Casinos stay open all night for a reason

Question: Why do casinos stay open all night? Are there sound neuroscientific reasons for this?

Answer: You can bet on it. Evidence shows that sleep enhances memory, even just a brief nap of six minutes, says John Whitfield in Scientific American magazine.

A sleeping brain is not just on standby but runs through a complex suite of activities, such as "moving" short-term memories from the hippocampus over to the cortex for more durable storage. Thus slumbering helps the brain juggle new information, extracting the gist of it and combining it with the day's emotions.

This "executive thinking" is especially impaired by sleep loss as people become more mentally blinkered, less able to deal with novelty and to evaluate risk. Says sleep researcher Jim Horne of Loughborough University in England, "This of course is bad news for medics, shift workers, military commanders, and perhaps explains why casinos stay open at night."

Question: Plato takes his friend Aristotle, who has a strong philosophical streak, down to the waterfront to show off his new yacht. He's beaming with pride, but Aristotle one-ups him with, "Plato, I thought your new yacht was bigger than it is." How does Plato cleverly one-up his one-upper?

Answer: "No, Ari," he answers, "my yacht is not larger than it is. And I don't know many things in this world that could be. If you really find something bigger than itself, I'd love to see it!" (From British philosopher Bertrand Russell, author of "On Denoting")

Question: What's perhaps the most famous sci-fi movie prediction to actually come true?

Answer: It's more a "carryover" than a prophecy, as the classic backward countdown of "10 ... nine ... eight ..." as used by NASA before a spacecraft blasts off, first appeared in Fritz Lang's 1929 silent movie "Frau im Mond" ("Woman in the Moon"), says Sidney Perkowitz in "Hollywood Science." The cinematic spinoff then led to this dramatic pre-launch ritual finding its way deep into the culture of space travel.

For more examples, visit the Web site Technovelgy.com and scan its lists of more than 1,000 inventions and ideas predicted in science fiction stories. "Many have come to pass, not because science fiction writers are clairvoyant but because they extrapolate the scientific and social currents of their time."