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suggest that some stimulants may actually have an opposite effect for people who naturally favour the difficult tasks of life that come with greater rewards

found that rats – like humans – show varying levels of willingness to expend high or low degrees of mental effort to obtain food rewards.

with stimulants, the “slacker” rats that typically avoided challenges worked significantly harder when given amphetamines

worker” rats that typically embraced challenges were less motivated by caffeine or amphetamine

essentially acts the same as a breath strip, sticking to your mouth and dissolving in your saliva

researchers, who are now based at the University of New Mexico

currently working on a strip to treat more severe burns that last two to three days

For slacker rats, amphetamine sharpened the mental work ethic, making the animals more likely to choose the harder task.

can’t yet explain why stimulants would cause workers to choose the easier task

One possibility is that hard workers are already performing optimally, so anything that swings the system out of whack, such as stimulants, could cause a net decrease in productivity.

sugar molecules, known as glycolaldehyde, have previously been detected in interstellar space

according to the researchers, this is the first time they have been spotted so close to a sun-like star

the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun.

glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee

found the sugar molecules using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile

we're capable of doing extremely complicated things without knowing explicitly what we are doing

The researchers recruited 100 university students and members from the surrounding community to participate in an experiment

The participants completed a short typing test

Then, they were shown a blank QWERTY keyboard and given 80 seconds to write the letters in the correct location

On average, they typed 72 words per minute, moving their fingers to the correct keys six times per second with 94 percent accuracy

By contrast, they could accurately place an average of only 15 letters on a blank keyboard.

The fact that the typists did so poorly at identifying the position of specific keys didn't come as a surprise

For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of automatism: the ability to perform actions without conscious thought or intention

Automatic behaviors of this type are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to making coffee to factory assembly-line work to riding a bicycle and driving a car

What did come as a surprise, however, was evidence that conflicts with the basic theory of automatic learning which holds that it starts out as a conscious process and gradually becomes unconscious with repetition

According to the widely held theory, when you perform a new task or the first time, you are conscious of each action and store the details in working memory

Then, as you repeat the task, it becomes increasingly automatic

This allows you to think about other things while you performing the task but your conscious recollection of the details gradually fades away

researchers were surprised when they found evidence that the typists never appear to memorize the key positions, not even when they are first learning to type.

Evidence for this conclusion came from another experiment included in the study

The researchers recruited 24 typists who were skilled on the QWERTY keyboard and had them learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard, which places keys in different locations.

After the participants developed a reasonable proficiency with the alternative keyboard, they were asked to identify the placement of the keys on a blank Dvorak keyboard

On average, they could locate only 17 letters correctly, comparable to participants' performance with the QWERTY keyboard.

According to the researchers, the lack of explicit knowledge of the keyboard may be due to the fact that computers and keyboards have become so ubiquitous that students learn how to use them in an informal, trial-and-error fashion when they are very young