Sleep is something we all do, yet most of us know surprisingly little about what’s actually happening when we close our eyes.
So, what should you know about sleep?
Kimberly Fenn is a professor in the psychology department at Michigan State University’s College of Social Science.
Here, she breaks down common misconceptions about sleep and shares steps we can take to get better quality sleep:
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A new study finds overconfident CEOs are less likely to delegate responsibilities to underlings, particularly in settings that involve complex transactions—such as hammering out the details of high-stakes deals.
“Organizations have only gotten more complex over time, often operating in multiple countries across many different sectors,” says Jared Smith, coauthor of a paper on the work and a professor of finance in North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management.
“As a result, it is important for modern companies to bring more voices to the table. Involving more people who have more varied expertise and experiences can be valuable in helping companies navigate a complex business environment.
“In other words, delegation is an important tool for CEOs,” says Smith. “It can help them bring in expert voices while also freeing up their own time to tackle the multitude of issues facing any enterprise. We wanted to see whether there is a relationship between overconfidence in CEOs and their willingness to delegate—because that may have meaningful implications for their organization.”
To explore this issue, the researchers focused on 3,690 mergers and acquisitions by publicly traded companies between 2000 and 2019. The researchers looked only at transactions with a value of at least $50 million and that constituted at least 1% of the acquiring company’s equity.
Those mergers and acquisitions involved 1,634 CEOs. The researchers used an established technique to assess the confidence of those CEOs based on how the executives made use of their stock options. And to assess the extent to which those CEOs were willing to delegate responsibility, the researchers looked at press releases and news articles about the 3,690 mergers and acquisitions (M&As).
“In general, if anyone other than a C-suite executive is mentioned in these releases, it strongly suggests that the person who was mentioned played a meaningful role in the M&As,” Smith says.
The researchers also looked at “background of the merger” documents that acquiring companies submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which detail all relevant meetings that took place between companies while arranging the relevant transaction.
“We found that if someone other than an executive was mentioned in a press release or news article, that person was very likely involved in meetings that took place during the M&A process,” Smith says.
“This helps validate the use of news releases and articles as a tool for determining whether an executive is willing to delegate responsibility.”
The researchers found that 41% of the CEOs in their data set were overconfident. And when the researchers compared the behavior of overconfident CEOs to the behavior of the overall group, they found that overconfident CEOs were 10-15% less likely than average to delegate responsibility.
The researchers also found that the relationship between overconfidence and delegation behavior varied quite a bit depending on the nature of the M&A.
“For example, when a firm was acquiring a company in an industry sector it was not previously involved in, overconfident CEOs were even less likely to delegate responsibility,” Smith says. “This is notable given that these deals involve unfamiliar industries, where outside expertise is more likely to be relevant.”
However, the most surprising result was also the most statistically powerful result.
“We found that the more segments—or business arms—the acquiring firm had, the less likely overconfident CEOs were to delegate responsibility,” says Smith.
“This is remarkable, because theory suggests that the more complex the CEO’s own information environment is, the more likely they are to benefit from getting outside expertise.
“It is important for leadership to be confident in their own abilities,” says Smith. “But our study suggests that executives who are overconfident are less likely to delegate responsibility to the people on their team—and that may affect the C-suite’s ability to navigate complex business situations.
“It would be interesting to see how this may be reflected in post-merger performance—that’s an area for future research.”
The paper appears in the Journal of Management Studies. Additional coauthors are from Indiana University and Clemson University.
Source: North Carolina State University
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Pancake-flipping robots could be just around the corner thanks to a new robot learning system.
Robots are increasingly learning new skills by watching people. From folding laundry to handling food, many real-world, humanlike tasks are too nuanced to be efficiently programmed step by step.
With imitation learning, humans demonstrate a task and robots learn to copy what they see through cameras and sensors. While at the leading edge of robotics research, this approach is limited by a major constraint: Robots can only work as fast as the people who taught them.
Now, researchers have created a tool that smashes that speed barrier. The system allows robots to execute complex tasks significantly faster than human demonstrations while maintaining precision, control, and safety.
The team addresses a central challenge in modern robotics: how to combine the flexibility of learning from humans with the speed and reliability required for real-world deployment. The technology could lead to wider adoption of imitation learning in industrial and household applications and even enable robots to execute humanlike tasks better than ever before.
“The thing we’re trying to create—and I would argue industry is also trying to create—is a general-purpose robot that can do any task that human hands can do,” says Shreyas Kousik, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and a co-lead author on the study. “To make that work outside the lab, speed really matters.”
The new tool is called SAIL (Speed Adaptation for Imitation Learning).
Teaching robots to work faster than the speed of human demonstrations is challenging. Robots can behave differently at higher speeds, and small changes in the environment can cause errors.
“The challenge is that a robot is limited to the data it was trained on, and any changes in the environment can cause it to fail,” Kousik says.
SAIL addresses this challenge through a modular approach, with separate components working together to accelerate beyond the training data. The system keeps motions smooth at high speed, tracks movements accurately, adjusts speed dynamically based on task complexity, and schedules actions to account for hardware delays. This combination allows robots to move quickly while staying stable, coordinated, and precise.
“One of the gaps we saw was that our academic robotics systems could do impressive things, but they weren’t fast or robust enough for practical use,” says Benjamin Joffe, senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. “We wanted to study that gap carefully and design a system that addressed it end to end.”
He adds, “The goal is not just to make robots faster, but to make them smart enough to know when speed helps and when it could cause mistakes.”
The team evaluated SAIL’s performance across 12 tasks, both in simulation and on two physical robot platforms. Tasks included stacking cups, folding cloth, plating fruit, packing food items, and wiping a whiteboard. In most cases, SAIL-enabled robots completed tasks three to four times faster than standard imitation-learning systems without losing accuracy.
One exception was the whiteboard-wiping task, where maintaining contact made high-speed execution difficult.
“Understanding where speed helps and where it hurts is critical,” Kousik says. “Sometimes slowing down is the right decision.”
While SAIL does not make robots universally adaptable on its own, it represents an important step toward robotic systems that can learn from humans without being constrained by human pace.
By showing how learned robotic behaviors can be accelerated safely and systematically, SAIL brings imitation learning closer to real-world use—where speed, precision, and reliability all matter.
The researchers presented their work at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL).
Funding for the work came from the State of Georgia and the Agricultural Technology Research Program at Georgia Tech.
Source: Georgia Tech
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Can a panic attack feel like a heart attack? Oftentimes, yes. Panic attacks are alarming because the symptoms can mirror a life-threatening heart attack.
“It can be frightening because both conditions can bring chest pain, rapid heartbeat, and shortness of breath, and you can’t be sure what is happening,” says Andrew Mathias of University of Rochester Medicine Cardiac Care.
That’s why it’s important to understand the differences between the two and when to seek appropriate medical care.
Panic attacks are sudden, intense episodes of fear or overwhelming anxiety that can peak within minutes. Although some call them anxiety attacks, panic attacks are different from generalized anxiety.
They occur in response to stress, fear, or a specific trigger, but they can also come unexpectedly. They are more common in individuals with anxiety disorders but can happen to anyone.
During a panic attack, you may feel:
Panic attacks are more common in individuals with anxiety disorders, but they can happen to anyone.
A heart attack (myocardial infarction) occurs when blood flow to a part of the heart muscle is blocked, usually by a blood clot. This blockage prevents oxygen from reaching the heart. Symptoms can vary, but commonly include:
Heart attacks are medical emergencies and require immediate treatment. If you suspect a heart attack, call 9-1-1 immediately.
The key differences between panic attacks and heart attacks are in the onset and duration of symptoms:
“If you’re an anxious person or you’ve had a panic attack before, sit down and take some deep breaths or do some calming exercises. If the symptoms ease, it may more likely be a panic attack,” Mathias says.
If you have chest pain that persists or worsens after several minutes despite calming techniques, it’s best to get care immediately.
Source: University of Rochester
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In recent years, a single federal judge has gained the power to halt policies across the entire United States.
From birthright citizenship to environmental policies, these sweeping rulings—known as universal or nationwide injunctions—have become one of the most powerful and controversial tools in the federal courts.
How did nationwide injunctions become such a central feature of modern constitutional battles? And should one judge really be able to block a policy for the entire country?
University of Chicago legal scholar Samuel Bray‘s research has helped spark a major rethinking of how courts use this remedy and whether it fits within the Constitution’s design.
In this episode of the Big Brains podcast, Bray explains the history and legal debate behind universal injunctions:
Source: University of Chicago
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Some generations—especially late Gen X and early Millennials—are already experiencing worse mortality than those before them, according to a new analysis.
Despite major advances in medicine, US life expectancy barely budged in the 2010s, and it still lags that of other wealthy nations.
Researchers have pointed to rising “deaths of despair”—drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related deaths—and stalled progress against heart disease as potential causes, but no single explanation seemed to account for this troubling trend.
In a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leah Abrams, an assistant professor of community health at Tufts University, and her collaborators from The University of Texas Medical Branch and several research European institutions examined death certificate data for US residents born between the 1890s and 1980s. The team analyzed changes in mortality from 1979 through 2023 across age groups and over time.
The researchers analyzed deaths from all causes and from three of the most common ones in the United States: cardiovascular disease, cancer, and so-called external causes, which include drug overdoses, suicides, homicides, and accidents. This allowed the researchers to see whether shortened life expectancy has a single driver or if multiple, overlapping crises are unfolding across generations.
The research reveals that some birth cohorts, particularly late Gen Xers and early Millennials, are already experiencing worse outcomes than their predecessors, including dying from diseases once rare in the young.
Here, Abrams digs into what the findings reveal about what we can learn from past decades of US mortality—and what they may signal for the country’s future:
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A new type of robotic hand developed has such sensitive touch that it can grasp objects as fragile as a potato chip or a raspberry without crushing them.
The technology, called Fragile Object Grasping with Tactile Sensing (FORTE), combines advanced tactile sensing with soft robotics.
The breakthrough could improve robot performance when a light touch is needed, such as in health care and manufacturing.
“Right now, robotics is starting to be able to do large motions around the house, but struggles with really fine and delicate movements,” says Siqi Shang, lead author of a new paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and a doctoral student in the the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering’s electrical and computer engineering department.
“Robots can fold a shirt but may struggle to carefully pick up your glasses or unpack fruit from your groceries. We believe sensing signals will give robots a sense of touch to handle these objects carefully.”
The fingers at the heart of this technology were inspired by the fin-ray effect—a design principle derived from the natural structure of fish fins. These fingers are made using advanced 3D-printing techniques and feature internal, empty air channels that act as tactile sensors. The researchers recently applied the sensing technology to a year-long collaboration with the College of Fine Arts’ theatre and dance department.
When the fingers prepare to grasp an object, the air channels inside them also shift, causing changes in air pressure. These pressure changes are detected by small, off-the-shelf sensors that provide real-time force feedback to the robot and let it know whether the object is slipping.
The researchers tested the grippers on 31 objects, including fragile items such as raspberries and potato chips, slippery items such as jam jars and billiard balls, and everyday items such as soup cans and apples.
The system achieved a 91.9% success rate in single-trial grasping experiments, outperforming traditional grippers that rely solely on visual feedback.
The system recognized 93% of slips with 100% precision, meaning it never falsely identified a slip event. This high level of precision ensures that the robot adjusts its grip only when necessary, avoiding excessive force that could damage an object.
“Humans pick up objects with just the right amount of force; too much and you’ll crush it, but too little and it’ll slip out of your hand,” says Lillian Chin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UT.
“Most current force sensors aren’t fast or accurate enough to provide that Goldilocks level of detail. In particular, our sensors operate closer to the timescales of human hand sensors.”
In addition to speed and accuracy, these fingers have a longer lifespan than other devices under development. Because the sensors are 3D printed, they can be easily customized to a variety of shapes.
The slip-sensing ability is what really distinguishes them. Very few robotic gripping technologies have slip detection at all, and those that do can’t match FORTE’s reaction time and speed.
FORTE is a significant milestone in the quest to create robot hands with dexterity similar to that of humans, and it could affect many industries:
The researchers have publicly released the hardware designs and algorithms to encourage other scientists and engineers to build upon their work. They’re still fine-tuning the technology, and the next steps include making the sensors less sensitive to temperature changes and improving the ability to catch objects that are slipping.
Support for the research came from the Texas Robotics Industrial Affiliate Program, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the DARPA TIAMAT program, and South Korea’s Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation.
Source: UT Austin
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