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British Man Claims a Horror Video Game Caused His Son to Commit Suicide

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Hand lying on the floor next to an empty pill bottle

The man thought the horror video game was a direct cause of his son’s suicide

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.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The Coldest Spot on Earth is Colder than We Thought (Study)

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Mount Charity on the East Antarctic Plateau

A new analysis revealed even lower temperatures in the coldest spot on Earth

In 2013, researchers spotted the coldest spot on Earth somewhere in the eastern part of Antarctica. Five years later, they performed some new observations in the area and made some distressing discoveries. A few sites in this region have dropped their temperatures even lower than before, challenging the rules of thermodynamics.

New data readings indicate a lower temperature for the coldest spot on Earth

In 2013, researchers identified the coldest spot on Earth on the East Antarctic Plateau, a high area covered in snow that stretches over a big part of the continent. In this region, they recorded temperatures of minus 93 degrees Celsius/minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit, marking an all-time low.

However, researchers decided to return with their studies and analyze the region better. This way, they discovered something quite distressing. Certain points in the region had actually reached even lower temperatures between 2004 and 2016. More precisely, the record was of minus 98 degrees Celsius/minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit.

For these new measurements, researchers used the same data as in 2013. However, this time, they took into account more factors regarding the weather. This way, they could perform an accurate assessment of the temperatures in the coldest spot on Earth.

Researchers identified the conditions necessary for Earth to get so cold

The previous readings were quite flawed, as researchers now discovered differences of 5 degrees Celsius and 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, researchers decided to measure the temperature in the tiny hollows, which are small holes on the ice surface where the air can get incredibly cold.

Researchers were also able to identify the conditions necessary for the coldest spot on Earth to get so cold. First of all, the area needs a clear sky without any strong winds. Then, the new results suggested the air needs to be extremely dry as well. If it’s humid, it traps heat in the water vapor in the atmosphere, so this is understandable. In the end, all of these conditions need to persist for at least a few days.

Therefore, researchers have discovered the coldest spot on Earth is a lot colder than they thought. Since it’s such a low record, they assumed this is the coldest our planet can get. As mentioned above, some atmospheric conditions are necessary for such temperatures, and it takes time for these conditions to change.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Researchers Highlight What Happens If Birds Leave the Nest at the Improper Moment (Study)

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Blackbird feeding its younglings in its nest

Leaving the nest at the wrong moment can be damaging both for parents and for young birds

Birds don’t leave the nest randomly but pick the ideal moment when this should happen. If the younglings leave their parents too late, they put the whole brood in danger, but leaving too early has its disadvantages as well. Therefore, researchers decided to study how the needs of young birds and their parents clash.

When should birds leave the nest?

Before birds leave the nest, they need to make sure they have acquired all the traits necessary to survive. If they spend more time with their parents, their wings develop better, while they also become more capable of escaping danger. However, an advantage for the young bird might mean a disadvantage for the brood. Every extra day it spends in the nest increases the levels of danger, as the whole brood risks getting eaten.

Researchers realized the needs of young birds and those of their parents might be different, so they decided to study when they should leave the nest. For this, they selected 19 species of songbirds native to the US and started making some observations.

Different fledging times have different consequences

They looked at the time these youngsters needed to develop, as well as the statistics on nest predations. Afterwards, they selected 11 of the species and performed advanced observations using Go-Pro cameras. With the cameras, they looked at their flying skills and the age when they left the nest.

If they chose to leave the nest early, their flying performance was poor and were easier targets for predators. Then, they performed a few experiments where they allowed young birds to leave the nest naturally but kept them protected for a few days. Even so, those who fledged too early were less likely to survive.

Now, you might think these birds should evolve a longer nesting period. However, older studies proved nests are easier targets for predation the more they stay occupied. If they get attacked, the whole brood is in danger. This way, parents promote early fledging, since some younglings manage to survive. Therefore, bird parents try to convince their young to leave the nest as soon as possible for everyone’s safety.

The study birds that leave the nest was published in the journal Science Advances.

Image source: Max Pixel

Giant Hogweed Is a Phototoxic Plant that Might Leave You Blind

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Giant hogweed growing tall in a field

Giant hogweed is extremely toxic if it touches your skin

A plant considered ornamental turned out to be a real enemy to humans, as touching it can leave you with third-degree burns. The giant hogweed with white blossoms and tall stems might look pretty in a garden, but researchers have just discovered how dangerous it is to have it touch your skin.

Giant hogweed started as an ornamental plant

The first ones who started cultivating giant hogweed were the English, but Americans quickly followed their example 100 years ago. This plant is easily recognizable after its white flowers that gather in numerous bouquets on 14-feet-tall stems. Given its ornamental status, it easily spread across several states, but people quickly realized it was actually really dangerous.

Giant hogweed, scientifically called Heracleum mantegazzianum, has a phototoxic sap. This means that, if the sap touches your skin and you expose it to light, you will suffer some severe adverse reactions. The place will turn into a rash, as you’ll quickly develop oozing blisters. If the sap gets into your eyes, you might go blind.

Giant hogweed has started spreading excessively over the past decades

The situation can easily become critical, according to the researchers. They have noticed how, over the past 20 years, giant hogweed has started spreading a lot more rapidly. This happens because only one plant can produce up to 20,000 seeds in a year that spread through all kinds of means. In even, even humans may carry them.

However, giant hogweed didn’t go on a growing spree as soon as it got established in the US. Its invasiveness only started several decades later, which is really interesting. Scientists couldn’t explain the phenomenon, but they have a few suggestions. It might be that only now did they get adapted to the new environment. Or, another culprit might be climate change for it.

Image source: Pixabay

Teenagers Are Laying Off Risky Behaviors, But Don’t Take Good Care of their Health

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Teenage girls talking next to a metal fence

Teenagers are now engaging in fewer risky behaviors than before

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 9th to 12th 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.

Image source: Flickr

Why Do People Become Hangry? Researchers Offer Psychological Explanation (Study)

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Man eating a cookie and spilling jam on his tie

Being hangry is both a psychological phenomenon and a result of external factors

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

East Antarctica Is Far from Being a Quiet Region, as It Experiences Dozens of Small Earthquakes (Study)

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The Dibble Ice Shelf in East Antarctica

Researchers recorded 27 small earthquakes in East Antarctica in a year

When you think of Antarctica, you probably envision a white and calm mass of ice that lies undisturbed. However, researchers discovered such a description isn’t too accurate. It turns out East Antarctica, an area always regarded as tranquil, is actually quite shaky from a geological point of view. A recent study has revealed phenomena like small earthquakes are actually quite common in the region.

Is Antarctica so geologically calm?

Researchers regarded East Antarctica as calm since it was quite difficult to measure any tectonic activity in the area. The mystery started when researchers discovered something interesting hiding beneath the ice sheet. Right underneath the surface, they could find an impressive mountain range that reminded them of other similar formations from other continents.

However, these mountains shouldn’t have been there. For such formations to come into being, two tectonic plates must smash. Also, their position on the continent was quite strange, since such movements don’t usually appear right in the middle. Therefore, researchers decided to investigate and see where they came from.

East Antarctica experiences small earthquakes relatively often

This way, they identified the presence of the small earthquakes in East Antarctica. The mountains came into being through some older geological processes that researchers managed to identify. After consulting a report on seismic activity from 2009, they got the first look into the intense geological activity of Antarctica.

However, they knew they shouldn’t stop here. Small earthquakes are a result of actual seismic activities, but sensors can pick up other stimuli and mistake them for such phenomena. Therefore, they attached some new sensors and made sure they reduced the effect of fake stimuli from the atmosphere or from the surface.

The final results revealed there had been 27 earthquakes during a year. They were all relatively small, but the average rate was of two earthquakes occurring every two weeks. This is extremely impressive, since researchers used to think Antarctica had no seismic activity at all. The study on these small earthquakes was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Egg Consumption Is Actually Good for the Heart, Researchers Say (Study)

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Three eggs on a wooden table

Egg consumption is actually good for the heart

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.

Image source: Pexels

Some Exoplanets Are More Likely to Enter a Snowball State, Making Them Less Likely to Be Habitable (Study)

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Icy exoplanet orbiting its governing star

The axis and orbit of an exoplanet might make it plunge into a snowball state

Scientists are usually optimistic when they find exoplanets situated in the habitable zones in their stars. This means they are at the optimal distance that allows water to exist in a liquid state, making it theoretically possible for life to exist. However, if their axes are tilted and their orbits strange, they might enter a snowball state.

Is the position of an exoplanet enough to tell if it’s habitable?

There are many factors that might influence the habitability of an exoplanet. One of them is its position from its parent star, but researchers have discovered more factors that influence it. The position of their axis and their orbit might be one of them, so they decided to see what happens if the two are tilted.

The main objects of many studies have been those exoplanets as close to their stars as Earth is to the Sun. Now, researchers wanted to see how a tilted axis can influence their habitability. They used to think those planets with a bigger tilt became warmer. Now, a recent study has revealed they actually cause a snowball state.

A tilted axis and an irregular orbit might plunge it into a snowball state

Whenever the planet with the tilted axis performs an irregular orbiting movement, it becomes a lot more likely for it to enter such a snowball state. If this happens, then any water present on it would freeze and it would be impossible for life to exist. This new hypothesis became apparent after researchers performed more advanced simulations.

In some cases, these irregularities might lead to the apparition of ideal temperatures for life. However, this can happen extremely rarely, and the snowball state hypothesis is a lot more common. Researchers also say that an ice age on an exoplanet would come out as a lot more severe than on Earth. This means that chances of finding life are getting more and more slim.

This study shows the position of an exoplanet is not enough to establish its habitability. The shape of its orbit and the angle of its axis are just as important, and they are often the decisive factor in this matter. The paper in question should soon appear in the Astronomical Journal, but it’s currently available on arXiv.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Transplanting Memories Is Not So Impossible If You Try It on Snails (Study)

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Scientist holding a sea snail in his hand

Researchers tried transplanting memories from one snail to another by using RNA

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.

Image source: Flickr

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