Huffington is a big advocate for sleep, penning several books on the topic. Huffington told Architectural Digest she turned a closet in the offices of her new company, Thrive Global, into a room that employees can use for naps or meditation.

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If you ever dream of squeezing in a siesta at work, you're not alone. In fact, snoozing on the job is actually pretty common, according to a new survey. Mattress company Amerisleep polled 1,001 Americans to gauge people's sleep habits while on the clock.

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"Ten percent of Harvard’s incoming freshman class recently admitted to cheating on exams prior to heading to the Ivy League institution, and another 42 percent admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set"

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Some of Harvard's newest members are already guilty of academic dishonesty, according to a recent survey.

Ten percent of Harvard's incoming freshman class recently admitted to cheating on exams prior to heading to the Ivy League institution, and another 42 percent admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set, the university's school newspaper, The Crimson, reported Thursday.

"We emailed the freshman class a completely anonymous survey," Crimson President and undergraduate Robert S. Samuels told NBC News. "We took great lengths (to assure anonymity)."

The Crimson discovered that recruited athletes were more likely to admit to cheating: 20 percent of freshman athletes admitted to cheating on an exam, compared to nine percent of students who were not recruited to play a varsity sport; and 26 percent of recruited athletes said they had cheated on a paper or take-home assignment, compared to 16 percent of non-recruits, the paper reported.

Samuels said more than 1,600 freshman from the class of 2017 were emailed the 10-minute, 60-question survey last month. An estimated 80 percent responded to the survey, he said.

"We were lucky to have a very high response rate," Samuels added.

The school newspaper discovered that the incoming class reported higher rates of cheating than Harvard's class of 2013, as determined by a Crimson senior survey conducted last spring.

The survey also discovered that men were more likely than women to report having cheated, according to The Crimson's website.

This recent data collection is the first part of a series The Crimson is releasing, Samuels said. Parts one and two were released earlier this week and delve into the demographics of Harvard's incoming freshmen with regard to sexual preference, post-graduate expectations and family income.

Samuels said he has yet to hear from university administrators with regard to the survey.

In an email to NBC News, Jeff Neal, Harvard's senior communications officer, said the university has established a committee made up of faculty, staff and students to address the issue of cheating, which "is a national problem in American education," he wrote.

"While the vast majority of Harvard and other students do their work honestly, beginning this year Harvard College has implemented a new, more robust strategy of communicating with all students, particularly first-year students, about the importance - and the ways to achieve - academic integrity," Neal wrote.

Neal declared that Harvard continues "to beat national averages in reports of cheating" and that the university aspires to strengthen their "culture of integrity."

A 2012 cheating scandal at Harvard sent shockwaves through the academic world after an investigation revealed dozens of students swapped and plagiarized answers on an exam for a course called "Introduction to Congress."

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Survey: 42 percent of Harvard's incoming freshman class cheated on homework

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Some of Harvard's newest members are already guilty of academic dishonesty, according to a recent survey. Ten percent of Harvard's incoming freshman class recently admitted to cheating on exams prior to heading to the Ivy League institution, and another 42 percent admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set, the university's school newspaper, The Crimson, reported Thursday.

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https://www.sleepassociation.org/about-sleep/sleep-statistics/
"37.9% reported unintentionally falling asleep during the day at least once in the preceding month."

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"When millennials were asked which was their first choice for home improvement shopping, Home Depot (64 percent) took the top spot, followed by Lowe's Co. (LOW, 53 percent), Amazon.com (AMZN, 46 percent) and Walmart (WMT, 36 percent)."

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"to study the effects of technology and social media on homeless adolescents — 90 percent of whom have a Facebook profile, according to her surveys."

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Research Examines Benefits of Social Media for Homeless Youth

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Social media can provide a "cultural bridge" for youth isolated from their peers, she says. Networks like Facebook can connect struggling children with family members, caseworkers and friends.

Her study, Barman-Adhikari says, is the first in the country to look not only at whether homeless populations are using social media, but how they're using it. Aided by a team of graduate students, the GSSW professor is recruiting 200 adolescents in centers where they receive help and examining their activity over the last year and a half.

To complete her work, she is receiving help from GSSW Associate Dean Kimberly Bender, as she collaborates with faculty from the Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science and the Daniels College of Business.

Computer science associate professor Rinku Dewri has created an interface that easily enrolls youth in the study and combs their Facebook profiles. Currently, he has harvested more than 150,000 posts, which business information professor YJ Lee will analyze for trends.

"Whenever I talk to someone about this project, I always talk about the collaborative impact," says Dewri, who typically specializes in Internet privacy and security. "I think being able to provide your skills in a general term first of all can be much more rewarding than providing your expert skills."

The ultimate goal, Barman-Adhikari says, is to better understand not only a child's social media habits, but his or her emotional needs as well. Using the research to develop algorithms can help resource centers reach homeless populations more efficiently. Some drop-in centers that serve the homeless already have begun to incorporate free Internet access, realizing the benefits it can provide.

"There's a lot of hope," she adds. "If we provide them with the right kind of services and the right resources, these young people can do a lot, and I really, really believe that."

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Research Examines Benefits of Social Media for Homeless Youth

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Conventional wisdom suggests that if a person doesn't have a job, a place to live or know where the next meal is coming from, a smartphone and social media are afterthoughts. But in a technology-driven world, assistant professor Anamika Barman-Adhikari says kids struggling with homelessness are still children of the digital age.

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McKenzie R
"we test for rice-wheat cultural differences in everyday life in China. In Study 1, we counted how many people were sitting alone versus with other people in Starbucks and other cafes around China. In Study 2, we moved chairs to block aisles in Starbucks and observed how many people moved the self to squeeze through or moved the chairs. We designed this measure to test exerting control over the environment, which is more common in individualistic cultures. "

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Study overview

Here, we test for rice-wheat cultural differences in everyday life in China. In Study 1, we counted how many people were sitting alone versus with other people in Starbucks and other cafes around China. In Study 2, we moved chairs to block aisles in Starbucks and observed how many people moved the self to squeeze through or moved the chairs. We designed this measure to test exerting control over the environment, which is more common in individualistic cultures ().

These studies make several contributions to previous studies:

1) These studies test the rice theory outside of the laboratory using a sample that is not primarily students. In some ways, middle-class patrons of Starbucks in major cities might be the last people among whom we should expect to find subsistence style differences.

2) These studies address the fundamental problem of self-report measures in cultural psychology. Researchers have documented many problems with using self-report scales to measure differences across cultures, from the reference-group effect () to the stubbornly persistent finding that the United States is just as collectivistic as China and Korea (, ), or that Japan is actually less collectivistic than the United States [(), p. 18]. There is also the complete lack of correlation between nation-level self-reports of conscientiousness with objective behaviors that tap into that same trait (). However, observational studies of cultural differences are oddly rare in psychology [except for a few strong examples: (, )]. Developing measures of concrete behaviors addresses the problems of self-report and may provide future researchers with documented non-self-report measures to use.

3) Much of cross-cultural psychology has focused on East-West differences and differences between nations. This study tests for differences within China.

4) This study extends the sample to include Hong Kong, which has not been tested as a part of rice-wheat differences.

Strengths and weaknesses of observational studies

However, observational studies have weaknesses too. Laboratory studies are strong designs because they use a controlled environment and previously validated measures. Observational studies are not so tightly controlled. We also cannot be as sure we know what we are measuring-that the behavior we are measuring represents individualism as we expect it does. For example, if a driver does not stop completely at a stop sign, is that a sign of self-importance? Impatience? Or disregard for law? The meaning of particular behaviors is more open to debate than it is with laboratory measures.

To combat these weaknesses, we use one behavior (sitting alone) that psychologists have used before to document differences between groups of people. For the new measure that we create (chair moving), we validate the measure by collecting data in the United States, China, and Japan. We also validate the reliability of the observations by having multiple observers rate the same behaviors. This gives some evidence that these behaviors truly differ between individualistic and interdependent cultures.

Despite the difficulties of observational studies, they are a good antidote for the fact that many laboratory tests are not very helpful for describing what rice and wheat cultures are like in everyday life. In a thought style task, if people in northern China are more likely to pair "train" with "bus" rather than "train" with "tracks," what does that mean for everyday life? These observational studies give a more concrete picture of how rice and wheat cultures differ in everyday life.

Testing sites

We tested in six cities: Beijing (wheat), Shenyang (wheat), Shanghai (rice), Nanjing (rice), Guangzhou (rice), and Hong Kong (rice). All the cities are in solidly rice areas (>70% farmland devoted to rice) or wheat areas [<20% farmland devoted to rice ()]. We chose major cities because (i) it would be easier to obtain large samples in each site and (ii) they have chain store locations that we could use as semiuniform testing environments.

Figure 1 shows how the six cities compare on demographic variables. All are major metropolises, with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita much higher than the national average, which may actually make these places harder places to test the rice theory (if modernization strongly influences culture and pushes cultures further away from their agrarian roots). The fact that most people in major cities do not farm for a living means that we are testing for the legacy of a history of farming, rather than the effect of having farmed land oneself.

Why Hong Kong is an interesting test case

We included Hong Kong for two reasons: (i) Hong Kong is a much wealthier, more modernized city than the other cities. Hong Kong has a GDP per capita about three times those of Beijing and Shanghai ( Fig. 1), as well as a longer history of market capitalism and globalization. (ii) Hong Kong is a former British colony, which has given it direct influence from a Western culture.

Using Hong Kong as a test case sets up a strong contrast between two competing theories: modernization and the rice theory. If Hong Kong shows more individualism, it would suggest that modernization (or British influence) has made the culture more individualistic. If Hong Kong shows more interdependence, it would suggest that rice differences can persist in the face of modernization.

Are people in Beijing cafes actually from Beijing?

One weakness of sampling large cities in China is that large cities have attracted newcomers from rural areas. So how do we know that people in Beijing cafes are actually from Beijing?

The answer is that people in Beijing cafes do not actually need to be from Beijing. Instead, this sample can adequately test the rice theory as long as most people in Beijing Starbucks are from the north-other wheat-growing provinces. Second, even among southerners who have moved to Beijing, there should be at least some cultural assimilation because most have lived in the north for years. Thus, the real threat to validity would be if more than 50% of people in Beijing cafes are recent arrivals from the south, which is unlikely.

But to be conservative, we surveyed 105 people in Starbucks in Beijing and Shanghai. We asked patrons which province they grew up in and how long they had lived in Beijing or Shanghai. In Shanghai Starbucks, 61% grew up in Shanghai, 89% were from rice provinces, and 93% were from rice provinces or had lived in Shanghai for at least 2 years ( Fig. 1). In Beijing, 60% grew up in Beijing, 92% were from wheat provinces, and 98% were from wheat provinces or had lived in Beijing for at least 2 years. Thus, people in Starbucks overwhelmingly represent the rice and wheat regions.

Are cafes too far removed from farming?

Cafes are expensive. In Beijing, the full-time minimum wage is US$434 a month (). At that rate, 10 Starbucks lattes a month would cost about 10% of someone's income. Starbucks customers are probably wealthier than average.

However, that should make it harder to find evidence for the rice theory. If modernization erases differences based on historical rice farming, then it should be harder to find those differences among middle-class consumers in modern cafes. However, cultures have inertia, and differences rooted in subsistence styles can persist hundreds of years after people put down their plows (). This study tests whether China's rice-wheat differences persist among its urban middle class.

Natural laboratories

Cafes do have one strong advantage as a testing site. Cafes provide a naturally uniform environment across different cities. One benefit of global capitalism is that it produces stores with more or less the same environment-the same colors, the same chairs, and the same smells-across China. This means that environmental cues should be roughly similar across cities.

Sitting alone

In Study 1, we observed the number of people sitting with other people or alone in cafes. Why measure sitting alone? On the face of it, sitting alone seems consistent with the independent culture of wheat areas. There is also evidence that doing things alone is more common in individualistic cultures. For example, researchers created an index of individualistic markers across the United States, such as divorce rates and Libertarian voting rates (). This index was positively correlated with the percentage of people driving to work alone versus carpooling, and the percentage of people living alone [(), p. 284], which suggests that spending time alone is more common in individualistic cultures.

Observation rules

Three researchers observed 8964 people in 256 stores across six cities (Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong). Observers coded the number of people sitting alone, the number of groups, the number of people in groups, and the gender of the people sitting alone. To test whether the observations were reliable, observers coded samples in Beijing ( n = 447) and Shanghai ( n = 251). Codings were nearly identical ( r 's > 0.99).

We hypothesized that day of the week and time of day might affect the percentage of people sitting alone, so we noted these variables and made an effort to sample evenly by time and day of the week across cities. The observers avoided tourist areas, such as the Forbidden City and the Bund, as well as areas with lots of travelers, such as train stations and airports. To avoid seasonal variation, all coding took place in the summer between June and August. Observers did not sample during national holidays or exceptional events (such as a typhoon that hit Guangzhou).

Control variables

As a predictor variable, we used the percentage of farmland devoted to rice paddies in the province, although results were similar using a binary rice-versus-wheat variable. We used the earliest rice data that we could find from the 1996 Statistical Yearbook. In addition to time of day and day of the week, we tested for city- and district-level GDP per capita, population density, and age of the population from 2013.

RESULTS

People in rice regions were less likely to be alone (γ = −0.42, P = 0.010, r city-level = 0.79; γ represents group-level regression coefficients). On weekdays, roughly 10% more people were alone in the wheat region than the rice region. On weekends, the wheat region had about 5% more people sitting alone ( Fig. 2).

DISCUSSION

People in the wheat areas were more likely to be alone than people in the rice areas. This was also true in Hong Kong, a wealthier, more modernized city in the rice region. These results suggest that rice-wheat cultural differences within China extend into everyday life-not just in the careful, controlled laboratory measurements.

Chair moving

Some cultural psychologists have argued that, when people run into a problem, individualists are more likely to try to change the situation, and collectivists are more likely to change the self to fit the situation [(, ), p. 67]. Similarly, in their classic paper on self-concept, Markus and Kitayama () theorized that individualistic Americans value "gaining control over surroundings" (p. 241), whereas Japanese people tend to see maturity as the ability to gain control over the inner world of the self (p. 227).

Findings have supported these theories. For example, researchers have found that Americans emphasize control and influence, whereas people in Japan emphasize adjustment and fitting in (, -). In addition, research on "primary control" (active control) versus "secondary control" (adjusting to the situation) has found that Americans are more likely to try primary control ().

To test this theory in everyday life, we pushed chairs together in Starbucks and observed how many people moved the chairs out of their way and how many moved their body to squeeze through the chairs ( Fig. 4). If people in rice areas are more collectivistic, with less importance placed on the self, they should be less likely to move the chairs.

To the best of our knowledge, no studies have used this method before. Thus, we cannot be certain what moving the chair represents. Thus, we tested the validity of this method by running samples in two countries shown to have differences in importance of the self-Japan and the United States. We also tested a subsample of participants in China who did and did not move the chair on psychological constructs previously shown to differ between individualistic and collectivistic cultures: cultural thought style, internal versus external locus of control, and self-efficacy (see the Supplementary Materials for more details).

Finally, moving the chair is similar to a study that put participants in front of a fan that was set to an uncomfortably high setting (). Participants who were primed to feel powerful (and perhaps place more importance on the self) were more likely to turn the fan off or move it out of the way. Thus, there is some evidence that actively removing an obstacle is more common among people who place a higher importance on the self.

Observation rules

A total of 678 people in five cities walked through the chair trap (wheat: Beijing and Shenyang; rice: Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong). All observations were made in the summer (11 July to 2 September). We ran the study in Starbucks only to keep the testing environment similar across cities.

Control variables

Observers coded for several variables that we thought might affect how likely people are to move chairs: gender, time of day, day of the week, employee versus customer, walking alone versus in a group, and under/over 40 years old. Observers estimated whether people were under or over 40 years old on the basis of their appearance. In addition to rice, we ran models with GDP per capita and population density at the city and district level.

RESULTS

People in the rice region were less likely to move the chair (γ = −1.86, P < 0.001, r city-level = −0.99, r ind-level = −0.24; Table 2). In the rice region, about 6% of people moved the chair, whereas in the wheat region, 16% of people moved the chair ( Fig. 5).

DISCUSSION

Two studies found evidence that historical subsistence styles can explain meaningful regional differences in people's everyday behavior in China. Modernization differences did not account for the differences-if anything, the wealthier cities (the rice areas) were less individualistic. The fact that these differences appeared among mostly middle-class city people suggests that rice-wheat differences are still alive and well in modern China.

Sitting alone

In an effort to standardize the observations, observers followed several rules. Only seated patrons counted; people standing in line did not count unless they later joined someone sitting. Foreigners were not counted. Although this is not always easy to determine, the observers used appearance and the language that people were using (if they were talking). Each location could only be observed once per day to avoid counting the same people twice. People sitting outside were only counted if they had purchased something; this excludes people who were using outdoor chairs as a place to sit without buying anything.

The observers plotted routes based on the locations of Starbucks and visited any nearby cafes. We defined cafes as places that serve coffee or tea and where most patrons are drinking beverages and eating light snacks. If many patrons were drinking alcohol or eating meals, the store was not counted.

In most cases, it was easy to determine who was alone and who was together with other people. However, particularly in cafes that were crowded or had shared tables, people sat near each other, and it was not always clear whether they were together. In these cases, the observers lingered to look for signs that people were together, such as talking to each other.

Chair moving

Statistical analysis

We used binomial (alone or not/moved chair or not) HLMs using the GLMER function in the program R. We present results for models nesting people in cities, districts, or stores depending on the predictor variable. Fully nested models with stores nested in districts nested in cities are in tables S10 and S11.

Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/4/4/eaap8469/DC1

fig. S1. Sample chair trap in a Starbucks in Shanghai.

table S1. Are people in international chains more likely to be sitting alone?

table S2. Rice-wheat differences controlling for international chain.

table S3. Sitting alone and GDP.

table S4. Sitting alone and district-level data.

table S5. Basic predictors of chair moving.

table S6. City and district census predictors of chair moving.

table S7. International comparison of chair moving.

table S8. How well do other major theories of culture predict sitting alone?

table S9. How well do other major theories of culture predict chair moving?

table S10. Sitting alone models with stores nested in districts nested in cities.

table S11. Chair moving models with stores nested in districts nested in cities.

table S12. Chair moving models with stores nested in districts nested in cities.

section S1. Rice statistics

section S2. Chair moving

section S3. Controlling for observer

section S4. Hong Kong GDP per capita

section S5. Age in districts

section S6. Calculating effect sizes in GLMER

section S7. Graphing mean percent sitting alone

section S8. GDP per capita

section S9. Alternative predictors

section S10. Chair moving validity checks

section S11. Ethics statement

View Abstract

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Moving chairs in Starbucks: Observational studies find rice-wheat cultural differences in daily life in China

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Traditional paddy rice farmers had to share labor and coordinate irrigation in a way that most wheat farmers did not. We observed people in everyday life to test whether these agricultural legacies gave rice-farming southern China a more interdependent culture and wheat-farming northern China a more independent culture.

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The index, which surveyed over 20,000 U.S. adults, found that nearly half of survey respondents reported sometimes or always feeling alone (46 percent) or left out (47 percent) and younger generations feel much lonelier than older ones.

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Loneliness among Americans has reached " epidemic levels," according to health service company Cigna's U.S. Loneliness Index, released Tuesday.

The index, which surveyed over 20,000 U.S. adults, found that nearly half of survey respondents reported sometimes or always feeling alone (46 percent) or left out (47 percent) and younger generations feel much lonelier than older ones.

The survey also revealed that striking the right work-life balance can combat feelings of isolation, with those working less than desired actually feeling lonelier than those working more than desired.

For Cigna's report, survey respondents were evaluated on their loneliness using the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a 20-item questionnaire that was developed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

Gen Z adults surveyed (ages 18 to 22), are the loneliest, according to the report. More than half of Gen Zers identified with 10 of the 11 feelings associated with loneliness, according to the survey, including feeling like people around them are not really with them (69 percent), feeling shy (69 percent) and feeling like no one really knows them well (68 percent).

"While we know that this is a group that is making life changes, these findings give us a surprising understanding of how this generation perceives themselves," Douglas Nemecek, M.D., chief medical officer for Behavioral Health at Cigna, tells CNBC Make It in an email. "It's something that we need to explore to understand how we can address it. And that's what we're planning to do."

Loneliness seems to lessen with age: Millennials (adults ages 23 to 37, according to the study) are not quite as lonely as Gen Z, but lonelier than Baby Boomers (ages 52 to 71). People in the Greatest Generation (ages 72 and up, according to Cigna's report) are least likely to report having feelings of loneliness.

Though the survey found that social media does't have much of an impact on loneliness - those who defined themselves as very heavy users of social media had similar loneliness scores as those who say they never used it - other things you do during the day have an impact.

Those who are employed, for example, are less lonely than students and the unemployed, the latter of whom have the highest feelings of loneliness. (Retired people were the least lonely, because many of them seem to have found a supportive community, says Nemecek, and homemakers fell in the middle of the spectrum.)

"The fact is that we spend a lot of time at work, so it's very natural that this time - and the relationships you build with co-workers - truly matter," says Nemecek, explaining the findings. "[S]o it's critical that employers create a space where employees can connect face-to-face and form meaningful relationships with their co-workers."

In fact, one way to combat loneliness, the survey found, is to work the right amount - those who reported doing so were the least likely to be lonely, while those who work more than desired had a three point increase in loneliness and those who work less than desired had a full six point increase in loneliness.

While Nemecek says the optimal level of hours of work per week is largely dependent on the individual and their line of work, "Balance is critical," he says. "It's important that managers keep watch over how much time employees spend at the office."

The survey also found that striking the right balance of sleep, exercise, socializing with friends and family and "me time," can help alleviate feelings of loneliness.
Don't miss: Air pollution can be bad for the brain - these are the cleanest and the smoggiest places in America

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Gen Z is the loneliest generation, survey reveals, but working can help

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Loneliness among Americans has reached " epidemic levels," according to health service company Cigna's U.S. Loneliness Index, released Tuesday. The index, which surveyed over 20,000 U.S. adults, found that nearly half of survey respondents reported sometimes or always feeling alone (46 percent) or left out (47 percent) and younger generations feel much lonelier than older ones.

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Social Media Use, 2018
Shows percentages on apps most used, who is using them, etc. "29 percent of people would find it hard to give up all social media" (mostly observational with some surveys integrated)

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Facebook and YouTube dominate the social media landscape. But younger Americans, especially those ages 18 to 24, stand out in using a variety of platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter.

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"29 percent of college freshman have less than $1,000 saved for college.

More than half of each group said they expected to use scholarships and grants, plus money earned while working to pay the costs.

But, 52 percent of juniors and 42 percent of seniors admitted they don’t actually know the cost of college tuition."

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Follow KDKA-TV: Facebook | Twitter

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A new study finds most high school and college students are not prepared to manage the cost of college.

A survey by Junior Achievement and Citizens Bank targeted 500 high school juniors, 500 high school seniors, and 500 college freshman.

The results show 39 percent of juniors, 30 percent of seniors, and 29 percent of college freshman have less than $1,000 saved for college.

More than half of each group said they expected to use scholarships and grants, plus money earned while working to pay the costs.

But, 52 percent of juniors and 42 percent of seniors admitted they don't actually know the cost of college tuition.

Find the complete data from the study here.

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Study: High School, College Students Unprepared To Manage College Costs

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Follow KDKA-TV: Facebook | Twitter PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A new study finds most high school and college students are not prepared to manage the cost of college. A survey by Junior Achievement and Citizens Bank targeted 500 high school juniors, 500 high school seniors, and 500 college freshman.

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McKenzie R
" Blockchain may be known to 66% of chief information officers (CIOs) but only 22% plan on using it "

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Gartner Survey: 77% Of CIOs Have 'No Plans' For Blockchain

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Over half of company CIOs surveyed by Gartner have "no plans" to use blockchain technology.

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Part I Getting Ready for AA8 Project AR.pdf

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“Participants were given a 48-gram bar of dark chocolate at the beginning of one experiment and then ate a piece of dark chocolate every two hours they were awake, for several days.”

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CLOSE

Dark chocolate with high concentrations of cacao can have positive effects on stress levels, inflammation, mood, memory and immunity, according to two new studies.

The research presented this week at the Experimental Biology 2018 annual meeting in San Diego suggests chocolate with a minimum of 70% cacao can support cognitive, endocrine and cardiovascular health.

Lee Berk, main investigator on the studies and an associate dean of research affairs at Loma Linda University's School of Allied Health Professions, said participants were given a 48-gram bar of dark chocolate at the beginning of one experiment and then ate a piece of dark chocolate every two hours they were awake, for several days.

Blood tests revealed the chocolate influenced gene activity, increased anti-inflammatory agents and increased infection-fighting cells, Berk said. Further research by Berk's team examined how brain activity reacted to dark chocolate consumption. Gamma waves recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG) suggested the treat could positively impact brain function, such as cognitive function and creativity, even two hours after eating it.

The two studies included a total of 10 participants and results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal for scrutiny.

Berk said his team's next step is to research how much dark chocolate someone should eat to affect brain function. He confesses he eats some every day.

The research was funded by the university and is not affiliated with any chocolate companies, Berk said.

More: M&M's maker fears chocolate shortage by 2050, report says

More: 50 states: 50 craft chocolate makers
Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2vZiGJJ

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Dark chocolate can improve stress, mood, memory and immunity, studies claim

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CLOSE Dark chocolate with high concentrations of cacao can have positive effects on stress levels, inflammation, mood, memory and immunity, according to two new studies. The research presented this week at the Experimental Biology 2018 annual meeting in San Diego suggests chocolate with a minimum of 70% cacao can support cognitive, endocrine and cardiovascular health.

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“Every one of the observational studies showed a beneficial relationship between being physically active and being happy,” says Weiyun Chen, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan, who, with her graduate student Zhanjia Zhang, wrote the review.”

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Phys Ed

Credit... iStock

Small amounts of exercise could have an outsize effect on happiness.

According to a new review of research about good moods and physical activity, people who work out even once a week or for as little as 10 minutes a day tend to be more cheerful than those who never exercise. And any type of exercise may be helpful.

The idea that moving can affect our moods is not new. Many of us would probably say that we feel less cranky or more relaxed after a jog or visit to the gym.

Science would generally agree with us. A number of past studies have noted that physically active people have much lower risks of developing depression and anxiety than people who rarely move.

But that research centered on the relationships between exercise and psychological problems like depression and anxiety. Fewer past studies explored links between physical activity and upbeat emotions, especially in people who already were psychologically healthy, and those studies often looked at a single age group or type of exercise.

On their own, they do not tell us much about the amounts or types of exercise that might best lift our moods, or whether most of us might expect to find greater happiness with regular exercise or only certain groups of people.

So for the new review, in The Journal of Happiness Studies, researchers at the University of Michigan decided to aggregate and analyze multiple past studies of working out and happiness.

They began by combing research databases for relevant studies and wound up with 23 published since 1980. Most of those were observational, meaning that the scientists simply looked at a group of people, asking them how much they worked out and how happy they were. A few of the studies were experiments in which people started exercising and researchers measured their happiness before and after.

The number of participants in any one study was often small, but together, they represented more than 500,000 people ranging in age from adolescents to the very old and covering a broad range of ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

And for most of them, the Michigan researchers found, exercise was strongly linked to happiness.

"Every one of the observational studies showed a beneficial relationship between being physically active and being happy," says Weiyun Chen, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan, who, with her graduate student Zhanjia Zhang, wrote the review.

The type of exercise did not seem to matter. Some happy people walked or jogged. Others practiced yoga-style posing and stretching.

And the amount of exercise needed to influence happiness was slight, Dr. Chen says. In several studies, people who worked out only once or twice a week said they felt much happier than those who never exercised. In other studies, 10 minutes a day of physical activity was linked with buoyant moods.

But more movement generally contributed to greater happiness. If people exercised for at least 30 minutes on most days, which is the standard American and European recommendation for good health, Dr. Chen says, they were about 30 percent more likely to consider themselves happy than people who did not meet the guidelines.

"I think the indications are strong that exercise can contribute to happiness and, while anything helps, a bit more is probably better," she says.

But because most of the studies in this review were observational, she says, it is not possible yet to establish whether exercise directly causes changes in happiness or if the two just happen to occur together often. It could be that happy people are more likely to take up exercise and continue with it than people who feel sad. In that case, exercise would not have helped to make people happy; rather, their happiness would have helped to make them exercisers.

Happiness also is an inherently subjective, squishy concept. The studies analyzed in the review asked people how happy they felt. But one person's happiness could be another's relative gloom, making it difficult to generalize about how any of us might react, emotionally, to starting an exercise routine.

And, of course, the review did not delve into how exercise could be influencing happiness.

"There are indications that social factors could mediate the effects of exercise on happiness for some people," Dr. Chen says. In other words, the social interactions that occur during an exercise class or trip to the gym might help to elevate people's moods.

Or exercise could more directly change the body, including the brain.

"We know that exercise improves health," Dr. Chen says, "and feeling healthier might make people feel happier."

Exercise might also remodel the brain, for example, by prompting the creation of new brain cells or inducing changes in brain chemicals, in ways that contribute to positive emotions.

Dr. Chen hopes that future experiments will explore these issues. But for now, she says, "I think that we can safely say that people who exercise are probably going to be happier than people who don't."

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Even a Little Exercise Might Make Us Happier (Published 2018)

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Phys Ed Small amounts of exercise could have an outsize effect on happiness. According to a new review of research about good moods and physical activity, people who work out even once a week or for as little as 10 minutes a day tend to be more cheerful than those who never exercise.

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“Support for same-sex relationships is rising sharply among all major ethnic and racial groups and most religious groups, according to a major new survey.”

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The survey found a dramatic increase in support for same-sex marriage across all racial and ethnic groups and almost all religious groups just since 2013. More than 6 in 10 - 61 percent - of Americans say same-sex couples should be able to marry legally, compared with 30 percent who are opposed. Five years ago, support was at a bare majority of 52 percent.

The survey - one of the most extensive of its kind, questioning more than 40,000 Americans in weekly installments for eight months last year - focused on issues of importance to the LGBTQ community, including same-sex marriage and protections against discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment.

It reported a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.2 percentage points, with a 95 percent level of confidence.

The Public Religion Research Institute found that supporters of same-sex marriage now make up majorities among Democrats and Republicans; blacks, whites and Latinos; Catholics; and most white mainline Protestant denominations.

Notably, opinions among black Americans have shifted from opposition - 41 percent supported same-sex marraige in 2013 - to support, with 52 percent signaling approval, the survey reported. Opposition among black Protestants has shifted especially strongly, falling from 57 percent in 2013 to just 43 percent, it said.

"The country has reached a milestone moment in the debate over LGBT rights," said Dan Cox, the institute's research director. "At a time when Americans are more divided than ever, the sea change in support for LGBT rights that now crosses lines of race, ethnicity, religion and geography means that LGBT rights are becoming one of the few areas of public agreement."

The main holdouts remain conservative Republicans. While a majority of all Republicans now support same-sex marriage - 51 percent - only 36 percent of conservative Republicans agree, according to the survey.

Perhaps not surprisingly, only two groups significantly aligned with conservative Republicanism statistically - Mormons and white evangelicals - continue to support allowing merchants to refuse to provide goods and services to same-sex couples, both at 53 percent. Black Protestants, by contrast, oppose refusing such service by almost two-thirds, the institute reported.

Opposition to refusing services spans the country, with residents of only three states falling below a majority: North Dakota and South Dakota (both at 49 percent) and Utah (48 percent).

By comparison, 60 percent of Americans overall oppose withholding service.

"While religious liberty is a widely held value, most believe that small businesses that are open to the public should serve all customers and that personal religious objections of the owners should not be allowable grounds for refusing service to gay and lesbian customers," said the institute's chief executive, Robert P. Jones, co-chairman of religion and politics for the American Academy of Religion.

Majorities of white evangelicals and Mormons may remain opposed to refusing service, Jones said, but "combined, they represent less than 1 in 5 Americans today."

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Support for same-sex marriage grows sharply in U.S., survey finds

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The survey found a dramatic increase in support for same-sex marriage across all racial and ethnic groups and almost all religious groups just since 2013. More than 6 in 10 - 61 percent - of Americans say same-sex couples should be able to marry legally, compared with 30 percent who are opposed.