Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elva Arulchelvan, Lecturer in Psychology and PhD Researcher in Psychology and Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin

As a researcher investigating how electric brain stimulation can improve people’s powers of recollection, I’m often asked how memory works – and what we can do to use it more effectively. Happily, decades of research have given us some clear answers to both questions.

Memory essentially operates in three stages, with different brain regions contributing to each one.

Sensory memory, which can last only milliseconds, registers raw information such as sights, sounds and smells. These are first processed by the brain’s five primary sensory cortices (visual cortex for sights, auditory cortex for sounds and so on).

Working (short-term) memory holds and manipulates a small amount of information over several seconds or more. Think of this as your brain’s mental workspace: the system that lets you do mental arithmetic, follow instructions and comprehend what you’re reading. So it mainly involves the prefrontal cortex – the front part of your brain that supports attention, decision-making and reasoning.

Finally, long-term memory stores information more permanently, from minutes to a lifetime. This includes both “explicit” memories (facts and life events) and “implicit” ones (skills, habits and emotional associations).

For long-term memories, the hippocampus and temporal lobes – located deep within the brain, around the sides of your head near your temples – contribute largely to memories involving facts or life events, while the amygdala (near the hippocampus), cerebellum (at the back of the brain) and basal ganglia (deep in the brain) process emotional or procedural memories.

Working memory often acts as a conscious gateway to long-term memory – but it has its limits. In 1956, the American psychologist George Miller proposed that we can only hold about seven “chunks” of information in our working memory at any time.

While the exact number is debated to this day, the principle holds: working memory is limited. And that limitation can shape how effectively we learn and remember things.

But you can also get your memory working more effectively. Here are five easy steps for improving both your working and long-term memory.

1. Put your phone away

Smartphones reduce your working memory capacity. Even just having a phone nearby – no matter if it’s face down and on silent – can reduce performance on memory and reasoning tasks.

The reason is that part of your brain is still subtly monitoring it. Even resisting the urge to check notifications consumes mental resources – which is why researchers sometimes call smartphones a “brain drain”. The solution is simple: put your phone in another room when you need to focus. Out of sight really does free up mental capacity.

2. Stop your mind racing

Stress and anxiety can take up valuable mental space. When you’re worrying about something or are distracted by racing thoughts, part of your working memory is already in use.

Relaxation training and mindfulness practices can improve both working memory and academic performance, probably by reducing stress levels. And if meditation feels intimidating, try breathing techniques such as “cyclic sighing”. Inhale deeply through your nose, take a second shorter inhale, then slowly exhale through your mouth. Repeating this for five minutes can calm the nervous system and create better conditions for learning.

3. Get chunking

Everyone can expand their working memory using the technique of chunking – grouping information into meaningful units. In fact, you probably already do it to remember some phone numbers or lists of words – breaking long sequences into bite-size chunks that your brain can recall as a mini-group.

The same principles apply if you’re delivering a presentation, to help your audience remember your key points more effectively. Chunking would involve grouping ten case studies, say, into three or four themes, each with a short headline and single key takeaway.

Repeat this structure on each slide: one idea, a few supporting details, then move on. By organising information into meaningful patterns, you reduce cognitive load and make it more memorable.

4. Become a retriever

In the 19th century, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated how quickly we forget information after learning it. Within about 30 minutes, we lose roughly half of what we have learned, with much more fading over the next day. Ebbinghaus called this the forgetting curve. The light blue line on the chart below illustrates this.

The forgetting curve – and how to disrupt it

However, there is a way of ensuring that more sinks in when you are trying to learn a lot of information in a short period of time: retrieval practice.

When preparing to give a talk or studying for an exam, rather than simply rereading your notes, keep testing how much you remember. Use flash cards, answer practice questions, or try explaining the material out loud without notes.

Memory works through associations. Each time you successfully retrieve information, you link the material to new prompts, examples and contexts. This builds more cues to accessing the information, and strengthens each memory pathway. Often when we “forget”, the memory isn’t gone – we just lack the right retrieval cue.

5. Give yourself a break

Research shows that memory is more effective when study or practice sessions are spread out, rather than massed together. If you are studying for an exam, build solid blocks of downtime into your revision schedule. The dark blue line on the chart above illustrates how spacing out your practice sessions can help you remember more information over time, by adjusting Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve.

One study suggests leaving gaps between each revision session that equate to 10-20% of the time left until your exam or presentation. So, if your deadline is five days away and you do hours of revision a day, you should still take between a half and full day off in between sessions. In other words, don’t overdo it – you probably won’t see the rewards!

If you only remember one thing from this article about improving memory, make it this. Memory isn’t just about intelligence, it’s about strategy. Small changes in how you study or work can make a real difference in how well, and how long, you remember crucial information.

Elva Arulchelvan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Five tips to make your memory work more effectively – https://theconversation.com/five-tips-to-make-your-memory-work-more-effectively-280327

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mokgadi Miranda Hlongwane, Lecturer, Department of Chemistry, Tshwane University of Technology

The growing use of toxic agricultural chemicals including fertilisers is also driving a scaling up of sustainable agrochemical alternatives.

In South Africa, I’ve been exploring why small-scale farmers resist switching to these more cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions, such as “biological fertilisers”. Rural small-scale farmers are hesitant about these non-toxic bacterial alternatives because they aren’t readily available or widely understood.

One such biological fertiliser is made from rhizobia. This bacteria converts atmospheric nitrogen into a nutritional form that can be absorbed easily by the roots of plants known as legumes. This process is called “nitrogen fixing”.

Biological fertilisers harness the power of these nitrogen-fixing bacteria to enhance the growth of legume crops such as bambara nuts, common bean and soybean, by making soil nutrients more available. Legumes are cost-effective and protein-rich crops.

My PhD research showed how rhizobia improves the growth of cancer bush, a multipurpose plant native to South Africa. Rhizobia also enhances the therapeutic effect of medicinal plants such as cancer bush, which is traditionally used as an anti-inflammatory treatment or to boost the immune system.

Some rhizobia tolerate extreme environmental conditions and can enhance plant growth even during drought. Rhizobia also improve soil health, increase microbial diversity and nutrients.

Unlike chemical fertilisers which easily wash away when it rains, rhizobia-based biological fertilisers persist in the soil for a long time. This means repeat applications aren’t often required.

Growing up in rural South Africa, I saw how small-scale farmers were hugely dependent on chemical fertilisers. Today, many of these farmers today are aware of the negative effects of synthetic chemical fertilisers. Yet they continue to use them.

Chemical fertilisers reduce soil fertility and pollute the environment. Synthetic agricultural chemicals like these can cause eutrophication – when nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen overload streams and rivers, causing excessive algal growth. This depletes oxygen in the water and poisons aquatic life.

In contrast, Rhizobia-based fertiliser technology is cost-effective, non-toxic and sustainable. But even with hundreds of these fertilisers now on the market, their adoption among small-scale farmers remains very low.

Reasons for reluctance

To understand why farmers resist adopting sustainable alternatives, I spent a day in Phiring, a village in Limpopo Province, South Africa. This farming community still relies heavily on financial support from the government to pay for agricultural supplies such as fertilisers.

I spoke to 15 farmers about their cultivation practices and perceptions of both rhizobia-based and chemical fertilisers. Restricted access to biological fertilisers and limited knowledge about their correct application discouraged them from switching. Most farmers wanted to know where to buy biological fertilisers and how best to use them.

One farmer noticed that his farm had a low crop yield compared to more recently established farms. The soil on his land had probably deteriorated due to extendsive use of chemical fertilisers over a decade.

Some farmers wrongly assumed that crops treated with biological fertilisers would grow slowly, rot quickly and have a low crop yield. As a result, they had not tried these alternatives to chemical fertilisers.

Convenience and access

This challenge is compounded by the abundant supply of chemical fertilisers. The Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme is an initiative from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries that supports small-scale farmers across South Africa. It provides vast amounts of chemical fertilisers for free.

Research on the low uptake of climate‑smart agriculture technologies identifies limited funding, low awareness and poor access to agricultural inputs as key barriers. Providing biological fertilisers through the same government programme would significantly increase adoption.

The farmers told me that their choice of cultivation practices is influenced both by convenience and access. Most farmers learn from their peers and seldom follow the instructions from the fertiliser manufacturers, so are likely to over- or underdose.

They rarely conduct soil analysis. This makes it difficult to select fertilisers that are suitable for their land, soil conditions or crop. In these cases, soil health further deteriorates and crop productivity declines.

The farmers I spoke to acknowledged their lack of knowledge about fertiliser applications, cultivation systems and available alternatives.

When legume crops are treated with rhizobia fertilisers, the increased nutrients and microbial diversity in the soil can also benefit non-legumes such as maize and wheat. this can happen through intercropping (simultaneously planting non-legume with legumes) or rotational cropping (planting legumes in one season and another crop in the same field the next).

There is huge potential for farmers to gain by switching from conventional agrochemicals to rhizobia-based fertilisers – but first, the financial constraints and misconceptions must be addressed.

Mokgadi Miranda Hlongwane receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation and the Elsevier Foundation.

– ref. South Africa’s farmers aren’t yet replacing chemical fertilisers with sustainable alternatives – this is why – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-farmers-arent-yet-replacing-chemical-fertilisers-with-sustainable-alternatives-this-is-why-278144

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Valerie van Mulukom, Visiting Lecturer in Psychology, Coventry University

We live in what has been called the “distraction economy”: an environment full of triggers that are engineered to demand our attention at every turn. The result is often fragmented attention, loss of focus and sometimes even increased rumination and anxiety.

Becoming fully absorbed in an activity is rare. Think of a time a film was so engrossing that you didn’t reach for your phone – the film-watching experience was no doubt the better for it. You can actively seek out this experience, which is known as “flow”. Hobbies are a great way to find a flow state and make outside distractions – work emails, unread messages, breaking news and chores – disappear.

The concept of flow was developed by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi. In his seminal 1990 book on the topic, he describes flow as: “A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

Hobbies can bring joy, wellbeing, and focus to our busy lives, but so many of us don’t have one. If you’re ready to replace scrolling with stitching, or hustle with horticulture, The Hobby Starter Kit (a new series from Quarter Life) will help you get going.

Reviews of neuroscientific evidence show that being in a flow state reduces mind wandering by suppressing brain activity in the so-called default mode network. This set of brain regions covers much of the self-referential processing we do, including our inner critic. Being able to “go with with flow” is thus directly related to not having such reflective or ruminative thoughts.

The reduction of the mind-wandering brain activation means there can be more efficient activation of attention networks. During a simulated car-racing task, researchers showed that objective mental effort and gaze focus were highest during flow conditions, even though participants reported the experience as more effortless. Flow doesn’t mean less attention – it means that attention is so efficiently allocated to the task that self-monitoring and distraction fall away.

However, flow is not the same as “hyperfocus”. In fact, they can be negatively correlated with each other. In a study with 85 college students with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), students with clinically significant ADHD symptoms reported higher hyperfocus, but lower flow on many measures. The key difference seems to lie in control: flow is directed and intentional, whereas hyperfocus tends to happen to you. But that raw capacity for absorption may be an asset – with the right conditions, like clear goals and a well-matched challenge, it could be channelled into genuine flow.

How to find your flow

Hobbies are a great mechanism for finding a flow state. Sports have been extensively researched as a flow-inducing activity. In a study of 188 junior tennis players, concentration on the task and sense of control were the two aspects of flow that most strongly predicted whether a player won or lost their match. However, it is not just about winning. A study with 413 young athletes aged 12-16, found that participants who were focused on effort and improvement, rather than winning, reported more flow.

Music is another rich domain for flow. In a survey of daily practice, 35 music students aged 12-18 indicated that concentration, emotion and clear goals were central to achieving flow. Eighty percent of the teenagers reported that being able to choose their own repertoire was a highly significant motivational factor.

Another study found that the balance between the challenge of a musical passage and the musician’s perceived skill consistently predicted the flow experience. Flow might also buffer against performance anxiety: when 27 student musicians were tracked over the course of a semester, it was found that when flow was at its highest, performance anxiety was at its lowest, and vice versa.

If neither sports nor music are your thing, you may want to consider games. In a project I recently ran with a student, we investigated flow during tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, and compared it to video games. Being in a flow state was associated with greater satisfaction with social interactions with friends, in particular for those who played tabletop games.

For those who play video games, gaming was associated with high monotropic flow – being so absorbed it is difficult to quit playing. These findings align with other research showing that a flow state during gaming can be so absorbing it makes you go to bed later – something to consider before picking up a new hobby.

Another form of role-playing is theatre and drama. In my previous work, I found that acting students experience significantly more flow than psychology students when they imagine scenarios as fictional people (like Romeo and Juliet), but not when imagining scenarios as oneself or one’s best friend. This reflects the effects of developing a practised skill. And, staying in a flow state while acting might ultimately culminate in a high-level performance.

Committing to a hobby and finding your flow might not only help you reduce outside noise (work or social media distractions), but also your own internal noise, such as mind wandering or rumination. Becoming fully absorbed in an activity is rare in the world of distractions, but can pay off for your brain.

Valerie van Mulukom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Feeling distracted? How hobbies can help you find ‘flow state’ and save your brain – https://theconversation.com/feeling-distracted-how-hobbies-can-help-you-find-flow-state-and-save-your-brain-278738

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

Marriage, it turns out, may come with a side‑effect no one puts in the vows: people who have been married seem less likely to develop cancer than those who have never married at all.

That is the provocative finding from a large new study that has raised interesting questions about what really keeps us healthy over a lifetime. If marriage shows up in the data as “protective”, is it love that matters, the piece of paper, or something much bigger hiding in the background?

In this analysis, researchers looked at cancer diagnoses in more than 4 million adults across 12 US states, representing a population of over 100 million people. They focused on cancers diagnosed after the age of 30 between 2015 and 2022 – a modern snapshot taken in an era when same‑sex marriage is legal nationwide, so marriage includes more people than ever.

Everyone was divided into two camps: those who were or had ever been married, including divorced and widowed people, and those who had never married at all. Around one in five adults landed in this never‑married group, a sizeable minority whose health has often been overlooked in traditional family‑centred research.

When the researchers compared the numbers, the gap was impossible to ignore. Men who had never married were about 70% more likely to develop cancer than men who had married at some point, while women who had never married were about 85% more likely to develop cancer than women who were or had been married.

More advantage to women

That last figure is especially notable, because many earlier studies suggested that men gained more from marriage than women. Here, women appear to gain at least as much, if not more. And the differences grew wider with age, especially after 50, when the consequences of decades of habits – smoking, diet, exercise, medical check‑ups, or the lack of them – finally rise to the surface.

The gap was not the same for every cancer, which is where the story becomes more revealing.

For anal cancer in men and cervical cancer in women – two diseases closely linked to infection with the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) – the differences were enormous. Never‑married men had around five times the rate of anal cancer compared with men who had married.

Never‑married women had nearly three times the rate of cervical cancer. These are precisely the cancers where preventive tools already exist: HPV vaccination and regular screening to catch pre‑cancerous changes early.

The study’s authors suggest that being married may increase the chances that someone is nudged into attending those appointments, or into having more stable healthcare and insurance.

Elsewhere, the pattern echoed long‑known biological themes. Cancers such as endometrial and ovarian cancer were more common in never‑married women, which may reflect lower rates of childbearing, since pregnancy and childbirth alter hormone exposure in ways that can reduce risk, as research my team has undertaken shows.

By contrast, for cancers strongly influenced by organised screening – breast, prostate, thyroid – the differences by marital status were smaller. Screening levels the playing field, regardless of whether someone has a spouse reminding them about their appointments.

Even race played an unexpected part. Black men who had never married had the highest overall cancer rates in the study, yet married black men actually had lower cancer rates than married white men, hinting that marriage might be especially protective in some groups.

Nothing magical about marriage, per se

So does this mean marriage itself somehow protects people from cancer? The researchers are careful to say no. Their study shows a pattern, not proof that marriage is the cause.

The real question is whether marriage makes people healthier, or whether healthier, wealthier and better-supported people are simply more likely to get married in the first place. People facing serious mental illness, addiction, chronic illness or deep poverty may be less likely to marry, and those same struggles are also linked to a higher risk of cancer. In that sense, marriage may be less a cause than a sign of other advantages that begin long before anyone walks down the aisle.

There are other reasons to be cautious, too. The “ever married” group bundles together happily married people with those who are divorced or widowed, despite the fact that those experiences can look very different in practice. Meanwhile, the “never married” group includes people in long-term relationships who may receive much of the same support as married couples. The researchers also cannot fully account for differences in income, education or access to healthcare – all of which strongly shape cancer risk in their own right.

Even so, the study points to something important. People who are or have been married are more likely to have someone encouraging them to see a doctor, to share financial resources and health insurance, and to be less likely to smoke heavily or avoid medical care. Over many years, those small differences can add up, shaping the risks people carry and influencing which cancers eventually develop – and which never do.

If you have never married, none of this is a personal health verdict. What the study really underlines is the need to ensure that the quiet advantages so often bundled with marriage – social support, gentle “nagging” to seek help, easier access to healthcare – are not reserved only for those with wedding photos on the mantelpiece.

Single people, widowed people, those who live alone or outside traditional coupledom, may need more targeted support to get to screening, to be offered vaccinations like HPV, and to have their concerns taken seriously. As more people choose to stay single, or to build lives outside marriage, those questions will only become more urgent.

In the end, this study is less a love letter to marriage than a reminder that our bodies are shaped not just by genes and chance, but by the social structures we move through. The people who notice when we’re unwell, encourage us to book that test, and help determine whether we can afford to act on that advice may leave traces visible years later under a microscope. The deeper challenge for public health and policy is to deliver the benefits of connection, stability and access to care to everyone – including those who never say “I do.”

Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Does marriage prevent cancer? And who benefits the most? – https://theconversation.com/does-marriage-prevent-cancer-and-who-benefits-the-most-280297

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christoph Siemroth, Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in Economics, University of Essex

The price of oil has changed a lot in the last few weeks. There have been dips as well as peaks, but generally, since the the start of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February, the black stuff has been getting more expensive.

As a direct result, petrol and diesel prices in the UK have also rocketed.

Motorists have felt the steep rise on petrol station forecourts, while some fuel sellers have been accused of profiteering and ripping off customers. There have also been calls for the government to intervene to prevent costs from spiralling out of control.

But what can it actually do to bring petrol prices down?

One option might be to impose price caps, setting a legal limit on what motorists can be charged for a litre of fuel. But a major problem with this idea comes down to a lack of supply.

Taking the Strait of Hormuz as a perfect example, if fewer tankers from Kuwait and Qatar are getting through, that means there is less oil available. As stocks runs low, it is impossible for everyone to get the same amount of fuel at the same price as before.

If price caps were introduced (with the supplier taking on the full impact of the discount), the countries and firms with oil to sell would naturally shift their sales to countries willing to pay higher prices. So a price cap would probably lead to empty petrol pumps in the UK.

There have already been shortages in France, where one major fuel provider implemented its own price cap and was subsequently inundated with customers.

In contrast, high fuel prices may persuade households to cut down on consumption, which is helpful when there is less oil available. After all, people don’t switch from travelling by car to public transport (which is often less convenient) unless there is a good reason to do so. High fuel prices are a good reason.

Research suggests that in the UK, a 10% increase in petrol prices can lead to a reduction in demand of up to 5%. So, high prices are a way of adjusting consumption to cope with the lower supply.

Duty calls

In the longer term, households might invest in a way which reduces their dependence on future fossil fuel consumption. Maybe, instead of a big SUV, the next family car will be be smaller or electric.

In the short term, though, demand for petrol and diesel will remain. Not all commuting and travelling can be cancelled or postponed. People need to get to work, children need to go to school.

A more promising policy intervention could be temporary fuel duty discounts – reducing the proportion of fuel costs which ends up in the Treasury. Unlike with price caps, oil exporters’ incentives to sell in the UK are not diminished by reducing fuel duty. So fuel duty cuts wouldn’t cause supply issues.

The issue here is that fuel duty cuts reduce government revenue at a time when it is already seriously stretched. Fuel duty receipts account for almost 2% of UK government income.

Also, the measure is not very targeted. Wealthy households with multiple vehicles would benefit more than a single mother struggling to pay for petrol to get to work.

Making allowances

Another option, favoured by some economists, is based on one-off transfers of money from the state directly to some motorists.

Instead of fuel duty cuts, the government could pay out a fixed sum to those in particular need (much like the winter fuel allowance for heating bills). This could be paid to households under a certain income threshold that own a car.

When a similar transfer scheme for gas was implemented in Germany in 2022 after Russia shut off gas pipelines, firms and households received compensation based on past consumption. Germany was able to reduce its gas consumption by about 20% during that time.

Unlike a fuel duty cut, compensation does not change depending on the amount of fuel bought. So the incentive to cut down on fuel consumption wherever possible remains.

Indeed, households that leave the car at home will profit, as they keep the transfer. This is as it should be: households that use less fuel get rewarded, while those that need it still have some support.

Many economists like this proposal because it keeps prices as an accurate reflection of supply shortages, while providing targeted relief. Neither price caps nor fuel duty cuts achieve this.

Christoph Siemroth previously received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council.

– ref. What can governments do when petrol prices rocket? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-governments-do-when-petrol-prices-rocket-280094