Victoria Times Colonist – Page 13

Take a lesson from the Bard: Make much ado about sleep

Shakespeare memorial at Southwark Cathedral, U.K. Photo © Duncan Harris.

William Shakespeare had a lot to say about the importance of sleep. His memorial at Southwark Cathedral, U.K.

We can sleep a little longer this weekend. Most of North America resets its clocks one hour back tonight, marking the end of daylight saving time.

If we choose to slumber through the hour gained, we’ll wake up slightly more rested and slightly better able to deal with the coming week’s events and obligations.

For some of us, that week includes attending Tuesday’s opening performance of the new show at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre. A Tender Thing, by British playwright Ben Power, re-imagines Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as lovers grown old together. It is the second of three Shakespeare-inspired shows the Belfry audiences will see this season.

Victoria's Belfry Theatre. Photo © Jason M Vanderhill, illustratedvancouver.com

Victoria’s Belfry Theatre presents Shakespeare three ways this season. A Tender Thing starts the week after clocks change back to Pacific Standard Time.

As with so many aspects of life, William Shakespeare had something to say about the importance of sleep. Four centuries ago, he described sleep as “sore labour’s bath / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course / Chief nourisher in life’s feast” (MacBeth).

Sleep research, most of which has occurred only within the last few decades, confirms the accuracy of Shakespeare’s 400-year-old descriptions. …

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Slugs and snails may provide the secret to perpetual youthfulness

Pacific banana slug: secret origin of the slime-fountain of youth. Photo © Jitze Couperus, www.couperus.org

Could the Pacific banana slug be the secret behind the slime-fountain of youth?

Years ago, when commiserating about my squeamishness for slugs, Nature Boy speculated that these terrestrial molluscs might yet surprise us.

“Perhaps scientists will discover remarkable youth-preserving compounds in the slime, and we’ll start eagerly smearing slugs on our faces.”

You have no idea how sorry I am to report it has come to pass. Spas in Japan and the U.K. recently started offering snail facials. Clients pay handsomely for the privilege of having snails slither youth-enhancing slime all over their faces.

Its coiled shell distinguishes the snail from its naked cousin, the slug. Both slime-meisters belong to the mollusc group known as gastropods—so called because they appear to use their stomachs (gastro) as feet (pod).

Their slime apparently contains natural antibiotics, elastin, collagen, glycolic acid, hyaluronic acid and many compounds known to heal cuts, soften scar tissue, fight infections, repair sun damage, regenerate skin cells, and make skin look younger, tighter and brighter.

And younger.

Did I mention younger? ….

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Coffee: The real fuel driving our society

19. October 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: caffeine, cancer, coffee, coffee culture, food, International Olympic Committee, oil, science, Victoria b, Victoria Times Colonist

coffee art. Photo © Jeremy Keith, adactio.com

Oil is the world’s most-traded commodity. This rating emphasizes our dependence on the substance.

However, I’d say an altogether different commodity has played as important a role in the development of our society. This substance has been used throughout the western world for 700 years. It has fuelled technological, economic, political and social change. It is the world’s second most-traded commodity, but unlike oil, it is a renewable resource. And we are as addicted to it as we are to oil.

Where would we be today if our forebears hadn’t started drinking coffee?…

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Some aliens actually come knocking;
Most invasives just sneak in

12. October 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Vancouver Island, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: Argentine ant, fire ant, giant house spider, insects, invasive species, Oak Bay, science, Victoria BC, Victoria Times Colonist

European imported fire ant. Photo by Gary Alpert, Harvard University, via bugwood.com

The European imported fire ant is one of many introduced insect species that are getting comfortable in the Victoria area.

In Germany earlier this year, a woman called the police after her doorbell rang repeatedly in the night, terrifying her. The cops apprehended the culprit—an ant nest built tight into the doorbell was tripping the switch.

My friend experienced a similar problem. Her home-security system spontaneously and repeatedly went off over a period of several months. It usually rang during the day, when she was at work. The alarm would signal the alarm company. The alarm company would notify the police. The police would come by and find nothing amiss. Telephone calls and letters from the company to my friend would follow. My friend would—again and again—call in technicians to find the problem.

It turns out the problem had eight legs and a dime-sized body, and liked to hide in crannies….

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Practice study hygiene to harness those little grey cells

Here’s good news for those of us trying to pick up new skills and information. Experts on how learning happens within the human brain have identified the two most reliable methods for transferring new information into our little grey cells.

One method requires that students revisit and build upon their study of a particular topic or problem over time, preferably at monthly intervals.

The other most effective technique requires students take repeated practice tests on the information—again, over periods of time. Students can administer the quizzes themselves, solo or with others, by using flash cards, study charts, practice sessions, or other study tools.

Both methods force students to repeatedly draw on and build upon their memories of the information, tasks or skills they’ve learned. The recurring engagement of memory consolidates the learning, and builds multiple neural pathways within the brain, so students can more easily access and retrieve the information from memory.

The techniques benefit students of all ages and abilities, and enhance performance in most areas of learning….

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Additional sources:

Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers

Will Listening to Mozart Really Make Me Smarter?

Female College Students’ Media Use and Academic Outcomes: Results From a Longitudinal Cohort Study + a synopsis that you don’t have to pay for

Microbes make the wine: A toast to them

We rarely see grapes being crushed by foot these days, but visitors to the Cowichan Wine and Culinary Festival earlier this month witnessed an old-fashioned grape stomp. Seven teams, dressed in costume, with grape juice soaking the hems of their trousers, shorts, gowns and dresses, competed against each other to stomp the grapes the fastest.

Their bare feet and enthusiasm served to remind spectators of wine making’s fundamentals.

Here and everywhere, wine making starts with sun, water, soil, and vines that take all of the above and turn it into grapes. Those who tend the vines and those that turn the grapes into wine strive to create product that represents and reveals the most desirable qualities of the fruit, place, climate, and so on. Each resulting bottle contains a bit of the heart and soul of the land and of the people who work it.

Yet, behind the growers of grapes and makers of wine, another community of players calls the shots. I’m not talking about grape stompers, who have been mostly replaced by mechanical presses these days. I’m talking about more enduring, pervasive contributors.

In the most basic sense, microbes make the wine….

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We make it easy to keep tabs on each other

Tinfoil hats. Photo © teaeff, via flickr

“They don’t need to read my mind,” I informed Nature Boy when he offered me his tinfoil helmet. “They can read everything else.”

What They would read are my emails, my Internet use, my cellphone data, and every other item or card on or near my person with a radio-frequency identification tag, GPS or other signal.

Every time I use a bank or credit card, turn my cellphone on, drive my GPS-enabled vehicle—even use a telephone landline—I leave a digital trail.

That trail can be tracked.

What I find truly amazing is that anyone could possibly find li’l ol’ me interesting enough to want to access the virtual banality of my existence.

When former National Security Agency contractor-turned-renegade Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s Internet spying program earlier this year, the revelations threw light on who might be interested in the digital trails I and hundreds of millions of others create every day.

Compared to that, this month’s ruling by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to uphold B.C. employers’ rights to track their workers’ whereabouts seems, well, small potatoes….

Continue reading this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

We’re oh-so-programmed to crave KD (and other refined-carbohydrate hits)

14. September 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: addiction, glycemic index, hedonic hyperphagia, junk food, pig out for pleasure, refine carbohydrates, science, Victoria Times Colonist

All sorts of two-legged critters are migrating to school-supply bargain-hunting grounds south of the border this weekend. The last young of the summer are fledging and moving out of the nest into college residences.

And turkeys, pigs, and first-year university students are facing being fattened up in time for forthcoming feast days.

Variations on the Freshman 15—the extra body weight from eating the high-starch, high-sugar, high-fat diet so readily available in university cafeterias—manifest widely. So to speak.

But avoiding university carb-palaces doesn’t mean a student fresh from the farm chooses food wisely in his first months away. Kraft Dinner, after all, sells 75 million boxes of its bright-orange, cheesy-flavoured macaroni to Canadians each year—the greatest per capita sales of any country, and enough to have it proclaimed Canada’s national dish by the likes of Douglas Coupland.