Inside Edition, July 20, 2019 (Video)
How Your Phone Might Hurt Your Sleep
UC Irvine ophthalmologist Dr. Andrew Smith agrees. The blue light can decrease melatonin, which is the hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. “The ultimate source of blue light in our life is the sun, so if you’re out in the day, you’re awake … then it goes down at night and you go to sleep,” Smith said. “But if you’re getting exposed to blue light that blue light is stimulating the brain to stay awake,” he added.
The Washington Post, July 21, 2019
What’s the best time of day to exercise, morning or evening?
A second group led by Paolo Sassone-Corsi, director of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at the University of California at Irvine, also put mice on treadmills, but took a different approach. … “We identified that time of exercise is critical in order for exercise to be beneficial” in metabolizing sugar and fat, Sassone-Corsi said. … “There is a time for exercise, resting or food intake,” he adds. “The metabolic cycles are not adapted to respond to external stimuli the same way at day or night. ” [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.]
Orange County Business Journal, July 22, 2019
$1M toward UCI research on lithium uses in psychiatry
UCI’s Interdisciplinary Institute for Salivary Bioscience Research over the next five years will manage the study of how lithium affects patients, while being monitored via salivary measurements. … The psychiatric study enrolled bipolar and major depressive patients who are receiving treatment with lithium. … “Thanks to the generosity of the Prentiss Foundation, we can continue our work,” said Douglas Granger, co- principal investigator. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.]
Discover, July 19, 2019
This AI Solves The Rubik’s Cube Way Better Than You
“Artificial intelligence can defeat the world’s best human chess and Go players, but some of the more difficult puzzles, such as the Rubik’s Cube, had not been solved by computers, so we thought they were open for AI approaches,” University of California, Irvine, computer scientist Pierre Baldi said in a press release. Now Baldi and his team say they have created an AI that can solve the Rubik’s cube. The researchers say the work is a step toward making an AI capable of higher-level thinking.
Science Alert, July 20, 2019
Scientists Might Have Found The Ideal Way to Get Your Toddler to Do What You Want
“Adults are able to distinguish between choices and are oftentimes more likely to select the first one. This is called primacy bias,” says cognitive science researcher Emily Sumner from the University of California Irvine. …This area hasn’t been studied in children before, so this is fascinating to pinpoint.” It could also be extremely useful. Especially if an adult wants to positively influence a child’s choices, or otherwise get a more truthful answer out of them.