I find this hard to believe. When you make claims like this, please include some type of reference to the matter (i.e. some section of some law or something that a legal expert has reported somewhere.) Otherwise, how are we supposed to know if this is true, or just something you heard some other guy on \., who heard it from somebody else....
This is how the "Starbucks uses child labor in third world countries" rumor got started.
Since there are no restrictions on using.com/.org/.net, I don't think the Bible-is-not-a-business argument should really fly, although I guess it did. It looks like corinthians.org is already taken by a yacht club, so the Christian can't really grab that one. Maybe the Christian and the Rich Boat Owners could swap real quick--Rich Yacht owners should have as much right to it as a "football" team.
The study here is based on measuring cerebral blood flow. When they analyze the image and come up with the pretty brain pictures, what you are actually seeing is a map of the areas of the brain that are significantly more active than the other regions, compared to a baseline condition. This means that if there is generally more blood flowing around in all parts of the brain, you will be less likely to measure significant activation in a specific area. This could happen in the sleep deprived for the following reasons:
The blood flow that is being measured is moderated by the exchange of sodium and potassium across the neuron membranes. So, chemicals that effect this process can also effect the blood flow. Certain brain chemicals go nutty when you are sleep deprived (thus the comments on hallucination on other posts). In fact, some would say these chemicals are the things that make you tired. The moral is, these chemical may be having a direct effect on the blood flow in all parts of the brain, making it more difficult to find significant differences in the regions of interest. So, their main conclusion, that areas are less active in the sleep-deprived, is probably an artifact of the plumbing of the brain, rather than an interesting finding about actual brain functioning.
The interpretation that many people are giving the paper is also incorrect. The actual finding is that sleep deprivation is bad, but those people who did better when sleep deprived had more parietal lobe activity. Even if this is true, nobody really knows what it means.
The interpretation that the researchers give this is on shaky ground--It is a potential explanation, but there are enough problems with the methodology that I think the only thing that is certain about this research is that "Sleep Deprived People Do Worse".
Moral: Don't rely on headlines for your science. And take it all with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Slashdot Mirror
This is how the "Starbucks uses child labor in third world countries" rumor got started.
Since there are no restrictions on using .com/.org/.net, I don't think the Bible-is-not-a-business argument should really fly, although I guess it did. It looks like corinthians.org is already taken by a yacht club, so the Christian can't really grab that one. Maybe the Christian and the Rich Boat Owners could swap real quick--Rich Yacht owners should have as much right to it as a "football" team.
Well, maybe not....boating isn't a sport.
The study here is based on measuring cerebral blood flow. When they analyze the image and come up with the pretty brain pictures, what you are actually seeing is a map of the areas of the brain that are significantly more active than the other regions, compared to a baseline condition. This means that if there is generally more blood flowing around in all parts of the brain, you will be less likely to measure significant activation in a specific area. This could happen in the sleep deprived for the following reasons:
The blood flow that is being measured is moderated by the exchange of sodium and potassium across the neuron membranes. So, chemicals that effect this process can also effect the blood flow. Certain brain chemicals go nutty when you are sleep deprived (thus the comments on hallucination on other posts). In fact, some would say these chemicals are the things that make you tired. The moral is, these chemical may be having a direct effect on the blood flow in all parts of the brain, making it more difficult to find significant differences in the regions of interest. So, their main conclusion, that areas are less active in the sleep-deprived, is probably an artifact of the plumbing of the brain, rather than an interesting finding about actual brain functioning.
The interpretation that many people are giving the paper is also incorrect. The actual finding is that sleep deprivation is bad, but those people who did better when sleep deprived had more parietal lobe activity. Even if this is true, nobody really knows what it means.
The interpretation that the researchers give this is on shaky ground--It is a potential explanation, but there are enough problems with the methodology that I think the only thing that is certain about this research is that "Sleep Deprived People Do Worse".
Moral: Don't rely on headlines for your science. And take it all with a healthy dose of skepticism.