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Winter brings more than just ugly sweaters – here’s how the season can affect your mind and behavior

Short winter days can influence your brain chemistry. Schon/Moment via Getty Images

Michael Varnum, Arizona State University and Ian Hohm, University of British Columbia

What comes to mind when you think about winter? Snowflakes? Mittens? Reindeer? In much of the Northern Hemisphere, winter means colder temperatures, shorter days and year-end holidays.

Along with these changes, a growing body of research in psychology and related fields suggests that winter also brings some profound changes in how people think, feel and behave.

While it’s one thing to identify seasonal tendencies in the population, it’s much trickier to try to untangle why they exist. Some of winter’s effects have been tied to cultural norms and practices, while others likely reflect our bodies’ innate biological responses to changing meteorological and ecological conditions. The natural and cultural changes that come with winter often occur simultaneously, making it challenging to tease apart the causes underlying these seasonal swings.

With our colleagues Alexandra Wormley and Mark Schaller, we recently conducted an extensive survey of these findings.

Wintertime blues and a long winter’s nap

Do you find yourself feeling down in the winter months? You’re not alone. As the days grow shorter, the American Psychiatric Association estimates that about 5% of Americans will experience a form of depression known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD.

People experiencing SAD tend to have feelings of hopelessness, decreased motivation to take part in activities they generally enjoy, and lethargy. Even those who don’t meet the clinical threshold for this disorder may see increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms; in fact, some estimates suggest more than 40% of Americans experience these symptoms to some degree in the winter months.

Scientists link SAD and more general increases in depression in the winter to decreased exposure to sunlight, which leads to lower levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Consistent with the idea that sunlight plays a key role, SAD tends to be more common in more northern regions of the world, like Scandinavia and Alaska, where the days are shortest and the winters longest.

Humans, special as we may be, are not unique in showing some of these seasonally linked changes. For instance, our primate relative the Rhesus macaque shows seasonal declines in mood.

man lying in bed in a room with dim daylight
It can feel hard to get out of bed on dark mornings. Lighthouse Films/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Some scientists have noted that SAD shows many parallels to hibernation – the long snooze during which brown bears, ground squirrels and many other species turn down their metabolism and skip out on the worst of winter. Seasonal affective disorder may have its roots in adaptations that conserve energy at a time of year when food was typically scarce and when lower temperatures pose greater energetic demands on the body.

Winter is well known as a time of year when many people put on a few extra pounds. Research suggests that diets are at their worst, and waistlines at their largest, during the winter. In fact, a recent review of studies on this topic found that average weight gains around the holiday season are around 1 to 3 pounds (0.5 to 1.3 kilograms), though those who are overweight or obese tend to gain more.

There’s likely more going on with year-end weight gain than just overindulgence in abundant holiday treats. In our ancestral past, in many places, winter meant that food became more scarce. Wintertime reductions in exercise and increases in how much and what people eat may have been an evolutionary adaptation to this scarcity. If the ancestors who had these reactions to colder, winter environments were at an advantage, evolutionary processes would make sure the adaptations were passed on to their descendants, coded into our genes.

Sex, generosity and focus

Beyond these winter-related shifts in mood and waistlines, the season brings with it a number of other changes in how people think and interact with others.

One less discussed seasonal effect is that people seem to get friskier in the winter months. Researchers know this from analyses of condom sales, sexually transmitted disease rates and internet searches for pornography and prostitution, all of which show biannual cycles, peaking in the late summer and then in the winter months. Data on birth rates also shows that in the United States and other countries in the Northern Hemisphere, babies are more likely to be conceived in the winter months than at other times of the year.

woman with hand on man's shoulder at a holiday gathering
There’s more to a holiday bump in romance than just opportunity. RgStudio/E+ via Getty Images

Although this phenomenon is widely observed, the reason for its existence is unclear. Researchers have suggested many explanations, including health advantages for infants born in late summer, when food may historically have been more plentiful, changes in sex hormones altering libido, desires for intimacy motivated by the holiday season, and simply increased opportunities to engage in sex. However, changes in sexual opportunities are likely not the whole story, given that winter brings not just increased sexual behaviors, but greater desire and interest in sex as well.

Winter boosts more than sex drive. Studies find that during this time of year, people may have an easier time paying attention at school or work. Neuroscientists in Belgium found that performance on tasks measuring sustained attention was best during the wintertime. Research suggests that seasonal changes in levels of serotonin and dopamine driven by less exposure to daylight may help explain shifts in cognitive function during winter. Again, there are parallels with other animals – for instance, African striped mice navigate mazes better during winter.

And there may also be a kernel of truth to the idea of a generous Christmas spirit. In countries where the holiday is widely celebrated, rates of charitable giving tend to show a sizable increase around this time of year. And people become more generous tippers, leaving about 4% more for waitstaff during the holiday season. This tendency is likely not due to snowy surroundings or darker days, but instead a response to the altruistic values associated with winter holidays that encourage behaviors like generosity.

People change with the seasons

Like many other animals, we too are seasonal creatures. In the winter, people eat more, move less and mate more. You may feel a bit more glum, while also being kinder to others and having an easier time paying attention. As psychologists and other scientists research these kinds of seasonal effects, it may turn out that the ones we know about so far are only the tip of the iceberg.The Conversation

Michael Varnum, Associate Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University and Ian Hohm, Graduate Student of Psychology, University of British Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.



Axel Foley is BACK in First Trailer for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Detective (Eddie Murphy) is back on the beat in Beverly Hills. After his daughter’s life is threatened, she (Taylour Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.

From Producers Jerry Bruckheimer, Eddie Murphy, Chad Oman, and Director Mark Molloy.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Only on Netflix, Summer 2024.

[Netflix on Youtube]

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Nonalcoholic beer: New techniques craft flavorful brews without the buzz

Brewers today are delivering nonalcoholic beers that are a far cry from the sweet, watery options of the past. Pramote Polyamate/Moment via Getty Images

Clark Da​nderson, Auburn University

The holiday season for me includes socializing over drinks with friends and family. But all the celebrating tends to catch up with my waistline, and by New Year’s Day, it’s time to get back in shape. Besides vowing to hit the gym more, my approach involves a “Dry January.” But as someone who teaches brewing science, spends a lot of time around breweries and bars, and thoroughly loves beer, abstaining is no easy task.

Thankfully, I can still enjoy beer while cutting back on my alcohol intake and calories by switching to nonalcoholic beers.

To some people, nonalcoholic beer sounds like an oxymoron, but newer techniques are producing tasty, high-quality options in this growing beverage category.

A nonalcoholic beer is usually a malt beverage that is more than 0.0% and less than 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV). Producing a beer this low in alcohol requires the brewer to use practices and equipment uncommon to the general brewing process and to consider additional food safety precautions.

Brewing regular beer

Regular beer has four main ingredients: malted barley, hops, yeast and water.

When brewing beer, brewers extract sugars from malted barley – barley grains that have been partially germinated and then dried to make available the starches in the grain and enzymes that break them down. The malted barley then goes into the mash. That’s where the enzymes in the grain wake up and get to work breaking down the starches into smaller sugars. This step results in a sweet wort.

The brewer then boils the sweet wort and adds hops to provide bitterness, aroma and flavors. The hopped wort is then cooled and transferred to fermentation vessels where the brewer adds yeast. The yeast breaks down the sugars in the wort, releasing carbon dioxide and ethanol. Ethanol is the alcohol that makes beer “alcoholic.”

At this point we have beer. Beer’s alcohol by volume ranges from 3% to 13%, with most styles falling between 4% and 7%.

The challenge of removing alcohol

Some of the more traditional approaches to making nonalcoholic beer are skipping the fermentation step or diluting a regular beer. These techniques can produce beers that are too sweet or one-note, lacking in flavor characters that come from fermentation. Advances in two alternative techniques – controlled fermentation and de-alcholization – have led to improved nonalcoholic beer quality.

Controlling fermentation involves using either low temperatures to limit yeast activity, strains of yeast that are unable to break down certain sugars, or wort that is less fermentable. Remember, it’s the living yeast cells that add alcohol to the mix as they digest sugars in the wort. By keeping yeast from doing its thing, brewers prevent the typical amount of alcohol from getting into the beer in the first place.

Alternatively, there are a few common techniques to de-alcoholize regular-strength beer.

Both steam distillation and vacuum distillation separate out the ethanol by heating the beer. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so it gets removed as steam while the water portion of the beer is left behind. One problem with steam distillation is that it also takes out volatile aroma molecules and give the beer a cooked flavor. Vacuum distillation, however, significantly lowers the temperature needed to evaporate ethanol. The gentler temperatures help the nonalcoholic beer retain aroma and minimize the impacts on flavor.

Membrane filtration usually relies on reverse osmosis. This process uses filters with small pores that allow alcohol and water molecules to pass through, but not the larger molecules – like sugars, hops acids and oils, and proteins – that provide flavor, aroma and body in the beer. Rather than the liquid flowing through the membrane head-on, reverse osmosis uses cross-flow filtration. The liquids flow parallel to the filter surface.

The brewer establishes a pressure differential so the side where the beer starts is at higher pressure than the other side of the filter. This pressure pushes the alcohol and water molecules through the membrane pores. The filtration process results in two liquid streams being collected: a concentrated syrupy beer liquid and an alcohol-water mix. The final step is adding water back to the beer concentrate.

Of the de-alcoholization options, most beer lovers agree that vacuum distillation and reverse osmosis produce the best results.

Challenges for brewing nonalcoholic beer

These techniques often require additional brewing equipment that can be cost prohibitive to many smaller craft breweries.

One significant downside associated with the production of nonalcoholic beer is that removal of alcohol creates a product that is not as shelf-stable. Alcohol normally acts as a preservative – without it, the beer can be vulnerable to contamination by microbes that are dangerous or spoil the beer. Because some of the common methods to produce nonalcoholic beers can use less hops, produce beer with more sugars and increase pH, the resulting product can be even more susceptible to bacterial growth.

Brewers need to take additional steps such as pasteurization, sterile filtration or the addition of preservatives to make nonalcoholic beer safe.

Nonalcoholic beer is a growth market

Regardless of the challenges and costs to produce safe nonalcoholic beer, the market is growing steadily. While nonalcoholic sales in the U.S. are comparatively small, currently representing around 2% of total sales, they experienced 31% average growth over the past four years even as other alcoholic beverage market segments languished. In other global markets, nonalcoholic sales have performed even better.

A few factors explain greater interest in nonalcoholic beers.

First, there’s been a steady decline in alcohol consumption among younger generations, along with a trend toward adopting more healthy lifestyles.

Second, nonalcoholic products have been successfully marketed not only to nondrinkers but to regular beer consumers. Regular beer drinkers who enjoy the taste of beer and not the intoxicating aspect, like me, can guiltlessly enjoy a nonalcoholic beer, even during the workday. Marketing campaigns have also focused on nonalcoholic beer being a lower calorie alternative since it doesn’t contain calorie-dense alcohol.

It also doesn’t hurt that the quality of nonalcoholic beer has significantly improved since its early days. Nonalcoholic today is not the watery, overly sweet or one-note product that it was in the past. Many recent technological advances in production help nonalcoholic beer maintain fermentation characteristics derived from the malts, hops and yeast, thus providing a more balanced and pleasant product that tastes like “real” beer.The Conversation

Clark Da​nderson, Assistant Professor of Hospitality Management and Director of Brewing Science and Operations, Auburn University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.