mal099

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 50 points 9 months ago (1 children)

sci-hub doesn't get new research papers any more, and the new alternatives are all much less user friendly. As far as I can tell, wosonhj.com is what's currently recommended, where you have to post in a forum and wait for either a bot or a human to send the paper to you. Other alternatives, like annas-archive, nexusbot or STC all didn't have the paper I was looking for.
I just want old sci-hub back, honestly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I used the Video DownloadHelper plugin for Firefox, the same plugin exists for Chrome too and should work. I'm sure you can find some websites that let you simply paste the URL too and download the files that way, if you don't want to download a plugin.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Here's the study, for anyone who wants to read it. It's surprisingly short and open access.
A few things:
The participants took Wasabi supplements once a day for 12 weeks, not just normal Wasabi. In each pill, there was 0.8 mg of the active compound (6-MSITC). Quick googling gave me the following for the level of that compound in actual Wasabi:

Another study determined ~550-556 μg/g of 6-MSITC in wet weight of wasabi root [10] . The present study observed a concentration of 120-150 μg/g wet weight of 6-MSITC in stem and rhizome blend.

In other words, you could actually also get the same amount of 6-MSITC that was in the supplements by eating a few grams of regular wasabi each day, assuming that the processed stuff still has similar levels. The abstract provides a reasonable summary of the study, and of the fact that it agrees largely with some previous science on the subject (although there's not a lot, two studies in small journals):

Cognitive functions decline with age. Declined cognitive functions negatively affect daily behaviors. Previous studies showed the positive effect of spices and herbs on cognition. In this study, we investigated the positive impact of wasabi, which is a traditional Japanese spice, on cognitive functions. The main bioactive compound of wasabi is 6-MSITC (6 methylsulfinyl hexyl isothiocyanate), which has anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory functions. Anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories have an important role in cognitive health. Therefore, 6-MSITC is expected to have positive effects on cognitive function. Previous studies showed the beneficial effects on cognitive functions in middle-aged adults. However, it is unclear that 6-MSITC has a positive effect on cognitive functions in healthy older adults aged 60 years and over. Here, we investigated whether 12 weeks’ 6-MSITC intervention enhances cognitive performance in older adults using a double-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT). Methods: Seventy-two older adults were randomly assigned to 6-MSITC or placebo groups. Participants were asked to take a supplement (6-MSITC or a placebo) for 12 weeks. We checked a wide range of cognitive performances (e.g., executive function, episodic memory, processing speed, working memory, and attention) at the pre- and post-intervention periods. Results: The 6-MSITC group showed a significant improvement in working and episodic memory performances compared to the placebo group. However, we did not find any significant improvements in other cognitive domains. Discussion: This study firstly demonstrates scientific evidence that 6-MSITC may enhance working memory and episodic memory in older adults. We discuss the potential mechanism for improving cognitive functions after 6-MSITC intake.

They tested the study participants once before and once after the 12 weeks of daily wasabi supplements. The participants were not tested for any long term cognitive effects.

As someone else has pointed out here in the comments, the study does list a Wasabi company as one of the sources of funding:

Funding
This study was founded[sic] by KINJIRUSHI Co., Ltd. and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (19H01760, 22H01088).
Conflicts of Interest
This study was supported by KINJIRUSHI Co., Ltd. The funding body had no role in the design of the study, collection, analyses, or interpretation of the data, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to publish the results.

Also, I don't want to poison the well too much, but I feel like I should mention that the editorial board of the journal resigned in 2018 because the publishers "pressured them to accept manuscripts of mediocre quality and importance". Doesn't mean it's all bad, but it's a very early study and more research should be done.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I believe this is the entire first season for streaming:
https://www.avf2.cn/index.php/vod/play/id/485708/sid/1/nid/1.html
You may have to wait a few minutes for the video to start, but it did play for me eventually.
Edit: Only 11 out of 14 episodes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Got a point there, but it's what the sources say. One possibility might be that it's the teenagers that got scammed (or even just filing the complaint?), but their parents' accounts that got emptied. This part of the report is unfortunately really lacking in detailed descriptions of the data.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The headline is pretty misleading. Reading the headline, I was imagining Nigerian Prince scams. But in the article, they state "Compared to older generations, younger generations have reported higher rates of victimization in phishing, identity theft, romance scams, and cyberbullying."
Teens get bullied more than the elderly? Say it ain't so!
While GenZ is, according to their source, also the generation with the highest percentage of victims if phishing scams, it's actually millenials that fall for identity theft and romance scams the most.

The article also states that the "cost of falling for those scams may also be surging for younger people: Social Catfish’s 2023 report on online scams found that online scam victims under 20 years old lost an estimated $8.2 million in 2017. In 2022, they lost $210 million."
The source for Social Catfish's claim is data released in 2023 by the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. According to that data, in 2022, there were 15,782 complaints for internet crime by victims under 20 totaling $210.5 million in losses. In the same year, there were 88,262 complaints by victims over 60, totaling $3.1 billion in losses.

Every generation since the beginning of times has claimed that the following generation was rude, stupid, and stopped doing things the "right way" like we used to do in the good old days. It has always been bullshit, it will always be bullshit. Stop stressing, the kids are alright.