Can You Force Yourself to Sleep Less ?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130320-can-you-get-by-on-less-sleep
by: Hadeel

People when they get older they sleep less. While teenagers sleep more than the normal hours. Is this statement is true? We don't actually know. According to CNN they said that the hours of sleeping differ from one to another 80% of us manage between six and nine hours a night; the other 20% sleep more or less than this. But how easy is it to change your regular schedule? If you force yourself to get out of bed a couple of hours early every day will your body eventually become accustomed to it? Sadly not. We all know that the lack of sleep makes us sick and weaker. One of the effects of not sleeping well is hard time to concentrate on one thing either a lecture or your work. Also, being stressed and confused is another effect in the short – term. However, in the long-term effects is more dangerous. According to the article they said that getting less sleep than you need over the course of decades is associated with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. But, there are a very few people who sleep less every day and they don’t get sick; those people known as “sleepless elite”. In 2009, the University of California San Francisco discovered a mother and daughter, who went to bed very late, yet were up bright and early every morning. Even in the weekends when they can get more sleep they actually don’t and they wake up very early and sleep late. So, tests shows that the mother and daughter have a gene called hDEC2, and when the researchers put the same gene in mice they found that they sleep less. But, this gene isn’t available to rest of us, because at the moment we are stuck with the genes we have.

The researchers working with the military had found that people can bank sleep in advance that might work. For instance, according to Walter Reed Army Institute of Research they had people go to bed a couple of hours earlier than usual every night for a week. When they were subsequently deprived of sleep they didn't suffer as much as the people who hadn't had the chance to bank sleep in advance. Try this method it will help you on organizing your sleep.

Behind the "Cheap Price" Wal Mart

      BY Tomoe

    
Wal-Mart seeks the lowest prices to its customers.  It pressures to vendors to sell products at low prices.  Those vendors have to lay off the U.S employees and close the factories, so they outsource goods from the low-cost countries.
      For example, “The pressure on Levi goes back 25 years--well before Wal-Mart was an influence. Between 1981 and 1990, Levi closed 58 U.S. manufacturing plants, sending 25% of its sewing overseas(Fishman, 56).”  Some companies have deep relation with Wal-Mart; their main consumer is Wal-Mart so they need to fill the condition even the price is ignored of the cost to produce.
       The low price at the Wal-Mart consists of the imbalance between the price and the costs.  They get benefits from laying in large quantity and sell a large amount.  However they makes seller sell predatory pricing and infringe the U.S jobs.

When I came to America in February, I was so surprised of the cheap price.  For example, one gallon milk is twice as expensive as in Japan.  I thought American buy much quantity so it is so cheap, of course it is true but not only that reason.

 

    For example, in 1994, the most admired and innovation-oriented company in America was Rubbermaid.  It has high quality, and didn't always charge the lowest price.  However Wal- Mart forces Rubbermaid to sell lowest products.  In 2003, the most admired company became Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart controls other company.  For consumers, the price gives benefits but some companies in America bankrupt. 

     However, some companies didn’t get negative effects.  Those companies planed new strategy.  They started having to change our facility to try to be quicker, better delivery and specialize in high-tech, large products. That required a lot of shipping cost, so they could compete and offset the difference in labor. They are focusing on large-screen, high-transportation-cost products, and also they try to specialize in delivery, making sure that we deliver on a timely basis and low quantities.

To keep American economy, the domestic companies is necessary so they need think about their strategy.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

Life on other planets

“The history of life on a planet mirrors the planet's life history.”

Last week, the NASA space telescope Kepler which should be searching for planets similar to Earth that orbit stars near to our galaxy did not function and does not seem to be fixable.

Kepler cost 550 million dollars. It was launched in 2009, and has found 132 planets which could be habitable. Scientists have found other 2,740 planets which should be analyzed in more details with telescopes from Earth which will confirm whether or not the aforesaid planets are habitable.

Stars that have planets which orbit around them is a very old idea originating from Greece. The existence of other worlds was suggested by philosophers at that time. There is an infinity of worlds in the space with probably some similar to our world.

In the sixteenth century, Giordano Bruno, an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, speculated about the existence of other worlds which could be habitable like Earth in his work On the Infinite Universe and Worlds.

Four centuries have passed, and nowadays, observation of other planets similar or like Earth is carried out instead of the speculation about likewise planets. "Comparative planetology", a new branch of astronomy, consists of studying and contrasting properties of numerous planets in detail.

Owing to comparative planetology, we know that most stars have planets orbiting around them, that life on planets is only possible with regular astronomical properties, and quite narrow chemical composition. Whereas simple bacterial life may be prevalent, complex life may not be ubiquitous.

Scientists defines life as carbon-based and operating in water, but there may be other types of life which could be silicon-based, and operating in ammonia. As a point in case, intelligent life could have evolved more than we can imagine, and maybe can leave behind its physical carbon envelope.

There are hundreds of billions of other planets in our galaxy, and with their moons, we can count trillions of other worlds. By the same token, there are “hundreds of billions of other galaxies across space”. Some planets will have the same properties than Earth. Life on each of these planets will be specific to them, and will depend on the planet’s history. Each planet has a unique history which winds up in this planet being unique in the Universe.

The observation of other planets will continue as Kepler's mission will be carry on by other space telescopes.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/06/05/188321257/other-planets-from-speculation-to-confirmation

Cartoonist Barry's challenge

By: Yoko

Original source: http://www.npr.org/2013/05/29/187079888/looking-ahead-to-the-future-of-cartoons-and-creativity (NPR)

Lynda Barry is a cartoonist. She had worked in alternative newspaper and was in charge of weekly comic strip Ernie Pool’s Comeek. After she worked in there from 1979 to 2008, she decided to shift her focus to teaching and started to work as an artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin.

 

She has a course which is described as a “writing and picture-making class with focus on the basic physical structure of the brain”. In the first class, she named all students with “brain names” such as Thalamus and Hippocampus so that she can know her students by their work, not by their personalities. Students remember names of brain when they finished semester by calling each other by names of brain. Lynda and students in this course got the point that they don’t be surprised to hear student say “Yeah, I saw Hippocampus at the party with Limbic System”. Now she become assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity and is called Professor Old Skull.

In her class, she tries to soften student’s stiffed brain and help them tap innate creativity. Barry strongly believes that doodling has a power to inspire creativity. So she teach student to draw when they are listening to people read the stories, and aims to get that drawing habit into student’s hands. She herself is always with pen and paper.  The students wrote about 50000 words and hundreds of drawings during the course of semester, according to a student known as Brain Stem. 

Her courses are not requiring drawing skills or former experiences. She says that she is interested in how people draw who didn’t draw or who didn’t feel they could draw. She sometimes surprised to see the work of people who had quit drawing around adolescence and started to draw again. 

When she was 19, her teacher asked her “what is an image?” This is why she got interest in the intersection of art and brain science. She is still trying to answer this question.

I really respect people who can draw. I don’t think I can draw, but Barry believes a possibility in people who like me… maybe I can try drawing from now：）  Her classes look so unique. Encouraging student to doodle is interesting. Expanding own major to another field is good. I’m not sure what kind of biological function of the art she is trying to figure out. I want to look growth of her work.