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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Mindy Millard-StaffordDehydration can impair your ability to think clearly, a new study suggests. Researchers found that athletes who lost fluid equal to 2% their weight took a hit to their cognition. Even this mild to moderate level of dehydration - the loss of 2 pounds for someone who weighs 100 pounds and four pounds for someone weighing 200 - led to attention problems and impaired decision making, according to the report in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. In particular, dehydration led to impairment in tasks requiring attention, motor coordination, and so-called executive function, which includes things like map recognition, grammatical reasoning, mental math, and proofreading, for example. “We’ve known that physical performance suffers at a threshold of 2% of body mass, particularly when it’s from exercise in a warm environment,” said study coauthor Mindy Millard-Stafford, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the physiology lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
