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Sleep Deprivation Increases Brain Activity
SL33Z3 writes "Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have found increased brain activity in areas of the brain that otherwise stay inactive. The longer the students went without sleep, the more activity was found. Research found students to have better recollection after long periods of sleep deprivation. Check out the release here. " Heck, combine this with the news about caffeine and I'm all set!
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Please allow me to make a few comments about the slashdot moderation system:
I think it works pretty well for what it's supposed to do. The problem is a) the nature of the site being general tech news; and b) the quantity of users. We can either a) give all users random moderation points; or b) give a limited group of users moderation points based on criterion such as being moderated up themselves; or c) a mix of both. I think this is best theoretically if tweaked properly.
However, some problems exist such as a) the default linear setup combined with the fact that this is just a news site means lots of good comments at the end of the forum get lost; b) not enough people meta-moderate; c) people mark down comments that they do not necessarily agree with but may be valid points of view, or comments that are slightly off topic but are good extensions of the current conversation; d) people given moderation points often just want to get rid of them. This is a news site after all, and responsibility to the integrity of moderation isn't exactly a priority. Many people just scroll down a bit and moderate comments that vaguely look good. Why? Again, probably because this is just a news discussion site and expending the effort to read all the comments in a story would take many, many hours.
So, I agree with you that it might be good to increase the moderation points available. However, this must be done in a manner that will give points to those who deserve them and not to those who will moderate posts down just because they do not agree with a point or those who will just moderate because at first glance the post looks good.
In short, not enough people meta-moderate so at a macro level, increasing the amount of moderation points to everyone would be bad. It would be a bit better only increasing the amount to those who are consistently moderated up but that does not guarantee that those who moderated them up properly looked at their posts. So we either give a select group a lot of points and allow them to moderate - or we give the group at large a lot of points and hope that they use them wisely. Not enough people meta moderate so this is why such a system can seem broken. The bottom line? It's a discussion news site. Expending the effort is just too much in this situation.
Even then, meta moderation does not give you the thread. This creates a problem because the moderation might be relevant to the post and thread that it replies to. The solution? Tell everyone to quote every time what they are responding to. This is done most of the time, so this is not too much of a major problem.
There is also another improvement that I want. Randomly displayed threads. There are some very good comments that get lost in the noise because we only have an option for newest and oldest in threads or by themselves. This isn't a problem for the 100 comment stories but becomes a large problem for 250+ comment stories. The first problem with randomly displayed nested and threaded comments that comes to mind is that the flow of the discussion often comes linearly, even if not the same thread. However, I think it would be welcome to most slashdot readers. Anyway, to tie this into the moderation problems, it would probably have to be the default setting for proper moderation to occur. Either that or a the owners of the site generating a lot of noise about it.
Wading through so much information and finding signal in noise isn't much fun. I usually just ignore moderation and scroll a lot.
Boy, I'd hate to be one of *their* test subjects. When these guys actually did get to sleep, the VA probably accidentally amputated their legs and then lost the medical records.
The things I've seen at the VA Medical Center East Orange NJ, it wouldn't suprise me!
Although subjects' memory performance was less efficient with sleep deprivation, greater activity in the parietal region was associated with better memory.
My interpretation of that line is that, overall, students had WORSE memory performance when sleep-deprived, but those students who had greater activity in the parietal region performed better than those with lower activity -- but still worse than they would have had with a good night's sleep. Am I correct in my reading?
Sleep deprivation can also kill you. I did a 12 page report on sleep and its effects on the human body, and have about 5 pages of stuff on sleep deprivation. A guy in the 1950's, I believe, did a radio show for 200 hours straight, and suffered SEVERE mental damage from it. Also, rats who have been deprived of any rest at all have died after 17 days. People with fatal familial insomnia, which causes the victim to be deprived of sleep for months upon months, will eventually kill after 9 to 12 months. If you want more information on sleep, deprivation, and disorders, e-mail me at mcnamarc@kirtland.cc.mi.us and I'll send you the report. I'll feel special, too. : )