Admit it: Your maths could be better. Well, neuroscientist Roi Cohen Kadosh might have just the thing. He is using the gentle currents of tDCS to improve the way people handle numbers. He gave subjects the task of learning a set of numbers. Then half of the subjects got stimulation and half did not. After training, the stimulated subjects responded more automatically than the non-stimulated group, indicating that they were processing them more efficiently. Remarkably, Cohen Kadosh says, “the effect lasted for six months.”
However, the effects of training on their own can go some way to explaining the improvement seen in these studies, Jenny Crinion says. So one lesson the studies can teach us is about the power of putting in the hours. Plus, the stimulation does not work in isolation. “Whatever you’re practicing has to be the right thing and you need to pair this with stimulation in the right bit of the brain,” she says.
What if the brain is not infinitely malleable? “If I improve your ability in one cognitive area, such as memory, could I at the same time be making it worse in another?” Chambers asks.
This has not stopped commercial companies from pricking up their ears. Medical technology firms such as Soterix and Magstim supply researchers with their kit, but do not sell to the general public, though some outfits have sprung up offering DIY versions for US$99.
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
Strategic thinker Carl von Clausewitz has said that “war is politics by other means,” while investment guru Warren Buffett has said that “tariffs are an act of war.” Both aphorisms apply to China, which has long been engaged in a multifront political, economic and informational war against the US and the rest of the West. Kinetically also, China has launched the early stages of actual global conflict with its threats and aggressive moves against Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan, and its support for North Korea’s reckless actions against South Korea that could reignite the Korean War. Former US presidents Barack Obama
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