The computer is a machine built for looking at pictures of fish you wouldn't otherwise see. Anything else you can do with a computer was an accident and unintended
The whole "the brain isn't fully mature until age 25" bit is actually a fairly impressive bit of psuedoscience for how incredibly stupid the way it misinterprets the data it's based on is.
Okay, so: there's a part of the human brain called the "prefrontal cortex" which is, among other things, responsible for executive function and impulse control. Like most parts of the brain, it undergoes active "rewiring" over time (i.e., pruning unused neural connections and establishing new ones), and in the case of the prefrontal cortex in particular, this rewiring sharply accelerates during puberty.
Because the pace of rewiring in the prefrontal cortex is linked to specific developmental milestones, it was hypothesised that it would slow down and eventually stop in adulthood. However, the process can't directly be observed; the only way to tell how much neural rewiring is taking place in a particular part of the brain is to compare multiple brain scans of the same individual performed over a period of time.
Thus, something called a "longitudinal study" was commissioned: the same individuals would undergo regular brain scans over a period of mayn years, beginning in early childhood, so that their prefrontal development could accurately be tracked.
The longitudinal study was originally planned to follow its subjects up to age 21. However, when the predicted cessation of prefrontal rewiring was not observed by age 21, additional funding was obtained, and the study period was extended to age 25. The predicted cessation of prefrontal development wasn't observed by age 25, either, at which point the study was terminated.
When the mainstream press got hold of these results, the conclusion that prefrontal rewiring continues at least until age 25 was reported as prefrontal development finishing at age 25. Critically, this is the exact opposite of what the study actually concluded. The study was unable to identify a stopping point for prefrontal development because no such stopping point was observed for any subject during the study period. The only significance of the age 25 is that no subjects were tracked beyond this age because the study ran out of funding!
It gets me when people try to argue against the neuroscience-proves-everybody-under-25-is-a-child talking point by claiming that it's merely an average, or that prefrontal development doesn't tell the whole story. Like, no, it's not an average – it's just bullshit. There's no evidence that the cited phenomenon exists at all. If there is an age where prefrontal rewiring levels off and stops (and it's not clear that there is), we don't know what age that is; we merely know that it must be older than 25.
Teenagers who regularly puff away on their vape throughout the day could be exposing their bodies to potentially toxic metals.
A new study led by researchers from the University of Nebraska has found that regular vapers between the ages of 13 and 17, who report using an e-cigarette at least eight times a day, have 30 percent more lead and twice as much uranium in their urine compared to their peers who only occasionally vape.
Among teens who preferred sweet vape flavors, as opposed to menthol or mint ones, biomarkers of uranium were especially high.
The research lacks a control group of teens who did not vape at all, but the pattern evident within a US sample of 200 e-cigarette users who avoided cigarettes is still concerning. For the sake of public health, the researchers argue for further investigation into the potential toxicity of e-cigarettes.
The results of this small study do not prove that vaping causes toxic metal accumulation in the body, but previous analyses have consistently found signs of toxic metals in e-cigarette aerosol samples and in the bodily fluid of vapers. At times, the blood and urine samples of vapers rival even those of cigarette smokers.
reblog if you enjoy napping, being cozy, being conked out, snoozing, wrapping up in blankets, sipping a hot drink, catching some z's, hugging a plushie, or otherwise relaxing and resting
I very urgently need one of those flaming texts with the words "CUNNILINGUS MISTAKE" but Tumblr isn't going to let me search for that, and looking it up in any search engine is guaranteed to get me a lot of the wrong images.
Can't even look up a flaming text editor, this world is truly fucking lost