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everlastingremorse-blog · 1 year ago

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We are officially in spoiler zone. From this point, spoilers for In Sound Mind.

So, before we get into the good (and it is really good), I want to get into the bad. Now, this criticism is coming from a place of love. This game was amazing! It’s just in my instinct that when I love something I want to rip it to shreds so I can look at all the little parts.

Now, before we begin, I want to say I played this game on the hardest mode except for a little bit at the ending. It’s possible that some of the problems I faced could have not been an issue in an easier game mode. That being said, I don’t think Harder should mean more frustrating. And I know that’s absolutely easier said than done, but still. I wanted something that was more of a challenge, not something that was more of a headache. How to do that, Im not entirely sure, but still.

Let’s start with Alan Shore. He’s the second patient you investigate, but his tape wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Unlike the other characters, when he’s chasing you, he auto locks onto you. Unlike the other bosses, you cannot stealth away from him. He knows where you are and will try to get to you, and you just wait in a light for him to leave. I think this is to add some variety to the game play, because like I said, he’s the only character that works like that.

Unfortunately, it’s not fun. It’s really annoying and tedious and kinda just annoying to deal with. You can get him off of you by either shining your light on him (and getting hurt no matter what) or shoot him with a gun or flare gun (and waste ammo). The thing is that I didn’t want to hurt Allen, but it just makes sense to hurt him from a gameplay perspective.

This is called Ludonarrative dissonance, where there is a clear divide between how the game is played and the narrative of the game. (Think yu-gi-oh/shadowverse. You’re trying to save the world by playing a card game. Maybe just punch each other. It’s different in shadowverse, but that’s not what this post is about.)

Anyways, there’s a lot of ludonarrative dissonance in Allen Shore��s chapter. He is very socially awkward person who tends to isolate himself… so why is he the one that’s always attacking you? Like his whole thing is that he feels like he’s stuck in the bottom of a pit. That he’s isolating himself, so why is he attacking me?

And there’s absolutely something there! Sometimes a mental illness makes you destructive to the people around you. I don’t think he wants to hurt you, but he’s doing it accidentally (kinda). There’s something there, I just don’t necessarily agree with how it’s done.

Furthermore, you get a flare gun in his chapter. This let’s you burn up darkness, an obstacle you can’t deal with before. It also gets Allen to leave you alone… and that’s it. The flare gun isn’t a useful weapon against anyone else and can only be used to get weird trick shots on explode barrels. Sometimes later in the game, they’ll just have random pools of darkness that kinda give justification for the flare gun, but they could just remove those and the game wouldn’t necessarily change.

And this is really annoying because you literally face a “bull” in the next level. You know what would have been great, if the bull chased the red flare. I think I read somewhere that you can use it to stun him, but I would vastly prefer if he saw the flare and chased after it. This would give more use to the item, and add a new layer to your inventory management. You can only carry five flares at a time, so do you lose a flare, or do you try to outrun it? I would have preferred that option, especially because you get an automatic stun later in that level!

The next enemy could have also been stunned this way. When I hit him with it, he just shrugged it off basically immediately. It would make sense that causing a ton of light would cause a lens flare that helps you escape, but no, he just shrugs it off.

Now one part that also annoyed me was with the bull I mentioned before. There’s this one part where he has to charge you, and you quickly run out of the way so that he breaks through the wall. This would have been fun to use the flare gun, but I digress. No my problem with this section is that it’s impossible to do without getting hurt, which is very frustrating. It’s ESPECIALLY frustrating when the bull stops in front of you to do a different attack from the charge. Which he does A TON. It was super frustrating.

The next enemy, “The Flash,” just sticks onto you way too hard. Like if he’s on you, it’s basically impossible to get away from him. That’s hyperbole, but it is really really annoying to deal with.

Those were the major things (excluding what I’m about to get to). There were some minor things like sometimes aiming/parkour is hard to do on switch, but I blame the switch more than I do the game.

But none of those were awful. Like, even though Allen was annoying, he wasn’t game breaking. The flare gun not used, annoying, but like, so what. No, the one thing that I think was absolutely wrong was the final boss fight. It was absolutely garbage. And it’s so sad because it didn’t even ruin the game. I still fucking love it, but I don’t EVER want to play that ending again. I kinda have an urge to play the other parts, but that ending? Absolutely not.

The ending constantly has barrels that explode coming for you. It’s not too bad except that they all basically one shot you no matter what difficulty you’re on. Literally, sometimes they’ll take you down 5 health, other times they’ll take 70 health. And I switched to easy because I though “oh, it’s because I’m on hard.” No, it’s fucking office. And it’s not TOO hard to dodge… except when you’re dealing with all the little enemies chasing after you. Which is basically always. And further on the fight, you have to let them hit you, so you basically have the same problem as the bull from before. This was absolutely intentional, but god damn you could have done it better.

Also, I’m the second to final section, the boss will have these huge aoe attacks that are impossible to dodge and aren’t telegraphed well. Like, it’ll make the ground turn read before it happens, but it’s not for a lot of time, and sometimes you have absolutely NO CHANCE to dodge it. And those hits are sometimes 1 hit KOs. Which is fucking awful and I hated it.

You beat the boss by using the previous tapes/levels to defeat it, because you’ve been able to learn from your patients, and that’s made you stronger. It has multiple sections, each reminiscent of a previous tape.

Except it didn’t do a good job of thematically tying itself into those tapes. You just use them when you get from point A to B because that’s what the fight tells you to do. You got a specific item in every tape/level of the game, but the only time you need to use them is for the last tape and at least ONCE for the flare gun.

The first item you get is a mirror that reveals the truth and can be used to cut tape… and in the first section of the final boss, you use it to cut tape. I would have absolutely preferred to use it in a cool way for something, using the mirror to find the truth. Maybe there were a bunch of tape recorders, and Virginia is pointing out the real one. That would have been cool, but didn’t happen.

The flare gun was only used to get rid of darkness in front of the tape (and maybe a few darknesses before). Imagine instead if you used the flare gun to call for help, like a flare gun usually does, and then boom, Allen Shore shows up and you can use the second tape recorder.

The third faze is the one reminiscent of the bull where you have to let the exploding stuff flying at you hit them. It would have been amazing if you had to use the lure pills (the item you get during the third tape) to get past the doors, but no, nothing cool like that.

And it’s not like the entire tape was bad, it had some AMAZING moments. Between the first and second phase, you can high five a mannequin that helped you along the way. I missed it the first time, so I went back and redid it. AND IT WAS SO FUCKING COOL M. I LITERALLY WAS INSTANTLY REENERGIZED TO KEEP GOING. But that’s the ONLY time they did it. They could have done something like that between each phase, but once again no. Between the second and third phase maybe a whale helps you get between them (it makes sense if you’ve played it.) I can’t think of something for the third and fourth phase (maybe a car taking out a bunch of enemies for you), but in between the fourth and final phase, Rosemary can come and help you. There was room to make the boss fight much more enjoyable, but it’s just kinda sad that it wasn’t.

But your character beats Agent Rainbow with a cool one liner and I literally jumped up in joy it was so fucking cool I literally said “Fuck yeah,” the ending of the story was amazing, the final gameplay was not.

So now that we got the bad out of the way, let’s get to the good.

OH! Also Allen gets associated with Icarus for some reason. It doesn’t make sense in any way and it just weird. But now onto the good stuff really.

Edit: one last thing I wanted to add (seriously this time) is something I said in the good post. The game ends with Agent rainbow coming back and basically telling you he’s still out there in the hearts of other. I think it would make sense if he survived in Desmond as a representation that overcoming trauma is a process that continues even after you think you finished.

Ok, so, In Sound Mind is an amazing game and you should definitely play it if you think you’d like it. So I’m gonna be posting a lot about it because I finished it and it’s super good.

So let’s start with what it is.

It’s a psychological survival horror indie game with a soundtrack by The Living Tombstone (‘you should’ve picked Mercy’ guy). If you’ve played any persona game, then it’s like if that was survival horror. It has some really cool ‘monster designs,’ that are like symbolic and stuff.

Anyways, you play Desmond Wales, a therapist who wakes up in the basement of your building. As you start to explore, you realize that the world isn’t quite what it seems, and you begin investigating the situations of your patients (one died, one is in a coma, and two are missing). While they at first seem unrelated, a large narrative and conspiracy starts to unravel.

Quick note, Tlt didn’t do the sound design, he just made 6 incredible songs for the game.

It’s made by this small indie company called We Create Stuff. It seems to be their first foray into an original IP that is a full game with a narrative and stuff. They have other games, but they’re not necessarily “games.” That mean. If you check out their website, you’ll see what I mean. They have other games, but In Sound Mind is their first game game.

Anyways, I’ll get more in depth in later posts, but we’ll end here rn because no spoilers.

#in sound mind #survival horror #psychological horror #indie games #video games #horror games #spoilers #tons of spoilers #it’s so good #allen shore #max nygaard #lucas cole #Virginia Ruhr #in sound mind Virginia #Virginia in sound mind #criticism #good faith #it’s a good game

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marciapolding-blog · 5 years ago

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MeTV Music

This can be a 'checklist of electronic music genres', consisting of genres of electronic music , primarily created with electronic musical instruments or electronic music technology A distinction has been made between sound produced utilizing electromechanical means and that produced using digital technology. If you are still having hassle figuring out the style, the arrangement of the tune might give you some clues. For instance in genres like chill-out and ambient there's a distinct lack of any structure, as the tune doesn't progress radically over its period. 7. Hennion A. The production of success: an anti-musicology of the pop song. Common Music. 1983 Jan 1;three:159-ninety three. A controversial term in hip-hop, many "conscious rappers" do not wish to be labeled as such. Nevertheless, www.Audio-transcoder.com there is no denying the importance of this subgenre, which promotes ideas such as information of self and consciousness of large-ranging social points. Many different subgenres accomplish the identical, however various rap (a better phrase) is labeled as such as a consequence of its smoother, extra laid-back production type. Indian classical music is the only music that makes such an extensive use of, and offers such an importance to musical modes. In contrast to Western, Chinese language, South Asian and Japanese music, Indian music locations emphasis on the artist's interpretation of a particular mode and his personal model of singing, moderately than a flawless facsimile of a composition written by another person. Because of this, ensembles are very uncommon in North Indian music, though it is a crucial part of the South Indian Carnatic college of music. Album sales have lengthy been a key measure of the recognition of particular person genres, and yr after yr jazz album gross sales continue to fall. Favourite among kids everywhere in the world, hip hop is likely one of the most popular modern genres of music. Hip hop music emerged as an offshoot of the hip hop movement within the Seventies. Centered in Bronx, the motion quickly spread to the remainder of the US, and hip hop music benefited from the growth, changing into one of the adopted genres of the Nineteen Seventies-1980s. Other H-topics had been much more dynamic. Between 1960 and 2009, the imply frequency of H1 declined by about 75%. H1 captures the usage of dominant-seventh chords. Inherently dissonant (because of the tritone interval between the third and the minor-seventh), these chords are generally used in Jazz to create tensions which might be eventually resolved to consonant chords; in Blues music, the dissonances are sometimes not resolved and thus add to the characteristic ‘dirty' color. Accordingly, we find that songs tagged blues or jazz have a excessive frequency of H1; it is particularly widespread in the songs of Blues artists similar to B.B. King and Jazz artists similar to Nat ‘King' Cole. The decline of this subject, then, represents the lingering death of Jazz and Blues within the Hot a hundred. Only a few classical musicians I've labored with have even heard of this idea of really feel, and even those with good rhythm do not obsess over it to the purpose that jazz musicians have to in order to obtain an anticipated stage of competence. So to a jazz musician, the classical musician's sense of rhythm can seem bafflingly substandard. The group had gathered to listen to the latest in digital dance music, so when a handful of bluegrass musicians shuffled onto the stage last March, they may as well have been astronauts-and virtually immediately, the blogosphere was abuzz with confusion. The study contributors were recruited via notices put up in Marienhospital Herne and in the MA building on the Medical College at Ruhr College Bochum. We focused healthy volunteers, not sufferers. All subjects had been examined in response to a strictly outlined research protocol consisting of six phases ( eTable 1 ). The music sequences had been randomized before the beginning of the research by means of computerized random number generation. 60 subjects (30 males and 30 ladies) had been included within the intervention group, of whom half were youthful than 50 and the opposite half older than 50 years of age. The age and sex distribution of the management group was identical. Random allocation was undertaken before the beginning of the study by the principal investigator (HJT); the study physician (GV) admitted individuals into the examine and, on the study day, allotted them to the respective interventions (musical genres). Just like the Gqom style aesthetic , Afrobeat has been round for some time. A mix of hip-hop, funky house, and native African music from London (through Africa diaspora), Ghana, and Nigeria, Afrobeat had originally been fairly restricted to elements of the African continent and the UK, but it's catching fireplace internationally. British-Ghanian artist Mista Silva's Murda" is a great instance of the Afrobeats vibe, which sounds nearly like a extra rhythmically and sonically various musical cousin of Reggaeton.

Hokum blues is basically blues music with sexual overtones. The genre was fashionable within the US in the Nineteen Twenties and '30s, particularly throughout Prohibition. On the time, there was a general belief that only people who engaged in sex, playing, or other questionable actions stored late nights. We began with our record of 1369 genres of music (and rising), sorted by popularity to deliver up the extra obscure ones at the bottom of the record. And then we plowed by means of in that order, plucking out those that sounded, nicely, strange to our ears, in terms of the music they had been describing in English. 1971 song Hocus Pocus was high within the charts in numerous nations. It was performed by Dutch progressive rock band Focus, made up of performers from the pit band for the Dutch production of the rock musical Hair. three) non-musical sound consists of unstructured noises (we call it noise). When was the final time Brittney Spears or Madonna gave you a free album on-line? 50 Cent helped to revolutionize the music biz by dropping free mixtapes, and ever since, hip-hop followers have gotten some actual classics and never needed to pay a dime. Tasks like Drake' s So Far Gone and Wiz Khalifa's Kush and Orange Juice have been literal presents. Finally all songs that music style was both missing or unknown had been eliminated. Also all songs with invalid year enter (less than 1970) have been removed. HILBRUNER, M. (2015). "It Ain't No Cake Stroll": The Influence of African American Music and Dance on the American Cultural Landscape. Virginia Social Science Journal, 50 73-eighty. Common music in Kenya. The electric bass guitar imitates the melodies of the standard Kenyan eight-string lyre called Nyatiti. All things, good or bad, should come an finish, and music trends are no exception. Welcome to , and in the present day we'll be counting down the High 10 Music Genres That Died Out.

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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Birds like this homing pigeon may have the necessary neural anatomy for thinking. (Ruth Swan, Alamy Stock Photo)

Newfound Brain Structure Explains Why Some Birds are So Smart—and May Be Even Self-aware

— By Virginia Morell | September 24, 2020 | ScienceMag.Org

Never before has “bird brain” been such a compliment: In recent years, birds have been found to make tools, understand abstract concepts, and even recognize paintings by Monet and Picasso. But their lack of a neocortex—the area of the mammalian brain where working memory, planning, and problem solving happen—has long puzzled scientists. Now, researchers have found a previously unknown arrangement of microcircuits in the avian brain that may be analogous to the mammalian neocortex. And in a separate study, other researchers have linked this same region to conscious thought.

The two papers are already being hailed as groundbreaking. “It’s often assumed that birds’ alien brain architecture limits thought, consciousness, and most advanced cognition,” says John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist and specialist on crows at the University of Washington, Seattle, who was not involved with either study. Researchers who have “demonstrated the cognitive abilities of birds won’t be surprised by these results,” he adds, “but they will be relieved.”

Indeed, it was because of birds’ and mammals’ similar cognitive abilities that Martin Stacho, a neuroanatomist at Ruhr-University Bochum, decided to investigate the avian forebrain, which controls perception. A gross comparison of mammalian and avian brains suggests “they have nothing in common,” he says. “Yet birds and mammals have many of the same cognitive skills.”To find out how bird brains support these mental talents, Stacho and his colleagues examined microscopic slices of three homing pigeon brains using 3D polarized light imaging. This high-resolution technique let them analyze the circuitry of a forebrain region called the pallium, considered most similar to the mammalian neocortex. Although the pallium lacks the cortex’s six layers, it has distinctive structures connected by long fibers.

The scientists compared the images of the birds’ pallia with those of rat, monkey, and human cortices. Their analysis revealed the fibers in the birds’ pallia are organized in a manner strikingly similar to those of fibers in mammal cortexes.

Researchers also visualized the connections among neurons in the brains of two distantly related avian species: pigeons and owls. After removing the brains of deeply anesthetized birds, scientists injected crystals into the dissected brains and discovered circuits in the sensory regions that were similar to those found in the mammalian neocortex. It is this neuroarchitecture—the connections between structures, rather than the structures themselves—that explains why birds are as cognitively talented as mammals, they report today in Science.

“This research confirms the old adage that looks can be deceiving,” Marzluff says. Although bird and mammalian brains “look very different, this study shows us they are actually wired in very complementary ways.”

But do birds have conscious experiences? Are they aware of what they see and do? To find out, Andreas Nieder, a neurophysiologist at the University of Tübingen, observed the brains of carrion crows (Corvus corrone) as they responded to cues. Known as “feathered apes” for their intelligence, these crows and their cousins have even been shown to reason causally. But inferring consciousness from such experiments is challenging, Nieder says.

So, he and colleagues used a test similar to one that probes primates for signs of consciousness—a state of mind thought to arise with the sudden activation of certain neurons. They trained two lab-raised, 1-year-old carrion crows to move or stay still in response to a faint cue displayed on a monitor. When correct, the birds were rewarded. The scientists then implanted electrodes in the crows’ brains to record their neuronal signals as they responded. When the crows reacted, their neurons fired, suggesting they had consciously perceived the cue; but when they didn’t, their neurons were silent. The neurons that fired in agreement with the crows’ action were located in the pallia, the researchers report today, also in Science. Nieder calls this “an empirical marker of sensory consciousness in birds’ brains,” similar to that seen in primates.

That’s certain to stir debate, as “some researchers argue that consciousness is uniquely human,” says Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Harvard University known for her work with Alex, an African gray parrot who communicated in English about abstract concepts. Pepperberg was not involved in these new studies but finds them “really exciting.”

Stacho and Nieder add that the building blocks for mammalian and avian cognition may have been present in their last common ancestor, some 320 million years ago. “Of course, mammal and bird brains evolved differently,” Stacho says. “What is surprising is how similar they still are in their perceptual and cognitive abilities.”

Posted in: Plants & Animals

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historyandclassicactors · 7 years ago

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June 24

1861: Federal gunboats attack Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia.

1931: The Soviet Union and Afghanistan sign a treaty of neutrality.

1940: France signs an armistice with Italy.

1941: President Franklin Roosevelt pledges all possible support to the Soviet Union.

1943: Royal Air Force Bombers hammer Muelheim, Germany, in a drive to cripple the Ruhr industrial base.

1948: The Soviet Union begins the Berlin Blockade, America responds with the Berlin Airlift.

1953: John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier announce their engagement.

Source: historynet.com

#This Day in History

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mrhenryharrell · 7 years ago

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November 30 Green Energy News

Headline News:

Nearly 5,500 K-12 US schools, about 5% of them, are now powered by the sun, and their solar capacity has almost doubled in the last three years, according to a study by the Solar Energy Industries Association, The Solar Foundation, and Generation 180. Their total generating capacity is 910 MW, enough to power 190,000 homes. [InsideClimate News]

Students at an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia (Credit: Lincoln Barbour)

Sales demand for sedans in the US could fall by more than half by 2030 due to the influence of self-driving taxis on the market, going on the findings of a new study from the consulting firm KPMG. The study predicts a “precipitous decline” in the US from the current 5.4 million sedan sales each year to 2.1 million by 2030. [CleanTechnica]

“Life After Coal” • At one time, 500,000 miners worked in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, producing as much as 124 million tons of coal every year. Next year, that era will come to an end when the last mine closes. Wind turbines have sprung up among old shaft towers and coking plants, as Germany strives to hit its renewable energy goals. [Grist]

“Senate bill threatens US renewable energy tax equity market” The Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax provisions in the Senate version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would hurt wind and solar investments in the US and damage tax equity markets, renewable energy groups warn. The BEAT provisions apply retroactively to existing plants. [Renewables Now]

The Industry Committee of the European Parliament backed a binding target of at least 35% renewable energy for 2030 and stricter renewable energy laws. Members of the European Parliament voted on the committee’s position on the post-2020 Renewable Energy Directive, steered by Spanish MEP José Blanco López. [Offshore Wind Journal]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

November 30 Green Energy News posted first on Green Energy Times

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newssplashy · 6 years ago

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World: Trump's false claims about coal, the environment and West Virginia

If coal itself were truly indestructible, you couldn’t mine or burn it. Anthracite coal is hard, but yields to a hammer; you can crumble soft lignite in your hand. (The term “clean coal” is also a misnomer.)

WHAT WAS SAID

“We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal. We love it. And you know that’s indestructible stuff. In times of war, in times of conflict, you can blow up those windmills. They fall down real quick. You can blow up those pipelines. They go like this and you’re not going to fix them too fast. You can do a lot of things to those solar panels. But you know what you can’t hurt? Coal.”

— President Donald Trump, at a campaign rally on Tuesday in Charleston, West Virginia.

THE FACTS

False.

The notion that coal-fired plants are somehow trouble-free and secure is also mistaken. In June, Westar Energy shut down Kansas’ largest power plant after an equipment failure led to the deaths of two employees, and an industrial accident shut down a Florida plant in 2017. In World War II, British bombers targeted the coal plants and stockpiles that powered the steel mills of the Ruhr Valley in Germany.

Trump has also argued that coal is more reliable than solar and wind power systems, which do not generate when the sun does not shine and the wind dies. This argument ignores the efforts to develop innovative energy storage systems to smooth those curves of supply and demand.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We are back. The coal industry is back.”

THE FACTS

This is exaggerated.

Trump lauded his administration’s attempts on many fronts to roll back environmental policies from President Barack Obama’s administration that encouraged the transition to renewable energy sources, including this week’s announcement of a proposed replacement for Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan.

But despite all of Trump’s efforts, the industry remains under heavy economic pressure from cheap natural gas and the rise of renewable energy. Coal consumption has continued to decline, and production, too, was lower in the first three months of 2018 compared with last year. The economy added about 2,200 jobs in the coal sector from February 2017, Trump’s first full month in office, to July 2018 — a modest increase of about 4.3 percent.

WHAT WAS SAID

“When I came here originally, West Virginia, frankly, was down and out. It was not doing exactly well. One of the last. Do you know that a few months ago, it hit where West Virginia is, on a per capita basis, one of the most successful GDP states in our union?”

THE FACTS

False.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, West Virginia ranked 47th out of 50 states in 2017 at a per capita gross domestic product of $37,353, after adjusting for inflation.

Trump may have been thinking of the increase in the state’s gross domestic product, which he has lauded in the past, but he would also be wrong about that. West Virginia’s economy grew at a rate of 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2018, placing it at No. 37.

WHAT WAS SAID

“I want clean air. I want crystal clean water. And we’ve got it. We’ve got the cleanest country in the planet right now. There’s nobody cleaner than us.”

THE FACTS

False.

The United States ranked 27th out of 180 countries in an environmental performance review, compiled by Yale and Columbia University researchers in collaboration with the World Economic Forum in 2018. (Switzerland topped the list.)

The Environmental Performance Index assigns the ranking based on 10 categories, including air and water quality, biodiversity, and climate and energy. The United States ranked the highest in agriculture, at No. 2, and the lowest in forests, at No. 115.

OTHER CLAIMS

Trump made a number of other false or misleading claims that The New York Times has previously debunked:

— He falsely claimed that United States Steel is opening “seven different plants.” (The company has not announced the opening of a single plant.)

— He misleadingly claimed that construction on his border wall “is moving along very nicely.” (Construction has not begun.)

— He claimed that the number of jobs added in the 20 months since his election was unbelievable. (More jobs were added in the previous 20 months.)

— He claimed that Obama had paid $1.8 billion to free hostages from Iran. (The payment was a settlement of a decadeslong dispute.)

— He falsely claimed that NATO members were “delinquent” in payments to the alliance. (Members do not owe NATO or the United States money.)

— He falsely claimed to have signed the “biggest” tax cuts in history. (Several rank higher.)

— He falsely claimed terminally ill patients “couldn’t get the drugs” before the enactment of a new law. (Patients could seek access to experimental medicines through an existing federal program.)

— He falsely claimed to have signed “a record $700 billion for the military.” (The Pentagon received more money in several years under Obama.)

Sources: The New York Times, The Wichita Eagle, “Air Battle of the Ruhr,” Energy Information Administration, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Environmental Performance Index.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/world-trumps-false-claims-about-coal_22.html

#News

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in-and-outside-my-head · 7 years ago

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Smells to make you well

By Lynn Bateson

The smell of an orange relieves stress. Smelling an orange or eating one can reduce stress by over 70%

People have used the scents of plants, trees, herbs and fruits since ancient times to fight inflammation, depression and induce sleep. “Smells act on the brain like a drug,” says neurologist Dr Alan Hirsch, founder of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.

Smells stimulate nerves in the nose that send impulses to the brain. These impulses usually go to the brain’s limbic system which controls heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, memory, stress levels and hormone balance.

LAVENDER

Lavender pillows may help you sleep. Dr Mark Moss of Newcastle’s Northumbria University found that lavender has a consistent sedative effect. It slows reactions, reduces attention and impairs working memory, the part of the brain that puts facts on hold before storing them.

Lavender may also help the elderly avoid falls and be less agitated. Researchers at the Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science at Tohoku University recently did three trials on lavender in randomly selected nursing homes in northern Japan. Some residents wore a lavender skin patch while others had unscented patches.

Those who smelled the lavender had significantly fewer falls and were calmer. Researchers speculate that lavender has a stabilising effect on balance.

JASMINE

The sweet white flowers could be nature’s Valium.

Researchers at Ruhr University led by Prof Hatt found that brains can respond as well to jasmine as to sedatives and barbiturates.

Tests showed jasmine dramatically calmed mice when their cage was filled with it. Brain scans confirmed this. By changing the chemical structure of the scent molecules researchers hope to achieve even stronger effects. Jasmine soothes, promotes high quality sleep and relieves anxiety.

Dr Hirsh says jasmine also helps to improve hand-eye coordination in cases as diverse as classical violinists and doctors performing micro-neurosurgery.

In an experiment last year the performance of Chicago White Sox baseball players improved when they wore wristbands saturated with jasmine. Independent assessors judged the batters by the mechanics of their swings, including bat speed, trajectory and the flight of the ball.

ROSEMARY

A rosemary plant on your desk could improve your work performance and how you feel about it. The old saying “rosemary is for remembrance” seems true. Smelling the herb produces beta brain waves which demonstrate alertness.

The link between smelling rosemary and scoring higher on mental tests was established by Dr Moss in 2003. However, more surprising news was to come.

Dr Moss has now demonstrated that after inhalation of the herb one of its main compounds, 1.8-cineole, could be detected in the bloodstream. The more of the compound in the bloodstream the more cognitive performance was improved.

Dr Moss believes the aroma which entered the bloodstream via the nasal membranes and lungs acts like a traditional drug. If it can work when ingested maybe one day we could have a pill to keep us mentally alert into old age.

APPLE

Sniffing green apples may control blood pressure, lessen migraine pain and help you lose weight.

Dr Gary E Schwartz, professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery at the University of Arizona, found that in particular the smell of spiced apples can control blood pressure as well as meditation.

In studies of healthy volunteers under stress it has brought systolic blood pressure, the peak pressure during heart beats, down by an average of three to five points and sometimes lowered diastolic blood pressure, the resting pressure in between beats.

Apples may also reduce migraine pain. In the knowledge that research suggested some smells can trigger migraine Dr Hirsch theorised the opposite could also be true. He investigated the effects of green apples since previous studies had pointed to their ability to reduce anxiety. Many patients had less pain but only if they liked the smell.

Dr Hirsch also found that the smell of apples might curb appetite. He asked 3,193 overweight people, mostly women aged 18 to 64, to smell green apples and other sweet smells including banana and vanilla when they were hungry. After six months they lost an average of 5lb a month and 30lb in total.

LEMON

Several studies demonstrate that the smell of lemons can reduce stress at least in rodents.

In one investigation the technical research centre at the Japanese flavour and fragrance company T Hasegawa gave stressed lab rats linalool, a component of lemons.

The linalool returned their stress-elevated levels of neutrophils and lymphocytes, key parts of the immune system, to near-normal levels. It also reduced the activity of more than 100 genes that go into overdrive during stress.

The researchers say their findings could form the basis of new blood tests for identifying stress-busting fragrances. At the Institute of Pharmacology in Tübingen, Germany, mice that became active after exposure to oils of rosemary and dwarf pine calmed down with oils of lemon balm and valerian.

PEPPERMINT

Getting pumped up with peppermint may improve workouts and accuracy in the workplace.

Dr Bryan Raudenbush at Wheeling Jesuit University, West Virginia, found that athletes who sniffed peppermint during exercise ran faster, had greater grip strength and could do more push-ups than those who did not.

He also found smelling peppermint improves clerical work, including typing accuracy and speeds and may make drivers more alert. He says peppermint and cinnamon both fight driving fatigue.

ORANGE

In 2000 researchers at the University of Vienna’s Neurological Clinic examined the response to orange scent in a dentist’s waiting room. The odour had a relaxing effect, mostly on women. Compared to patients not exposed to the scent they had lower anxiety, felt more positive and were calmer.

Violent criminals in Rotterdam in the Netherlands became less aggressive and had fewer fights when exposed to the scent of oranges, according to a 2008 study.

During the four-week experiment inmates were calmer and needed fewer sedatives when orange smells were circulated through prison cell air vents.

CUCUMBER

In one of Dr Hirsch’s experiments three quarters of claustrophobic volunteers felt better about being in a lift after smelling cucumber.

Some hospitals apply cucumber oil on a cotton square and put it under a patient’s nose while they have MRI scans.

Dr Hirsch speculates that there is something in cucumber that changes people’s perceptions of space.

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touristguidebuzz · 8 years ago

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How an Economic Tourist Understands Africa’s Largest City

Street traffic in Lagos, Nigeria. satanoid / Flickr

Skift Take: We like the idea of "the GDP tourist," if for no other reason that it sincerely seeks to understand what it's really like to live like a local.

— Jason Clampet

I’m spending six days as a tourist in Lagos, Nigeria. A lot of people seem to think that’s pretty strange.

The place is not renowned for its food (one of my main interests), nor was there a special event or festival on, nor did I know anyone in Africa’s biggest metropolis. It’s commonly cited as one of the most crime-ridden, congested and hellish cities on the planet. That’s not a fair description (a topic for another column), but I didn’t know that before booking.

Nigeria’s Horrors and Hopes

People seemed surprised to see me and I did not encounter many other evident tourists. The Nigerian clerk at my (upscale) hotel expressed shock that a white person had arrived. Perhaps she thought I was a sex tourist, as she continued in full enthusiasm: “The room is solo? Don’t worry, Nigerian women just love men like you!” I believe she meant this as local hospitality, though under another reading it is a veiled critique. The truth, I admit, is indeed pretty strange. I like to go around and look at gross domestic product, and that simple fact explains much of my unusual behavior abroad.

Nigeria is now the country with the highest GDP in Africa, having surpassed South Africa, and it ranks globally at number 26. If Lagos state were a country, it would have the fifth largest GDP on the continent.

As an economist, I feel a moral pull, not to mention a personal curiosity, to see goods and services being produced. That means visiting Lagos’s renowned computer market and fabrics market as well as its fast-food shops, shopping malls, street food and ice cream parlors. I sought out its bridges, canals and electric generators, though not the oil areas — there are too many kidnappings there.

GDP

Making large-scale structures and trading goods and services are among the most human and noble of activities, so is it actually so strange to visit them, as one might enter a cathedral or make a pilgrimage to Gettysburg? For all the talk about human interactions being the key to a wonderful trip, those interactions usually require some sort of scaffolding and structure to one’s daily activities, and on that score a quest for GDP can help out. I’ve yet to go on a safari.

The commercial view in Lagos is of course a mixed one. Nigeria barely has its own automobile industry (only 2,600 jobs), and the manufacturing base is generally weak, but the country has demonstrated a tantalizing ability to mobilize its intellectual and entrepreneurial talents. That facility may define a new path for economic growth in an era when manufacturing jobs are disappearing across the globe due to automation. The result is a city full of smartphones, where my iPad connects more quickly than at home in Virginia, but there are also gut-wrenching traffic jams and millions of people living in shanties.

It’s an interesting question whether, to understand a city, you would rather read 10 books about it or visit for a day. I’ll take the visit, but if you can do both even a short trip makes the written word more vivid and context-laden. It still amazes me that I once had a professorial colleague from a top school who researched Africa and published papers on it, but had no interest in going.

Visitors should avoid the mistake of judging living standards through appearances alone, because that tends to overweight the value of infrastructure. Prague in the late 1980s looked pretty splendid, largely because of its historic buildings, but good consumption opportunities were hard to come by. South Korea impresses with its roads, bridges, ports and trains, but the widespread poverty of the country’s elderly is harder to see. As for Lagos, its infrastructure appears mediocre to Western eyes, and so we probably underrate its prosperity. But if you are arriving from the Nigerian countryside you might be impressed by the tall buildings and road network and thus overrate the wealth of the place.

My interest in GDP tourism dates back to my teenage years in the late 1970s. I grew up in northern New Jersey and enjoyed the industrial beauty outside of New York City on periodic drives, mostly centered around the Pulaski Skyway. At that time, U.S. manufacturing employment was in its heyday. These days, cruising around retail chains and dental offices doesn’t provide the same thrill. So I’ve gone to see the key regions of the world’s largest and most successful economies, whether it be the port of Rotterdam, the skyline of Singapore or Chinese tech hubs like Shenzhen. I started in the 1980s with a trip to the then still-vital West German Ruhr.

I don’t ever expect a GDP cruise or even a GDP tourist guide or agency, but perhaps a few Bloomberg readers won’t find this approach to travel so totally off the mark.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include “Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation.”

This article was written by Tyler Cowen from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.