Hyper Fruit

The future is going to be so awesome. Just imagine…

Imaginary advertisement for genetically engineered hybrid hyperfruits featuring an ‘limwi’, ‘kiwange’ and a ’strawblackberry’. Imagine a taste of things to come. Makes you want to kiss the future. Created for the Freaking News photoshop contest.

via NextNature.net – Exploring the Nature caused by People..

Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think

I found this New York Times article about the different types of intelligence in babies and adults very interesting…

Adults focus on objects that will be most useful to them. But . . . children play with the objects that will teach them the most. In our study, 4-year-olds imagined new possibilities based on just a little data. Adults rely more on what they already know. Babies aren’t trying to learn one particular skill or set of facts; instead, they are drawn to anything new, unexpected or informative.

Part of the explanation for these differing approaches can be found in the brain. The young brain is remarkably plastic and flexible. Brains work because neurons are connected to one another, allowing them to communicate. Baby brains have many more neural connections than adult brains. But they are much less efficient. Over time, we prune away the connections we don’t use, and the remaining ones become faster and more automatic. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls the directed, planned, focused kind of intelligence, is exceptionally late to mature, and may not take its final shape until our early 20s.

In fact, our mature brain seems to be programmed by our childhood experiences — we plan based on what we’ve learned as children. Very young children imagine and explore a vast array of possibilities. As they grow older and absorb more evidence, certain possibilities become much more likely and more useful. They then make decisions based on this selective information and become increasingly reluctant to give those ideas up and try something new. Computer scientists talk about the difference between exploring and exploiting — a system will learn more if it explores many possibilities, but it will be more effective if it simply acts on the most likely one. Babies explore; adults exploit.

via Op-Ed Contributor – Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think – NYTimes.com.

3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late

My parents are always bugging me about my sleeping habits. They say I need to go to bed BEFORE MIDNIGHT (their definition of a “reasonable time”).

Throughout high school, I routinely stayed up past midnight working on my homework, websites, or just reading articles and listening/watching podcasts.

Despite my best efforts to sleep early, it was all too easy to find justification for staying up just one more hour. I would stumble upon some cool video or article, have an idea for a website feature — and that always took priority over sleep.

Take tonight for instance. I’m posting this message at 5:00AM. And you know what the best part is? I have psuedo-scientific evidence to prove that my night-owl habits are actually good for me.

I stumbled upon this short piece in the January 2009 issue of Wired Magazine, which proves that being a night-owl is AWESOME, and good for you too:

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were “well rested” actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, “evening people” almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You’ll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.

P.S. Mom and Dad: if you’re reading this, then you should know I am totally, completely, absolutely kidding about this article… you know I would never, never, never, stay up so late at night… right?