A drug can make sleep optional Stuff like this is the dry straw of punditry: There’s virtually nothing about Modafinil’s off-label use that doesn’t invite speculation, and no way to disprove that speculation in the short term. Will not having to sleep mean managers will work longer hours? Will lower-level workers? Will marriages crumble after doubling the amount of time you have to stay interesting to your partner? Will the bars ever close? As it happens, the drug had been around as a narcolepsy treatment since its UK launch in 1998, and has already generated a fair amount of scholarship around those questions. Why precisely would society want to regulate or govern sleepiness and alertness in this way? That does sound bad. UK sociologist Catherine Coveney interviewed students—who have taken to the drug as a procrastination aid—and night shift workers.
Modafinil - the time-shifting drug The wonders of pharmacology keep appearing regularly, each new drug seemingly too good to be true. In recent times there have been several killer apps for the drug industry – chemical substances that replace depression with a happy disposition or bolster a flagging sex drive to royal command performance (with encore) levels. Prozac and Viagra provided benefits so compelling they have entered everyday language and have a global following. Now there’s another “drug-most-likely-to-succeed” – this one enables you to stay awake for 40+ hours with close to full mental capacity with few side effects Modafinil improves memory, and enhances one's mood, alertness and cognitive powers. Marketed as Provigil ', 'Aletec' and 'Vigicer', Modafinil is a psychostimulant approved by the US Federal Drug Administration for improving wakefulness in patients with excessive sleepiness associated with shift work sleep disorder, obstructive sleep apnea / hypopnea syndrome and narcolepsy. So how good is it?
Coffee vs. beer: which drink makes you more creative? — What I Learned Today I didn’t know what I was going to write about today. When this happens, normally I grab a coffee to help get the ideas flowing, but for the last few days in Montreal, no one’s been allowed to drink the water due to a bacteria leakage, which also means, no coffee. So instead, I grabbed the next best thing to help me get going - a beer. This got me wondering about coffee and beer and which one would actually help me be more creative and get work done. Hopefully, this will help you decide when it’s best to have that triple shot espresso or ice cold brew. What is creativity really? From a scientific perspective, creativity is your ability to think of something original from connections made between pre-existing ideas in your brain. These connections are controlled by neurotransmitters like adenosine, which alerts your brain when you’re running out of energy and reacts by slowing down the connections made between neurons by binding to adenosine receptors. Your brain on coffee The result?
Why 'Breaking Bad' Should Be Set in China Above: a Thai policeman guards a shipment of meth pills smuggled from China It was in China that I was introduced to meth. Specifically, it was thanks to Beijing's pirated DVD shops that I first saw Breaking Bad, or as my dealer knew it, 绝命毒师 jué mìng dú shī—literally, “deadly drug master.” Since returning to the US and a Netflix account, I've been able to partake in the ugly, tangled moral struggles of Walter White under more legal circumstances. But I haven't been able to get China out of my head. If you’ve ever seen the show, you probably know that most of the meth in the US comes from Mexico. Records of large drug busts involving meth in recent years--an increasingly common occurrence--tend to show a trail that leads back to China. American officials now estimate that 80 percent of the meth consumed in the US is Mexican-made--with ingredients from China. In these rural areas in China, meth has become popular among populations not previously pegged as drug users. (via) Our Chinese Mr.
How easy is it to invent and manufacture a recreational drug that does not break any laws? By Mike Power, The GuardianFriday, November 1, 2013 2:48 EDT The reason so many new drugs are appearing is because we keep banning them. It’s time for a change of approach How easy is it to invent and manufacture a recreational drug that does not break any UK drug laws? I just spent the last two months doing exactly that – and the answer might surprise you. Since 2008, the emergence of legal highs has wrong-footed policymakers, parents and police. Most stories about legal and illegal drugs in the mass media are at best hysterical and inaccurate, and at worst simply untrue, so I decided to put this particular claim to the test. The market in legal highs is growing. Or rather, make that 244, because as part of a two-month investigation for the online science and technology publisher Matter, I just devised a new, legal drug, had it synthesised in China, and delivered to a PO Box in central London. There’s a bag of it sat in its courier packaging on my desk as I write.
The drug revolution that no one can stop — Matter MY JOURNEY, FROM MIKE POWER TO JOHN BUCKLEY, from investigative journalist to drug designer, started six weeks earlier. To understand exactly how access to designer drugs has changed—to see exactly how easy it is to commission, purchase and import powerful new compounds that are beyond the reach of the law—I decided to get one made myself. I chose to focus on the Beatles’ drug, phenmetrazine: a nod to the cultural significance of Prellies and their illustrious user base. How easy would it be to get a legal version made? I phoned a contact with expertise in chemistry and asked if he could think of a simple molecular tweak that would produce a new version of phenmetrazine that would be totally legal. The search began for a laboratory that would make a one-off sample. After weeks of constant searching for a decent lab, one of my contacts sent me the URL of a site in Shanghai that, on the surface of things, has nothing to do with legal highs, analog drugs, or any gray-market activity.
The Light That Burns: Night-Time Illumination and Melatonin Suppression - The Nexian By Bancopuma on Friday, 14 March 2014, hits: 2670 Darkness is good for us; it is an ally that heals us. It is something to be embraced, not feared. From Palaeolithic times, up until very recently, the only major sources of light we would have experienced once the sun went down would have been starlight, moonlight and firelight. The health ramifications of disturbed sleep and the direct effects of melatonin suppression should be considered separately, while at the same time being intimately linked. Melatonin has neuroprotective properties and may maintain and augment neurogenesis. The evidence for the importance of enough high quality, deep sleep for health is overwhelming. You may be blaming yourself for poor sleeping habits. Light exposure at the right time of day may have beneficial effects. A simple test to see whether you are being affected by light pollution is to turn your bedroom light off at night and let your eyes adjust with your curtains closed. Liu, R., Fu.
midwestreal.tumblr.com Bitcoin is immortal, so you might as well embrace it. New technologies almost always follow a predictable pattern. They start off exclusive, expensive and as something that grants power to a privileged few, all while some lucky nerd sits atop an ever-growing pile of money at the top of the pyramid. But eventually, those very same pieces of innovation become cheap, ubiquitous and totally standard until they’re replaced by the next big thing. Spoiler: yes. In just a few years, Bitcoin went from a thought-provoking paper, to some clever coding worth a fraction of a penny, to “nerd money,” to disruptive technology worth billions, to the number one consumer of raw computing power in the entire world; 256 times more than the world’s top 500 super computers combined. Bitcoin is not just a defiant, decentralized currency. Join Chris Ellis, Will Pangman and myself as we dig oh so much deeper in this episode. Chris Ellis is one of the driving forces behind the crypto-currency, Feathercoin.
When It Comes To Pot Vs. Alcohol, The Facts Are Hard To Ignore Ezra Klein: Here's something most people don't know about marijuana. Officially the U.S. government classifies it as a Schedule I drug. That is the strictest classification they have, period, full stop. That means the government thinks marijuana is more dangerous than Schedule II drugs like cocaine or meth. But there is a way in which legal pot could be a huge public health win, I mean one of the biggest public health wins we've had in decades saving huge numbers of lives. So this is a question of legal pot. Now, I'm going to say something that kind of sucks. There may be small errors in this transcript.