KhP on oIuodYd

[Johnniebeact]

Study shows how the pandemic may have affected teens’ brains
kraken ссылка

The pandemic’s effects on teenagers were profound — numerous studies have documented reports of issues with their mental health, social lives and more.

Now, a new study suggests those phenomena caused some adolescents’ brains to age much faster than they normally would — 4.2 years faster in girls and 1.4 years faster in boys on average, according to the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By being the first to contribute details on aging differences by sex, the study adds to the existing body of knowledge provided by two previous studies on the Covid-19 pandemic and accelerated brain aging among adolescents.
https://krak9.net
kraken зеркало
“The findings are an important wake-up call about the fragility of the teenage brain,” said senior study author Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and codirector of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, via email. “Teens need our support now more than ever.”

Significant socioemotional development occurs during adolescence, along with substantial changes to brain structure and function. The thickness of the cerebral cortex naturally peaks during childhood, steadily decreases throughout adolescence and continues to decrease through one’s lifespan, the authors wrote.

The researchers originally intended to track ordinary adolescent brain development over time, starting with MRIs the authors conducted on participants’ brains in 2018. They planned to follow up with them for another scan in 2020.

The pandemic delayed the second MRI by three to four years — when the 130 participants based in Washington state were between ages 12 and 20. The authors excluded adolescents who had been diagnosed with a developmental or psychiatric disorder or who were taking psychotropic medications.

[WilliamFah]

Meet the artist transforming tennis balls into furniture
спрут onion

In the last two years, tennis has taken over our closets (court-appropriate garb can be found everywhere from Skims to Miu Miu), our screens (who could forget Zendaya’s turn as the tennis protoge-turned-elite-coach Tashi Duncan in “Challengers”) and now — our living rooms.

At least that is the hope of Belgian eco-designer Mathilde Wittock, who fashions bespoke furniture from discarded tennis balls. Wittock’s sleek, modernist chaise longues are entirely cushionless — save for the padding of 500 precisely arranged tennis balls. Her one meter-long benches are similarly sparse, with some 270 balls being both stylish and structurally substantial.

https://bs2bestat.net
блекспрут
“It takes around 24 different manufacturing steps to (make) a tennis ball, which is around five days. Then it has such a short lifespan,” Wittock told CNN in a video call from Brussels. “I was looking into tennis balls because I played tennis myself, so I know there is a lot of waste.”
Around 300 million tennis balls are produced each year — and almost all of them end up in landfills, taking over 400 years to decompose. The US Open, which ended at the weekend, goes through around 70,000 each year, with Wimbledon not far behind at 55,000. Wittock estimates the lifecycle of a ball stands at just nine games, depending on the level of tennis being played. “Even if they are contained in their box, if the box has been opened the gas inside the tennis balls will be released over time,” she said. “(Eventually) they will get flat and you’ll have to throw them away.”

[BradleyThods]

National Park calls out ‘world changing’ impact of dropped Cheetos bag
kra10.gl
Plain water is the only thing visitors are allowed to consume inside the huge cavern at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Cheetos are a no-go, and the recent park visitor who dropped a bag full of them created a “huge impact” on the cave’s ecosystem, the park said Friday in a Facebook post.

“At the scale of human perspective, a spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing,” the park said in its post about the garbage found off-trail in the Big Room.
https://kra7.gl-kra7.cc
кракен сайт
“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi. Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organize into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues.”

The park said rangers spent 20 minutes carefully removing molds and foreign debris from surfaces inside the cave, noting that while some members of the ecosystem that rose from the snacks were cave-dwellers “many of the microbial life and molds are not.”
The post called that particular impact on the cave “completely avoidable,” contrasting it with the hard-to-prevent fine trails of lint left by each visitor.

“Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go. Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it,” the post urged park goers.
The park’s website says that eating and drinking anything other than plain water attracts animals into the cavern.

Carlsbad Caverns followed up its post about the Cheetos bag with a post about the “leave no trace” principle of disposing of waste properly.

“Contrary to popular belief, the cave is NOT a big trash can,” the post said, yet rangers pick up waste left behind every day.

“Sometimes this can be a gum wrapper or a tissue, other times it can unfortunately mean human waste, spit, or chewing tobacco.” Visitors are asked to make sure they don’t leave trash in the cavern and to use designated restrooms.