月份: 2022 年 8 月

Seven hours may be the ideal amount of time for people in middle and old age to sleep, new research suggests.

In a study from the University of Cambridge and China’s Fudan University, nearly 500,000 British adults between the ages of 38 and 73 completed surveys about their sleep. Many also completed cognitive tests, and about a third completed a survey on their mental health and well-being.

The results showed that participants who said they slept an average of about seven hours a day did best in the cognitive tests, had the lowest symptoms of anxiety and depression, and had the highest feelings of well-being.

Even those who slept more than seven hours did not do as well as those who slept seven. “For every hour that you moved away from seven hours you got worse,” study co-author Barbara Sahakian told The Guardian.

Brain scans done on almost 40,000 participants showed that the areas of the brain most affected by sleep included the memory center.

However, Sahakian said the researchers are not yet sure why too much sleep could have a negative effect, although one idea was that people might spend longer in bed if they sleep poorly and wake up a lot.

However, Russell Foster, a sleep expert at the University of Oxford who did not take part in the study, disagreed with the results, telling CNN that the ideal amount of sleep is different for everyone, and that “one size does not fit all.”

Sahakian said that getting a good night’s sleep is important for people of all ages, adding, “I think it is as important as getting exercise.”

Russian authorities have charged former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova with spreading false information about Russia’s armed forces, according to her lawyer.

The charge was over a street protest in July 2022, during which Ovsyannikova held a sign that said “Putin is a killer, his soldiers are fascists. (法西斯主義) 352 children have been killed [in Ukraine]. How many more children should die for you to stop?”

If convicted, Ovsyannikova faces up to 10 years in prison under a new law that punishes statements made against the military. The law was made shortly after Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine, her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, said in a Telegram post.

Ovsyannikova made international headlines on March 14, 2022, when she appeared behind the presenter of an evening news show holding a sign that said, “Stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here.”

She was charged with disparaging the Russian military and fined about $270 at the time.

She quit her job afterwards and became something of an anti-war activist by speaking out publicly against the conflict.

She was fined two more times in recent weeks for disparaging the military in a Facebook post and for comments she made in court.

According to Net Freedoms, a legal aid group focusing on free speech cases, as of August 10 there were 79 criminal cases on charges of spreading false information about the military and up to 4,000 non-judicial cases on charges of disparaging the armed forces.

Independent journalists have come under面臨 particular Kremlin scrutiny 審查. Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta was fined $5,700 August 10 for “abusing濫用 the freedom of mass information.” It was unclear what the newspaper was accused of doing wrong.

Since Putin came to power more than two decades ago, nearly two dozen journalists have been killed in Russia.