8 hours of sleep to improve your memory

8 hours of sleep to improve your memory
Here's a reason to make sure you sleep well before exams or a presentation.

When given an opportunity to sleep for up to 8 hours, participants correctly matched 12 per cent more of the faces and names.



Do you want to better remember new names and faces? Go, hit the sack. According to researchers, people are better at remembering faces and names if they get 8 hours of sound sleep after seeing those faces and names for the first time. Many different kinds of memories are improved with sleep.
While a couple of studies have looked at how naps might affect our ability to learn new faces and names, no previous studies have looked at the impact of a full night of sleep in between learning and being tested.
“We found that when participants were given the opportunity to have a full night’s sleep, their ability to correctly identify the name associated with a face – and their confidence in their answers – significantly improved,” explained Jeanne F Duffy, associate neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH).

Participants in the study underwent testing in a controlled environment while staying at BWH’s centre for clinical investigation.They were shown 20 photos of faces with corresponding names from a database of over 600 colour photos of adult faces and asked to memorise them.

After a 12-hour period, they were then shown the photos again with either a correct or incorrect name.In addition to answering whether or not the correct name was shown, participants were asked to rate their confidence on a scale of one to nine.When given an opportunity to sleep for up to 8 hours, participants correctly matched 12 per cent more of the faces and names.The findings suggest that sleep after new learning activities may help improve memory.

While the current study was conducted on healthy subjects in their 20s, the research team would like to explore the implications for people of all ages, including older adults.
“Sleep is important for learning new information. As people get older, they are more likely to develop sleep disruptions and sleep disorders, which may, in turn, cause memory issues,” Duffy noted.
By addressing issues with sleep, we may be able to affect people’s ability to learn things at all different ages, the authors concluded in a paper appeared in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

A super-fast WiFi Coming soon

 A super-fast WiFi pavement in UK with 166 Mbps speed

Chesham market town in Buckinghamshire will be the first in world to get a 'smart' pavement with super fast public WiFi all free for residents.

United Kingdom’s Chesham market town in Buckinghamshire will be the first in world to get a ‘smart’ pavement with super fast public WiFi all free for residents. Virgin Media
United Kingdom’s Chesham market town in Buckinghamshire will be the first in world to get a ‘smart’ pavement with super-fast public WiFi free for all its residents. 

UK-based Virgin Media is overseeing the installation of this WiFi network and according to a report in Telegraph UK, the smart WiFi pavement will benefit “Chesham’s high street and parts of Lowndes Park.” According to a press statement from Virgin Media, the company is promising download speeds of up to 166 Mbps and they can download a 634 MB file in less than 35 seconds, which should cover favorite TV episodes for many.

Virgin Media adds that the “Smart Pavement” will connect directly to the company’s fibre network and provides the ultra-fast WiFi via a submerged access point which is placed beneath a specially developed resin cover. It is also rainproof and the company adds that the access point uses a “mixture of the latest tech including fibre optic cabling and superior DOCSIS 3 technology.” According to Virgin Media, the WiFi will be accessible even at distances of up to 80 metres. 

“Not only is this the first time we’ve built metropolitan WiFi directly from our street cabinets, it is also the UK’s first deployment of a WiFi connected pavement,” said Gregor McNeil, Managing Director of Consumer at Virgin Media in a press statement. 

The pilot is available to all 21,000 residents and businesses of Chesham.

Live watch from Space Station

International Space Station marks 15 years of nonstop human presence 

Watch live view from Space Station

Since the first permanent crew moved in on Nov. 2, 2000, 220 people have come and gone,
representing 17 countries.

  Image: NASA 

The International Space Station when it was under construction (left) to what it is now. 

                                                                                          

Humankind marked an off-the-planet pinnacle Monday: the 15th anniversary of continuous residency at the International Space Station.

NASA and its global partners celebrated the milestone, as did the six astronauts on board. The U.S., Russian and Japanese spacemen planned a special dinner 250 miles up.
Commander Scott Kelly, seven months into a yearlong mission, said the biggest benefit of the orbiting lab is furthering long-term exploration goals deeper into space.

“The space station really is a bridge. It’s a test bed for the technologies that we need to develop and understand in order to have a successful trip to Mars,” American astronaut Kjell Lindgren noted during a news conference.Since the first permanent crew moved in on Nov. 2, 2000, 220 people have come and gone, representing 17 countries.

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The United States is in the lead because of all the space shuttle flights that were needed to deliver station pieces; Russia is in second place, and Canada and Japan tied for third. At least one American and one Russian have been on board at all times. 

More than 26,500 meals have been dished up, according to NASA, and the complex has grown from three to 13 rooms since 2000. 

The current structure has a mass of nearly 1 million pounds and as much pressurized volume as a Boeing 747. 

The most important experiment, Kelly said, is about keeping humans alive in space. His one-year mission with Russian Mikhail Kornienko, due to end in March, includes 400 experiments, many of them medical. 

Americans have never spent this long in space; the Russians have, but it was decades ago on the former Mir station. NASA puts the number of experiments at this space station, over the years, at more than 1,760. At the same time, there have been 189 spacewalks to build and maintain the outpost since construction began in 1998; No. 190 will occur Friday when Kelly and Lindgren venture out for the second time in 1½ weeks. As the space station ages, more maintenance will be required. 

NASA hopes to keep the complex running until 2024. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called Monday’s milestone “a remarkable moment 5,478 days in the making.” “It has taught us about what’s possible when tens of thousands of people across 15 countries collaborate to advance shared goals,” Bolden said in a statement. 

One sticking point, one to two decades ago, was a name for the place other than International Space Station — ISS in NASA shorthand. The original inhabitants — American Bill Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko — christened their high-flying home Alpha when they arrived, but the name didn’t last. Kelly remembers wishing back then that the space station had a real name, but the various countries couldn’t agree on one. 

“Now, it’s the ‘space station’ to me and I think it’s a great name,” Kelly told reporters. “The name ‘International Space Station’ really represents what it is. So in some ways, maybe it’s a better name.” As for day-to-day life, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui said the space station has yielded a unique culture given all the nationalities involved, with the crew members respecting each other. If this were practiced back on the planet, he noted, “the Earth will be a much better place.