Hasta La Gadget!

NASA recently announced that it is looking for people to perform what may be the easiest job ever. The space agency is looking for participants for 70 days of study and they will pay you $5000 per month to do nothing but lay in bed. The study is being conducted by NASA’s Flight Analogs Project Team at the Johnson Space Center.

The experiment is designed to study the effects of prolonged exposure to microgravity. These effects can be simulated here on Earth by forcing people to remain horizontal for 70 days. The goal of the Bed Rest Study is to help improve conditions for astronauts who work in a weightless environment.

NASA says that by placing participants in a slightly tilted down position with their heads down and their feet up 24 hours a day for 70 days straight without getting out of bed except for limited times will simulate what happens to the astronauts body during weightlessness in space flight. Participants in the test will have access to video games, TV, books, and Internet. Food will be provided to help participants maintain body weight.

[via MedicalDaily]

There have been signs that Americans are leaning more and more on the smartphone as a primary internet device, and nowhere is that clearer than the latest edition of Pew’s Cell Internet Use survey. The research group found that 21 percent of American cellphone owners now get online chiefly through their handset, up from 17 percent last year. Offline users, meanwhile, have been reduced to a minority — 63 percent of US cell owners have hopped on the internet from their phones at some point. The PC isn’t going away anytime soon, but it’s clear that the traditional computer is just one internet client among many.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Pew Internet

Gamers out there have probably been told many times to “grow up”, and that video games were best left for kids and not adults, but come the time when we hit the ages of 60-80, that might be a whole different story as it has been found that playing video games makes us cognitively younger. This is according to a study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco, where they had a group of 60-80 year olds play a custom game in which they tasked the players to drive a car within the game and identify road signs while ignoring others. The result basically confirms the fact that as we get old, multitasking becomes a much harder task than it used to be.

The researchers used electroencephalography to monitor their subjects while they played the game and found that the theta wave activity in their prefrontal cortexes looked like that of a younger person’s. This finding is said to help further research on which part of the brain should be tinkered with to improve memory and attention. According to Earl K. Miller (via NYTimes), the research “shows you can take older people who aren’t functioning well and make them cognitively younger through this training.”

One of the lead researchers, Daphne Bavelier, stated that while this was a pretty important breakthrough, learning how to rewire the brain properly is still in its infancy stages and that it is unclear if there will be any adverse side-effects to doing so.

Study Finds That Gaming Makes Our Brains Younger original content from Ubergizmo.

In recent years, social media has altered the way we interact with each other, and according to a Nielsen study released today, it’s also changing the way we consume media. While it may sound like a common sense conclusion to anyone who witnessed the storm of tweets surrounding the SyFy phenomenon Sharknado, Nielsen has uncovered a statistical link between what people tweet and what people watch. Basically, the more people tweet about a particular show, the more people will watch it. Likewise, the higher a program’s viewership, the more likely people are to discuss it on Twitter in real time. Certain types of programming — reality TV, comedies and sports — showed a higher percentage of ratings changes influenced by social media, while things like scripted dramas showed a smaller but still noticeable uptick. The times are a-changin’, and studies like this one are bound to inspire broadcasters and advertisers to change with them.

Filed under: Internet, HD

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Via: VentureBeat

Source: Nielsen

While many of us enjoy video games, there are always those who are against it for some reason or the other. Some blame video games for causing violence, while others find that video games actually has medical benefits, but this latest study conducted by Dr. Eric Lewkowiez, a Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist at Georgia Regents University, it seems that according to his study, playing too much video games can always lead to suicidal thoughts! Admittedly playing video games can get frustrating when you’re stuck at a level you can’t pass, or if you’re playing with an inept team mate, and while that frustration can lead to destruction of personal property, could it actually lead to suicide?

According to Dr. Lewkowiez, “There’s an increase a risk of suicidal thinking….Another thing that we know is if you’re playing video games that takes away from your school work, your grades are going to suffer.” He goes on to state that those who are most susceptible to these thoughts are those aged 13 years and younger. He claims that he has patients telling him that they have nightmares due to these games and have a hard time sleeping at night. Unsurprisingly Dr. Lewkowiez advocates moderation when it comes to playing video games, a sentiment which we wholeheartedly support, but what do you guys think?

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | Excessive Gaming Might Lead To Suicidal Thoughts, According To Study original content from Ubergizmo.