Video games can have a really big influence on children, as some people argue they can make them violent. Now, parents are worried about a horror video game that looks harmless at first, but has multiple references to violence, suicide, or traumatizing elements. The concerns became even more serious when a British parent blamed this game for his son’s suicide.

The title was easily classified as a psychological horror video game

Doki Doki Literature Club, developed by Team Salvato, appeared last year in September. The game looks completely innocent, as it exhibits characters drawn in a cartoon style. However, it is actually a horror video game with serious psychological implications and themes that include suicide and violence.

Soon after its release, the game became popular because it was massively streamed by YouTubers. Since its ending contained a lot of plot twists, these people recorded their shocked reactions and then posted them on YouTube. One user said the game was traumatizing and that he was left scarred by the ending. In fact, the developers posted a warning on Steam, saying the horror video game was not suitable for children.

The man thinks the game caused his son to commit suicide

If these concerns weren’t enough, a devastated parent blamed the horror video game for his 15-year-old son’s suicide. Darren Walmsley wanted everyone to know about the dangers of Doki Doki Literature Club. He couldn’t confirm the link officially, but he knew for sure his son was playing it. Although he didn’t talk about it, he could see how the gameplay was dragging him in and messing with his mind.

A coroner came to support the concerned man’s claims. His statement classified the title as a psychological horror video game with elements that might cause young people to experience suicidal thoughts. Things get even more serious if these people already have a feeble state of mind. Therefore, he encouraged all parents to check what games their kids are playing and get help if they notice something strange with them.

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Every two years, the CDC performs a survey on all the risky behaviors teenagers engage in. While some activities are no longer as popular as they used to be, young people now enjoy trends that seem harmless. However, they are a lot more dangerous than they seem. Sex and drugs are no longer so popular among teens but, apparently, they are damaging their health by not drinking enough milk.

Teenagers drink less milk than they used to

To keep risky behaviors among teenagers under control, the CDC performs the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System every two years. For this survey, the CDC interviews teenagers from 9^th to 12^th grade, asking them about their choice of risky behaviors. These include having sex, taking drugs, consuming alcohol, but also trends that might damage their health.

One such trend that might suit the last category is not drinking milk. To stay healthy, teens have to drink three dairy cups per day. In 1999, 18 percent of these youngsters drank the recommended amount of milk. Now, their rate dropped to 7.9 percent. Also, 27 percent of them admitted to drinking no milk during the week.

Milk has plenty of vitamins and minerals necessary for our health. If dairy consumption is decreasing, teens risk getting sick and feeble more often. However, the results might be better from other points of view, as teens have started laying off some other risky behaviors.

Youngsters now engage in fewer risky behaviors

Only 39.5 percent of them declared having sex in the past year, which is quite a big decrease since 1991, when this survey started. From those who had sex, the percentage of sexually active teens in the past three months was still small.

In the end, the survey came with the best news of all. The most dangerous risky behaviors of all, namely alcohol and drug consumption, has been decreasing for the past years. The rate of alcohol-drinking teenagers dropped from 81.6 to 60.4 percent, while the rate of cannabis consumption went from 26.7 percent to 19.8 percent.

It turns out teenagers are saving the risky behaviors for later, or they have just decided to engage in different activities. However, they should not neglect drinking milk and consuming nutritious foods.

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When you are feeling incredibly hungry, there’s just a small step until you become angry or, as many people call it, hangry. If you thought low blood sugar was to blame, researchers came here to enlighten you. The cause of the event is actually a combination between emotional and psychological factors, as well as the external context of the situation.

Being hangry isn’t only related to hunger?

Being hangry is quite a complex process, since it doesn’t only come from hunger. Kristen Lindquist, one of the researchers from North Carolina that developed the study, put the whole event in simpler words. Whenever you are hungry, you experience an unpleasant feeling. Sometimes, you might think the feeling doesn’t come from hunger. In these cases, you end up directing it towards other people or external situations.

To reach these conclusions, researchers developed two different experiments. For the first one, 400 American participants had to watch images that were either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Afterwards, they had to rate both a Chinese pictograph and their hunger.

Strategically, researchers picked a pictograph that should appear as neutral as possible. However, an interesting phenomenon happened. Hungrier people rated the image as more negative, but this happened only if they saw negative images before.

Negative contexts make it easier for people to be hangry

Here’s how the researchers explained being hangry. The previous negative context they had been given made them see the image as negative as well. In fact, they converted their feelings of hunger into hostility against the image. However, the interpretations were more peaceful in case of positive and neutral images.

For the second experiment, 200 students had to either eat or stay hungry before performing a test. Some of them could express their emotions in writing before the task. To check their reactions, researchers made some computers malfunction, and then blamed the students for it. Those who hadn’t got to express their feelings appeared more hangry and frustrated.

These experiments are the best proof that a negative context can really make people hangry. That unpleasantness caused by hunger can immediately turn into something else if external factors allow it. More details on the study have been published in the journal Emotion.

Image source: Pixabay

Researchers have come with great news for egg lovers, as it turns out egg consumption has a great benefit for the heart. Those who eat an egg per day seem to have a much lower risk of suffering from heart disease than those who do not eat eggs. This contradicts the previous knowledge that eggs are bad for our cholesterol levels but eating them with moderation can really be beneficial.

How does egg consumption impact heart health?

Heart disease is quite a common cause of death mostly everywhere in the world, leading to events like strokes and heart attacks. These are associated with a number of risk factors, and an unhealthy diet is one of them. Given their high cholesterol levels, eggs are on this list, so many people avoid eating them too often. However, they usually overlook the actual benefits of egg consumption.

These products are rich in plenty of nutrients. They are a great source of good protein, vitamins, but also other chemical components like biocarotenoids and phospholipids. However, researchers haven’t been able to find a clear association between egg consumption and heart disease. Therefore, the products have been seen as neither good nor bad.

People who ate eggs more often had smaller chances of suffering cardiac events

This is why a team of scientists from China decided to study these connections in depth. For the research, they looked at data collected from 512,891 people from 10 different Chinese regions. These participants were aged between 30 and 79.

The study started in 2004, when the researchers asked them some questions on their egg consumption. Afterwards, they kept a close look on them and potential diseases they might develop. From all of them, 13.1 percent consumed eggs daily in a moderate amount, while 9.1 percent declared they never ate eggs or did it only rarely.

This is how they observed that daily egg consumption was related to better health results. More precisely, it showed a 26 percent smaller chance of suffering a stroke, while the chance of developing heart disease was 18 percent smaller. Despite all the expectations, these products are actually good for the heart.

The study in question was published in the journal Heart.

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Transplanting memories sounds like an impossible thing to do, but a team of researchers from UCLA has managed to perform this complicated operation on snails belonging to the species Aplysia. By using some RNA strands, they showed it was possible to bring back some lost memories.

Researchers tested transplanting memories on snails

Researchers wanted to do the impossible, so they started experimenting and transplanting memories from one sea snail to another. To do this, they used RNA, as it has a transporting purpose. However, RNA might have other roles as well. In the case of damaged cells, RNA might help with their fixing.

To see if transplanting memories was possible, the research team decided to experiment on three marine snails of the Aplysia species. They chose this animal because scientists have great knowledge of its brain. Therefore, it was easier to experiment with it and study all the processes in detail.

The unshocked snails showed the same reactions as the shocked ones

At first, researchers started with a series of electric shocks they administered to two of the snails, while the third one remained unshocked. This is how they noticed the shocked specimens had their muscles shrinking for a period of about 50 seconds. Afterwards, they extracted RNA from all three, and gave it to seven other snails that had no memory of any electric shocks.

This is where the interesting thing comes in. Those snails who had received RNA from the shocked snails exhibited the same reaction as them. This means their muscles also contracted, but it happened only over a period of 40 seconds. Therefore, these results might be enough to prove that transplanting memories is possible.

Despite some obvious differences, researchers think the brain cells of snails and those of humans are really similar. This makes researchers optimistic, as it might mean that transplanting memories might be possible for humans as well. The study can highlight some possible future treatments for PTSD or Alzheimer’s. If you’re curious about it, you can read it in the journal eNeuro.

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