The Effects of Video Games on Human Intelligence

With the help of rapidly growing electronics industry offering more affordable electronic gaming devices, an increasing number of people have stepped into the realm of video games and as a result, playing video games has become part of life for many to some extent. While the majority of people are embracing the fun and the thrill that video games have brought about, a handful of people are still holding relatively negative opinions on video games, thinking that playing video game is just a waste of time and money. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite. It has proved that video game is actually playing a multifaceted positive role in improving people’s intelligence, or making people smarter on the physiological aspect, the psychological aspect as well as the sociological aspect

Soft vibrational mode associated with incommensurate orbital order in multiferroic CaMn7_7O12_{12}

We report inelastic light scattering measurements of lattice dynamics related to the incommensurate orbital order in $\mathrm{CaMn_7O_{12}}$. Below the ordering temperature $T_\mathrm{o} \approx 250 \,\mathrm{K}$, we observe extra phonon peaks as a result of Brillouin-zone folding, as well as a soft vibrational mode with a power-law $T$-dependent energy, $\Omega = \Omega_{0}(1 - T/T_{\mathrm{o}})^{1/2}$. This temperature dependence demonstrates the second-order nature of the transition at $T_\mathrm{o}$, and it indicates that the soft mode can be regarded as the amplitude excitation of the composite order parameter. Our result strongly suggests that the lattice degrees of freedom are actively involved in the orbital-ordering mechanism.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure