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Pondering Prudence and Its “Parts” – A Reflection on the Sometimes-Misunderstood Virtue of Prudence By: Msgr. Charles PopeAs a follow-on to yesterday’s post on the spiritual work of counseling  the doubtful, I would like to say a little more about prudence.Prudence is often misunderstood by those who reduce it to mere caution or reluctance to act. It is true that sometimes prudence indicates caution and that hasty action is seldom prudent. However, sometimes it is prudent to act quickly. Having long discussions about the best way to put out a house fire before acting is not prudent. Quick, expedient action is the...

Typically, today’s budget PCs come with 4GB of RAM. A mid-range configuration may offer double that, and high-end gaming systems and workstations go as high as 16GB or more. There’s no doubt which way the wind’s blowing, either: Windows 8 supports up to 128GB of physical memory (assuming you’re running the 64-bit edition), while Windows 8 Pro can go up to 512GB. Does anyone really need this much RAM? Memory isn’t as expensive as it used to be, but there’s obviously no point paying for gigabytes of RAM from which you’ll receive no material gain. Does more equal faster? Many...

It’s a commonly held belief among software developers that avoiding disk access in favor of doing as much work as possible in-memory will results in shorter runtimes. The growth of big data has made time saving techniques such as performing operations in-memory more attractive than ever for programmers. New research, though, challenges the notion that in-memory operations are always faster than disk-access approaches and reinforces the need for developers to better understand system-level software. These findings were recently presented by researchers from the University of Calgary and the University of British Columbia in a paper titled When In-Memory Computing is...

Pick any ranking of publicly traded companies, and year after year you’ll find Apple AAPL +1.73% in the top three worldwide. To say that its famous logo is ubiquitous is an understatement. It’s everywhere and then some. There’s a decent chance you’re holding it in your hand as you read this article. This is all true – but right now, without any help, do you think you could draw the Apple logo from memory? If you’re like participants in a recent study on memory, you probably feel confident you could pull it off without peeking. But you may find, as...

Remembering a Crime That You Didn’t Commit In 1906, Hugo Münsterberg, the chair of the psychology laboratory at Harvard University and the president of the American Psychological Association, wrote in the Times Magazine about a case of false confession . A woman had been found dead in Chicago, garroted with a copper wire and left in a barnyard, and the simpleminded farmer’s son who had discovered her body stood accused. The young man had an alibi, but after questioning by police he admitted to the murder. He did not simply confess, Münsterberg wrote; “he was quite willing to repeat his...

Dogs Don't Remember: Episodic Memory May Distinguish Humans Dogs are wonderful creatures. Our dogs recognize me and are always happy to see me. Dogs are also smart and successful creatures. Our dogs have learned several cute tricks. But dogs (and other non-human animals) are missing something we take for granted: episodic memory. Dogs don't remember what happened yesterday and don't plan for tomorrow. In defining episodic memory, Endel Tulving argued that it is unique to humans. Experience influences all animals. Most mammals and birds can build complex sets of knowledge or semantic memory. You and I also remember the experience...

Alzheimer's could be prevented and even cured by boosting the brain's own immune response, scientists at Stanford University believe. Researchers discovered that nerve cells die because cells which are supposed to clear the brain of bacteria, viruses and dangerous deposits, stop working. These cells, called 'microglia' function well when people are young, but when they age, a single protein called EP2 stops them operating efficiently. Now scientists have shown that blocking the protein allows the microglia to function normally again so they can hoover up the dangerous sticky amyloid-beta plaques which damage nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease. The researchers found...

In case anyone needed another reason to love chocolate, a new study suggests that a natural compound found in cocoa, tea and some vegetables can reverse age-related memory loss. The findings suggest that the compound increases connectivity and, subsequently, blood flow in a region of the brain critical to memory, the researchers said. Researchers said that if a person had the memory of a typical 60-year-old at the beginning of the study, after three months, on average, that person’s memory would function more like a 30- or 40-year-old’s. The researchers also cautioned that more work is needed because of the...

(Phys.org) —By using voltage-generated stress to switch between two magnetic states, researchers have designed a new non-volatile memory with extremely high energy efficiency—about two orders of magnitude higher than that of the previous most efficient non-volatile memories. The engineers, Ayan K. Biswas, Professor Supriyo Bandyopadhyay, and Professor Jayasimha Atulasimha at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, have published their paper on the proposed non-volatile memory in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. "We are excited that we have been able to come up with the idea of a strain-switched memory element capable of 180° switching using a simple geometric...

Stimulating a particular region in the brain via non-invasive delivery of electrical current using magnetic pulses, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, improves memory, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The discovery opens a new field of possibilities for treating memory impairments caused by conditions such as stroke, early-stage Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and the memory problems that occur in healthy aging. "We show for the first time that you can specifically change memory functions of the brain in adults without surgery or drugs, which have not proven effective," said senior author Joel Voss, assistant professor of medical social...

Bad memories could be reversed after scientists discovered the part of the brain which links emotions to past events Bad memories of past trauma can leave people emotionally scarred for life. But now neuroscientists believe they can erase feelings of fear or anxiety attached to stressful events, in a breakthrough which could help treat depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers at MIT, US, have discovered which brain circuits attach emotions to memories, and crucially, how to reverse the link. They managed to ‘switch off’ feelings of fear in mice which had been conditioned to feel anxious. It is likely the...

Now, researchers from the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, CA, and the University of California-San Francisco reveal they have successfully reversed learning and memory deficits in mouse models of Alzheimer's through transplantation of healthy brain cells. The team transplanted inhibitory neuron progenitors - early-stage brain cells that can change into mature inhibitory regulator cells - into the hippocampus of two mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. One mouse model possessed the apoE4 gene, while the other had the apoE4 gene alongside a build-up of amyloid-beta - a protein also believed to play a role in Alzheimer's development. The researchers found that...

Google and other search engines have changed the way we use the Internet, putting vast sources of information just a few clicks away. But Lindsley professor of psychology Daniel Wegner’s recent research proves that websites—and the Internet—are changing much more than technology itself. They are changing the way our memories function. Wegner’s latest study, “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips,” shows that when people have access to search engines, they remember fewer facts and less information because they know they can rely on “search” as a readily available shortcut.

<p>Traditional hard drive manufacturers are currently going through a paradigm shift—one where new solid-state hard drives, known as SSD, are taking market share and slowly eliminating traditional hard drives. SSD hard drives of one terabyte or more are slowly becoming affordable to the masses.</p>

Research shows people with higher levels of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil may also have larger brain volumes in old age This would be the equivalent to preserving one or two years of brain health. Eating more fish could give you a bigger brain - and greater protection against diseases such as Alzheimer’s, claim researchers. They found people with higher levels of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil may also have larger brain volumes in old age. This would be the equivalent to preserving one to two years of brain health, says a new study...

Slow waves are generated by the middle frontal lobe, and as this region deteriorates with age, the elderly tend to lose the ability to experience long REM sleep University of California, Berkeley, scientists have found a connection between the amount of sleep one gets in their old age and the quality of their memory. The UC Berkeley team, led by Matthew Walker, believes that forgetfulness in old age may be attributed to a lack of deep, non-rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. According to the study, the slow brain waves produced during deep REM sleep help move memories from the hippocampus (short-term memory storage...

The brains of older people only appear to slow down because they have so much information to compute, much like a full-up hard drive, scientists believe. Older people do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because they have more information in their brains, scientists believe. Much like a computer struggles as the hard drive gets full up, so to (sic) do humans take longer to access information, it has been suggested. Researchers say this slowing down it is not the same as cognitive decline. “The human brain works slower in old age,” said...

Middle-aged men who drink the equivalent of two and a half pints a day risk speeding up memory loss and mental decline by six years, researchers have warned. A 10-year study of more than 7,000 male and female civil servants found men who regularly drank significant amounts of alcohol suffered notable mental decline. The study was reported in the journal Neurology. In contrast men who drank less than one and a half pints a day, or a glass and a half of wine suffered no impact on mental ability. The heaviest drinkers were found to have the equivalent memory of...

Coffee has long been a friend of students working through the night, but it does more than just keep us awake. A study provides the first convincing evidence that caffeine enhances long-term memory in people – provided the dose is right. The effects mirror similar results seen in honeybees, where a boost to memory from caffeine-laden nectar may help bees return to certain plants. Researchers strongly suspected that caffeine enhances memory, but studies that tried to show this in people weren't conclusive, as any apparent benefits in memory could have been due to increased attention, a known benefit of caffeine....

Researchers in Baltimore, Maryland, carried out tests on 100 people Showed them a series of images which they had to remember Then gave some participants 200mg of caffeine - the same as a strong cup Those who took dose could remember pictures more clearly the next day Coffee doesn’t just perk you up – just one mug a day can give your memory a boost too, experts claimed yesterday. ‘We have always known caffeine has cognitive enhancing effects, but its particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail in humans. We...