Sunday, 30 June 2019

Scientists achieve teleportation breakthrough

  • Scientists figure out how to teleport information within a diamond.
  • The study took advantage of defects in the diamond’s structure.
  • The achievement has implications for quantum computing.

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Scientists from the Yokohama National University in Japan achieved the feat of teleporting quantum information within a diamond. Their study is an important step in the field of quantum information technology.

Hideo Kosaka, a professor of engineering at Yokohama National University, led the study. He explained that the goal was to get data where it doesn’t normally go

“Quantum teleportation permits the transfer of quantum information into an otherwise inaccessible space,” shared Kosaka. “It also permits the transfer of information into a quantum memory without revealing or destroying the stored quantum information.”

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The “inaccessible space” explored in the study was the lattice of carbon atoms in a diamond. The strength of the structure stems from the diamond’s organization that has six protons and six neutrons in the nucleus, with six spinning electrons around it. As they bond to the diamond, the atoms form a super-strong lattice.

For their experiments, Kosaka and his team focused on defects that sometimes arise in diamonds, when a nitrogen atom appears in vacancies that would ordinarily house carbon atoms.

Kosaka’s team manipulated an electron and a carbon isotope in such a vacancy by running a microwave and a radio wave into the diamond via a very thin wire – one fourth the width of a human hair. The wire was attached to the diamond, creating an oscillating magnetic field.

The scientists controlled the microwaves sent to the diamond to transfer information within it. In particular, they employed a nitrogen nano magnet to transfer the polarization state of a photon to a carbon atom, effectively achieving teleportation.

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“The success of the photon storage in the other node establishes the entanglement between two adjacent nodes,” Kosaka said, adding that their “ultimate goal” was to figure out how to make use of such processes “for large-scale quantum computation and metrology.”

The accomplishment could prove vital in the quest for new ways to store and share sensitive information, with previous studies showing diamonds could house giant amounts of encrypted data.

Kosaka’s team also included Kazuya Tsurumoto, Ryota Kuroiwa, Hiroki Kano, and Yuhei Sekiguchi.

You can find their study published in Communications Physics.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/scientists-achieve-teleportation-breakthrough/

Scientists teleport quantum information in a diamond

  • Scientists figure out how to teleport information within a diamond.
  • The study took advantage of defects in the diamond’s structure.
  • The achievement has implications for quantum computing.

None

Scientists from the Yokohama National University in Japan achieved the feat of teleporting quantum information within a diamond. Their study is an important step in the field of quantum information technology.

Hideo Kosaka, a professor of engineering at Yokohama National University, led the study. He explained that the goal was to get data where it doesn’t normally go

“Quantum teleportation permits the transfer of quantum information into an otherwise inaccessible space,” shared Kosaka. “It also permits the transfer of information into a quantum memory without revealing or destroying the stored quantum information.”

None

The “inaccessible space” explored in the study was the lattice of carbon atoms in a diamond. The strength of the structure stems from the diamond’s organization that has six protons and six neutrons in the nucleus, with six spinning electrons around it. As they bond to the diamond, the atoms form a super-strong lattice.

For their experiments, Kosaka and his team focused on defects that sometimes arise in diamonds, when a nitrogen atom appears in vacancies that would ordinarily house carbon atoms.

Kosaka’s team manipulated an electron and a carbon isotope in such a vacancy by running a microwave and a radio wave into the diamond via a very thin wire – one fourth the width of a human hair. The wire was attached to the diamond, creating an oscillating magnetic field.

The scientists controlled the microwaves sent to the diamond to transfer information within it. In particular, they employed a nitrogen nano magnet to transfer the polarization state of a photon to a carbon atom, effectively achieving teleportation.

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“The success of the photon storage in the other node establishes the entanglement between two adjacent nodes,” Kosaka said, adding that their “ultimate goal” was to figure out how to make use of such processes “for large-scale quantum computation and metrology.”

The accomplishment could prove vital in the quest for new ways to store and share sensitive information, with previous studies showing diamonds could house giant amounts of encrypted data.

Kosaka’s team also included Kazuya Tsurumoto, Ryota Kuroiwa, Hiroki Kano, and Yuhei Sekiguchi.

You can find their study published in Communications Physics.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/scientists-teleport-quantum-information-in-a-diamond/

Space miners race to an asteroid worth quintillions

  • 16 Psyche is an asteroid full of metal in the asteroid belt that could be worth $700 quintillion.
  • NASA plans to visit 16 Psyche by 2026.
  • Commercial mining of faraway asteroids could still be decades away and some set closer targets, like the moon.

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Would you like to be a billionaire? All you have to do is figure out how to go into space and mine 16 Psyche, an asteroid made of gold and other metals like iron and nickel. Flying somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, this amazing space rock is estimated to be worth as much as $700 quintillion, thanks to all the metals it contains.

Quintillion, if you are wondering, is 1 with 18 zeroes. It’s such a large amount of money that if you divide it up between everyone alive on Earth currently, each person would get about $93 billion.

Of course, don’t pack your bags for your new palace just yet – the prospect of actually getting such a giant chunk of precious metals back to Earth is difficult and hasn’t been accomplished yet even on much smaller scales. And 16 Psyche is a truly massive space rock at over 200 km (120 mi) in diameter. It is one of the largest asteroids flying in the asteroid belt.

Experts, like Professor Zarnecki of the Royal Astronomical Society, conjecture we may be up to 50 years away from being able to carry out commercial mining operations of that size. To start things off, NASA is planning to send a Discovery Mission to the asteroid in 2022, which will arrive there by 2026.

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Some skeptics also don’t believe the asteroid is as full of expensive things as we think, with Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital tweeting that 16 Psyche may just be “made almost entirely of an iron-nickel alloy, with small amounts of other metals, likely to include gold.” He thinks the news about the asteroid are just out there to help bitcoin, which would benefit from the price of gold going down.

There are also other questions to consider – if it really is so full of gold and other riches, the asteroid could actually crash Earth’s economy, which at $75.5 trillion is a pittance against the amount of money one could get from the asteroid.

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Veteran miner Scott Moore, CEO of the mining company EuroSun Mining, explained to Oil Price that: “The ‘Titans of Gold’ now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world, but the 4-5 million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space.”

Of course, the thinking that a space gold rush that discovers a vast amount of heavy metals could bring down Earth’s affairs is based on the current state of economy and the needs of the present day. Decades from now our requirements for metal might be entirely different.

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16 Psyche was actually discovered back in 1852 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, and named after the Greek mythological character Psyche.

Besides this giant rock in the asteroid belt, there are other mining opportunities much closer to Earth. Moore points out that while Psyche “may be the Holy Grail of space exploration for gold,” near-Earth asteroids are much better first targets for mining. Even our moon might be a better place to start such operations. It also has gold as well as platinum and other rare earth metals.

In other nearer goals, Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources each plan to mine the 2011 UW158 asteroid, worth up to $5.7 trillion.

Lest you think this is all science fiction, Morgan Stanley projects the global space economy to be already worth $350 billion, which it thinks will grow to trillions by 2040. The race is on between the U.S., China, Japan and even small Luxembourg, which has 10 space-mining companies registered.

Why is NASA sending a spacecraft to a metal world? – Linda T. Elkins-Tanton



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/space-miners-race-to-an-asteroid-worth-quintillions/

God is not a man with a beard on a throne in the clouds



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/god-is-not-a-man-with-a-beard-on-a-throne-in-the-clouds/

Animals do have memories, and can help us crack Alzheimer’s

For almost as long as modern science has been around, the idea that animals can remember past experiences seemed so preposterous that few researchers bothered to study it.


Surely only humans, with our big, sophisticated brains, could be capable of ‘episodic’ memories – recalling a trip to the grocery store last Saturday, for example. Animals, in their constant striving for survival, as the popular thinking went, must live in the now, and only in the now. Using our own cognitive superpowers, we now know that we were spectacularly mistaken – and a memory champ from the animal world might even help us improve how we treat Alzheimer’s disease.

The view of animals as primitive beings void of memories and living only in the present had its roots in a 400-year-old idea still often taught and debated in introductory Philosophy classes. ‘They eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it; they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing,’ wrote Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a French priest and philosopher. Malebranche was poetically summarising the ideas of RenĂ© Descartes (1596-1650), the father of modern Western philosophy and perhaps the most famous person to devalue animals, seeing them as lacking souls and therefore nothing more than mechanical ‘automata’.

As science has learned more about the capabilities of animals, that assumption has become impossible to justify. Beginning in the 1980s, studies confirmed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that animals are capable of what’s called procedural memory – a type of long-term memory that aids in performing motor skills such as running or climbing. But what about episodic memory, the ability to perform mental time-travel, returning to a past event and replaying it in the mind? The psychologist Endel Tulving in Canada, who defined episodic memory in 1972, popularised the view that such mental feats were beyond creatures other than us. Where was the evidence, he said, that the hippocampus of other species – the part of the brain where episodic memories are kept and retrieved – could capture memories like our own?

Undeterred, a small but persistent group of researchers kept at this question of whether animals are capable of episodic memory. Maybe we just haven’t figured out the right way to test for it, they thought – a difficult challenge to surmount given that animals can’t just tell us about their inner lives. Now, having come up with some sneaky new ways to investigate animal memory, scientists are closer than ever to answering that question once and for all. In the past decade, researchers studying animals from the far corners of the animal kingdom – western scrub-jays, dolphins, elephants, even dogs – have come to the same conclusion: at least some animals are capable of these human-like memories of past experience. ‘For a long time, people thought that nonhuman animals were not capable of forming episodic memories,’ Jonathon Crystal, a neuroscientist at the Indiana University, told me. ‘That default view is not correct.’

The accretion of evidence was enough to convert a former skeptic, the psychologist Michael Corballis at the University of Auckland. In 2012, he wrote in Trends in Cognitive Sciences that it was ‘highly likely from an evolutionary perspective’ that mental time travel was not unique to humans. After all, humans evolved from other mammals, so where did we get episodic memory if not from our nonhuman ancestors? Is it really so far-fetched that humans and rats can both remember what trail leads to the apple orchard, and the last time they were there?

Some of the most persuasive evidence to date of animals reliving the past comes from Crystal’s own studies of episodic memories in rats. Previous studies tended to test limited aspects of episodic memory, such as where and when something occurred, but few had explored the most important one: whether the animal could replay those past experiences in its mind, from start to finish. To investigate rat recall, Crystal and his PhD student Danielle Panoz-Brown conducted a clever study in 2018. First, they trained 13 rats to memorise 12 odours. They built a special rat ‘arena’ with 12 stops, numbered 1 to 12, each scented with a different odour. When the rat identified the odour in a particular stop on the route, such as second-to-last or fourth-to-last, it received a reward. Then the researchers changed the number of odours and watched to see if the training had taken hold: would the rats identify the second-to-last and fourth-to-last odour in the sequence, even if the number of odours was different? This ensured that the rats were identifying the odours according to their position in the sequence, not just by scent. ‘We wanted to know if the animals can remember a lot of items and the order in which those items occur,’ Crystal said.

After a year of these tests, the team found that the rats aced the task about 87 per cent of the time. Subsequent tests confirmed that their memories stuck with them, and withstood interference from other memories. What’s more, when the researchers temporarily dialled down the hippocampus, the rats performed poorly, further confirming that it was, indeed, episodic memory on which the rats had relied. Studies in dolphins by other researchers in 2018 showed that the hippocampus fired up when the animals were replaying a memory, confirming that it coordinates memory replay and further challenging Tulving’s view that the hippocampus in animals can’t handle episodic memories.

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The psychologist Scott Slotnick of Boston College, the author of Cognitive Neuroscience in Memory (2017), believes that episodic memory is far more common in the animal world, at least among mammals, than anyone thought. ‘Given that hippocampal sharp-wave ripples coordinate memory replay and have been observed in all mammals that have been tested, it can be concluded that all mammals have episodic memory,’ he wrote in a blog post in 2017.

This brave new paradigm of episodic memory in animals has implications that go far beyond our understanding of animals’ inner lives and behaviour. Rats’ impressive performance on memory tests means that they might have a lot to teach us about Alzheimer’s – including how to treat it more effectively. ‘What’s most debilitating in Alzheimer’s patients is episodic memory,’ Crystal said. ‘So we’re trying to develop models in rats that more closely mimic that.’

The timing could not be better: new genetic tools such as gene-editing allow scientists to create rats with an Alzheimer’s-like neurological condition, making them the perfect analogue subjects to test new Alzheimer’s drugs. Testing Alzheimer’s treatments on rats that have been robbed of their episodic memories would give scientists a much better idea of how well the drug might work in people, before proceeding to expensive and often anticlimactic clinical trials. ‘It opens all kinds of new opportunities,’ Crystal said. ‘If the drug does not improve episodic memory, well, that’s not going to be the most valuable treatment.’

The success rate for Alzheimer’s drugs remains heartbreakingly low. According to a study by the neurologist Jeffrey Cummings in Clinical and Translational Science in 2017, these drugs have a 99 per cent failure rate. ‘To be fair, there are a lot of factors [for why clinical trials fail],’ Crystal told me. ‘But what I contend is that once you have those fixed, you better be using a model that uses episodic memory function.’

Crystal and his team are developing these designer rats now, and they will not come soon enough. In the United States alone, the number of people suffering from Alzheimer’s will soar from 5.8 million today to 14 million by 2050 as the population ages. If rats with episodic memory can help to crack the Alzheimer’s code, this thief of the past might finally be vanquished.Aeon counter – do not remove

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the original article.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/animals-do-have-memories-and-can-help-us-crack-alzheimers/

Ack! I need chocolate! The science of PMS food cravings

Premenstrual food cravings are the punchline of endless jokes. Like most good jokes, they’re funny because they’re true.


Certain parts of a woman’s menstrual cycle do seem to go hand in hand with the desire for chocolate ice cream and potato chips. I hear about this every day from my OBGYN patients.

Researchers have studied food cravings for years; one of the most cited studies dates back to 1953. Scientists – and lots of others – want to know who has food cravings and why, what they crave, when they crave it and how to minimize the cravings. Here’s what the research has found.

Craving and eating before a period

Food cravings are just one of the many symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, also known as PMS. PMS is likely caused by hormonal fluctuations and how they affect chemical messengers in the brain called neurotransmitters. Its symptoms are exclusive to the second half of the menstrual cycle. This luteal phase of the cycle starts with the release of the egg at ovulation and ends when a period begins. The symptoms usually resolve around the third or fourth day of menstruation.

Researchers have documented more than 150 different PMS symptoms in studies, ranging from physical to emotional to behavioral to cognitive. Food cravings are up there with the most commonly reported behavioral PMS symptoms, along with mood swings, irritability, anxiety and tension, and sad or depressed mood.

A woman doesn’t need an official diagnosis of PMS to report hankering for sweets and chocolates, though. Eighty-five percent of women have some sort of perceptible premenstrual symptoms, while only somewhere in the range of 20% to 40% of all women meet the diagnostic criteria for PMS. Researchers find that cravings can occur during that premenstrual time period in normal, healthy individuals without a diagnosis of PMS or other disorder. In fact, one study showed that 97% of all women had previously experienced food cravings – independent of their menstrual cycle.

Research data confirm women tend to eat more during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, compared to the follicular phase that leads up to ovulation. With or without the diagnosis of PMS, this increased food intake can be as high as 500 extra calories per day.

What foods are women reaching for? Carbs and fats and
sweets. No surprise there. The most commonly reported food craving is chocolate, likely because it’s a pleasantly sweet combination of carbs and fat.

And although the existence of any craving is similar across women with and without PMS, the craving itself may differ depending on if you have the diagnosis of PMS. In one study, women without PMS increased their intake of energy and fat, while women with PMS showed increase in total energy and all macronutrients.

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What causes food cravings?

Researchers aren’t exactly sure where these food cravings come from, but there are several leading theories.

One idea is that women are unconsciously using food as a pharmacological therapy. Many studies show that women in their luteal phase crave more carbohydrates compared to during their follicular phase. Eating carbs turns up levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, which contributes to a general sense of well-being and happiness. By increasing carb intake, women may be self-medicating with food to cause that serotonin bump in order to feel better. In one study, when researchers increased serotonin neurotransmission in the brain, either through diet or drugs, people’s food intake and mood went back to normal.

Another possible explanation for food cravings suggests that women intentionally turn to food for physical and psychological comfort. Food can play a sensory role, eliminating any uncomfortable feeling of hunger while tasting good and feeling pleasant to eat. Researchers find that “thinking” of a really tasty food is the most common provocation for wanting to consume it and that cravings are not solely hunger driven. Women also usually reported specific triggers for thinking of comforting food, like boredom or stress, further promoting the idea that the comfort of food helps mitigate unpleasant feelings – as one might experience with PMS.

Other researchers suggest that these food cravings are regulated by hormones. Scientists have observed that women tend to eat more when estrogen levels are low and progesterone levels are high – as occurs during the luteal phase. The reverse pattern is seen in rats during the follicular phase, when estrogen levels are high and progesterone levels are low. The fact that progesterone-only forms of contraception like Depo Provera are associated with weight gain, likely due to increased appetite, supports this theory as well.

How can you get rid of monthly cravings?

My general advice to women: be knowledgeable about your own body and how it changes in response to your monthly cycle. Your experience is different than your best friend’s. Being in touch with your symptoms can help you acknowledge that they are normal for you at this point in time instead of worrying whether they’re weird. If you feel unsure, ask your gynecologist.

Lifestyle changes can help balance and minimize unwanted symptoms related to your menstrual cycle. Things to try include regular exercise, relaxation and stress reduction techniques such as breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, massage, self-hypnosis and regular, good sleep.

Cognitive behavioral therapy and biofeedback may be options. They usually require support of a therapist or counselor to be most effective.

And you can optimize your diet to fight cravings:

  • Choose complex carbohydrates, including whole grains, brown rice, barley, beans and lentils. Choose whole wheat over white flour.
  • Reduce fat, salt and sugar – all of which can leave you craving more.
  • Minimize or avoid caffeine and alcohol.
  • Eat more calcium-rich foods, including green leafy vegetables and dairy. One study showed women who consumed milk, cheese and yogurt had less abdominal bloating, cramps, appetite and cravings for some foods, possibly because the calcium they contain helped reverse an imbalance of feel-good serotonin. Women who are sensitive to dairy can take a calcium supplement of 1200 mg daily.
  • Try magnesium supplements. This mineral can help reduce water retention and bloating, breast tenderness and mood symptoms.
  • Vitamin B6 (50 mg daily), in addition to magnesium, may have some benefit as well.
  • Vitamin E (150-300 IU daily) may be helpful to reduce cravings.

When food cravings are part of a PMS diagnosis, treatment for premenstrual syndrome in general may help minimize them.The Conversation

Sara Twogood, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Southern California.

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



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/ack-i-need-chocolate-the-science-of-pms-food-cravings/

Decades long surveys suggest the deleterious effects of smoking may extend to detrimental personality changes

There is increasing recognition that while our personality traits are stable enough to shape our lives profoundly, they are also partly malleable, so that our choices and experiences can feedback and influence the kind of people we become.


A new study in the Journal of Research in Personality shines a light on a highly consequential behaviour that captures this dynamic – smoking cigarettes.

The results add “… to existing knowledge on the implications of smoking by showing that this behaviour is also likely to alter individuals’ characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time,” the researchers said.

It’s already well established that, by virtue of their traits, some people are more disposed than others to take up smoking – namely those who are more extraverted, less emotionally stable and less conscientious. The new research, led by Yannick Stephan at the University of Montpellier, suggests (but does not prove) that this habit can then feedback and shape smokers’ traits.

Using repeated measures of people’s personality traits over many years, the researchers report that smokers display personality changes that are different from those seen in non-smokers, especially in terms of reduced emotional stability and reduced extraversion.

The data come from five large surveys of middle-aged and older volunteers, four in the US and one in Japan. Ranging in size from just over 600 participants to over 6000, the surveys included information on whether the participants smoked and measures of their personality traits collected repeatedly over time spans from 4 to 20 years.

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Overall, the results showed that smokers showed declines in emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, relative to non-smokers. However, the precise patterns of change varied across the different samples. The most consistent pattern was for smokers to show relative declines in emotional stability and extraversion.

Stephan and his team also looked to see if stopping smoking had any positive personality consequences. In fact, there was little evidence of this. If anything, stopping smoking was associated with declines in agreeableness. Perhaps, the researchers speculated, this is because of a loss of “smoking-related social interactions”; residual adverse effects of smoking; and due to health-related side-effects associated with smoking cessation, such as “heightened risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes” both of which are known to have unhelpful consequences for personality traits.

The study is impressive for the size of the samples and the use of a longitudinal methodology that followed the same people over time. However, it’s limited by the reliance on participants’ self-reports of their own traits; the lack of information on smoking intensity; the skew towards older participants; and it’s inability to offer insights into why smoking would seem to lead to mostly adverse personality changes.

The researchers speculated that the health-related harms of smoking might be a factor mediating the habit’s apparent effects on personality. Health consequences of smoking such as insomnia, depression and reduced cardio-vascular fitness are known to have negative effects on personality. “Furthermore,” Stephan’s team add, “smoking may alter the energetic capacities needed to maintain emotional stability, the tendency to be exploratory, cooperative and altruistic, self-disciplined and playful, and enthusiastic and active.”

A curious detail in the findings is that, unlike the US samples, differences in personality change were not found among smokers in Japan compared with non-smokers. The researchers said this result may be an extension of what has become known as the “Japanese smoking paradox” – the fact that even though smoking rates are higher in Japan than the US, rates of lung cancer and mortality risk are lower.

Overall, this new research represents “the largest and longest longitudinal examination of the association between smoking and personality change in adulthood,” the researchers said. The results suggest that the “deleterious effects of smoking may extend to detrimental personality changes,” they added.

However, and as the researchers acknowledge, this conclusion, while highly plausible, comes with a hefty caveat – the observational study design cannot prove that smoking causes personality change. It’s possible that another factor or factors, such as stressful life circumstances, both increase the likelihood of people taking up smoking and cause unwelcome long-term personality changes. It’s also possible that pre-existing personality dispositions drive both the uptake of smoking and the later trajectory of personality change over time.

Future research that collects more detailed baseline contextual data on participants may be able to test these possibilities. In the meantime, if you are ever tempted to take up smoking, it is worth considering that it is not just your health you are putting at risk, but quite likely also your personality.

Cigarette Smoking and Personality Change Across Adulthood: Findings from Five Longitudinal Samples

Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest and the author of a forthcoming book on personality change.

Reprinted with permission of The British Psychological Society. Read the original article.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/30/decades-long-surveys-suggest-the-deleterious-effects-of-smoking-may-extend-to-detrimental-personality-changes/

Saturday, 29 June 2019

Study explains exactly why captivity is bad for orcas

  • Researchers present a detailed catalogue of the hardships captive orcas face and the damage done to them.
  • The study draws parallels between known human chronic stresses and entertainment and research facility conditions.
  • The evidence offers a damning response to perplexed apologies offered by proprietors of such parks, aquariums, and zoos when an orca dies.

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Free Willy came out in 1993, followed 20 years later by the disturbing Blackfish. One fiction, one fact, and both depicting the cruelty of keeping marine animals — in this case, the orcas — in captivity. Intuitively, it seems obvious that imprisoning these deep-sea creatures for human entertainment in marine parks and aquariums is inhumane, and a growing body of research agrees. Now a new study, titled “The Harmful Effects of Captivity and Chronic Stress on the Well-Being of Orcas,” focuses on identifying the links between specific conditions in such environments and the greater incidence of illness and early mortality seen in captive orcas.

Each time an orca dies, proprietors of such facilities express surprise and “confoundment,” says neuroscientist Lori Marino, lead author of the paper — it was published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior on June 15 — in an email to Big Think. “The message to the public is that there is no connection between living in concrete tanks and mortality,” she writes. “But this paper and others before it show that this is far from the case. We should not be surprised when a young orca dies in a tank. We know why; it is not a mystery. It is explainable by well-known mechanisms of how chronic stress effects health. We wanted to finally put an end to the false debate about the welfare of orcas in concrete tanks and also provide the potential mechanism for the high morbidity and mortality in captive orcas. I hope we did both.”

About Marino’s work

Marino is the founder of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, whose mission is to bring together the animal advocacy movement and academic researchers to make the scientific, moral, and legal case for animal rights. Her work extends beyond marine animals — and includes research on gorillas and farm animals — in over 130 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and magazine articles. This self-described “scientist-advocate” for animals has been cited by National Geographic as an “innovator,” and she was co-author of the original landmark research published in 2001 in which a pair of young dolphins demonstrated self-awareness by interacting with their reflections in mirrors.

Marino also appeared in Blackfish, and is currently president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, an ambitious endeavor aimed at establishing seaside sanctuaries for orcas and belugas released from entertainment facilities.

Marino was a scientific advisor for the Nonhuman Rights Project’s effort to award chimpanzees Tommy and Kiko legal personhood, an important step forward for animals and a case we’ve previously written about. “There is abundant, unquestionable evidence for personhood for animals,” Marino told National Geographic. “Person doesn’t mean ‘human.’ Human is the biological term that describes us as a species. ‘Person,’ though, is about the kind of beings we are: sentient and conscious. That applies to most animals, too. They are persons or should be legally.”

Marino is no longer involved with direct research on animals. She was hit hard by the early deaths of the dolphins she’d worked with in the mirror study, and soon after learned about “the underworld of dolphin and whale captivity and the Taiji drive hunts in Japan,” and that they were financed by marine parks all over the world, including the U.S. “I gave up working with captive dolphins,” she recalls, and committed herself instead to their advocacy. “I felt that as a marine mammal scientist it was my responsibility to use my expertise for the good of those animals I learned so much from,” she writes.

Marino envisions another paper similar to the orca study looking at the effect of captive environments on belugas, who are also often held in marine parks and zoos. In addition, she and her research partner are working toward their third paper examining the medical validity of dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT), in which humans swim with dolphins. Despite claims to the contrary, the researchers’ first two publications “showed that the studies used to claim that DAT is authentic treatment for autism and other problems are too methodologically flawed to support that claim. There is currently no evidence that DAT works,” Marino writes.

Orcas

The black and white Orca (Orcinus orca) is the third most-often captured cetacean after bottlenose dolphins and beluga whales. There are currently 71 orcas in captivity according to Inherently Wild, including Miami Seaquarium’s lone Southern Resident Lolita — aka, “Tokitae.”

Such orcas, the researchers of the new study state, “consistently display behavioral and physiological signs of stress and frequently succumb to premature death by infection or other health conditions.”

Orcas are dolphins with large complex brains and strong social and familial ties. They routinely range widely and dive deeply. They are self-aware, cultural beings who differentiate and identify their own groups through dialect, prey preference, group size, and many other learned traditions. They have a prolonged juvenile period of social learning and the emotional bonds between mothers and calves, as well as among other relatives, are as strong as any in the animal kingdom. They also demonstrate the capacity to grieve. While these characteristics are associated with a high degree of intelligence and social sensitivity and complexity, these characteristics also describe what natural capacities and behavior these whales need to be able to express in order to thrive. — Marino, et al

This self-awareness makes their captive plight even sadder. “Intelligence — meaning cognitive complexity — can be a liability, rather than a buffer, for these animals as they attempt to cope with life in artificial barren settings,” says Marino.

The focus of the paper

The new study is a unique collaboration among marine mammal researchers, veterinarians, and physicians. Co-authors Naomi Rose and Ingrid Visser are marine mammal biologists, Hope Ferdowsian and Veronica Slootsky are physicians specializing in human physical and psychological trauma, and Heather Rally is a veterinarian. Marino tells Big Think, “You might expect that there would be many disagreements given the wide range of expertise all of us represent but, in fact, in terms of the substantive issues the opposite was true.”

Within the paper is an encyclopedic review of the cognitive systems that orcas posses, thus establishing the “neurobiological foundations of complex psychology, emotion, and behavior.” These include:

  • a large relative brain size
  • an expanded neocortex
  • a well-differentiated cortical cytoarchitecture
  • an elaborated limbic system.

The study also looks at the conditions in which captive orcas live, and associates a long list of captive environmental factors to corresponding chronic stresses known to be harmful to humans. The Whale Sanctuary Project’s press release highlights five areas of chronic stress for orcas:

  • Social: Artificially-formed social groups and frequent transfers in and out of facilities disrupt mother-calf bonds, perpetuating a cross-generational cycle of poor maternal care and negative impacts.
  • Confinement: Inadequate depth and horizontal space in tanks prevent the expression of species-specific movement and lead to behavioral anomalies and physiological de-conditioning.
  • Sensory disturbance: Exposure to loud artificial sounds both above and below the water surface, such as fireworks, audience noise, construction, and filtration system noise creates anxiety and sensory interruption. Additionally, the concrete tank walls create an abnormal acoustic environment.
  • Lack of control: Loss of autonomy and control over daily activities leads to the well-known stress-related psychological condition known as learned helplessness, which manifests as depression, lack of motivation, impaired learning, anorexia, and eventual immunocompromise.
  • Boredom: Daily monotony and lack of appropriate challenges in such a large-brained complex animal, lead to immobility (increased logging behavior on the surface), depression, irritability, and increased anxiety.

All captive orcas need is the opposite of what they have

While the methodology employed in the study has been rigorously undertaken and applied by its authors, some may say that it’s a leap to use human chronic stress to as a standard for assessing chronic stress non-humans. Marc Bekoff of Psychology Today would disagree, writing that he “couldn’t agree more with Marino’s conclusion.”

Marino herself says, “I am more convinced than ever that human-nonhuman expertise — when brought together — can be a very interesting and productive way to understand health and well-being across the board. The issues are so similar and there is no reason to not utilize the full range of expertise and insight when approaching these issues.”

As for what Marino would like to see as the study’s impact, she writes, “Follow the data! We would like the science to drive the action.” Given the comprehensive nature of the paper, she hopes the “science is an impetus for the marine mammal community to critically re-evaluate their practices and work together to provide a more natural and viable environment for captive whales.”



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/29/study-explains-exactly-why-captivity-is-bad-for-orcas/

Berlin freezes rent for five years

  • Rent prices in Berlin have risen 129 percent in the past decade.
  • In response to growing public pressure, the Berlin city government has enacted a plan to freeze rent prices for five years.
  • The majority of economic research on rent controls suggest that this may backfire, but only time will tell.

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Like many once affordable cities, the Berlin rental market is facing a gentrification crisis. At one point, artists, musicians, and writers fleeing New York’s sky-high prices traveled to Berlin, attracted by the cheap rent, cultural connections, and the distance from traditional professional culture. But Berlin’s status as a cultural mecca may be at risk: In the last decade, rental prices skyrocketed in Berlin by 129 percent. Considering that 85 percent of Berliners rent their homes, this has had a serious impact.

In a bid to halt this runaway gentrification, Berlin’s city government has determined to freeze rental prices for five years, starting 2020. Under the plan, 1.5 million apartments will be protected from rent increases. The plan was developed in part due to the objectively sharp rent increases, but also due to significant public backlash. Berliners have been so distressed by rent increases that activists had been collecting signatures for a referendum to force the city to seize apartments from large landlords who owned more than 3,000 buildings.

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Prior to German unification, East Berlin was economically isolated by the Berlin Wall, a legacy that enabled its later cheap housing prices and correspondingly attracted students and artists. However, attracted by the culture, opportunities for investment, and high job growth, more than 40,000 people have flocked to Berlin every year in the last decade. The addition of more than 83,000 refugees has put an additional strain on the economy.

The freeze was enacted by Berlin’s coalition government, composed of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Green Party, and the far-left Die Linke, with the SDP calling for similar freezes across the country. Rental prices in other German cities have been exploding as well, such as in Munich, where prices increased by 141 percent over the last decade. Thorsten Schäfer-GĂ¼mbel, an SPD leader, believes this crisis needs to be addressed. “We need a rent price cap for all of Germany,” he said. Chancellor Angela Merkel isn’t quite so enthusiastic, however, having said that “we must also provide an environment for people to want to build.”

The plan would allow small, fixed rent increases in case landlords decide to renovate their apartments, but large improvements would require city approval first. If landlords ignore this rule, they could face fines up to €500,000, or $569,000. Although the plan would go into effect on 2020, it would apply retroactively to June 18th, which would prevent landlords from rushing to raise prices before the freeze goes into effect.

This is exactly what Haus und Grund, a powerful German property owner’s association, attempted to do, calling on its members to raise their rent prices before the bill was publicly announced. Even though the retroactive date has passed, Haus und Grund is recommending that landlords increase their prices anyways in case the law changes between now and 2020.

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While threatening to seize apartments from corporate landlords might be an unlikely proposition in the U.S., many Americans might be looking at what’s happening in Berlin with envy. Compared to many U.S. cities, such as San Francisco and New York, Berlin’s rental prices are still rock bottom. For instance, the median one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco costs a staggering $3,690 a month, while a comparable one-bedroom apartment in Berlin costs €869 a month, or about $990.

However, the majority of economists believe that rent controls don’t work and may actually hurt their intended beneficiaries. Just to name a few potential downsides, rent controls often cause landlords to sell their apartments rather than rent them, so that they can obtain the real market price of the property; they bulldoze their buildings and construct other properties that aren’t subject to rent control, ultimately reducing the city’s housing supply; and they might not invest in maintenance of their properties if they don’t believe they can recoup the losses through rent.

Overall, rent controls seem to work well in the short-run, but in the long-run, they can actually increase gentrification. The majority of rent control research has been conducted in the U.S., however, so there may be different conditions in Germany. Only time will tell how well the freeze works in Berlin. If it fares for the better on behalf of residents, then the move could serve as a model for other European cities.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/29/berlin-freezes-rent-for-five-years/

Study: Social robots can benefit hospitalized children

A new study demonstrates, for the first time, that “social robots” used in support sessions held in pediatric units at hospitals can lead to more positive emotions in sick children.


Many hospitals host interventions in pediatric units, where child life specialists will provide clinical interventions to hospitalized children for developmental and coping support. This involves play, preparation, education, and behavioral distraction for both routine medical care, as well as before, during, and after difficult procedures. Traditional interventions include therapeutic medical play and normalizing the environment through activities such as arts and crafts, games, and celebrations.

For the study, published today in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from the MIT Media Lab, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Northeastern University deployed a robotic teddy bear, “Huggable,” across several pediatric units at Boston Children’s Hospital. More than 50 hospitalized children were randomly split into three groups of interventions that involved Huggable, a tablet-based virtual Huggable, or a traditional plush teddy bear. In general, Huggable improved various patient outcomes over those other two options.

The study primarily demonstrated the feasibility of integrating Huggable into the interventions. But results also indicated that children playing with Huggable experienced more positive emotions overall. They also got out of bed and moved around more, and emotionally connected with the robot, asking it personal questions and inviting it to come back later to meet their families. “Such improved emotional, physical, and verbal outcomes are all positive factors that could contribute to better and faster recovery in hospitalized children,” the researchers write in their study.

Although it is a small study, it is the first to explore social robotics in a real-world inpatient pediatric setting with ill children, the researchers say. Other studies have been conducted in labs, have studied very few children, or were conducted in public settings without any patient identification.

But Huggable is designed only to assist health care specialists — not replace them, the researchers stress. “It’s a companion,” says co-author Cynthia Breazeal, an associate professor of media arts and sciences and founding director of the Personal Robots group. “Our group designs technologies with the mindset that they’re teammates. We don’t just look at the child-robot interaction. It’s about [helping] specialists and parents, because we want technology to support everyone who’s invested in the quality care of a child.”

“Child life staff provide a lot of human interaction to help normalize the hospital experience, but they can’t be with every kid, all the time. Social robots create a more consistent presence throughout the day,” adds first author Deirdre Logan, a pediatric psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. “There may also be kids who don’t always want to talk to people, and respond better to having a robotic stuffed animal with them. It’s exciting knowing what types of support we can provide kids who may feel isolated or scared about what they’re going through.”

Joining Breazeal and Logan on the paper are: Sooyeon Jeong, a PhD student in the Personal Robots group; Brianna O’Connell, Duncan Smith-Freedman, and Peter Weinstock, all of Boston Children’s Hospital; and Matthew Goodwin and James Heathers, both of Northeastern University.

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Boosting mood

First prototyped in 2006, Huggable is a plush teddy bear with a screen depicting animated eyes. While the eventual goal is to make the robot fully autonomous, it is currently operated remotely by a specialist in the hall outside a child’s room. Through custom software, a specialist can control the robot’s facial expressions and body actions, and direct its gaze. The specialists could also talk through a speaker — with their voice automatically shifted to a higher pitch to sound more childlike — and monitor the participants via camera feed. The tablet-based avatar of the bear had identical gestures and was also remotely operated.

During the interventions involving Huggable — involving kids ages 3 to 10 years — a specialist would sing nursery rhymes to younger children through robot and move the arms during the song. Older kids would play the I Spy game, where they have to guess an object in the room described by the specialist through Huggable.

Through self-reports and questionnaires, the researchers recorded how much the patients and families liked interacting with Huggable. Additional questionnaires assessed patient’s positive moods, as well as anxiety and perceived pain levels. The researchers also used cameras mounted in the child’s room to capture and analyze speech patterns, characterizing them as joyful or sad, using software.

A greater percentage of children and their parents reported that the children enjoyed playing with Huggable more than with the avatar or traditional teddy bear. Speech analysis backed up that result, detecting significantly more joyful expressions among the children during robotic interventions. Additionally, parents noted lower levels of perceived pain among their children.

The researchers noted that 93 percent of patients completed the Huggable-based interventions, and found few barriers to practical implementation, as determined by comments from the specialists.

A previous paper based on the same study found that the robot also seemed to facilitate greater family involvement in the interventions, compared to the other two methods, which improved the intervention overall. “Those are findings we didn’t necessarily expect in the beginning,” says Jeong, also a co-author on the previous paper. “We didn’t tell family to join any of the play sessions — it just happened naturally. When the robot came in, the child and robot and parents all interacted more, playing games or in introducing the robot.”

An automated, take-home bot

The study also generated valuable insights for developing a fully autonomous Huggable robot, which is the researchers’ ultimate goal. They were able to determine which physical gestures are used most and least often, and which features specialists may want for future iterations. Huggable, for instance, could introduce doctors before they enter a child’s room or learn a child’s interests and share that information with specialists. The researchers may also equip the robot with computer vision, so it can detect certain objects in a room to talk about those with children.

“In these early studies, we capture data … to wrap our heads around an authentic use-case scenario where, if the bear was automated, what does it need to do to provide high-quality standard of care,” Breazeal says.

In the future, that automated robot could be used to improve continuity of care. A child would take home a robot after a hospital visit to further support engagement, adherence to care regimens, and monitoring well-being.

“We want to continue thinking about how robots can become part of the whole clinical team and help everyone,” Jeong says. “When the robot goes home, we want to see the robot monitor a child’s progress. … If there’s something clinicians need to know earlier, the robot can let the clinicians know, so [they’re not] surprised at the next appointment that the child hasn’t been doing well.”

Next, the researchers are hoping to zero in on which specific patient populations may benefit the most from the Huggable interventions. “We want to find the sweet spot for the children who need this type of of extra support,” Logan says.

Reprinted with permission of MIT News. Read the original article.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/29/study-social-robots-can-benefit-hospitalized-children/

Chris Moukarbel (filmmaker) – The closest thing to actual magic

  • “For a lot of those kids drag was more punk than punk. Ok, you could shave your head and put on a spike collar… or you could throw on a wig and heels and traipse around Times Square. That was brave. That was radical.”
  • Lady Gaga writes a hook and the whole world suddenly takes notice…I always thought of it as casting a spell. It’s the closest thing to actual magic. Because imagine an incantation that you can just repeat for 3 minutes and it can grab the attention of the entire world.”

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When I was in middle school in the suburbs of Maryland, a man—let’s call him Robert—started doing some occasional gardening and housecleaning for my parents. By high school, Robert was our full-time housekeeper and a nanny for me and my sister, a family member, really. And he had become a she—let’s call her Tina. My sister and I learned to use her new pronouns and we watched as her clothes and then, with the help of hormones and surgery, her body changed to that of a woman.

At the same time, the transition we went through with Tina at home was playing out in American popular culture. Homosexuality and drag and other queer lives and identities came out of the closet and onto the stage, screen, and streets. In 1984, in Mahattan’s Tompkins Square Park, Wigstock was born. It started as a kind of afterparty and evolved into a DIY, outrageous, funny, and fabulous annual drag festival that by the 90’s was drawing crowds in the thousands.

It’s hard even to think back to the time when Robert who became Tina had to hide who she was for fear of upsetting her religious mother or—who knows—maybe not getting that job with my folks. In a world where RuPaul’s Drag Race is going into its 12th smash season, It’s easy to forget the courage it took, and still takes, for so many people to live on the outside what they know they are on the inside. My guest today is documentary filmmaker Chris Moukarbel, the director of Lady Gaga biopic GAGA FIVE FOOT TWO. In his new HBO documentary WIG, Chris and his stars—including Lady Bunny, Charlene Incarnate, and many more—take us back through the history of drag in New York City. And they show that now more than ever we need public spaces like Wigstock where we can perform, amplify, and celebrate our differences.

Surprise conversation starters in this episode:

Bill Eddy on “toxic people”

John Cameron Mitchell on online communication and miscommunication



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/29/chris-moukarbel-filmmaker-the-closest-thing-to-actual-magic/

Ice sheet collapse: The greatest unknown in climate science

  • The science of glaciology and ice sheets is quite new, as methods to measure melting glaciers were only realized with the advent of aviation and lasers.
  • The world’s sea levels are rising 3mm per year, and of that Greenland’s ice sheet contributes 1mm – it is losing between 250 to 300 billion tons of ice per year. Three millimeters total is not much, but ice sheets don’t always operate in a linear fashion.
  • No human has ever witnessed an ice sheet collapse. It is also such a rare event that models cannot accurately predict what the effect will be. Can we halt global warming before we reach that tipping point?




The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future
List Price: $28.00
New From: $8.24 in Stock
Used From: $11.55 in Stock


source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/29/ice-sheet-collapse-the-greatest-unknown-in-climate-science/

Friday, 28 June 2019

Do newspaper presidential endorsements matter anymore?

  • Lots of newspapers endrose cadndiates, but the practice has been questioned in recent years.
  • Perceived bias is a big part of the recent decline of trust in media.
  • One study found endorsements can change people’s minds, but only under certain circumstances.

Endorsements are an often-contentious part of the increasingly endless American election cycle. Most significant organizations of every kind give them out; including unions, business groups, civic groups, political action groups, and, of course, newspapers.

While it seems evident that the first few groups would be interested in endorsing candidates, it’s less clear why newspapers would.

Why do newspapers make endorsements at all? 

Consider it; it’s kind of weird that newspapers endorse candidates at all. The rest of the time they report the news and maybe print a few opinion pieces, all the time claiming objectivity and neutrality. Then, every few years, they take up at least a full page to explain why they think you should vote for a particular person. Why does anybody do it?

If you ask a dozen editors that question, you’ll likely get a dozen different answers.

Robert Greene of the Los Angeles Times told NPR that endorsements could serve as a statement of transparency and as a capstone to editorials on the various policy issues given before that point.

“Well, I think expressing your opinion is in some way an expression or a demonstration of transparency. The idea that on the editorial page is that after writing editorials about particular issues as they arrive and about candidates as they arise, that you don’t also come to a conclusion about if you were going to vote which one you would vote for. I think it’s a little disingenuous to say that you haven’t reached that opinion. And if you’ve reached such an opinion, just in the interests of transparency, I think it’s a good idea to express it and then to put it in front of the readers and see if they believe that you have justified that opinion properly.”

Jeff Cohen of the Houston Chronicle suggested that endorsements are a vital part of the debate:

“We endorse candidates because most contemporary newspapers feel it is part of our public service mission even if some readers disagree with our point of view. We believe it is paramount for the community and electorate to be engaged and strongly advocate for participation. We think that editorial endorsements help provoke higher thought and cognition and is a motivation to partake in democracy.”

Chuck Plunkett of the Denver Post appealed to history when justifying endorsements:

“The idea of that tradition that if you’re going to go to the trouble to have a printing press and a newsroom and put your message out and try to cover public policy, then you also have the right as the owner of that paper to express your opinion. That’s how an editorial page got started to begin with, in trying to make arguments that would be good for society. The reason we do endorsements is because we’re trying to help people understand complicated political questions. Whether that’s a candidate, as in a presidential endorsement, or an issue, like a ballot issue, where the devil is in the details.”

Despite these lines of reasoning, some major newspapers have ended the practice. David Haynes of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel explained why his paper stopped endorsing candidates to NPR:

“…it really boils down to this notion of independence. We work very hard each day to provide a balance of views on our pages and on our website increasingly and mobile devices as well. And we work hard to be open-minded and approach issues that we’re going to editorialize on independently. We pull good ideas from both major schools of political thought, and we’re pragmatic. We back ideas we think will work. Ideology is really immaterial.
So then, we do all that for 364 days of the year and turn around and choose sides in a bitter partisan election? I think that tends to undermine this whole idea of independence, and it really undermines this idea of being an honest broker of opinion. Again, that forum, that’s our real mission. The editorial is a part of that.”

He is onto something; distrust of the media is at an all-time high in the United States. One study found that many of those surveyed blamed perceived bias. You can’t help but wonder if part of that is because newspapers squander their credibility by endorsing a candidate with one hand and then claiming not to be biased in their reporting with the other.

Do endorsements bias the reporting?

No.

For the last hundred years or so the opinion and editorial sections of every major newspaper have been completely sperate entities. The people who decide who to endorse report to different people than the journalists who write the news do. The journalists often don’t know who is getting endorsed until you do.

However, despite explainers on this which grace almost every opinion page in major papers and that this was taught to anybody who wasn’t asleep in middle school, many people still fail to grasp this fact. The pervasiveness of this misunderstanding is why USA today doesn’t ever endorse anybody.

Danny Funt of the Columba Journalism Review explained that “Editors told me they’ve spent their careers explaining to readers the very simple difference between news and opinion sections.” He attributes this misunderstanding to both “media illiteracy” on the part of the readers and to a failure of the news media to adequately explain itself.

Do endorsements convince anybody?

All of these questions also demand another one be answered; does it actually help anybody to be endorsed by a newspaper at all?

A study from Brown University shows that endorsements can change people’s opinions. However, the effect is limited if the endorsement is expected. If a major newspaper in a cosmopolitan city known for having a center-left leaning editorial board endorses a Democrat for president not much will happen. On the other hand, a neutral or even right-leaning editorial board doing the same thing can carry great weight.

Northwestern did a report on prediction markets and found that there are changes in who is more likely to win the race for president as a result of newspaper endorsements. Like Brown, they found that surprising endorsements had the most effect.

However, a study by Pew Research Center found that 7 in 10 people report that endorsements don’t influence them at all. The remaining three were split between saying the support would make them more or less likely to vote for the candidate.

There is the question of local races, though. Endorsements may matter more when the election is one that has gotten less media coverage and the typical voter can’t name all of the candidates. As the Columba Journalism Review puts it, “Fewer Americans may clip out endorsements from the paper to bring to the polls, but for down-ballot races, there simply are no other media willing to interrogate potential property appraisers for 90 minutes.”

They also quote the opinion editor for the Houston Chronicle, who claimed “Calls from readers wanting a comprehensive list of our endorsements outnumber those who are complaining about the process five-to-one.” There may still be something to be said for the endorsement of an entity that spends a great deal of time reporting on and interviewing the candidates and then even more time on the effects of their actions.

Claims that newspaper endorsements were one the way out or don’t matter have proven to be exaggerated. While not everyone will be convinced by an endorsement and a few people might even stop trusting a paper over it, they are going to be part of our democracy for the foreseeable future.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/28/do-newspaper-presidential-endorsements-matter-anymore/

Here are the states where teens smoke the most pot

  • The report is based on the most recent data from the National Survey on Drugs Use and Mental Health.
  • Overall, the share of younger Americans (17 and under) who have used marijuana in the past year declined slightly from 2016 to 2017, but some states showed increases.
  • No studies indicate that marijuana legalization causes more teens to start using marijuana.

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As marijuana becomes increasingly legal across the U.S., are more American teens using cannabis, and how do usage rates vary by state?

A recent report from Oxford Treatment Center explored those questions by comparing data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drugs Use and Mental Health for 2016 to 2017, which was the most recent dataset available.

What did the report indicate? Well, there are some considerable differences among U.S. states when it comes to their share of young people (17 and younger) who use marijuana. Utah, for instance, came at the bottom of the list (9.2 percent) while its immediate neighbor, Colorado, came in on top (17 percent).

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Nationally, the share of younger Americans who had used marijuana in the past year declined slightly from 2016 to 2017, though some states saw double-digit year-over-year increases, such as Massachusetts, Vermont, Washington, and Illinois — all states where recreational marijuana is or will soon be legal.

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You can check out how your state ranked in the infographic below.

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Does legalization cause more teens to use marijuana?

There’s no evidence that conclusively shows legalization causes more teens to start using marijuana. In fact, a 2018 report from the Colorado Department of Public Safety showed that marijuana use among teens hadn’t significantly changed in the years since the state became the first to legalize recreational marijuana. But that doesn’t mean Colorado’s legalization experiment hasn’t brought problems.

One is driving while high: Car-accident fatalities involving “cannabinoid‐only or cannabinoid‐in‐combination” drivers increased from 55 in 2013 to 139 in 2017.

“I think more than anything we need to combat that perception about driving while high,” Andrew Freedman, a consultant for governments considering legalization, told The Denver Post. “Just because you’re driving slowly on the highway doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

The number of hospitalizations involving marijuana also increased after legalization. Increasingly potent marijuana likely bears some of the blame: THC levels in marijuana have increased nearly three-fold since the early 1990s, and it’s unknown exactly how this is affecting users. Some health experts warn it’s more dangerous than the public might be aware.

“Horrible things are happening to kids,” Libby Stuyt, a psychiatrist who treats teens in southwestern Colorado and has studied the health impacts of high-potency marijuana, told The Washington Post, which reported that visits to Children’s Hospital Colorado facilities for paranoia, psychosis, and other “acute cannabis-related symptoms” jumped from 161 in 2005 to 777 in 2015, in the Denver area. “I see increased problems with psychosis, with addiction, with suicide, with depression and anxiety.”



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/28/here-are-the-states-where-teens-smoke-the-most-pot/

Here’s how to get the best advice at work

Asking for advice at work is an essential way to learn, to course correct, and to improve.


Colleagues with different expertise across your company can provide insight into their career paths if you’re considering a move, thoughts on workplace best practices if you’re new to a position, or advice on how to handle specific, often stressful, situations. People often think that asking several people for advice leads to the best results — after all, the more diversity in perspective, the more information we can consider. However, new research suggests that we should think twice before asking for input from a very wide range of people.

New research published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes explains that asking many people for advice can actually trigger negative reactions. “Given how commonly most of us are told to seek second and third opinions, we expected advisors to rate those pursuing this strategy as more competent. But we found the opposite. People who were in a group of several advisors not only rated the advice-seeker as less competent, but also indicated that they felt more socially distant to them later and were less interested in advising them in the future,” Hayley Blunden, a Ph.D student at Harvard Business School and a co-author of the study, and her colleagues wrote for Harvard Business Review.

The researchers hypothesized that these reactions stemmed from the advisers’ realization that their advice might not be followed; the larger number of people who were consulted for advice, the lower probability that an adviser’s advice would be followed, resulting in a sense of rejection because individuals “tend to think highly of themselves and their opinions and gain status when their advice is taken,” the researchers explained. In a subsequent study, the researchers confirmed their hypothesis — advisers whose suggestions were ignored became more offended and “were likely to denigrate and sever their relationship with the seekers,” the researchers wrote.

Such findings might confuse those of us in need of advice. Should we only consult one person when we need guidance? What if that person’s advice doesn’t line up with goals or values? While seeking the “wisdom of crowds” — as the researchers put it — could come with some negative side effects, it can also be done in a way that promotes an environment of candor, understanding, and growth. After all, soliciting multiple opinions is still valuable.

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Be direct and transparent about your goals

First, the study suggests that advice seekers should be more transparent about their intentions when asking a group of people for ideas and suggestions. So whether you are looking for general information about next steps in your career or are curious about a specific concept you’re not familiar with, let people know what kind of information you are after and why you are asking in the first place.

Express gratitude before and after seeking advice

Gratitude has been shown to promote honesty, productivity, and overall well-being in the workplace, and can be used as a tool to ease any interaction, including asking for advice. If a co-worker agrees to meet for coffee and share a lot of advice with you, emphasize how much you appreciate their time. After your conversation, send a follow-up email, deliver a handwritten thank you note, or drop by their desk to reaffirm your gratitude.

Ask the right kinds of questions

To reap the most reward from any advice that a co-worker gives you, be sure to ask questions that show your interest and keep the conversation flowing. Follow-up questions can make conversations less superficial, and research shows that people are more willing to reveal sensitive or personal information when the toughest questions are asked at the beginning of the conversation. Active listening should also be a key component of your conversation, as it will show your advice-giver that you are engaged and care about what is being discussed.

Use compassionate directness in your approach

If you decide not to follow someone’s advice, there is no better way to inform them than with compassionate directness. As Thrive founder and CEO Arianna Huffington puts it, compassionate directness means “empowering employees to speak up, give feedback, disagree, and surface problems, pain points and constructive criticism… immediately, continuously, and with clarity” in a way that is empathetic and understanding. Take a moment to talk with your colleague about why you decided to pursue another path, or rely on other information. Be straightforward in your conversation, but be sure to express the ways in which their advice was helpful.

Asking for advice — especially from a large group of people with conflicting opinions — can feel like you’re treading water. The good news, though, is that you can navigate these situations with transparency, gratitude, and compassionate directness. This way, you can garner the information you need, while maintaining good relationships in the workplace and ensuring everyone feels valued.

Reprinted with permission of Thrive Global. Read the original article.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/06/28/heres-how-to-get-the-best-advice-at-work/