Free WiFi Makes Us Rude; We're Eating Too Much Grouper
Discovered: WiFi turns people into really rude café goers, we're eating too much grouper, social jet lag is the latest thing that's killing us, and finger regeneration?
This article is from the archive of our partner 
.
.Discovered: WiFi turns people into really rude café goers, we're eating too much grouper, social jet lag is the latest thing that's killing us, and finger regeneration?
- Free WiFi turns people into rude "cafe-conquerors." Science has confirmed café workers' greatest fears. Using a café as an office turns people into what the study calls "café-conquerors." The study found that these people tend to take over. "They use the devices they have at hand - laptop, phone, purse, briefcase, backpack, clothes, coffee cup - and place them all on the table top and chairs surrounding them," explains the research. "This effectively barricades against others looking for a place to sit down and relax. A single customer can turn a four-person table into a makeshift office," continues the report. We've gotten too comfortable in cafés. It has turned us into a bunch of heathens, really. "Our efforts to connect technologically - anywhere, anytime - can interfere with the common courtesy we've traditionally extended to one another," added Journal editor Katherine Lemon. [The Telegraph]
- We're eating all the grouper. We're fishing them to death. One quarter of the grouper species is being fished to extinction. Just to put some numbers on this, researchers estimate at least 90,000,000 groupers were captured in 2009. It's not only because it is a delicious fish, but it has to do with the following mentality. "Unfortunately, the false perception that marine resources are infinite is still common in our society, and in order to preserve groupers and other marine resources we need to reverse this old mentality," explains researcher Dr. Luiz Rocha. It also has something to do with the grouper's sex organs, which take awhile to mature, meaning they die out faster than other animals. Anyway, some food for thought. (Heh.) [California Academy of the Sciences]
- Social jet lag is really bad for your health. What is social jet lag you may ask? Well, it's a new thing science has discovered that has all sorts of negative health repercussions. Science explains: "It concerns an increasing discrepancy between the daily timing of the physiological clock and the social clock. As a result of this social jetlag, people are chronically sleep-deprived. They are also more likely to smoke and drink more alcohol and caffeine. Now, we show that social jetlag also contributes to obesity; the plot that social jetlag is really bad for our health is thickening." How do we fix this problem? More sleep: "Waking up with an alarm clock is a relatively new facet of our lives," explains researcher Till Roenneberg. "It simply means that we haven't slept enough and this is the reason why we are chronically tired. Good sleep and enough sleep is not a waste of time but a guarantee for better work performance and more fun with friends and family during off-work times," she continues. Um, yeah, we can do that. (Or at least some of us can.) [Cell Press]
- Finger regeneration? This has not happened yet. But a review article is looking into it. By studying the way hair and feathers grow back on humans (and poultry), science thinks it can find a way to use this in the limb department. "Using the episodic regeneration of skin appendages as a clear readout, we have the opportunity to understand and modulate the behavior or adult stem cells and organ regeneration at a level heretofore unknown," explains the research. Basically, they're going to keep studying it and hopefully one day figure it out. [American Physiological Association]
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
Rebecca Greenfield is a former staff writer at The Wire.