(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers from Western University have utilized their own game-changing technology – previously developed for use with patients in a vegetative state – to assess a more prevalent group of brain-injured patients, those in the minimally conscious state (MCS). Their findings were released today in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study, led by Adrian Owen, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging, and Damian Cruse of Western's Brain and Mind Institute, is a follow-up to the team's groundbreaking Lancet publication from November 2011 that used electroencephalography (EEG) to show that some vegetative state patients were able to reliably follow commands, even though this ability was entirely undetectable from their external behaviour.
In the new paper, titled "The relationship between aetiology and covert cognition in the minimally-conscious state," the MCS patients showed some inconsistent but reproducible external signs of awareness, such as being able to follow their eyes in a mirror. Cruse says, however, that currently very little is known about their 'internal' state of awareness that may be hidden from their external behaviour.
"Using our EEG approach, we found that 22 per cent of 23 MCS patients were able to complete a complex task which required them to imagine particular types of movement," says Cruse, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Brain and Mind Institute and the lead writer of the paper. "This tells us that these patients have a much higher level of cognitive ability than what you could detect from their behaviour."
Cruse adds that the cause of the brain injury was a determining factor in finding these cognitive abilities as 33 per cent of traumatically injured patients (e.g. traffic accident, fall) returned positive EEG results compared to zero per cent of non-traumatically injured patients (e.g. heart attack, stroke).
The research team, in collaboration with Steven Laureys at the University of Liège, Belgium, asked patients approximately 100 times each to imagine moving his or her right-hand and toes. By making recordings of the patients’ EEG, a measure of the electrical activity of the brain, the team showed that 22 per cent of the MCS patients were able to produce patterns of brain activity that were indistinguishable from a healthy individual following the same commands.
"There are a large number of patients in the MCS worldwide, and our approach highlights the importance of using EEG and other forms of brain imaging when assessing the mental capabilities of patients following brain injury," says Cruse "It reinforces our understanding that the externally observable abilities of a patient are not necessarily a true reflection of their internal state."
Aging does not appear to be a factor in poor sleep, a new survey of more than 150,000 Americans shows. In fact, subjective sleep quality seems to improve over a lifetime, with the fewest complaints coming from people in their 80s.
"This flies in the face of popular belief," said Michael Grandner, PhD, lead author of the study. "These results force us to re-think what we know about sleep in older people – men and women."
The study, appearing in the March edition of the journal Sleep, examined rates of sleep disturbance and daytime fatigue reported by 155,877 adults participating in a randomized telephone survey. Respondents were asked about sleep disturbances and daytime tiredness. The survey also asked about race, income, education, depressed mood, general health and time of last medical checkup. All responses were weighted so that they matched U.S. Census data.
Health problems and depression were associated with poor sleep, and women reported more sleep disturbances and tiredness than men. But except for an uptick in sleep problems during middle age – more pronounced in women than men – sleep quality improved consistently over a lifetime. Or at least that's how people reported their sleep.
"Even if sleep among older Americans is actually worse than in younger adults, feelings about it still improve with age," said Grandner, Research Associate at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "Once you factor out things like illness and depression, older people should be reporting better sleep. If they're not, they need to talk to their doctor. They shouldn't just ignore it."
Grandner said the study's original intent was to confirm that increased sleep problems are associated with aging, using the largest and most representative sample ever to address this issue. Instead, the results challenge the conventional wisdom that difficulty sleeping is perceived more by older adults, and challenge the general clinical practice of ignoring sleep complaints from older adults as a normal part of aging.
More information: "Age and Sleep Disturbances Among American Men And Women: Data From the U.S. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System," in journal Sleep.
(PhysOrg.com) -- We've all seen the ads meant to scare us into buying products like protective sunscreen or to avoid doing something like drugs. Well, it turns out those advertisements may only freeze us with fear and inaction. New research from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University shows, in order to work best, these ads also have to disgust and gross us out.
“Fear creates uncertainty and insecurity over what to do, but disgust gives us a very strong impulse to avoid and distance ourselves from the item or situation as quickly as possible,” explains Andrea Morales, W. P. Carey School of Business marketing professor, lead author of the work. “When you add a disgusting message or image to an advertisement, it can significantly increase the ad’s effectiveness.”
The new research from Morales and her colleagues was just posted online by the Journal of Marketing Research. It points to successful, disgusting campaigns, such as one by the New York City Department of Health that centered on images of soda turning into gobs of fat. Department officials say sugar-rich beverage consumption in the area dropped by 12 percent after the campaign. Other popular advertisements in the disgusting category include a medication ad with a creepy yellow rat-like creature attacking a human toenail, a pain-medication ad featuring a pair of feet covered in fire ants, and an anti-smoking matchbook with graphic images of decayed, blackened teeth.
“Disgust dramatically enhances persuasion and compliance above and beyond just fear appeals,” says Morales. “You have to go beyond scare tactics to produce a strong and immediate avoidance reaction or a change in behavior. For example, disgust is especially good at motivating people toward losing weight, quitting smoking or changing another behavior to improve their health.”
In particular, the research discusses a real ad campaign in Britain that showed graphic images linking cigarettes with fat-filled arteries. The 2004 campaign by the British Heart Foundation and the local Department of Health was so successful that the United Kingdom’s government is planning to print these pictorial-warning images on all tobacco products sold in the U.K.
“We’ve also seen several recent ads for cleaning products that disgust viewers by talking about and showing the dirt, grime and germs left behind when you use other, less effective mops, cleansers, even toothpaste,” says Morales. “A new series of Febreze commercials shows people in filthy rooms, but smelling pleasant odors thanks to the spray.”
In a series of five experiments, the researchers repeatedly found the same thing. When people looked at ads with neutral messages or those simply meant to induce fear, they didn’t work as well as those using disgust.
For example, 155 undergraduate students looked at various versions of a real anti-meth ad with the same words and format, but different, altered images. The version with a teen whose face was covered in open sores was found to be much more effective than the versions with a picture of a coffin or two teens sitting side by side. The coffin, while scary, didn’t portray an immediate, imminent, disgusting threat.
Another experiment involved showing participants a sunscreen ad with identical images, but different text in each case. The most persuasive version talked about “open sores that crust and do not heal for weeks,” “scaly red patches” and “wart-like growths that ooze and bleed.” The reaction to it was far more significant than a neutral ad version and one that simply talked about “a severe sunburn” and the “possibility of heat stroke.”
Morales’ co-authors are Eugenia Wu, assistant professor at Cornell University and Gavan Fitzsimons, professor at Duke University.
More information: The full write-up called “How Disgust Enhances the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals,” is available at theJournal of Marketing Research website at http://www.journal … /jmr.07.0364 .
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People who are considered ambitious attend the best colleges and universities, have prestigious careers and earn high salaries, but they don’t necessarily lead more successful lives, according to new research by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
The lead author of “On the Value of Aiming High: The Causes and Consequences of Ambition” forthcoming from the Journal of Applied Psychology, Judge seeks to create a better understanding of ambition — a commonly mentioned but poorly understood concept in social science research — and its consequences.
Is it a virtue, or is it a vice? Both, says Judge.
“If ambition has its positive effects, and in terms of career success it certainly seems that it does, our study also suggests that it carries with it some cost,” Judge says. “Despite their many accomplishments, ambitious people are only slightly happier than their less-ambitious counterparts, and they actually live somewhat shorter lives.”
Tracking 717 high-ability individuals over seven decades, Judge uses multiple criteria to measure ambition during periods of participants’ lives ranging from childhood to young adults just beginning their careers. Their education ranged from attending some of the world’s best universities — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Berkeley, Oxford and Notre Dame — to more modest educations, including high school diplomas and community college degrees.
“Ambitious kids had higher educational attainment, attended highly esteemed universities, worked in more prestigious occupations and earned more,” Judge says. “So, it would seem that they are poised to ‘have it all.’ However, we determined that ambition has a much weaker effect on life satisfaction and actually a slightly negative impact on longevity (how long people lived). So, yes, ambitious people do achieve more successful careers, but that doesn’t seem to translate into leading happier or healthier lives.”
Specializing in personality, leadership, moods, emotions and career and life success, Judge has published more than 130 articles in refereed journals, including more than 80 in top-tier journals. His study “Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last?” published last year, was widely cited in the media.
Judge’s new ambition study tracks individuals born in the early part of the last century and continued to follow them throughout their lives, which is how the mortality measure was derived; however, it doesn’t address the underlying reasons for the higher mortality of ambitious people.
“Perhaps the investments they make in their careers come at the expense of the things we know affect longevity: healthy behaviors, stable relationships and deep social networks.”
Most parents want their kids to be ambitious, attend the best schools and eventually have successful careers, and while it certainly isn’t wrong to have those parental hopes and dreams, Judge cautions that we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking they will make our kids happier.
“If your biggest wish for your children is that they lead happy and healthy lives, you might not want to overemphasize professional success. There are limits to what our ambitions bring us — or our children.”
Amazing Homes and Offices Built from Shipping Containers
Not just for resourceful squatters, container architecture is taking the world by storm. Recycled freight containers bring efficiency, flexibility and affordability to innovative green buildings, from small vacation cabins to movable cafes, schools and skyscrapers.
Containers are an extremely flexible construction method, being modular in shape, strong structurally and readily available. Container Cities offer a reasonably priced alternative solution to traditional space provision. They are ideal for office and workspace, live, work and worker housing.
Container Cities do not even have to look like containers! It is relatively simple to completely clad the building externally in various materials.
Finally the benefits of Container Homes or Cities can truly be seen in short and medium term land use projects. Short-life sites can have Container Houses that simply unbolts and can be relocated or stored when land is required for alternative uses. To date this alternative method of construction has successfully created youth centers, classrooms, office space, artists studios, live / work space and retail space.
Overpopulation, migration and mobility characterize life and living today. Natural catastrophes frequently leave thousands of people homeless; indeed, the idea of home is less constant and more fluid today than it was just a generation ago, and personal space is now a luxury, making us reflect on how much space we need.
Container homes are a fast, green, economical and surprisingly flexible alternative to traditional houses as they provide modern dwellings for any household size – from individual to family and community housing. We look at five container dwellings showing how a steel box can be stylish and environmentally friendly.
Cargo container homes show no sign of slowing down. With the ever-growing population of disused and deserted shipping containers worldwide, more and more designers are finding creative ways to adaptively reuse containers to create houses and multi-family homes and more.
HybridSeattleis a West Coast architectural firm that has created several real-life shipping container buildings and envisioned several other fixed and mobile architectural designs based on cargo container modules. Built and unbuilt, their work is impressive and just the tip of the architectural iceberg.
Innovative architects turn used shipping containers into homes.
Rammed earth, sod, yak wool, reclaimed wood, oriented-strand board, straw ... nowadays, the smorgasbord of offerings in alternative building methods and materials is staggeringly abundant, if not a little confusing.
On the one hand, architectural innovators advocate prefabrication to make a better "housetrap." With high-tech products and cutting-edge mass production, they are trying to develop a new housing methodology: designerly, affordable, energy-efficient houses built to withstand anything, come hell or high water. On the other hand, some ecological purists have turned to older methods of shelter building. They embrace sustainable resources like straw and dirt, making homes as natural as a footprint in the sand.
Like most new construction, the problem with the prefab movement is that it typically uses less-than-sustainable resources like steel and wood. (True factory production could reduce our ecological footprint by eliminating the waste typical of construction, but that's still quite far from reality.) And the problem with environmentally sound but old-fashioned building techniques is that they require too much time and skilled labour to solve our society's need for affordable green housing on a grand scale.
So where is an eco-friendly homeowner or builder to turn?
In this era of scouring the earth for the magic bullet in home building, few ideas can compete with the weird, pragmatic beauty of the used shipping container. Cheap, strong and easily transportable by boat, truck or train, these big steel structures now litter the ports of America as mementoes of our Asian-trade imbalance. (Many more full containers arrive on our shores than depart, so ports either ship them back empty -- to the tune of about $900 per -- or sell them.)
Hurricane-proof, flood proof, fire proof, these metal Lego blocks are tough enough to be stacked 12-high empty -- and thus can be used in smaller multistory buildings. Used containers (which can be picked up for $1,500 to $2,000) often have teak floors and sometimes are insulated. The bright orange, blue and rust corrugated boxes may appeal to some. But contemporary hipsters find them not just the ultimate in postmodern appropriation but aesthetically pleasing as well.
And even though containers have little of the crunchy nostalgia of the hay-bale house or the yurt, they trump most other forms of green building because, in the current economy, they are virtually a waste product. Making a building (which can last and last) out of what is essentially a huge piece of industrial detritus takes recycling to a new level.
Using shipping containers as buildings is hardly new -- institutions like the military have been using the structures as temporary offices, bunkhouses and showers for some time. Examples of designers incorporating shipping containers into residential designs date back to 1982.
But in the past couple of years, a field known as container architecture has evolved, offering the hope that what was once only a post-industrial pipe dream can emerge as a practical new building form. A handful of architectural firms worldwide -- from New York to New Zealand -- have built prototypes or plans for shipping-container homes. Most of these designers develop each house or project as a one-off. Still, one prefab factory has begun pumping out little container homes not meant for the military encampment or the disaster relief camp. Rather, they are meant for the discerning homeowner avid for something new.
Since his New Jersey factory began production this year, Adam Kalkin has sold a dozen of his so-called Quik Houses, each based on five shipping containers. These are two-story, 2,000-square-foot homes with skylights and enormous glass windows, equipped with three bedrooms and two baths. The price ranges from $76,000 for the basic kit to $160,000 (with all the bells and whistles like a stainless-steel kitchen and mahogany doors), is under $100 per square foot, not including land or foundation.
Kalkin, a celebrated young architect and artist, has made a name for himself by walking a tightrope between the straight-laced world of architecture and the mad land of performance art. His recent creation -- the "Push Button House" -- is an art installation of a "home" built inside a shipping container with mechanized walls that open like a blossoming flower. His Web site, which promotes his prefab container homes and books, also sells kitschy homemade candy ("classic candy melange") and offers a pay-per-minute phone line for your confessions.
Among the custom amenities in the Quik House promotional pamphlet is a $1,000 dinner prepared by the architect in the client's new home. Kalkin also delves into humanitarian work, including collaborating with fashion model Natalia Vodianova on a series of container-based recreational centers for underprivileged kids in her native Russia.
Given his orientation as an artist-inventor -- not a conventional architect, much less a businessman -- Kalkin is a little dismissive when discussing his place in a movement that he characterizes as "very ideological."
He says he never imagined running a construction factory at the forefront of a new building form. "I just like the found-object quality of these things. It wasn't a rational proposition," he said, adding that he is developing houses made of fabrics and other materials that he declines to mention. "I'm not really part of the movement."
Rational or not, his work is in the vanguard of a building form that is gaining mainstream interest and acclaim. Recently, architect Jennifer Siegal used shipping containers in a custom home in downtown L.A., and architect Peter DeMaria designed a container-based home now under construction in Redondo Beach.
Jennifer Kretschmer, an architect based in San Jose who is designing her first shipping container home for a client in Healdsburg, said that she hopes the designers interested in this form can come together and develop standards. "We are all in an experimental field," she said, "with each of us inventing the wheel ourselves. It would be good to share our failures and successes."
If shipping containers are cheap, transportable, stackable, and able to survive most disasters, why haven't they been widely adopted already?
"Building codes -- that's really our big hurdle," said Kretschmer, adding that even though they are stronger than most construction forms, it's hard to convince planning departments of anything so new. Indeed, although some California counties have allowed shipping container construction, Rancho Palos Verdes has proposed building codes that would disallow any shipping containers as housing.
As long as we are trading with Asia," explained Kretschmer, "there are going to be extra shipping containers, so in this sense, it's a very green product. But I would never advocate using new shipping containers."
In this sense, shipping containers will never -- or at least should never-- be the ultimate building form. Steel is not a renewable resource, and moving it around is far from environmentally advisable. Ideally, our society will only overproduce these steel boxes for a while. And even if it does, more than overproduction will be needed to satisfy our housing needs.
But shipping-container architecture does signal a new creativity among architects and builders that may be more powerful than any magic-bullet building technique. After a hundred years of environmentally disastrous construction methods and escalating real estate prices, the shipping container is more than a harebrained scheme of an eco-shelter movement -- it's a whisper of the weird world of housing to come.
The interest in converting old Shipping Containers into real-world homes is exploding. Following a discussion with an Architect friend about the application of our Home Design software to this design niche I was rather surprised by just how many people are researching and interested in Shipping Container Homes and Container House Design.
A few years ago we created an add-on module for our Home Design Software for the task of visualization of Shipping Container Modules in the Built Environment; now I am more aware of just how many people are interested in this area, I have decided to make those library modules into a public release of our Home Software.
If you are interested in Shipping Container Design, you might be interested in these two design resources I came across in my research.
The first is a book called Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings which is quite a mouth full but its a good resource.
It explains how to purchase steel cargo containers and modify them for use as buildings saving up to 40% over traditional construction methods. ‘
Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings is 116 pages and includes photos, diagrams, and plans.
The second is a 200-page Illustrated Manual of Shipping Container Home Design.
This is a 200 Page Illustrated Manual that you can download without waiting for the book shipment.
I have included a series of photographs showing some truly wonderful examples of design genre using this resource – how wonderful they are – who would have thought these beautiful homes began life as humble shipping containers.
Complex Home Design using Multiple Shipping Containers
The award-winning Redondo Beach House by De Maria Design turns heads with its modern lines and appealing spaces. The luxury beachside showpiece was built from eight prefabricated, recycled steel shipping containers and some traditional building materials. According to the architects, the modified containers are "nearly indestructible," as well as resistant to mould, fire, and termites. Seventy per cent of the building was efficiently assembled in a shop, saving time, money and resources.
One of the containers can even sport a pool! The lessons learned from Redondo Beach House are being incorporated into a line of more affordable, accessible designs, soon available as Logical Homes.
Billed as the largest container city in the world, Amsterdam's massiveKeetwonen complexhouses 1,000 students, many of whom are happy to secure housing in the city's tight real estate market. Designed byTempo Housingin 2006, Keetwonen is said to be a roaring success, with well-insulated units, surprisingly quiet and comfortable.
Each resident enjoys a balcony, bathroom, kitchen, separate sleeping and studying rooms and large windows. The complex has central heating, high-speed Internet, and dedicated bike parking.
Keetwonen has proved so popular that its lease has been extended until at least 2016.
Also by LOT-EK is this fantastic concept for a tower at 87 Lafayette Street in New York City. The idea is for a 19-story artists' loft building, built by stacking containers, with staircases at the north and south ends. The roof of the slanted tower would sport solar panels.
The building in front of the bold new design is a historic New York City firehouse, perhaps serving as a visual tie to the past.
Battery packs can cost more than $10,000, which is one of the biggest reasons electric cars cost more than conventional gas-powered cars.
Envia, a startup funded by GM and the U.S. government's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), says it has built batteries that store more than twice as much energy as the ones in electric cars now. If the technology comes to fruition, it could halve the cost of batteries—the most expensive part on an electric vehicle.
Much work remains, however, before the batteries can be used in commercial electric vehicles. Among other things, the number of times they can be charged and recharged must be more than doubled.
The technology was highlighted at the annual ARPA-E summit in Washington, D.C., this week, in part to demonstrate the progress in energy technology being made by the Department of Energy, which oversees ARPA-E. The DOE has come under fire after giving loan guarantees to some companies that later declared bankruptcy.
Envia's technology is based on work originating in the DOE's Argonne National Lab, which identified a material with a novel microscopic structure that could help improve the storage capacity of one of the battery electrodes.
GM and battery maker LG Chem, which is using some aspects of the technology in the Chevrolet Volt, may incorporate other technology from Argonne in batteries for the next generation of the car. Envia modified the original Argonne technology to get higher energy densities.
Using the Argonne material as a starting point, the researchers systematically tested variations of the material design to help increase its practical operating voltage (a powerful way to improve energy density) and to deal with a known issue with the material: a tendency of one of its components, manganese, to move out of the electrode and dissolve in the battery electrolyte, reducing storage capacity over time. To achieve these goals, the researchers added trace elements to the material and developed coatings to keep the manganese from escaping.
The company then turned its attention to the opposite electrode, which is usually made of graphite. Researchers decided to use silicon, which can store far more energy but typically works for only a short number of charges, since it swells and cracks. Envia addressed these issues by using a porous form of silicon, which is better able to tolerate expansion and contraction, and by mixing the silicon with various forms of carbon, including carbon fiber and graphite. The carbon is meant to provide a path for electrons to take through the material, bridging gaps that form as the silicon cracks. The researchers also had to modify the electrolyte to keep it from breaking down at the high voltage levels seen in the battery cell.
To develop the materials, Envia took the unusual approach of testing new electrode materials in complete batteries, with both electrodes and an electrolyte. Usually researchers test electrode materials in isolation to identify those with promising properties, such as high energy capacity. But sometimes materials that look great on their own are incompatible with electrolytes or other electrodes. On the other hand, some materials that don't look great on their own may do well when paired with the right electrolyte. So Envia tested batches of 1,500 battery cells—each with a different combination of electrodes and electrolyte—to find the best combinations. (Envia prepares the electrode and electrolyte materials by hand. Wildcat Discovery Technologies, one of Technology Review's TR50 most innovative companies, uses a robotic system to speed up a similar process.)
After testing small coin-sized cells, Envia built cells large enough for use in electric cars. Each weighs one kilogram and stores 400 watt-hours. Commercial lithium-ion batteries store about 120 to 250 watt-hours per kilogram.
Lower-energy batteries often have safety features that make them attractive for use in cars. Sujeet Kumar, Envia's president and CTO, says the company's batteries have passed nail puncture tests, one key test of battery safety.
Because the materials can be made with conventional equipment, they could be relatively easy to commercialize. Kumar says Envia doesn't plan to manufacture batteries itself, but to license its technology to battery manufacturers or create joint ventures.
But the cells aren't yet ready for use in electric cars. To last the life of a vehicle, they need to be able to recharge over 1,000 times and still maintain 80 percent of their original storage capacity. The company is still testing the new batteries, but after only 400 charges, they have dropped to 72 percent of capacity, Kumar says. Solving the problem could require substantial improvements to the electrodes. The cells also have to be put through several other tests of performance and safety before they're qualified for use in vehicles.
