James' World 2

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

1. What is REM sleep behavior disorder?

Every night, you go through four to five sleep cycles. Each cycle, lasting about 90 to 110 minutes, has four stages. That fourth stage is REM sleep.

REM sleep only comprises 20% to 25% of total sleep, but its proportion increases throughout the night. During REM sleep, your brain rhythms are similar to when you are awake, your muscles lose tone so you are unable to move, and your eyes, while closed, move quickly. This stage is often accompanied by muscle twitches and fluctuations in your respiratory rate and blood pressure.

But someone with REM sleep behavior disorder will act out their dreams. For reasons that are poorly understood, the dream content is usually violent – patients report being chased, or defending themselves, and as they sleep they shout, moan, scream, kick, punch, and thrash about.

Injuries often result from these incidents; patients may fall from bed or accidentally harm a partner. Some 60% of patients and 20% of bed partners of people with this disorder sustain an injury during sleep.

Appropriate testing, including a sleep study, are needed to determine if a patient has REM sleep behavior disorder, as opposed to another disorder, such as obstructive sleep apnea. This is a disorder in which breathing is interrupted during sleep.

REM sleep behavior disorder can occur at any age, but symptoms usually start with people in their 40s and 50s. For those younger than 40, antidepressants are the most common cause of REM sleep behavior disorder; in these younger patients, it affects biological males and females about equally, but past age 50, it’s more common in biological males.

.

Past age 50, men are much more likely to have REM sleep behavior disorder than women. Jose Luis Pelaez/Stone via Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

In the gym, on medical and wellness websites, and on social media, the phrase “boost your metabolism” gets thrown around a lot. Supplement marketers promise pills to make it happen, health mavens pinky swear their diet routine will rev the rate, and probably most of us, starting around our 30s, think that aging has reduced the efficiency of our metabolic engine.

And almost none of that is true.

There isn’t a method to boost metabolism “in a way that’s durable or real,” says Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Global Health Institute at Duke University. He says most things people promise will boost metabolism fall into two categories. “There are things that are dangerous and illegal and things that are BS, and you should probably avoid both of them,” Pontzer says.

Basal, or resting, metabolic rate refers to work performed by cells when we are doing nothing. It’s the baseline hum of being alive as cells keep blood circulating and lungs functioning. Formally, it’s the calories per minute used for these housekeeping duties. That adds up to about 50 to 70 percent of the total you burn through each day, depending on age, says Samuel Urlacher, an anthropologist, and human evolutionary biologist at Baylor University in Waco, Tex.

Most popular interest in basal metabolism centers around ways to kick it up a notch and increase our energy use while doing absolutely nothing, with the prospect of losing weight in the process.

.

Credit: Luis Alvarez/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

They have confirmed that the Moon is edging away at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8cm) every year. And as it does so, our days are getting ever so slightly longer.

“It’s all about tides,” says David Waltham, a professor of geophysics at Royal Holloway, University of London, who studies the relationship between the Moon and the Earth. “The tidal drag on the Earth slows its rotation down and the Moon gains that energy as angular momentum.”

.

(Image credit: Nicolas Economou/Getty Images)

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Imagine waking up on a tropical island.

You’re surrounded by palm trees, you hear singing birds and waves crashing into the coastal rocks. The island is small and with no permanent inhabitants; it is just you, some fellow tourists, a few hospitality staff, and the monkeys with their loud morning cries. If you find yourself on the Salvation Islands, off the coast of the city of Kourou, French Guiana, then you are a stone’s throw away from an active spaceport. And a rocket launch might be imminent.

I began to explore these islands a few weeks after first arriving in South America a few months ago. I made my way to Kourou to gather research on the social and cultural impacts of the space industry on local communities. My work is part of the ARIES project, a team of ethnographers who are investigating the impact of outer space on people around the globe and searching for missing narratives among communities woven into the global space industry.

For my research, I am particularly interested in how this European spaceport found its way to South American soil, and what it means for the surrounding communities. Fellow ARIES project member Peter Timko also published some of his research on Supercluster, taking a look at the culture around Norton Space Props in Hollywood and its impact on the space industry.

In my first weeks here, I’ve spent most of my time learning French, wandering around, and working in the archives of the Guiana Space Center. If you followed the anxiety-driven but successful Christmas morning launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021, then you are somewhat familiar with the mysterious spaceport in French Guiana. The massive space observatory was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on the Ariane 5 rocket.

.

The European spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana, is an important launch site for rockets. Adèle Roncey

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

This morning, Kendel Kay woke without an alarm and went outside to meditate in the sunshine on her balcony. She made herself breakfast — she invariably has either a smoothie or overnight oats — did her morning skincare routine of several serums, an LED mask, and ice rolling, followed by a Pilates workout. Then she made her boyfriend, Luke, his breakfast: eggs, a bagel, and chicken breast for extra protein.

Soon, it was time to make lunch for them both — some sort of salad — and then Kay went on her usual afternoon walk for an hour or so. She did some laundry and a bit of cleaning. Then she made their dinner, did the nighttime version of her skincare routine, hung out with Luke, and went to bed.

This is a typical day in the life of a “stay-at-home girlfriend.” It’s a concept, a lifestyle, a viral TikTok trend that’s been sparking equal parts outrage, consternation, and, yes, envy.

Kay would know. Last August, she posted a vlog of her “morning routine as a 25-year-old stay-at-home girlfriend.” It blew up in the way that only happens on TikTok, quickly garnering millions of views (it’s currently at over 12 million), hundreds of thousands of likes, and tens of thousands of comments, which ranged the gamut of “this is satire, yes?” to “manifesting this.”

Kay didn’t coin the term “stay-at-home girlfriend,” but when she saw it on another video, it immediately resonated with her. Her situation is best summarized by another video she posted with the words: “my boyfriend: ‘I’ll make enough money for both of us if you wanna be a stay at home girlfriend, take care of our house, and make me food.’” Her caption: “Deal,” and the sealed envelope emoji.

.

Stay-at-home girlfriend

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.[Source Video: Pixabay]

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

There comes a special moment in every relationship when the person you are with reveals something that makes you go, “Hmm … okay.” It could be the particular way they do their laundry or their deep fear of astronauts. This tidbit of information is neither a dealbreaker nor a dealmaker, neither alarming nor alluring; it simply is. This, according to TikTok, is a beige flag.

Beige flags are traits that, while not immediate cause for concern, are cause for pause. Of course, this is subjective, making the exact definition of a beige flag hard to pin down. The phrase isn’t entirely new — videos listing beige flags made the rounds on Australian TikTok last year. And according to those TikToks, a beige flag is simply something that indicates a person isn’t very interesting. On dating-app bios, it manifests as phrases and interests that some users read as shorthand for “I’m boring.” (Think: saying you’re looking for the “Pam to your Jim”; listing “adventure” or “coffee” as an interest.) However, in the year since, what TikTok considers a beige flag has shifted.

If you’re confused, so is everyone else. TikTok isn’t in total agreement on what qualifies as a beige flag. The comments section of these videos is often littered with some variation of the question, “Isn’t this just … a characteristic?” Some people’s beige flags fall into the category of “charming quirk,” an innocuous trait (e.g., remembering everyone’s birthday). Or the everyday, recurring inside jokes that you have with yourself (e.g., throwing theme parties for no reason). Then there are beige flags that seem to be at best annoying habits and at worst red flags masquerading as beige flags.

.

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Ed Freeman/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________