Computer Programming

Why workers in cities may be more productive

“Workers are more productive in large cities” (Bacolod et al., 2020). This has been well established for years, but the reasons behind the phenomenon remain a bit of a chicken-or-egg question: Does being together make workers more productive, or do inherently more productive workers tend to congregate? And, what exactly makes them more productive in the first place? Economists Marigee Bacolod (Naval Postgraduate School), Marcos Rangel (Duke), and Bernardo Blum and William Strange (University of Toronto) offer a novel contribution to this question with a study using Lumosity data. In it, they find that cities are magnets for people adept at certain types of learning. Their paper “Learners in Cities” distinguishes between “crystallized intelligence”—accumulated knowledge and facts—and “fluid intelligence,” or the ability to solve new problems. By looking at the scores of people who played a variety of Lumosity games and comparing them to the density of the population where they live,(1) ...

Too Much Screen Time Damages the Brain : Neuroimaging research shows excessive screen time damages the brain.

“Taken together, [studies show] internet addiction is associated with structural and functional changes in brain regions involving emotional processing, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control.” --research authors summarizing neuro-imaging findings in internet and gaming addiction (Lin & Zhou et al, 2012) But what about kids who aren't "addicted" per se? Addiction aside, a much broader concern that begs awareness is the risk that screen time is creating subtle damage even in children with “regular” exposure, considering that the average child clocks in more than seven hours a day ( Rideout 2010 ). Scientists observe that many of the children they saw suffer from sensory overload, lack of restorative sleep, and a hyperaroused nervous system, regardless of diagnosis—what they call electronic screen syndrome . These children are impulsive, moody, and can’t pay attention—much like the description in the quote above describing damage seen in scans. ,...

Research Found Potential Wave Of COVID-linked Brain Damage

COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is largely a respiratory illness that affects the lungs, but neuroscientists and specialist brain doctors say emerging evidence of its impact on the brain is concerning. “My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year's time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits ... then that's going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living,” Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, told Reuters in an interview.

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