Happy creativity: Listening to happy music facilitates divergent thinking

© 2017 Ritter, Ferguson. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Creativity can be considered one of the key competencies for the twenty-first century. It provides us with the capacity to deal with the opportunities and challenges that are part of our complex and fast-changing world. The question as to what facilitates creative cognition—the ability to come up with creative ideas, problem solutions and products—is as old as the human sciences, and various means to enhance creative cognition have been studied. Despite earlier scientific studies demonstrating a beneficial effect of music on cognition, the effect of music listening on creative cognition has remained largely unexplored. The current study experimentally tests whether listening to specific types of music (four classical music excerpts systematically varying on valance and arousal), as compared to a silence control condition, facilitates divergent and convergent creativity. Creativity was higher for participants who listened to ‘happy music’ (i.e., classical music high on arousal and positive mood) while performing the divergent creativity task, than for participants who performed the task in silence. No effect of music was found for convergent creativity. In addition to the scientific contribution, the current findings may have important practical implications. Music listening can be easily integrated into daily life and may provide an innovative means to facilitate creative cognition in an efficient way in various scientific, educational and organizational settings when creative thinking is needed

The cost of inadequate sleep among on-call workers in Australia: A workplace perspective

© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. On-call or stand-by is becoming an increasingly prevalent form of work scheduling. However, on-call arrangements are typically utilised when workloads are low, for example at night, which can result in inadequate sleep. It is a matter of concern that on-call work is associated with an increased risk of workplace injury. This study sought to determine the economic cost of injury due to inadequate sleep in Australian on-call workers. The prevalence of inadequate sleep among on-call workers was determined using an online survey, and economic costs were estimated using a previously validated costing methodology. Two-thirds of the sample (66%) reported obtaining inadequate sleep on weekdays (work days) and over 80% reported inadequate sleep while on-call. The resulting cost of injury is estimated at $2.25 billion per year ($1.71–2.73 billion). This equates to $1222 per person per incident involving a short-term absence from work;$2.53 million per incident classified as full incapacity, and $1.78 million for each fatality. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study to quantify the economic cost of workplace injury due to inadequate sleep in on-call workers. Well-rested employees are critical to safe and productive workplace operations. Therefore, it is in the interest of both employers and governments to prioritise and invest far more into the management of inadequate sleep in industries which utilise on-call work arrangements

The development and validation of a human screening model of tobacco abstinence

INTRODUCTION: Given the low efficacy of smoking cessation methods, an experimental medicine model indicating smoking abstinence would be of great benefit to the development of new treatments. Hence the sensitivity of cognitive tasks and ambulatory craving measures to smoking abstinence were investigated. METHODS: Cognitive tasks and ambulatory ratings of craving were assessed for sensitivity to acute abstinence (experiment 1), and nicotine replacement therapy administration (NRT) (experiment 2). RESULTS: In experiment 1 go/no-go performance was improved (Mean Difference [MD] -0.99, 95% CI: -1.90 to -0.08) and craving was lower (Regression Coefficient [RC] -33.39, 95% CI: -39.96 to -26.82) in satiated compared with abstinent smokers. There was no clear evidence that N-back (MD 0.64, 95% CI: -0.42 to 2.51), delay discounting (MD 0.01, 95% CI: 0.001 to 0.005) or dot probe performance (MD 0.61, 95% CI: -0.87 to 1.54) were sensitive to acute abstinence. In experiment 2 go/no-go performance was improved (MD 1.12, 95% CI: 0.16-2.08) and craving was lower (RC -18.59, 95% CI: -24.63 to -12.55) smokers abstinent overnight receiving NRT compared with placebo. There was no clear evidence that N-back (MD -0.25, 95% CI: -1.45 to 0.94), delay discounting (MD 0.01, 95% CI: -0.002 to 0.004) or dot probe performance (MD -0.49, 95% CI: -1.61 to -0.64) were sensitive to NRT. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from two experiments converge to suggest that abstinence in smokers reliably increases ambulatory craving assessments and, to a lesser extent, decreases go/no-go task performance. These findings can be utilized in the development of an experimental medicine model to test novel treatments for smoking cessation

A 65 k.y. time series from sediment-hosted glasses reveals rapid transitions in ocean ridge magmas

Studies of ocean ridge magmatism have been hampered by the difficulty in constructing time-series data over more than a few thousand years. Sediment rapidly covers newly formed ocean crust, and older rocks, even when recovered from fault scarps, cannot be dated accurately. Ridge eruptions, however, disperse pyroclastic glass over distances as far as 5 km, and these glasses have been shown to persist for thousands of years in on-ridge sediment push cores. Here we present data on such glasses from a piston core that impacted basement in much older (600 ka) sediment. The age of deposition was determined using established stratigraphic methods to date the host sediment, yielding an average sample resolution of a few thousand years and a continuous 65 k.y. time series. The new time-series data show systematic temporal variations in magma compositions related to a change to the dynamics of crustal storage, which led to greater extents of pre-eruptive differentiation. Shortly thereafter was a small but discernable shift toward more enriched primary melt compositions. These events coincide with the onset of enhanced crustal production, previously identified using seismic data and interpreted to reflect the capture of a hotspot by the ridge. These results show the long-term preservation of pyroclastic glasses and suggest that the construction of high-resolution volcanic stratigraphy over a million years or more may be possible at ocean ridges, using multiple piston cores that impact basement. Sediment-hosted glasses have the potential to transform ocean ridges from the volcanic setting with the worst time-series data to that with the best

Graduate entry to medicine: widening psychological diversity

At Nottingham University more than 95% of entrants to the traditional 5-year medical course are school leavers. Since 2003 we have admitted graduate entrants (GEM) to a shortened (4-year) course to 'widen access to students from more disadvantaged backgrounds'. We have recently shown that the GEM course widens academic and socio-demographic diversity of the medical student population. This study explored whether GEM students also bring psychological diversity and whether this could be beneficial. We studied: a) 217 and 96 applicants to the Nottingham 5- and 4-year courses respectively, applying in the 2002-3 UCAS cycle, and, b) 246 school leavers starting the 5-year course and 39 graduate entrants to the 4-year course in October 2003. The psychological profiles of the two groups of applicants and two groups of entrants were compared using their performance in the Goldberg 'Big 5' Personality test, the Personal Qualities Assessment (PQA; measuring interpersonal traits and interpersonal values), and the Lovibond and Lovibond measure of depression, anxiety and stress. For the comparison of the Entrants we excluded the 33 school leavers and seven graduates who took the tests as Applicants. Statistical analyses were undertaken using SPSS software (version 16.0). Graduate applicants compared to school leaver applicants were significantly more conscientious, more confident, more self controlled, more communitarian in moral orientation and less anxious. Only one of these differences was preserved in the entrants with graduates being less anxious. However, the graduate entrants were significantly less empathetic and conscientious than the school leavers. This study has shown that school leaver and graduate entrants to medical school differ in some psychological characteristics. However, if confirmed in other studies and if they were manifest in the extreme, not all the traits brought by graduates would be desirable for someone aiming for a medical career

Galaxy Harassment and the Evolution of Clusters of Galaxies

Disturbed spiral galaxies with high rates of star formation pervaded clusters of galaxies just a few billion years ago, but nearby clusters exclude spirals in favor of ellipticals. ``Galaxy harassment" (frequent high speed galaxy encounters) drives the morphological transformation of galaxies in clusters, provides fuel for quasars in subluminous hosts and leaves detectable debris arcs. Simulated images of harassed galaxies are strikingly similar to the distorted spirals in clusters at $z \sim 0.4$ observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.Comment: Submitted to Nature. Latex file, 7 pages, 10 photographs in gif and jpeg format included. 10 compressed postscript figures and text available using anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/pub/hpcc/moore/ (mget *) Also available at http://www-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/papers

Biogenesis of the inner membrane complex is dependent on vesicular transport by the alveolate specific GTPase Rab11B

Apicomplexan parasites belong to a recently recognised group of protozoa referred to as Alveolata. These protists contain membranous sacs (alveoli) beneath the plasma membrane, termed the Inner Membrane Complex (IMC) in the case of Apicomplexa. During parasite replication the IMC is formed de novo within the mother cell in a process described as internal budding. We hypothesized that an alveolate specific factor is involved in the specific transport of vesicles from the Golgi to the IMC and identified the small GTPase Rab11B as an alveolate specific Rab-GTPase that localises to the growing end of the IMC during replication of Toxoplasma gondii. Conditional interference with Rab11B function leads to a profound defect in IMC biogenesis, indicating that Rab11B is required for the transport of Golgi derived vesicles to the nascent IMC of the daughter cell. Curiously, a block in IMC biogenesis did not affect formation of sub-pellicular microtubules, indicating that IMC biogenesis and formation of sub-pellicular microtubules is not mechanistically linked. We propose a model where Rab11B specifically transports vesicles derived from the Golgi to the immature IMC of the growing daughter parasites

Does a 'direct' transfer protocol reduce time to coronary angiography for patients with non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndromes? A prospective observational study.

OBJECTIVE: National guidelines recommend 'early' coronary angiography within 96 h of presentation for patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS). Most patients with NSTE-ACS present to their district general hospital (DGH), and await transfer to the regional cardiac centre for angiography. This care model has inherent time delays, and delivery of timely angiography is problematic. The objective of this study was to assess a novel clinical care pathway for the management of NSTE-ACS, known locally as the Heart Attack Centre-Extension or HAC-X, designed to rapidly identify patients with NSTE-ACS while in DGH emergency departments (ED) and facilitate transfer to the regional interventional centre for 'early' coronary angiography. METHODS: This was an observational study of 702 patients divided into two groups; 391 patients treated before the instigation of the HAC-X pathway (Pre-HAC-X), and 311 patients treated via the novel pathway (Post-HAC-X). Our primary study end point was time from ED admission to coronary angiography. We also assessed the length of hospital stay. RESULTS: Median time from ED admission to coronary angiography was 7.2 (IQR 5.1-10.2) days pre-HAC-X compared to 1.0 (IQR 0.7-2.0) day post-HAC-X (p<0.001). Median length of hospital stay was 3.0 (IQR 2.0-6.0) days post-HAC-X v 9.0 (IQR 6.0-14.0) days pre-HAC-X (p<0.0005). This equates to a reduction of six hospital bed days per NSTE-ACS admission. CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of this novel care pathway was associated with significant reductions in time to angiography and in total hospital bed occupancy for patients with NSTE-ACS