Philippa Kaur

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    in Humans

    Science is increasingly revealing how we can boost our happiness

    Kseniia Zagrebaeva
    “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are three unalienable rights emphasised by the US Declaration of Independence as being the duty of their leaders to protect and secure.
    The third one gives perhaps most pause for thought. What should governments – and all of us – be doing to maximise societal and personal happiness? Indeed, what even defines happiness?
    Politicans and philosophers have wrangled over the apparent contradictions and conflicts that such questions throw up for centuries. Meanwhile, a simple equivalence has come to be made across the world. Many believe that happiness comes with having a bigger cake and … More

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    in Humans

    The happiness revolution: How to boost the well-being of society

    We now know that economic growth doesn’t necessarily translate into greater well-being. A closer look at Nordic countries such as Finland reveals surprising truths about what really makes a happy society and how other governments can emulate their success

    Humans

    19 January 2022

    By David Robson
    Matt Dartford
    IF YOU want to maximise your chances of living a happy and fulfilled life, you might consider moving to one of the coldest, darkest countries in the world. Since 2012, The World Happiness Report has ranked the average life satisfaction of more than 150 nations. In the past four years, the top slot has been taken by one country: Finland.
    No one was more surprised than the Finns. “The Finnish self-image is that we are this introverted, melancholic people,” says Frank Martela, a philosopher and psychologist at Aalto University in Finland. More surprising, at first glance, is the fact that as the country has ascended to the top of the well-being charts, its economic development has remained remarkably flat.
    This seeming paradox confirms what many people have long suspected – that our traditional focus on economic growth doesn’t translate into greater well-being. While gross domestic product (GDP) continues to be the default proxy for people’s welfare, many economists and governments are waking up to the fact that our fixation on money is distracting us from policies that could actually improve the quality of people’s lives. Indeed, various nations, from the UK to New Zealand and Costa Rica, have now publicly stated their intention to track measures designed to better capture human happiness.
    Clearly, this is no trivial task. So what can we learn from the evidence emerging from psychology, and the social sciences more broadly, about the various factors that contribute to our emotional well-being? And what, if anything, can that tell us about how other countries can emulate Finland’s success?
    One of the biggest problems is that happiness is … More

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    in Humans

    Unknown voices spark more brain activity in sleep than familiar ones

    Unfamiliar voices seem to put the sleeping brain on alert in a way that familiar voices don’t

    Humans

    17 January 2022

    By Jason Arunn Murugesu
    Electroencephalography (EEG) is used to monitor brain activityShutterstock / NPS_87
    The sleeping brain is more active if it hears unfamiliar voices rather than familiar ones. The finding suggests that we can process information about our environments even in the depths of sleep.
    Manuel Schabus at the University of Salzburg in Austria and his colleagues monitored 17 people, with an average age of 23, in a sleep lab over two nights. Brain activity was monitored using an electroencephalography (EEG) machine.
    “The first night was so that the subjects could get comfortable with their new environment,” says Schabus.Advertisement
    During the second night, while the participants were asleep, they played an audio recording of human speech on loop. The voice was either unfamiliar to the sleeper or belonged to a familiar person, such as a parent or a romantic partner.
    In either case, the voice repeatedly uttered three first names: two random but common names and the name of the sleeper. The audio recordings were played for four 90-minute periods during the night. There was a 30-minute gap between each audio recording so that it would be easier for people to stay asleep.
    The audio was played at a volume so as not to wake the participants up. “We adjusted the sound levels individually,” says Schabus.

    The researchers found that unfamiliar voices generated more brain activity in the sleepers than familiar voices. In particular, they found an increase in the number of K-complexes – a type of brainwave that is slow and isolated – when the subjects heard unfamiliar voices.
    “K-complexes are interesting because they show the immediate response to a disturbance,” says Schabus. That response is divided into two parts, he says: first, the brain processes the information, then it inhibits the information so it doesn’t wake up the sleeping individual.
    If the participant’s brain activity suggested that they were on the verge of waking up, the researchers lowered the volume of the recordings to help them stay asleep.
    Schabus says it makes sense evolutionarily why unfamiliar voices generate stronger brain activity than familiar ones. “Unfamiliar voices should not be speaking to you at night – it sets off an alarm,” he says.
    The finding may be part of the reason why we sometimes struggle to sleep in new environments, such as hotel rooms, says Schabus.
    “This study shows that unfamiliar voices disturb sleeping people more than familiar ones,” says Julie Darbyshire at the University of Oxford. “We see these effects when hospital patients find it very hard to sleep.”
    “Partly, this is because almost nothing in the environment is familiar. As well as unfamiliar voices, patients will also be surrounded by equipment with unfamiliar and unpredictable pings, bongs and beeps.”
    Unfamiliar voices also triggered fewer K-complexes in the second half of the night compared with the first half. “It means we can learn something new in the near-unconscious state,” says Schabus.
    But he notes that this doesn’t mean we can learn new words during sleep. “You need the night to sleep and rest and if you don’t sleep properly, it does more harm than good for learning,” he says.
    Journal reference: Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2524-20.2021

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    in Space & Astronomy

    An early outburst portends a star’s imminent death

    A star’s death usually comes without warning. But an early sign of one star’s imminent demise hints at what happens before some stellar explosions.

    In a last hurrah before exploding, a star brightened, suggesting that it blasted some of its outer layers into space. It’s the first time scientists have spotted a pre-explosion outburst from a run-of-the-mill type of exploding star, or supernova, researchers report in the Jan. 1 Astrophysical Journal.

    Scientists have previously seen harbingers of unusual types of supernovas. But “what’s nice about this one is it’s a much more normal, vanilla … supernova that’s showing this eruption before explosion,” says astronomer Mansi Kasliwal of Caltech, who was not involved with the research.

    On September 16, 2020, scientists discovered the explosion of a star roughly 10 times as massive as the sun, located about 120 million light-years away. Thankfully, telescopes that regularly survey a swath of the sky, as part of an effort called the Young Supernova Experiment, had been observing the star well before it detonated. About 130 days before the explosion, the star brightened, the researchers found, the start of a pre-explosion eruption.

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    The final explosion was a commonplace type of stellar detonation called a type 2 supernova, which occurs when the core of an aging star collapses. Precursors to such explosions probably hadn’t been seen before because the early eruptions are faint. For this supernova, scientists had observations of the star sensitive enough to pick up the relatively weak eruption.

    Previous post-explosion observations of such supernovas have hinted that the stars slough off layers before death. In 2021, astronomers reported signs of a supernova’s shock wave plowing into material that the star had expelled (SN: 11/2/21). A similar sign of cast-off stellar material was also found in the new study.

    Scientists aren’t sure exactly what causes such early outbursts. They could be the result of events happening deep within a star, for example, as the star burns different types of fuel as it nears death. If more such events are found, scientists may eventually be able to predict which stars will go boom, and when.

    Precursor outbursts are a sign that stars experience inner turmoil before exploding, says study coauthor Raffaella Margutti, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “The main message that we are getting from the universe is that these stars are really knowing that the end is coming.” More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Astronomers identified a second possible exomoon

    Some of the same researchers who found the first purported exomoon now say that they’ve found another.

    Dubbed Kepler 1708 b i, the satellite has a radius about 2.6 times that of Earth, and circles a Jupiter-sized exoplanet that orbits its parent star about once every two Earth years, the team reports January 13 in Nature Astronomy. That sunlike star lies about 5,700 light-years from Earth.

    To find this nugget, the team sorted through a database of more than 4,000 exoplanets detected by NASA’s now-retired Kepler space telescope. Because large planets orbiting far from their parent star are more likely to have moons large enough to be detected, the team focused on a subset of 70 exoplanets.

    Each of these planets is between half and twice the size of Jupiter. They all either take more than 400 Earth days to orbit their star or have an estimated average surface temperature less than 300 kelvins (around 27° Celsius), slightly higher than that of Earth.

    After further screening, including tossing out exoplanets that don’t have near-circular orbits (which are statistically less likely to host moons), the team identified a strong candidate for an exomoon. It, like its host planet, caused detectable dimming of the parent star’s light when moving across the face of the star.

    Discovery of the first possible exomoon, dubbed Kepler 1625 b, has faced a lot of skepticism (SN: 4/30/19). Both proposed exomoons need to be confirmed by further observations by other instruments, such as the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, the team notes (SN: 10/6/21).

    But fresh observations will need to wait: The newfound exomoon candidate and its planet won’t pass in front of the parent star again until March 24, 2023, the researchers calculate. More

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    in Humans

    Why everyone should learn some sign language

    By Bencie Woll
    Simone Rotella
    Not so long ago, deaf children were punished in the UK for using sign language in the classroom. Recounting his experience in the 1960s, one deaf person told one of my colleagues many years later: “I had a lot of punishments for signing in classrooms… One morning at assembly, I was caught again, then ordered to stand at the front of the class. The headmistress announced that I looked like a monkey [and that she would] put me in a cage in the zoo so the people will laugh at a stupid boy in the cage.”
    Thankfully, experiences like this are no longer as common. Sign languages have not only survived, but are now flourishing – so much so that many more people are getting the chance to learn them, which should be celebrated.Advertisement
    British Sign Language (BSL) is used by tens of thousands of people in the UK, including around 90,000 deaf signers. For some of them, such as children with deaf parents, it is the first language they acquire. In the US, more undergraduate and graduate students have enrolled on courses in American Sign Language (ASL) than German each year since 2013.
    Currently, the UK Department for Education has a draft BSL curriculum for England on its desk for GCSE students (14 to 16-year-olds), which could come into effect later this year. This would make it a modern language option alongside French, German, Spanish and Chinese. Both Scotland and Wales have BSL curricula in the works too.
    Elsewhere, sign languages are gaining both recognition as official languages and a place on the national curriculum. South Africa has hired 60 instructors to teach South African Sign Language as part of a state-run adult literacy programme, and Jamaican Sign Language was introduced into Jamaica’s national curriculum earlier this month.
    That sign languages are thriving should be welcomed for many reasons, including the cognitive benefits that learning them brings. Several studies have found that hearing people who learn sign languages perform better in tasks requiring spatial transformation abilities – which you might use when taking down directions. Space is an integral part of the grammar of a sign language, with verbs, nouns and pronouns using the space in which they are located as part of their meaning. A series of experiments by Mary Lou Vercellotti at Ball State University in Indiana also found that adult ASL students have enhanced face-processing skills, which are essential to reading emotions.
    Learning a sign language can be enlightening, too. In a year-long study of preschool children by Amy Brereton at Trinity Washington University in Washington DC, hearing children who were learning ASL attained a greater appreciation of cultural diversity, as determined via classroom observations and interviews.
    Part of the beauty of learning languages – both spoken and sign – is that you don’t need to be fluent to experience the benefits. In a recent British Academy project I led with my colleague Li Wei at University College London, we highlighted how learning languages shapes the mental functions you use in a range of other fields, from your social awareness to your creativity and grasp of mathematics.
    Sign languages today are rich with communities and culture. Up until the 1980s, many deaf people essentially had to exist in the 19th century: no telephones, no radio, no television. But in many countries, social clubs, networks and advocacy groups for deaf signers have given rise to a diverse range of vernaculars. With the internet and social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, content creators are now sharing these with the world, bringing greater awareness and respect – and increased interest in learning these languages.
    Bencie Woll is a professor of deaf studies at University College London

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    in Humans

    Goliath review: Tourism to a ruined Earth explores the idea of home

    By Sally Adee

    Even a post-apocalyptic Earth retains a certain charm for humankindgremlin/Getty Images
    Goliath
    Tochi Onyebuchi
    TordotcomAdvertisement

    SCI-FI dystopias of a ruined Earth are thick on the ground these days, filled with the wreckage of climate change: drowned continents, great extinctions and air that is no longer safe to breathe. In the more hopeful, people leave the planet in search of another world where they can start again, with lessons learned and a determination not to repeat the same mistakes.
    In Tochi Onyebuchi’s Goliath, human nature is eternal. So, while the rich predictably leave for pristine space colonies, abandoning those who can’t afford to escape, there is money to be made from tourism to the ruins left behind. Some tourists find themselves captivated by the communities that have emerged, and decide to return to Earth. Gentrification ensues.
    The premise is wry and au courant. In a lesser writer’s hands, it could lead to lazy and cynical caricatures, but Onyebuchi uses it only as a jumping off point into a deeper examination of the idea of home, and what we will do to get there.
    Onyebuchi started out writing sci-fi for young adults before reaching a wider audience with the multi-award gobbling novella Riot Baby in 2020. He has a master’s degree in screenwriting, which is on vivid display in his hypnotic descriptions of Goliath’s two new human worlds.
    We explore these through the eyes of several characters, including colony-dweller Jonathan, who looks out into star-spangled black space from a window in a sterile space station straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. On Earth, we meet Sydney, who watches a dandelion’s seeds get nibbled away by wind under a poisoned red sky.
    “By detailing the two worlds, Onyebuchi makes it obvious why people start yearning for Earth”
    The style is more than matched by the substance of the story, in which Onyebuchi takes his time to explore the main themes. The gentrification issue, for example, is treated not as an easy punchline but as a way into deeper questions about what we need.
    When Jonathan travels from the colonies to Earth, he tours destroyed homes looking for one to fix up. Onyebuchi shows us what he starts with – a shell of a house filled with geological layers of detritus. Then, months later, Jonathan is accepted into the community, which allows him to connect to the lone cable still bringing electricity to the neighbourhood. His wonder and joy at something so ordinary as a working light switch is infectious, especially after the technological marvels he has been taking for granted in the colonies.
    By detailing the contrasting textures of the two worlds, Onyebuchi makes it obvious why colony-dwellers start yearning for Earth. Home inspires such longing that people living in the clean, metallic colonies pay handsomely for individual bricks to be salvaged from demolished houses on Earth and sent into space. They fight on auction sites for tiny cacti.
    Back on Earth, there are different tensions. Returning residents bring back things that Earth’s citizens were only too happy to see the back of, not least social inequality. Even in space, the richest live in the part of the space station with a view of the galaxies, while everyone else faces the unrecyclable detritus – including dead bodies – that surrounds the colonies in a ring.
    What will the prodigal Jonathans bring back to Earth apart from their longing for home? And will the people they left behind be interested in anything they have to offer?
    Sally also recommends…

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    in Humans

    Emotional review: A new take on the importance of feelings

    By Gege Li

    HAVE you ever become angry about something that, in hindsight, had more to do with the fact that you were having a bad day? Most of us have had moments like this, where we let our emotions get the better of us or allow them to influence our decisions. It isn’t necessarily ideal, and we often assume that the involvement of emotions – intended or otherwise – is always detrimental to our ability to make good choices.
    Not so, says physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow in his book Emotional: The new thinking about feelings. He argues that while it might seem like getting emotional is a bad idea, our feelings actually play an essential role in shaping our thoughts and decisions, helping us to react flexibly to situations and motivating us to pursue our goals.
    Drawing on the latest research, Mlodinow guides us through the ways in which neuroscientists are changing their understanding of human feelings – what he calls “the emotion revolution”.
    One of the breakthroughs in the science of emotion is the finding that rational thought alone isn’t enough to process the masses of information that we are exposed to in our environment. To think effectively, we also need to feel. “Emotion is not at war with rational thought but rather a tool of it,” writes Mlodinow.
    This challenges two well-worn assumptions laid out long ago by some of history’s greatest thinkers, such as Plato: that the human mind can be split into rational and non-rational parts, reason and emotion, and that harnessing the former while taming the latter holds the key to success and making good decisions.
    But now that we have the technology to probe the human brain more deeply than ever before, modern science is uncovering the complex neural dynamics that are involved in generating our emotions, and in turn reshaping our knowledge of their importance.
    Mlodinow explores how and why feelings evolved in the first place, arising initially from purely reflexive behaviours to environmental stimuli before the “upgrade” of emotion occurred, which provided a more flexible and effective way for organisms to react to the challenges they encountered.
    The research also illustrates the universality of emotion and its benefits – scientists have seen emotion-guided behaviours at play in not only humans, but also rodents, fruit flies and bees.
    Towards the end of the book, readers are given the chance to determine and reflect on their own emotional profile, using various questionnaires that were developed for research into specific feelings like happiness and anxiety. This is one of the more provocative elements of the book: the idea that we can gain power over our emotions by learning to understand and navigate them better. It is a tantalising concept that Mlodinow backs up with numerous studies and anecdotes. He also gives advice on how we can better manage our own emotions and gain more control over our lives.
    Though the message of controlling your feelings to ultimately improve your well-being is an important one, it did get repetitive at times. What’s more, regular readers of New Scientist or of popular neuroscience in general may find the research and the solutions Mlodinow offers, such as meditation and exercise, to be a little predictable.
    Emotional may occasionally seem like a self-help book, but it is nevertheless an illuminating read that deals well with the complexity of emotion, the emerging science behind it and the fascinating workings of the brain itself. It might just help you remain calm and collected, even on a bad day.

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