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Menopause is having a moment. How a new generation of women are shaping cultural attitudes

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bridgette-glover-2232638">Bridgette Glover</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-new-england-919">University of New England</a> From hot flashes to hysteria, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739170007/Periods-in-Pop-Culture-Menstruation-in-Film-and-Television">film and TV</a> have long represented menopause as scary, emotional and messy. Recently, celebrities have been sharing their personal menopause experiences on social media, helping to re-frame the conversation in popular culture. We are also seeing more stories about menopause on television, with real stories and depictions that show greater empathy for the person going through it. Menopause is having a moment. But will it help women? <h2>The change onscreen</h2> This is not what we’re used to seeing on our screens. Countless sitcoms, from All in the Family (1971–79) to Two and a Half Men (2003–15) have used the menopause madness trope for laughs. Retro sitcom That ‘70s Show (1998–2006) used mom Kitty’s menopause journey as comedic fodder for multiple episodes. When she mistakes a missed period for pregnancy, Kitty’s surprise menopause diagnosis results in an identity crisis alongside mood swings, hot flashes and irritability. But the audience is not meant to empathise. Instead, the focus is on how Kitty’s menopause impacts the men in her family. Having to navigate Kitty’s symptoms, her veteran husband likens the experience to war: “I haven’t been this frosty since Korea”. <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mPLJBZiKV4U?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> Even when male characters are not directly involved, women are determined to reject menopause because they see it as a marker of age that signals a loss of desirability and social worth. In Sex and the City (1998–2004), Samantha describes herself as “day-old bread” when she presumes her late period signifies menopause. This is a popular framing of menopause in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2018.1409969">post-feminist TV</a> of the 1990s and early 2000s. While the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2012.712373#d1e783">menstruating body</a> is constructed as uncontrollable and in need of management, the menopausal body requires management and maintenance to reject signals of collapse. These storylines erase the genuine experiences of confusion, discomfort and transformation that come with menopause. <h2>A cultural moment arrives</h2> <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/31/460726461/why-2015-was-the-year-of-the-period-and-we-dont-mean-punctuation">Since 2015</a>, stories of menstruation have increased in popular culture. Series like comedy Broad City (2014–19) and comedy-drama Better Things (2016–22) directly call out the lack of menopause representations. When Abbi in Broad City admits she “totally forgot about menopause”, a woman responds “Menopause isn’t represented in mainstream media. Like, no one wants to talk about it”. Similarly, in Better Things, while watching her three daughters stare at the TV Sam laments: “No one wants to hear about it, which is why nobody ever prepared you for it”. And lack of preparation becomes a key theme for perimenopausal Charlotte in the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That … (2021–) when she has a “flash period”. <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9AmwXuHo-2w?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> Fleabag (2016–19) included a groundbreaking monologue about menopause delivered by Kristen Scott-Thomas, playing a successful businesswoman. She describes menopause as “horrendous, but then it’s magnificent”. <blockquote> […] your entire pelvic floor crumbles, and you get fucking hot, and no one cares. But then you’re free. No longer a slave. No longer a machine with parts. </blockquote> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RZrnHnASRV8?wmode=transparent&start=13" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> Scripted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-menopause-20190524-story.html">celebrated</a> monologue critiques the post-feminist notion of striving to be the “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2012.712373#d1e783">idealised feminine body</a>”. Through this new feminist lens, menopause is acknowledged as both painful – physically and emotionally – and necessary for liberation. <h2>Today’s menopause on screen</h2> Alongside more recent series like The Change (2023), multiple documentaries including <a href="https://www.tamsenfadal.com/the-m-factor">The (M) Factor</a> (2024), and <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-is-no-future-for-ageing-women-how-the-substance-uses-body-horror-in-a-feminist-critique-239729">arguably</a> even films like The Substance (2024), social media has become a prolific space for raising awareness about menopause. Celebrities use social media to share tales of perimenopause and menopause, often in real time. Last year, actor Drew Barrymore experienced her “first perimenopausal hot flash” during her talk show. And ABC News Breakfast guest host, Imogen Crump, had to pause her news segment, saying <blockquote> I could keep stumbling through, but I’m having such a perimenopausal hot flush right now, live on air. </blockquote> Both Barrymore and Crump shared clips of their live segments to their social media pages, to challenge stigma and create conversations. Crump even posted to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/imogen-crump-6b74b726_perimenopause-activity-7127788484861300736-mhHh/">LinkedIn</a> to raise awareness in a professional setting. In a podcast interview clip shared to Instagram, writer and skincare founder, Zoë Foster Blake describes perimenopause as a “real mental health thing”, because of the lack of awareness. Recalling conversations with other perimenopausal women, Foster Blake says “We all think we’re crazy. We don’t know what the fuck is going on”. Feeling “crazy” is a constant theme in these conversations. As actor and <a href="https://stripesbeauty.com/pages/founder-story">menopause awareness advocate</a> Naomi Watts points out, this is largely thanks to Hollywood. Despite the stigmatising media stereotype of “crazy lady that shouts”, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ3BN9rS_7g">Watts argues</a> that with “support and community”, women experiencing perimenopause and menopause “can thrive”. In fact, Watts believes menopause should be celebrated: “we know ourselves better, we’re wiser for our cumulative experiences”. Medical professionals like American doctors <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DBUCPW5OUTf/">Marie Clare Haver</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C7IfaHDgXMY/">Corinne Menn</a> have been well-positioned to share their expertise and experiences via social media. They are catching and helping fuel a wave of advocacy and awareness for midlife women’s health. <h2>Building community</h2> After watching the menopause madness trope on our screens for decades, we are now seeing perimenopause and menopause depicted with more empathy. These depictions allow viewers – those who menstruate, who have menstruated, and who know menstruators – to feel seen and be informed. By sharing their experiences on social media and adding to these new screen stories, celebrities are building a community that makes the menopausal journey less lonely and helps those on it remember their worth.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/241784/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bridgette-glover-2232638">Bridgette Glover</a>, PhD Candidate in Media and Communications, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-new-england-919">University of New England</a> Image credits: Shutterstock This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/menopause-is-having-a-moment-how-a-new-generation-of-women-are-shaping-cultural-attitudes-241784">original article</a>.

Body

Revealed: How much regular sex each generation is having

While it's often seen as a taboo subject, researchers from Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, have just revealed their report on the sex lives of thousands of people around the world and across different generations. The report, titled The State of Dating: How Gen Z is Redefining Sexuality and Relationships is based on data from over 3,310 people of the dating app, Feeld. The participants, who came from 71 different countries and between 18-75 years old, were surveyed about their sex lives and results are not what you'd expect. Gen Z is having less sex, fewer partners and fewer relationships than other generations, reporting that on average they had had sex three times in the last month. "Gen Z and Boomers exhibited nearly identical sexual frequencies, suggesting that both the youngest and oldest adults are having the least sex," the researchers, led by Dr Justin Lehmiller, wrote in the report. Millennials and Gen X reported slightly higher figures, with both groups having sex five times in the last month. "Also, nearly half of Gen Z reported that they were single, compared to only one-ﬁfth of Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers." Despite having the least sex, Gen Z appears to be the most adventurous group in the bedroom, with 55 per cent of them saying they'd discovered a new kink since joining the app compared to 49 per cent of Millennials, 39 per cent of Gen X, and 33 per cent of Boomers. Researchers said there are two possible explanations for this. "One is simply that older adults have had more time to learn and discover what they enjoy about sex, so they may have already uncovered their kinks. "However, the other is that it also appears to be the case that younger adults today have a greater overall interest in kink than older adults, which may create greater openness to exploring and learning about one's kinks." The researchers hope that their findings will help shed new light on the evolution of sex, gender, sexuality and relationships. "Despite the longstanding tendency of humans to narrowly categorize sexuality and relationships, they have always existed on a continuum, and that continuum will only evolve and expand further as Gen Z and future generations continue their pursuit of sexual and relational self-discovery," they wrote. "The more that we can understand and embrace this simple fact of human life, the better suited we will all be to pursuing pleasure and happiness." Images: Shutterstock

Relationships

The best destinations for multi-generational holidays

As summer crawls forward, more and more people are planning their holidays, while a new trend shows that families are opting for multi-generational getaways. According to new research by<a href="https://www.clubmed.com.au/"> Club Med</a>, almost half (43%) of Aussies plan on taking a holiday in the next 12 months with their kids, parents and grandparents in tow. There are some destinations more suited to multi-generational travel than others, with these four international cities topping the list of best places to travel with families. Bali One of Australia’s favourite overseas holiday destinations, Bali offers a tropical paradise of warm weather and sunny days. The Indonesian paradise boasts the perfect backdrop for families looking for a blend of rich culture, water activities and relaxation, from forest exploring trips and beach days, to spa retreats and delicious food. With its array of family-friendly resorts and diverse attractions, Bali provides a seamless blend of relaxation and adventure. Phuket The Thai coastal city of Phuket is a top destination for families looking for a holiday that blends culture with leisure. Phuket is one of Thailand's best playground for families featuring gentle waves ideal for children and an array of cultural experiences that the whole family can enjoy. From exploring temples and taking part in cooking classes to snorkelling and having relaxing beach days, Phuket has something for everyone. Japan If you’re looking for a winter holiday for all the family to enjoy, you can’t go past the snowy mountains of northern Japan. Hokkaido's diverse range of ski resorts offer family-friendly amenities and excursions, such as relaxing in hot springs, ice fishing and snow sled expeditions. Mauritius A hidden paradise of the Indian Ocean, Mauritius offers an enriching family getaway that has something for all ages. Thanks to its cultural tapestry shaped by the indigenous Mauritian Creole population and French, British, Indian, African, and Chinese influences, Mauritius boasts a huge array of activities and cuisine. The island's lush forests blend perfectly with its stunning coastline, offering a stunning backdrop for outdoor family adventures like hiking, snorkelling with tropical fish, golf or simply sitting back at a beach bar. Image credits: Shutterstock

International Travel

Popular names Generation Alpha believe are “for old people”

Today's youth have a very different idea of what constitutes an "old person" name, and one mum was left flabbergasted after a conversation she had with her six-year-old daughter about her classmates’ names. “You know what I find wild? I have an eight-year-old and a six-year-old, and the names of their friends, I can’t even pronounce some of them,” Australian entrepreneur and mum-of-two Steph Pase said in a now viral TikTok. “I asked her, so do you have anyone in your year called Sarah, Alex, Jack or Daniel? “She laughed and said ‘they’re old people names!’.” She then probed her daughter with a few other common names saying: “I asked, what about Steph … Michelle … she’s like no,” she laughed. “It just makes me realise, that we are that generation … our parents’ generation. Names like Helen, Karen or Joanna … now we’re that generation. “We have the old people names.” She captioned her video with the text "Millennial names are officially old" and many of her followers agreed with the upsetting revelation. “In my classes we have Vision, Stoney, Diesel, Hennesy, Blaze, Cruze, Kingdom, Ace, Boss, Oasis, Mercedes, Destiny,” one shared. “Luna, Harper & Arlo are the new Ashley, Jessica & Stephanie,” another said. “The names in my kids classes are Lamb, Honey, Hazard, Blu, Bambi,” another added. “My six year old has a girl in his class named ‘Summah’ and another called ‘Phox’ because Fox was too mainstream,” a fourth wrote. “My daughter has a Moses, Twayla, Lorde it’s wild …” a fifth commented. Baby name expert and CEO of Fifth Dimension Consulting Lyndall Spooner told news.com.au that there are a few reasons why there's been a shift in children's names over the years, including popularity, less pressure to follow traditional family names, and a trend towards more gender-neutral names. “Parents want their children to be unique and so they use nouns or verbs as names, or character names from books, TV shows, movies, shopping chains or cars," she said. And while the "millennial names" are not as common, "they are not extinct". “We will continue to see changes in baby names and the ‘recycling’ of older names that become popular again,” she told the publication. Images: TikTok

Family & Pets

Your parents’ income doesn’t determine yours – unless you’re ultra rich or extremely poor

<div class="theconversation-article-body"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/catherine-de-fontenay-5631">Catherine de Fontenay</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne-722">The University of Melbourne</a> Australia is among the strongest global performers in terms of income mobility between the generations, according to a new <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/fairly-equal-mobility">Productivity Commission report</a>. The country’s long-term economic growth has led to each generation earning more than the last, on average. Our report finds 67% of the so-called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/xennials-born-between-millennials-and-gen-x-2017-11">“Xennial”</a> generation – those born in 1976–1982, on the cusp of the Millennial/Gen X divide – earn more than their parents did at a similar age. This is particularly true of those born into poorer families. <hr /> <iframe id="NsmB3" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" style="border: 0;" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/NsmB3/" width="100%" height="400px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <hr /> When we look at where people rank in an income distribution, the picture is a little less rosy. While children with parents at the bottom or top of the income scale are more likely to remain there, almost 15% of people with parents in the lowest income decile, remain there while just 6% move to the top. And those living in poverty - who often include renters, people from migrant backgrounds who don’t speak English at home and single parents - face some of the biggest barriers to improving their economic lot. <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/fairly-equal-mobility">Fairly Equal? Economic mobility in Australia</a>, released on Thursday, measures intergenerational income mobility by examining the relationship between a person’s income and the eventual income of their children. <h2>Measuring inequality</h2> Most countries anxiously monitor income distribution and economic mobility amid concerns inequality may be increasing. And countries with high inequality tend to have low mobility: the rungs of the social ladder are far apart making it difficult to move up to the next level. If mobility is low, the consequences are serious. Low mobility is discouraging, unproductive and unstable. If young people have little chance of achieving their aspirations, their wellbeing is affected. <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2023026.html">Social unrest is more likely</a>. And the abilities of young people from less affluent backgrounds are under-used. The next tech entrepreneur Steve Jobs may never be discovered, and many other opportunities are lost. In Australia we are used to thinking of ourselves as having inequality and mobility somewhere between Scandinavia and the US; but that comparison is not as comforting as it used to be, if inequality and mobility are worsening in the US. Our report considers people’s income mobility over the course of their lives, and across generations. If income mobility is low, people will struggle to recover from initial disadvantage, and those born into privilege will be financially secure. First we look at whether people move in the income distribution; there is a surprising amount of movement. And we look for evidence people can access opportunities throughout life, after setbacks. <h2>Recovering from setbacks</h2> There is not much evidence of recovery after a person experiences a severe illness or a job loss, perhaps because the causal factors are still at work. More encouragingly, the income of women who experience separation <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/4815110/HILDA-User-Manual-Release-22.0.pdf">does increase</a>, eventually restoring the buying power of their household. This is in part due to well-targeted government support. For intergenerational mobility, we extended the dataset developed by <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20211413">an analytical dataset</a> to measure the influence parents’ income had on the income their offspring were likely to earn. We found Australia’s intergenerational mobility is actually higher than the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjoe.12197">Scandinavian</a> countries, and second only to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3662560">Switzerland</a> among comparable studies. <hr /> <iframe id="5DFB9" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" style="border: 0;" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5DFB9/" width="100%" height="400px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <hr /> In all countries studied there was some link between parents’ income mobility and that of children, because parents pass on tastes, ambitions and abilities. And there was greater correlation between the incomes of mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons than with parents of the opposite gender, perhaps because of role model effects. <hr /> <iframe id="BJ4hD" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" style="border: 0;" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/BJ4hD/" width="100%" height="400px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <hr /> While Australia’s strong income mobility between generations is remarkable, it’s concerning there is less mobility among those at the very bottom and top of the income distribution scale. The fact children born into the poorest families were more likely to remain in the lowest deciles, while those born into the top earning families tended to remain in the top deciles, suggests privilege is often passed on. People who grew up in frequently poor households were <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/3537441/HILDA-Statistical-report-2020.pdf">three time more likely</a> to be poor at age 26 to 32 than those who never experienced poverty. <hr /> <iframe id="SxHBo" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" style="border: 0;" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SxHBo/" width="100%" height="400px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <hr /> And consistent with <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/37c2c8b7-328c-41e1-bace-87ed7a551777/australias-welfare-chapter-2-summary-18sept2019.pdf.aspx">other studies</a> we found children whose family received government payments were twice as likely to receive support as adults, compared with those whose families received no help. <h2>Movement in the middle</h2> Taken together, these results suggest some segmentation of opportunities. In the middle of the income distribution, there are opportunities to get ahead, and individuals’ careers are not restricted by their families’ circumstances. At the bottom, things are a lot more “sticky”, and finding opportunities to permanently escape poverty is more difficult. Some of this boils down where people live, peers, school quality and local job options. Researchers <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20211413">Deutscher and Mazumder</a> (2023) have shown regional economic conditions have a big impact on mobility, and we show remoteness limits movement out of poverty. Overall, the mobility picture is extremely good news for most Australians. But this should not blind us how difficult it is to move out of poverty, especially for those in remote areas. Identifying where mobility fails to deliver allows us to focus our policy response.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/234158/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/catherine-de-fontenay-5631">Catherine de Fontenay</a>, Honorary Fellow, Department of Economics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne-722">The University of Melbourne</a> Image credits: Shutterstock This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-parents-income-doesnt-determine-yours-unless-youre-ultra-rich-or-extremely-poor-234158">original article</a>. </div>

Money & Banking

Boomers vs millennials? Free yourself from the phoney generation wars

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bobby-duffy-98570">Bobby Duffy</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/kings-college-london-1196">King's College London</a> Generational thinking is a big idea that’s been horribly corrupted and devalued by endless myths and stereotypes. These clichés have fuelled fake battles between “snowflake” millennials and “selfish” baby boomers, with younger generations facing a “war on woke” and older generations accused of “stealing” the future from the young. As I argue in my book, <a href="https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/generations/">Generations</a>, this is a real shame. A more careful understanding of what’s really different between generations is one of the best tools we have to understand change – and predict the future. Some of the great names in sociology and philosophy saw understanding generational change as central to understanding society overall. <a href="http://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Comte/Philosophy2.pdf">Auguste Comte</a>, for example, identified the generation as a key factor in “the basic speed of human development”. He argued that “we should not hide the fact that our social progress rests essentially upon death; which is to say that the successive steps of humanity necessarily require a continuous renovation … from one generation to the next”. We humans get set in our ways once we’re past our formative years, and we need the constant injection of new participants to keep society moving forward. Understanding whether, and how, generations are different is vital to understanding society. The balance between generations is constantly shifting, as older cohorts die out and are replaced by new entrants. If younger generations truly do have different attitudes or behaviours to older generations, this will reshape society, and we can, to some extent, predict how it will develop if we can identify those differences. But in place of this big thinking, today we get clickbait headlines and bad research on millennials “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-hate-napkins-2016-3?r=US&IR=T">killing the napkin industry</a>” or on how baby boomers have “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/boomers-are-blame-aging-america/592336/">ruined everything</a>”. We’ve fallen a long way. <h2>Myth busting</h2> To see the true value of generational thinking, we need to identify and discard the many myths. For example, as I outline in the book, gen Z and millennials are not lazy at work or disloyal to their employers. They’re also no more materialistic than previous generations of young: a focus on being rich is something we tend to grow out of. Old people are not uncaring or unwilling to act on climate change: in fact, they are more likely than young people to boycott products for social purpose reasons. And our current generation of young are not a particularly unusual group of “culture warriors”. Young people are always at the leading edge of change in cultural norms, around race, immigration, sexuality and gender equality. The issues have changed, but the gap between young and old is not greater now than in the past. Meanwhile, there are real, and vitally important, generational differences hidden in this mess. To see them, we need to separate the three effects that explain all change in societies. Some patterns are simple “lifecycle effects”, where attitudes and behaviours are to do with our age, not which generation we are born into. Some are “period effects” – where everyone is affected, such as in a war, economic crisis or a pandemic. And finally, there are “cohort effects”, which is where a new generation is different from others at the same age, and they stay different. It’s impossible to entirely separate these distinct forces, but we can often get some way towards it – and when we do, we can predict the future in a much more meaningful way. There are many real generational differences, in vitally important areas of life. For example, the probability of you owning your own home is hugely affected by when you were born. Millennials are around half as likely to be a homeowner than generations born only a couple of decades earlier. There is also a real cohort effect in experience of mental health disorders, particularly among recent generations of young women. Our relationship with alcohol and likelihood of smoking is also tied to our cohort, with huge generational declines in very regular drinking and smoking. Each of these point to different futures, from increased strain on mental health services to declining alcohol sales. But lifecycle and period effects are vitally important too. For example, there is truth in the idea that we grow more conservative as we age. One analysis suggests that this ageing effect is worth around <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379413000875">0.35% to the Conservatives each year</a>, which may not sound like a lot, but is very valuable over the course of a political lifetime. And, of course, the pandemic provides a very powerful example of how period effects can dramatically change things for us all. <h2>Reaching beyond the avocado</h2> When there is such richness in the realities, why are there so many myths? It’s partly down to bad marketing and workplace research – that is, people jumping on the generation bandwagon to get media coverage for their products or to sell consultancy to businesses on how to engage young employees. This has become its own mini-industry. In 2015, US companies spent up to US$70 million (£51 million) on this sort of “advice” <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/helping-bosses-decode-millennialsfor-20-000-an-hour-1463505666">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>, with some experts making as much as US$20,000 an hour. Over 400 LinkedIn users now describe themselves solely as a “millennial expert” or “millennial consultant”. Campaigners and politicians also play to these imagined differences. Our increasing focus on “<a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/culture-wars-in-the-uk.pdf">culture wars</a>” often involves picking out particular incidents in universities, such as the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-45717841">banning of clapping</a> at events or the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-57409743">removal of a portrait of the Queen</a> to exaggerate how culturally different young people today are. Maybe less obviously, politicians such as former US President Barack Obama repeatedly lionise coming generations as more focused on equality, when the evidence shows they’re often not that different. These assertions are not only wrong, but create false expectations and divides. Some have had enough, calling on the Pew Research Center in the US, which has been a champion of generational groups, to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/07/generation-labels-mean-nothing-retire-them/&data=04%257C01%257C">stop conducting this type of analysis</a>. I think that misses the point: it’s how it’s applied rather than the idea of generations that’s wrong. We should defend the big idea and call out the myths, not abandon the field to the “millennial consultants”.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167138/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bobby-duffy-98570">Bobby Duffy</a>, Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Policy Institute, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/kings-college-london-1196">King's College London</a> Image credits: Shutterstock This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/boomers-vs-millennials-free-yourself-from-the-phoney-generation-wars-167138">original article</a>.

Mind

After 180 years, new clues are revealing just how general anaesthesia works in the brain

<div class="theconversation-article-body"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/adam-d-hines-767066">Adam D Hines</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/queensland-university-of-technology-847">Queensland University of Technology</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4773932/pdf/BLT.15.159293.pdf/">Over 350 million surgeries</a> are performed globally each year. For most of us, it’s likely at some point in our lives we’ll have to undergo a procedure that needs general anaesthesia. Even though it is one of the safest medical practices, we still don’t have a complete, thorough understanding of precisely how anaesthetic drugs work in the brain. In fact, it has largely remained a mystery since general anaesthesia was introduced into medicine over <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/08941939.2015.1061826">180 years ago</a>. Our study published <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0588-23.2024">in The Journal of Neuroscience today</a> provides new clues on the intricacies of the process. General anaesthetic drugs seem to only affect specific parts of the brain responsible for keeping us alert and awake. <h2>Brain cells striking a balance</h2> In a study using fruit flies, we found a potential way that allows anaesthetic drugs to interact with specific types of neurons (brain cells), and it’s all to do with proteins. Your brain has around <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974">86 billion neurons</a> and not all of them are the same – it’s these differences that allow general anaesthesia to be effective. To be clear, we’re not completely in the dark on <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0165614719300951">how anaesthetic drugs affect us</a>. We know why general anaesthetics are able to make us lose consciousness so quickly, thanks to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/367607a0">landmark discovery made in 1994</a>. But to better understand the fine details, we first have to look to the minute differences between the cells in our brains. Broadly speaking, there are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6591655/">two main categories of neurons in the brain</a>. The first are what we call “excitatory” neurons, generally responsible for keeping us alert and awake. The second are “inhibitory” neurons – their job is to regulate and control the excitatory ones. In our day-to-day lives, excitatory and inhibitory neurons are constantly working and balancing one another. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2017294">When we fall asleep</a>, there are inhibitory neurons in the brain that “silence” the excitatory ones keeping us awake. This happens <a href="https://askdruniverse.wsu.edu/2018/01/07/why-do-we-get-tired/">gradually over time</a>, which is why you may feel progressively more tired through the day. General anaesthetics speed up this process by directly silencing these excitatory neurons without any action from the inhibitory ones. This is why your anaesthetist will tell you that they’ll “put you to sleep” for the procedure: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2372">it’s essentially the same process</a>. <h2>A special kind of sleep</h2> While we know why anaesthetics put us to sleep, the question then becomes: “why do we stay asleep during surgery?”. If you went to bed tonight, fell asleep and somebody tried to do surgery on you, you’d wake up with quite a shock. To date, there is no strong consensus in the field as to why general anaesthesia causes people to remain unconscious during surgery. Over the last couple of decades, researchers have proposed several potential explanations, but they all seem to point to one root cause. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7709148/#:%7E:text=At%20presynaptic%20part%2C%20voltage%2Dgated,anesthetics%20to%20inhibiting%20neurotransmitter%20release.">Neurons stop talking to each other</a> when exposed to general anaesthetics. While the idea of “cells talking to each other” may sound a little strange, it’s a <a href="https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/brain/brain-physiology/action-potentials-and-synapses">fundamental concept in neuroscience</a>. Without this communication, our brains wouldn’t be able to function at all. And it allows the brain to know what’s happening throughout the body. <figure class="align-center zoomable"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/593888/original/file-20240514-16-5fletd.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" alt="Two branching structures in orange, green, blue and yellow colours on a black background." /></a><figcaption>Colourised neurons in the brain of a fly. Adam Hines</figcaption></figure> <h2>What did we discover?</h2> Our new study shows that general anaesthetics appear to stop excitatory neurons from communicating, but not inhibitory ones. <a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/21/4103">This concept isn’t new</a>, but we found some compelling evidence as to why only excitatory neurons are affected. For neurons to communicate, proteins have to get involved. One of the jobs these proteins have is to get neurons to release molecules called <a href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22513-neurotransmitters">neurotransmitters</a>. These chemical messengers are what gets signals across from one neuron to another: dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin are all neurotransmitters, for example. We found that general anaesthetics impair the ability of these proteins to release neurotransmitters, but only in excitatory neurons. To test this, we used <a href="https://www.eneuro.org/content/8/3/ENEURO.0057-21.2021">Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies</a> and <a href="https://imb.uq.edu.au/research/facilities/microscopy/training-manuals/microscopy-online-resources/image-capture/super-resolution-microscopy">super resolution microscopy</a> to directly see what effects a general anaesthetic was having on these proteins at a molecular scale. Part of what makes excitatory and inhibitory neurons different from each other is that they <a href="https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00007.2012">express different types of the same protein</a>. This is kind of like having two cars of the same make and model, but one is green and has a sports package, while the other is just standard and red. They both do the same thing, but one’s just a little bit different. Neurotransmitter release is a complex process involving lots of different proteins. If one piece of the puzzle isn’t exactly right, then general anaesthetics won’t be able to do their job. As a next research step, we will need to figure out which piece of the puzzle is different, to understand why general anaesthetics only stop excitatory communication. Ultimately, our results hint that the drugs used in general anaesthetics cause massive global inhibition in the brain. By silencing excitability in two ways, these drugs put us to sleep and keep it that way.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/229713/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/adam-d-hines-767066">Adam D Hines</a>, Research fellow, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/queensland-university-of-technology-847">Queensland University of Technology</a> Image credits: Shutterstock This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-180-years-new-clues-are-revealing-just-how-general-anaesthesia-works-in-the-brain-229713">original article</a>. </div>

Body

Are young people smarter than older adults? My research shows cognitive differences between generations are diminishing

<div class="theconversation-article-body"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephen-badham-1531316">Stephen Badham</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/nottingham-trent-university-1338">Nottingham Trent University</a> We often assume young people are smarter, or at least quicker, than older people. For example, we’ve all heard that scientists, and even more so mathematicians, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2014/08/07/who-says-scientists-peak-by-age-50/">carry out their most important work</a> when they’re comparatively young. But my new research, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027322972400008X#:%7E:text=Highlights&text=Three%20review%20studies%20measure%20secular,%2C%20education%2C%20and%20overall%20health.">published in Developmental Review</a>, suggests that cognitive differences between the old and young are tapering off over time. This is hugely important as stereotypes about the intelligence of people in their sixties or older may be holding them back – in the workplace and beyond. Cognitive ageing is often measured by comparing young adults, aged 18-30, to older adults, aged 65 and over. There are a variety of tasks that older adults do not perform well on compared to young adults, such as memory, spatial ability and speed of processing, which often form the basis of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-iq-test-wars-why-screening-for-intelligence-is-still-so-controversial-81428">IQ tests</a>. That said, there are a few tasks that older people do better at than younger people, such as reading comprehension and vocabulary. Declines in cognition are driven by a process called <a href="https://www.nature.com/collections/cbjacdabdf">cognitive ageing</a>, which happens to everyone. Surprisingly, age-related cognitive deficits start very early in adulthood, and declines in cognition have been measured as dropping in adults as young as just 25. Often, it is only when people reach older age that these effects add up to a noticeable amount. Common complaints consist of walking into a room and forgetting why you entered, as well as difficulty remembering names and struggling to drive in the dark. <h2>The trouble with comparison</h2> Sometimes, comparing young adults to older adults can be misleading though. The two generations were brought up in different times, with different levels of education, healthcare and nutrition. They also lead different daily lives, with some older people having lived though a world war while the youngest generation is growing up with the internet. Most of these factors favour the younger generation, and this can explain a proportion of their advantage in cognitive tasks. Indeed, much existing research shows that <a href="https://theconversation.com/iq-tests-are-humans-getting-smarter-158837">IQ has been improving</a> globally throughout the 20th century. This means that later-born generations are more cognitively able than those born earlier. This is even found when both generations are tested in the same way at the same age. Currently, there is growing evidence that <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115">increases in IQ are levelling off,</a> such that, in the most recent couple of decades, young adults are no more cognitively able than young adults born shortly beforehand. Together, these factors may underlie the current result, namely that cognitive differences between young and older adults are diminishing over time. <h2>New results</h2> My research began when my team started getting strange results in our lab. We found that often the age differences we were getting between young and older adults was smaller or absent, compared to prior research from early 2000s. This prompted me to start looking at trends in age differences across the psychological literature in this area. I uncovered a variety of data that compared young and older adults from the 1960s up to the current day. I plotted this data against year of publication, and found that age deficits have been getting smaller over the last six decades. Next, I assessed if the average increases in cognitive ability over time seen across all individuals was a result that also applied to older adults specifically. Many large databases exist where groups of individuals are recruited every few years to take part in the same tests. I analysed studies using these data sets to look at older adults. I found that, just like younger people, older adults were indeed becoming more cognitively able with each cohort. But if differences are disappearing, does that mean younger people’s improvements in cognitive ability have slowed down or that older people’s have increased? I analysed data from my own laboratory that I had gathered over a seven-year period to find out. Here, I was able to dissociate the performance of the young from the performance of the older. I found that each cohort of young adults was performing to a similar extent across this seven-year period, but that older adults were showing improvements in both processing speed and vocabulary scores. <figure class="align-center "><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/591482/original/file-20240501-24-esxcic.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" alt="The figure shows data for a speed-based task where higher scores represent better performance." /><figcaption>The figure shows data for a speed-based task where higher scores represent better performance. <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></figcaption></figure> I believe the older adults of today are benefiting from many of the factors previously most applicable to young adults. For example, the number of children who went to school <a href="https://education-uk.org/history/chapter12.html">increased significantly</a> in the 1960s – with the system being more similar to what it is today than what it was at the start of the 20th century. This is being reflected in that cohort’s increased scores today, now they are older adults. At the same time, young adults have hit a ceiling and are no longer improving as much with each cohort. It is not entirely clear why the young generations have stopped improving so much. Some research has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2016.10.002">explored maternal age, mental health and even evolutionary trends</a>. I favour the opinion that there is just a natural ceiling – a limit to how much factors such as education, nutrition and health can improve cognitive performance. These data have important implications for research into dementia. For example, it is possible that a modern older adult in the early stages of dementia might pass a dementia test that was designed 20 or 30 years ago for the general population at that time. Therefore, as older adults are performing better in general than previous generations, it may be necessary to revise definitions of dementia that depend on an individuals’ expected level of ability. Ultimately, we need to rethink what it means to become older. And there’s finally some good news. Ultimately, we can expect to be more cognitively able than our grandparents were when we reach their age.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/229132/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephen-badham-1531316">Stephen Badham</a>, Professor of Psychology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/nottingham-trent-university-1338">Nottingham Trent University</a> Image credits: Getty Images This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-young-people-smarter-than-older-adults-my-research-shows-cognitive-differences-between-generations-are-diminishing-229132">original article</a>. </div>

Mind

Storytelling allows elders to transfer values and meaning to younger generations

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mary-ann-mccoll-704728">Mary Ann McColl</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/queens-university-ontario-1154">Queen's University, Ontario</a> If you spent time over the holidays with elderly relatives or friends, you may have heard many of the same stories repeated — perhaps stories you’d heard over the years, or even over the past few hours. Repeated storytelling can sometimes be unnerving for friends and families, raising concerns about a loved one’s potential cognitive decline, memory loss or perhaps even the onset of dementia. <a href="https://tenstories.ca/">Our research</a> at Queen’s University suggests there is another way to think about repeated storytelling that makes it easier to listen and engage with the stories. We interviewed 20 middle-aged adults who felt they had heard the same stories over and over from their aging parent. We asked them to tell us those stories and we recorded and transcribed them. We used a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/14439881211248356">narrative inquiry approach</a> to discover that repeated storytelling is a key method for elders to communicate what they believe to be important to their children and loved ones. Narrative inquiry uses the text of stories as research data to explore how people create meaning in their lives. <h2>Transmitting values</h2> Based on nearly 200 collected stories, we found that there are approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.13121">10 stories</a> that older parents repeatedly tell to their adult children. The hypothesis was that repeated storytelling was about inter-generational transmission of values. By exploring the themes of those repeated stories, we could uncover the meaning and messages elders were communicating to their loved ones. The ultimate purpose was to offer a new and more constructive way of thinking about stories that we’ve heard many times before, and that can be otherwise perceived as alarming. <h2>Here’s what we have learned:</h2> <ol> <li> There are typically just 10 stories that people tell repeatedly. While 10 is not a magic number, it does seem to be about the right number to capture the stories that are told over and over. Interviewees felt that a set of approximately 10 allowed them to do justice to their parent’s stories. </li> <li> Among our interviewees, a significant number of their parents’ stories – 87 per cent — took place when they were in their teens or twenties. A person’s second and third decades are a time when they make many of the decisions that shape the rest of their lives; a time when values are consolidated and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2013.863358">adult identity is formed</a> </li> <li> What’s important about the 10 stories is not the factual details, but the lesson that was learned, or the value that was reinforced — values like loyalty toward friends, putting family first, maintaining a sense of humour even in hard times, getting an education, speaking up against injustice, and doing what’s right. </li> <li> Key themes in the stories reflected the significant events and prevailing values of the early to mid-20th century. Many of the stories revolved around the war, and both domestic and overseas experiences that were formative. Many of our interviewees heard stories about immigrating to Canada, starting out with very little, seeking a better life and working hard. Stories often reflected a more formal time when it was important to uphold standards, make a good impression, know one’s place and adhere to the rules. </li> <li> The stories elders tell appear to be curated for the individual receiving them. They would be different if told to another child, a spouse or a friend. </li> </ol> <h2>Tips for listening</h2> Our research offers some tips for listening to stories from elders: <ul> <li> Focus on just 10 stories. It can make the listening seem less overwhelming. </li> <li> Write them down. Writing challenges us to get the story straight. </li> <li> Notice your loved one’s role in the story, as the message is often contained in that role. </li> <li> Be attentive to feelings, sensations, tension and discomfort. These can be signals or clues to the meaning of a story. </li> <li> Finally, remember these stories are for you — selected and told in the context of your relationship with your loved one. As such, they are a gift from a loved one who is running out of time. </li> </ul> <h2>The importance of receiving stories</h2> Storytelling is an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/cad.20067">essential human process</a> and a universal experience associated with aging. Neuroscientists suggest that storytelling has practical survival value for individuals and communities, <a href="https://www.jonathangottschall.com/storytelling-animal">as well as social and psychological benefits</a>. It may be as powerful as medication or therapy for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/gps.1018">overcoming depression among elders</a>. Storytelling becomes especially important <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2017.1396581">when people become aware of their mortality</a> — when they are ill, suffering or facing death. People don’t necessarily tell the same stories over and over again because they’re losing cognitive function, but because the stories are important, and they feel we need to know them. Telling stories repeatedly isn’t about forgetfulness or dementia. It’s an effort to share what’s important. Our hope is that by better understanding elderly storytelling, caregivers may be able to listen in a different way to those repeated stories and understand the messages they contain. Those 10 stories can help us to know our loved one at a deeper level and assist our parent or grandparent with an important developmental task of old age. This research offers a constructive way for caregivers to hear the repeated stories told by their aging parents, and to offer their loved one the gift of knowing they have been seen and heard.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197766/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mary-ann-mccoll-704728">Mary Ann McColl</a>, Professor, School of Rehabilitation Therapy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/queens-university-ontario-1154">Queen's University, Ontario</a> Image credits: Getty Images This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/storytelling-allows-elders-to-transfer-values-and-meaning-to-younger-generations-197766">original article</a>.

Mind

Mariah Carey slapped with multi-million dollar lawsuit over hit festive song

Mariah Carey is facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit over her hit festive song, as another musician has come forward claiming she plagiarised an original work. Carey’s song All I Want For Christmas Is You has long been a staple of December, and has sold over 10 million copies since its 1994 release. However, Andy Stone, lead vocalist of Vince Vance and the Valiants, claims Carey infringed on his copyright. Stone co-wrote a song, which has the same title as Carey’s smash hit, in 1989 to which he claims Carey and her team of copying his song’s “compositional structure,” according to the complaint obtained by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/mariah-carey-facing-20-million-lawsuit-over-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fox News Digital</a>. <iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w8HWHd0EYJA?si=IdW0GIKXEQBJqaO_" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> The court documents state that Carey “directly” copied lyrics from Stone’s 1989 hit and “approximately 50 per cent” of the song is copyright infringement. Stone went on to claim that Carey and her team “undoubtedly” had access to his version of All I Want For Christmas is You due to its “wide commercial and cultural success.” Stone’s track charted on Billboard for years, with the band even performing the track at the White House in 1994 - the same year Carey’s festive song was released. “Carey has capitalised on the success of her infringing work,” Stone’s complaint alleged. <iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yXQViqx6GMY?si=Exrq9M0AA2u5XRpB" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> “All I Want For Christmas is You has become a ubiquitous part of popular culture, and Carey’s name has become synonymous with the season.” Stone first sued Carey over the copyright issue in June 2022 in a Louisiana court before dropping the claim five months later. Image credits: Getty Images

Legal

ChatGPT and other generative AI could foster science denial and misunderstanding – here’s how you can be on alert

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/gale-sinatra-1234776">Gale Sinatra</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-southern-california-1265">University of Southern California</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/barbara-k-hofer-1231530">Barbara K. Hofer</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/middlebury-1247">Middlebury</a> Until very recently, if you wanted to know more about a controversial scientific topic – stem cell research, the safety of nuclear energy, climate change – you probably did a Google search. Presented with multiple sources, you chose what to read, selecting which sites or authorities to trust. Now you have another option: You can pose your question to ChatGPT or another generative artificial intelligence platform and quickly receive a succinct response in paragraph form. ChatGPT does not search the internet the way Google does. Instead, it generates responses to queries by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/07/ai-beginners-guide/">predicting likely word combinations</a> from a massive amalgam of available online information. Although it has the potential for <a href="https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/05/how-generative-ai-changes-productivity">enhancing productivity</a>, generative AI has been shown to have some major faults. It can <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-platforms-like-chatgpt-are-easy-to-use-but-also-potentially-dangerous/">produce misinformation</a>. It can create “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/ai-chatbots-hallucination.html">hallucinations</a>” – a benign term for making things up. And it doesn’t always accurately solve reasoning problems. For example, when asked if both a car and a tank can fit through a doorway, it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/technology/openai-new-gpt4.html">failed to consider both width and height</a>. Nevertheless, it is already being used to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/01/17/cnet-ai-articles-journalism-corrections/">produce articles</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/technology/ai-generated-content-discovered-on-news-sites-content-farms-and-product-reviews.html">website content</a> you may have encountered, or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/opinion/chatgpt-journalism.html">as a tool</a> in the writing process. Yet you are unlikely to know if what you’re reading was created by AI. As the authors of “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/science-denial-9780197683330">Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It</a>,” we are concerned about how generative AI may blur the boundaries between truth and fiction for those seeking authoritative scientific information. Every media consumer needs to be more vigilant than ever in verifying scientific accuracy in what they read. Here’s how you can stay on your toes in this new information landscape. <h2>How generative AI could promote science denial</h2> Erosion of epistemic trust. All consumers of science information depend on judgments of scientific and medical experts. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2014.971907">Epistemic trust</a> is the process of trusting knowledge you get from others. It is fundamental to the understanding and use of scientific information. Whether someone is seeking information about a health concern or trying to understand solutions to climate change, they often have limited scientific understanding and little access to firsthand evidence. With a rapidly growing body of information online, people must make frequent decisions about what and whom to trust. With the increased use of generative AI and the potential for manipulation, we believe trust is likely to erode further than <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/">it already has</a>. Misleading or just plain wrong. If there are errors or biases in the data on which AI platforms are trained, that <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-information-retrieval-a-search-engine-researcher-explains-the-promise-and-peril-of-letting-chatgpt-and-its-cousins-search-the-web-for-you-200875">can be reflected in the results</a>. In our own searches, when we have asked ChatGPT to regenerate multiple answers to the same question, we have gotten conflicting answers. Asked why, it responded, “Sometimes I make mistakes.” Perhaps the trickiest issue with AI-generated content is knowing when it is wrong. Disinformation spread intentionally. AI can be used to generate compelling disinformation as text as well as deepfake images and videos. When we asked ChatGPT to “<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-platforms-like-chatgpt-are-easy-to-use-but-also-potentially-dangerous/">write about vaccines in the style of disinformation</a>,” it produced a nonexistent citation with fake data. Geoffrey Hinton, former head of AI development at Google, quit to be free to sound the alarm, saying, “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer-quits-hinton.html">using it for bad things</a>.” The potential to create and spread deliberately incorrect information about science already existed, but it is now dangerously easy. Fabricated sources. ChatGPT provides responses with no sources at all, or if asked for sources, may present <a href="https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2023/01/21/chatgpt-cites-economics-papers-that-do-not-exist/">ones it made up</a>. We both asked ChatGPT to generate a list of our own publications. We each identified a few correct sources. More were hallucinations, yet seemingly reputable and mostly plausible, with actual previous co-authors, in similar sounding journals. This inventiveness is a big problem if a list of a scholar’s publications conveys authority to a reader who doesn’t take time to verify them. Dated knowledge. ChatGPT doesn’t know what happened in the world after its training concluded. A query on what percentage of the world has had COVID-19 returned an answer prefaced by “as of my knowledge cutoff date of September 2021.” Given how rapidly knowledge advances in some areas, this limitation could mean readers get erroneous outdated information. If you’re seeking recent research on a personal health issue, for instance, beware. Rapid advancement and poor transparency. AI systems continue to become <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer-quits-hinton.html">more powerful and learn faster</a>, and they may learn more science misinformation along the way. Google recently announced <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/technology/google-ai-products.html">25 new embedded uses of AI in its services</a>. At this point, <a href="https://theconversation.com/regulating-ai-3-experts-explain-why-its-difficult-to-do-and-important-to-get-right-198868">insufficient guardrails are in place</a> to assure that generative AI will become a more accurate purveyor of scientific information over time. <h2>What can you do?</h2> If you use ChatGPT or other AI platforms, recognize that they might not be completely accurate. The burden falls to the user to discern accuracy. Increase your vigilance. <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/12/ai-will-start-fact-checking-we-may-not-like-the-results/">AI fact-checking apps may be available soon</a>, but for now, users must serve as their own fact-checkers. <a href="https://www.nsta.org/science-teacher/science-teacher-januaryfebruary-2023/plausible">There are steps we recommend</a>. The first is: Be vigilant. People often reflexively share information found from searches on social media with little or no vetting. Know when to become more deliberately thoughtful and when it’s worth identifying and evaluating sources of information. If you’re trying to decide how to manage a serious illness or to understand the best steps for addressing climate change, take time to vet the sources. Improve your fact-checking. A second step is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000740">lateral reading</a>, a process professional fact-checkers use. Open a new window and search for <a href="https://www.nsta.org/science-teacher/science-teacher-mayjune-2023/marginalizing-misinformation">information about the sources</a>, if provided. Is the source credible? Does the author have relevant expertise? And what is the consensus of experts? If no sources are provided or you don’t know if they are valid, use a traditional search engine to find and evaluate experts on the topic. Evaluate the evidence. Next, take a look at the evidence and its connection to the claim. Is there evidence that genetically modified foods are safe? Is there evidence that they are not? What is the scientific consensus? Evaluating the claims will take effort beyond a quick query to ChatGPT. If you begin with AI, don’t stop there. Exercise caution in using it as the sole authority on any scientific issue. You might see what ChatGPT has to say about genetically modified organisms or vaccine safety, but also follow up with a more diligent search using traditional search engines before you draw conclusions. Assess plausibility. Judge whether the claim is plausible. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.03.001">Is it likely to be true</a>? If AI makes an implausible (and inaccurate) statement like “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/12/23/fact-check-false-claim-covid-19-vaccines-caused-1-1-million-deaths/10929679002/">1 million deaths were caused by vaccines, not COVID-19</a>,” consider if it even makes sense. Make a tentative judgment and then be open to revising your thinking once you have checked the evidence. Promote digital literacy in yourself and others. Everyone needs to up their game. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-be-a-good-digital-citizen-during-the-election-and-its-aftermath-148974">Improve your own digital literacy</a>, and if you are a parent, teacher, mentor or community leader, promote digital literacy in others. The American Psychological Association provides guidance on <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/social-media-literacy-teens">fact-checking online information</a> and recommends teens be <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use">trained in social media skills</a> to minimize risks to health and well-being. <a href="https://newslit.org/">The News Literacy Project</a> provides helpful tools for improving and supporting digital literacy. Arm yourself with the skills you need to navigate the new AI information landscape. Even if you don’t use generative AI, it is likely you have already read articles created by it or developed from it. It can take time and effort to find and evaluate reliable information about science online – but it is worth it.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204897/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/gale-sinatra-1234776">Gale Sinatra</a>, Professor of Education and Psychology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-southern-california-1265">University of Southern California</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/barbara-k-hofer-1231530">Barbara K. Hofer</a>, Professor of Psychology Emerita, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/middlebury-1247">Middlebury</a> Image credits: Getty Images This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-and-other-generative-ai-could-foster-science-denial-and-misunderstanding-heres-how-you-can-be-on-alert-204897">original article</a>.

Technology

“That name goes back four generations”: Paul Walker’s brother makes a touching tribute

Almost a decade after the world lost Fast & Furious star Paul Walker, his younger brother Cody Walker has paid heartfelt tribute with the birth of his third child. Cody and his wife, Felicia, welcomed their son on April 30, with People magazine reporting that he weighed in at 7lbs 5oz. Felicia took to Instagram on May 2 to make an announcement, too, declaring that they’d had a boy, and writing “welcome to the clan, Barrett”. Many took this as confirmation of his name, and rushed to congratulate the family on their new addition. Felicia had shared a picture of the newborn in the arms of his big brother, Colt, with the announcement, and fans were delighted to note that he was the image of a proud older sibling, beaming from ear to ear. However, People magazine have now revealed that there was more to the story, and that the newborn Walker’s name is even closer to his father’s heart than anyone had anticipated. It was a day after his birth that Cody and Felicia reached their decision, declaring their son’s name to be Paul Barrett Walker - naming him after Cody’s late brother. "This November will mark 10 years since we lost my brother, Paul,” Cody told the publication, “and I just felt now was the appropriate time.” He went on to share that he and their other brother - Caleb - were “both done having children”, and that the name held special meaning to all of them. “My brother, Paul, was Paul William Walker IV and that name goes back four generations,” he explained. "Within the family, he went by ‘little Paul’ or ‘Paul 4,’ even though he quickly outgrew our father in height. “It was important to me to have that name carry on.” It isn’t the only move Cody has taken towards honouring his brother, having teamed up with Tyrese Gibson and Chris Lee to bright FuelFest to life - an automotive and motorsports festival showcasing car culture, with a portion of profits going towards Paul’s nonprofit Reach Out WorldWide, something that Cody views “as a part of Paul that he left behind.” And in an echo of his message regarding his new son’s name, he noted that “it’s important to so many to see that part of his legacy live on.” And Paul’s daughter, Meadow, has made her own moves towards furthering her father’s legacy, with a cameo appearance in Fast X - the tenth instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise. “For me, this is super exciting,” she said of her involvement, “and he would be amazed that this is happening.” Images: Instagram, Getty

Family & Pets

The Devil Wears Prada iconic townhouse up for grabs

This multi million-dollar house is nothing short of iconic. The Upper East Side townhouse where fictional magazine editor Miranda Priestly resided in David Frankel’s groundbreaking film The Devil Wears Prada has hit the market. Unsurprisingly, the home of the glamorous Runway editor-in-chief, rumoured to be based on Vogue’s Anna Wintour is priced at an eye-watering $40 million. Fans of the beloved 2006 film are sure to recognise the seven-bedroom, six-level home’s grand entrance and spiral staircase as Anne Hathaway’s character Andrea Sachs delivered a mock-up of Runway magazines to Meryl Streep’s character, Priestly in the film. But the infamous staircase also appears on the set of another fictional Upper East Side world. The stairwell briefly appears in the teen drama Gossip Girl’s final episode, for the wedding of Penn Badgley's character Dan and Blake Lively's Serena. Modlin Group boss Adam D. Modlin holds the listing for the neo-Italian renaissance-style limestone and marble townhouse, which last sold in 2003 for $8.8 million. The home was originally built in 1907 by architect Stanford White and was renovated in 2005 with a tasteful interior design by Diamond Barrata. The top floor of the breathtaking abode includes a custom-built basketball court, as well as a terrace with a spa. Adding to the 129 East 73rd St home’s A-list status, it’s just across the road from American journalist and political activist Gloria Steinem’s NYC pad. Image credit: Instagram/Realestate.com.au

Movies

"This doesn’t feel right, does it?": Photographer admits Sony prize-winning photo was AI generated

A German photographer is refusing an award for his prize-winning shot after admitting to being a “cheeky monkey”, revealing the image was generated using artificial intelligence. The artist, Boris Eldagsen, shared on his website that he would not be accepting the prestigious award for the creative open category, which he won at <a href="https://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/art/winners-of-sony-world-photography-awards-revealed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2023’s Sony world photography awards</a>. The winning photograph showcased a black and white image of two women from different generations. Eldagsen, who studied photography and visual arts at the Art Academy of Mainz, conceptual art and intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and fine art at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication in Hyderabad released a statement on his website, admitting he “applied as a cheeky monkey” to find out if competitions would be prepared for AI images to enter. “They are not,” he revealed. “We, the photo world, need an open discussion,” Eldagsen said. “A discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not. Is the umbrella of photography large enough to invite AI images to enter – or would this be a mistake? “With my refusal of the award I hope to speed up this debate.” Eldagsen said this was an “historic moment” as it was the fist AI image to have won a prestigious international photography competition, adding “How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn’t feel right, does it? “AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award.” The photographer suggested donating the prize to a photo festival in Odesa, Ukraine. It comes as a heated debate over the use and safety concerns of AI continue, with some going as far as to issue apocalyptic warnings that the technology may be close to causing irreparable damage to the human experience. Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pirchai said, “It can be very harmful if deployed wrongly and we don’t have all the answers there yet – and the technology is moving fast. So, does that keep me up at night? Absolutely.” A spokesperson for the World Photography Organisation admitted that the prize-winning photographer had confirmed the “co-creation” of the image using AI to them prior to winning the award. “The creative category of the open competition welcomes various experimental approaches to image making from cyanotypes and rayographs to cutting-edge digital practices. As such, following our correspondence with Boris and the warranties he provided, we felt that his entry fulfilled the criteria for this category, and we were supportive of his participation. “Additionally, we were looking forward to engaging in a more in-depth discussion on this topic and welcomed Boris’ wish for dialogue by preparing questions for a dedicated Q&A with him for our website. “As he has now decided to decline his award we have suspended our activities with him and in keeping with his wishes have removed him from the competition. Given his actions and subsequent statement noting his deliberate attempts at misleading us, and therefore invalidating the warranties he provided, we no longer feel we are able to engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him. “We recognise the importance of this subject and its impact on image-making today. We look forward to further exploring this topic via our various channels and programmes and welcome the conversation around it. While elements of AI practices are relevant in artistic contexts of image-making, the awards always have been and will continue to be a platform for championing the excellence and skill of photographers and artists working in the medium.” Image credit: Sony World Photography Awards

Technology

13 unusual uses for coffee filters

If you enjoy a cup of the caffeinated stuff of a morning, chances are good you probably have a packet or two of coffee filters knocking around in the pantry. While essential for creating the perfect brew, the simple shape and lint-free design of this beverage essential makes them useful in plenty of other places around the house. <ol> <li>Use them to protect your dishes – Protect your favourite plates or good china from chipping and scratches by slipping a single filter in between each when stacking.</li> <li>Savvy snacking – If you’re serving up something greasy or even a finger food snack, a coffee filter makes the perfect snack bowl. Added bonus? No washing up!</li> <li>Sparkling windows and mirrors – The lint-free design of coffee filters make them perfect for cleaning fragile surfaces.</li> <li>In the garden – When filling up pots with soil, place a filter in the bottom, over the water hole. This allows water to filter through but stops soil seeping out.</li> <li>Smart storage – Lots of loose odds and ends floating around? Corral them all together by using a filter to group similar objects.</li> <li>Clean your screens – Dusty TV or computer screen? A coffee filter is great for grabbing dust and grime from smooth surfaces.</li> <li>The key to micro-sieving – If you’re baking and need a super fine sieve, line your standard utensil with a filter to catch even the smallest particles of food.</li> <li>Ice block savior- Stop sticky fingers in the grandkids by snipping a hole in the centre of a filter and pushing the stick through to create a little “drip dish”.</li> <li>Grease your baking utensils – Ensure a lint free, well-greased surface by using a filter to grease your baking tins or trays.</li> <li>Create spotless glassware – Prevent unsightly streaks by using a filter to dry your glassware.</li> <li>Keep your microwave clean – Use a filter when heating leftovers in the microwave to prevent splatter.</li> <li>Absorb oil – Cooking bacon? Pop the finished product onto a filter to drain away excess oil.</li> <li>Streak free stainless steel – Filters work like magic on stainless steel appliances like your toaster as well as taps and fixtures.</li> </ol> Image credits: Getty Images

Home & Garden

General Hospital star dies aged 55

Sonya Eddy, best known for her role on General Hospital, has passed away at age 55. The actress, who scored many fans after playing beloved, no-nonsense nurse Epiphany Johnson in the popular US soap, died on Tuesday night, her good friend and actress Octavia Spencer announced on Instagram. "My friend @sonyaeddy passed away last night. The world lost another creative angel. Her legions of @generalhospitalabc fans will miss her 💔🕊️," Spencer wrote alongside a photo of the late actress. "My thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones, friends, and fans!" <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CmZlaq8v_ks/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CmZlaq8v_ks/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Octavia Spencer (@octaviaspencer)</a> </div> </blockquote> Spencer did not reveal any details about Sonya's cause of death. Octavia's post was flooded with condolences and tributes for the actress, with comedian Loni Love writing, "Sonya was best.. in an industry that often over looks us, she made her mark… Rest well Sis." The actress first joined the cast of General Hospital in 2006, starring in a total of 543 episodes before appearing on the show for the final time in November 2020. From 2007 to 2008, she was also a regular cast member on the soap's spin-off program, General Hospital: Night Shift. Image credits: Getty Images

News

3 surprising health and beauty benefits of coffee beans

Ah, coffee - who doesn't love to start the day without a cup! You'll be delighted to hear that coffee beans also have a plethora of beneficial uses. For starters, coffee beans can also improve hair and skin. Hello bright eyes These days, lots of trageted eye creams contain caffeine for its ability to decrease puffiness. Failing buying a new cream, why not try and little beauty DIY. Simply soak a cotton pad, ball or some clean gauze in some cool coffee water and relax with it on your eyes for at least 10 minutes but no more than half an hour. Wake up skin Not only can coffee brighten your comlexion, because of antioxidants and acids it has also been shown to diminish fine lines and tighten skin. Combine filtered warm water, coffee grounds, 2 teaspoons of Epsom salts and a bowl and allow to soak for a little while. Then simply wash you face - not only will you get a brightening clean, but the ground will give you a gentle exofliation too. Colour boost This is one for those with brunette hair. To add shine to your hair, make a paste from mixing coffee grounds with water. Simply apply to damp, clean hair and leave for 10 minutes before rinsing. Image credits: Getty Images

Beauty & Style

Multi-coloured plants are suddenly a home decor ‘must-have’. Here’s how to keep them alive

Fads and fashion have always influenced the plants we keep. And so it is with variegated plants, which have become <a href="https://thatplantylife.com/affordable-and-gorgeous-variegated-houseplants/">very popular</a>with indoor plant enthusiasts these days. Variegated plants possess multiple colours – typically on their leaves, but in some cases on stems, flowers and fruit. Their patterns include stripes, dots, edges and patches. They’re usually green with either white or yellow, but can also feature red, pink, silver and other colours. Variegated plants can divide opinion. I recall a great aunt telling me many years ago of her great fondness for the variegated Aspidistra elatior growing her garden. But I’ve also heard gardeners and garden designers dismiss variegated foliage because it didn’t fit with their design or colour themes. Now, it seems indoor variegated plants are considered a “<a href="https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/variegated-plant-care-tips-36878935">must-have</a>” home decor accessory. But before you rush out and buy one, make sure you know how to keep it happy. <h2>Understanding variegated plants</h2> Most plant species are entirely green but occasionally a variegated individual arises. Some catch the eye of a dedicated plant collector or nursery worker and become a popular variety. Plant variegation can occur for several reasons. In some plants, such as the flowers of tulips, it’s due to a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/tulip-mania-how-a-plant-virus-fueled-a-speculative-frenzy">viral infection</a>. The resulting streaks of different colours may be cursed or valued depending on the aesthetic effect. Others plants, such as those in the genus <a href="https://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/Stories/2019/Coleus-back-in-the-name-game">coleus</a>, are naturally patterned. Groups of cells produce different colour combinations, causing leaves to grow with attractive markings. Plant variegations can also arise from genetic mutation. When growing variegated plants, it’s important to understand how the various colours affect the way it functions. The green part of plants contains chlorophyll, a pigment essential for photosynthesis. (Photosynthesis, of course, is the process by which the leaves convert sunlight into oxygen and carbohydrate that provides energy for plants to grow.) In variegated plants, white parts of leaves do not contain chlorophyll and so do not photosynthesise. Yellow parts of leaves can help send energy to the chlorophyll, but can’t perform photosynthesis on their own. The same goes for some red, orange and pink patches of tissue. But all cells in the leaf – green or not – use the plant’s energy. That means variegated plants are less efficient energy producers than their all-green counterparts, which causes them to grow more slowly. Some plants have mutated into <a href="https://www.chicagobotanic.org/blog/how_to/science_activity_albino_plants">albinos</a> containing no chlorophyll. These normally die within a few days or weeks of germination. <h2>Caring for your plant indoors</h2> It’s no coincidence many popular indoor plants – such as coleus, philodendrons, monsteras, dracaenas and calatheas – are variegated. Because they’re usually far less vigorous than all-green versions of the species, they won’t be pushing against the ceiling within weeks. The decorative colour and pattern of a variegated indoor plant is an added bonus. Variegated plants can take longer than others to reach a size considered appropriate for sale at a nursery, so may be comparatively more expensive. But there are ways to protect your variegated investment. First, watch out for “reversion”. This can occur when a variegated plant sends up an all-green shoot. The shoot will grow fast compared to the variegated parts and can eventually take over, causing the whole plant to revert to green. To avoid this, vigilantly remove any green shoots before they get big. You don’t want variegated plants quickly outgrowing their space, but remember they’re low on chlorophyll and so need good light. And like any indoor plant, ensure its leaves are kept free of fine dust and you don’t give it too much, or too little, water. <h2>Variegated plants in the garden</h2> The popularity of indoor variegated plants will almost certainly lead to greater use outdoors. Their slow-growing nature means outdoor variegated plants are usually much less likely to be “weedy” and spread where they’re not wanted. This can be an advantage if you’ve avoided planting a species because it will take over the garden. The variegated versions of <a href="https://www.plantmark.com.au/pittosporum-eugenioides-variegata">pittosporum</a>, ficus and <a href="https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/57250/nerium-oleander-variegatum-(v)/details">nerium oleander</a>, for example, are far less intent on global domination than their all-green counterparts. When planting a variegated plant outdoors, watch that it doesn’t become shaded by other quicker-growing plants. Many variegated plants already struggle to photosynthesise sufficiently. A bit of extra shade can damage or even kill them. So ensure they get enough light – and every so often give them a hand by trimming back nearby plants. <h2>Growing with flying colours</h2> Variegated plants are having their moment in the sun. But their interesting biology is always in fashion! These plants can brighten up your indoor space and provide attractive colour and pattern in the garden. By learning about how variegated plants function and considering their special requirements, you can enjoy them for years to come. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/multi-coloured-plants-are-suddenly-a-home-decor-must-have-heres-how-to-keep-them-alive-181163" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

Home & Garden

Artists furious after AI-generated art wins contest

A stunning artwork generated by artificial intelligence has claimed first prize at an art competition, enraging the art world and calling into question what it means to be an artist. The work was “created” by Jason M Allen, a game designer from Colorado, who won first place in the emerging artist division's "digital arts/digitally manipulated photography" category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. His winning image, titled Théâtre D'opéra Spatial (French for Space Opera Theatre), was made with Midjourney — an artificial intelligence system that can produce detailed images when fed written prompts by the user. "I'm fascinated by this imagery. I love it. And I think everyone should see it," Allen, 39, told CNN Business. Allen's winning image looks like a bright, surreal cross between a Renaissance and steampunk painting. As per the category Allen competed in, he told officials that Midjourney was used to create his image when he entered the contest, as the category dictated entrants use "digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process". Midjourney is one of a growing number of such AI image generators, joining the likes of Imagen and DALL-E to give the artistically-challenged the means to create stunning images. Despite the parameters of the category, many artists were angered by Allen’s win due to his reliance on technology to create the artwork. "This sucks for the exact same reason we don't let robots participate in the Olympics," one Twitter user wrote. "This is the literal definition of 'pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece'," another Tweeted. "AI artwork is the 'banana taped to the wall' of the digital world now." Yet while Allen didn't use a paintbrush to create his winning piece, he assured people there was plenty of work involved. "It's not like you're just smashing words together and winning competitions," he said. "Rather than hating on the technology or the people behind it, we need to recognise that it's a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward rather than sulking about it," Allen said. Image credits: Jason M Allen - Midjourney

Art

Woman shares why she planned to sue after winning multi-million dollar jackpot

A UK woman who won over a million dollars through the lottery has described it as a “twisted fairytale” rather than a dream come true. Jane Park, who won the £1 million Euromillions lottery in 2013, said winning big isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, revealing that she has been blackmailed and threatened with violence ever since, per <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/19570621/jane-park-lottery-pleas-money-strangers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Sun</a>. “The lottery should come with a health warning similar to smoking or drinking,” she said. “I understand they can’t make winning sound awful but they have a responsibility to not mislead the public.” After threatening to sue Camelot, the company that sold her the fateful ticket when she was just 17, prompted changes preventing those under 18 from having a gamble, she said the change doesn’t go far enough. Ms Park also wants ads for the game to be aired later at night - rather than during time slots that kids will be watching - and thinks that Lotto chiefs shouldn’t wait until someone wins to warn players of what’s in store. “The adverts should be aired later in the evening and advertising should be out of the way from children,” she said, “It sounds silly but children dream of either being famous or winning the lottery, and if it wasn’t so glamorised maybe there would be more ambition rather than gambling. “People always refer to the lottery as ‘playing the lottery’, but it’s not ‘playing’, it’s just plain gambling, apart from picking some number there is no game element to it. “How it wasn’t held to the same legislation as gambling from the beginning baffles me.” Ms Park revealed that she is bombarded with pleas for help in the form of cash from strangers and that she’s even proposed to on a weekly basis. “It may be parents with terminally-ill children or needing life-changing surgery. Uni students want me to pay for their education,” she explained. “I also get a lot of marriage proposals, I’d say I get at least one a week. It’s not from anyone interested in me, it’s from people interested in the money.” The Edinburgh native has previously spoken about her fight to increase the age limit, which she had planned to take to court until her cause became the subject of media attention. “I was prepared to go to court to get my argument known, but the media attention it received got my point heard by the right people and I didn’t need to go that far in the end,” she explained. “I know that is directly because of the attention I brought to the subject. “Part one of my mission was to have the age range increased, part two is to try and make advertising the lottery more truthful.” She added that it’s “wrong” that the lotto is glamorised as “dream come true money”, when in reality she described it more as a “twisted fairytale” where strangers ask about her bank balance daily. “I’m proud that I have invested my money wisely and nine years later I’m still living a good life,” she said. “It just feels like people are waiting for the day I become broke and homeless, but I won’t let that happen.” A spokesperson for the Department of Media Culture and Sport said the law was changed so that only those over the age of 18 could take part in the National Lottery, up from the previous minimum age of 16. “The National Lottery is regulated by the Gambling Commission and we will not hesitate to act further if we consider it necessary,” they said. Image: @janeparkx (Instagram)

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