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current teaching approaches underestimate the amount of explicit guidance, “scaffolding” and practice children need to consolidate new concepts. Asking children to make their own discoveries before they solidify the basics is like asking them to compose songs on guitar before they can form a C chord.

he gained a reputation as a kind of math miracle worker. Many students were sent to him because they had severe learning disabilities (a number have gone on to do university-level math). Mighton found that to be effective he often had to break things down into minute steps and assess each student’s understanding at each micro-level before moving on.

Mighton saw that if he approached teaching this way, he could virtually guarantee that every student would experience success. In turn, the children’s math anxiety diminished. As they grew more confident, they grew excited, and they began requesting harder challenges. “More than anything, kids love success,” he says, “and they love getting to higher levels, like in a video game.”

Mighton saw that if you provided painstaking guidance, children would make their own discoveries. That’s why he calls his approach “guided discovery.”

Schools in British Columbia evaluate students based on whether they meet expectations for learning outcomes. “Teachers who used Jump were suddenly finding that they had all of their kids in the ‘fully meeting expectations’ category,” Grant told me. “It was such a foreign experience. It doesn’t typically happen when we’re teaching science or language arts. And they were kind of at a loss. ‘What do we do about this?’”

Even deeper, for children, math looms large; there’s something about doing well in math that makes kids feel they are smart in everything. In that sense, math can be a powerful tool to promote social justice. “When you have all the kids in a class succeeding in a subject, you see that they’re competing against the problem, not one another,” says Mighton. “It’s like they’re climbing a mountain together. You see a very healthy kind of competition. And it makes kids more generous to one another. Math can save us.”

last year Mr. Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “American left who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a few massacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a 21st-century campaign?

Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a “beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excuse for more government control of your life.” You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.

Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’s caucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (and conspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and his declarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes. Clearly, a large segment of his party’s base is comfortable with views one might have thought were on the extreme fringe.

Finally, there’s Mr. Romney, who will probably get the nomination despite his evident failure to make an emotional connection with, well, anyone. The truth, of course, is that he was not a “severely conservative” governor. His signature achievement was a health reform identical in all important respects to the national reform signed into law by President Obama four years later. And in a rational political world, his campaign would be centered on that achievement.

in this case, however, a little time spent changing your settings can provide invaluable peace of mind knowing that Google can't exploit your personal tendencies for its own purposes.

First sign into your Google account and head to the history page. Click the button labeled Remove all Web History. Then click Okay to confirm. Note that this also pauses your web history going forward, and Google won't start listening to your history again unless you let it.

This will not stop Google from gathering data when you search. To do that you would need to block Google cookies completely. However, while it will still gather the data, Google will not use it to serve targeted ads or do anything other than use it for internal purposes. Also, with Web History disabled, your data is at least partially anonymized after 18 months (if you leave Web History on, Google will keep your search records indefinitely).

On the negative side, bear in mind that while this won't prevent Google from making search suggestions, it will prevent you from getting personalized suggestions based on your previous searches.

I fear we’re facing a crisis in which a chunk of working-class America risks being calcified into an underclass, marked by drugs, despair, family decline, high incarceration rates and a diminishing role of jobs and education as escalators of upward mobility. We need a national conversation about these dimensions of poverty, and maybe Murray can help trigger it. I fear that liberals are too quick to think of inequality as basically about taxes. Yes, our tax system is a disgrace, but poverty is so much deeper and more complex than that.

to blame liberal social policies for the pathologies he examines. Yes, I’ve seen disability programs encourage some people to drop out of the labor force. But there were far greater forces at work, such as the decline in good union jobs.

Eighty percent of the people in my high school cohort dropped out or didn’t pursue college because it used to be possible to earn a solid living at the steel mill, the glove factory or sawmill. That’s what their parents had done. But the glove factory closed, working-class jobs collapsed and unskilled laborers found themselves competing with immigrants. There aren’t ideal solutions, but some evidence suggests that we need more social policy, not less. Early childhood education can support kids being raised by struggling single parents. Treating drug offenders is far cheaper than incarcerating them. A new study finds that a jobs program for newly released prison inmates left them 22 percent less likely to be convicted of another crime. This initiative, by the Center for Employment Opportunities, more than paid for itself: each $1 brought up to $3.85 in benefits.

Facebook researchers recently reported how the company had developed a powerful pattern-recognition system, called DeepFace, which had achieved near-human accuracy in identifying people’s faces.

To work, the technology needs a large data set, called an image gallery, containing the photographs or video stills of faces already identified by name. Software automatically converts the topography of each face in the gallery into a unique mathematical code, called a faceprint. Once people are faceprinted, they may be identified in existing or subsequent photographs or as they walk in front of a video camera.

some casinos faceprint visitors, seeking to identify repeat big-spending customers for special treatment. In Japan, a few grocery stores use face-matching to classify some shoppers as shoplifters or even “complainers” and blacklist them.

Is faceprinting as innocuous as photography, an activity that people may freely perform? Or is a faceprint a unique indicator, like a fingerprint or a DNA sequence, that should require a person’s active consent before it can be collected, matched, shared or sold?

A private high school in Los Angeles also has an FST system. The school uses the technology to recognize students when they arrive — a security measure intended to keep out unwanted interlopers. But it also serves to keep the students in line.“If a girl will come to school at 8:05, the door will not open and she will be registered as late,” Mr. Farkash explained. “So you can use the system not only for security but for education, for better discipline.”

As with many emerging technologies, the arguments tend to coalesce around two predictable poles: those who think the technology needs rules and regulation to prevent violations of civil liberties and those who fear that regulation would stifle innovation. But face recognition stands out among such technologies: While people can disable smartphone geolocation and other tracking techniques, they can’t turn off their faces.

To maintain the status quo around public anonymity, he says, companies should take a number of steps: They should post public notices where they use face recognition; seek permission from a consumer before collecting a faceprint with a unique, repeatable identifier like a name or code number; and use faceprints only for the specific purpose for which they have received permission. Those steps, he says, would inhibit sites, stores, apps and appliances from covertly linking a person in the real world with their multiple online personas.

I encourage you to test yourself at implicit.harvard.edu. It’s sobering to discover that whatever you believe intellectually, you’re biased about race, gender, age or disability.

unconscious racial bias turns up in children as soon as they have the verbal skills to be tested for it, at about age 4. The degree of unconscious bias then seems pretty constant: In tests, this unconscious bias turns out to be roughly the same for a 4- or 6-year-old as for a senior citizen who grew up in more racially oppressive times.

Many of these experiments on in-group bias have been conducted around the world, and almost every ethnic group shows a bias favoring its own. One exception: African-Americans.

in contrast to other groups, African-Americans do not have an unconscious bias toward their own. From young children to adults, they are essentially neutral and favor neither whites nor blacks.

even if we humans have evolved to have a penchant for racial preferences from a very young age, this is not destiny. We can resist the legacy that evolution has bequeathed us.

“We wouldn’t have survived if our ancestors hadn’t developed bodies that store sugar and fat,” Banaji says. “What made them survive is what kills us.” Yet we fight the battle of the bulge and sometimes win — and, likewise, we can resist a predisposition for bias against other groups.

Deep friendships, especially romantic relationships with someone of another race, also seem to mute bias

The crash, which killed all 49 people on board as well as one person on the ground, should never have happened.

aptain’s response to the stall warning, the investigators reported, “should have been automatic, but his improper flight control inputs were inconsistent with his training” and instead revealed “startle and confusion.

Automation has become so sophisticated that on a typical passenger flight, a human pilot holds the controls for a grand total of just three minutes.

We humans have been handing off chores, both physical and mental, to tools since the invention of the lever, the wheel, and the counting bead.

And that, many aviation and automation experts have concluded, is a problem. Overuse of automation erodes pilots’ expertise and dulls their reflexes,

No one doubts that autopilot has contributed to improvements in flight safety over the years. It reduces pilot fatigue and provides advance warnings of problems, and it can keep a plane airborne should the crew become disabled. But the steady overall decline in plane crashes masks the recent arrival of “a spectacularly new type of accident,”

“We’re forgetting how to fly.”

The experience of airlines should give us pause. It reveals that automation, for all its benefits, can take a toll on the performance and talents of those who rely on it. The implications go well beyond safety. Because automation alters how we act, how we learn, and what we know, it has an ethical dimension. The choices we make, or fail to make, about which tasks we hand off to machines shape our lives and the place we make for ourselves in the world.

What pilots spend a lot of time doing is monitoring screens and keying in data. They’ve become, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say, computer operators.

Examples of complacency and bias have been well documented in high-risk situations—on flight decks and battlefields, in factory control rooms—but recent studies suggest that the problems can bedevil anyone working with a computer

That may leave the person operating the computer to play the role of a high-tech clerk—entering data, monitoring outputs, and watching for failures. Rather than opening new frontiers of thought and action, software ends up narrowing our focus.

A labor-saving device doesn’t just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job or other activity. It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people taking part.

when we work with computers, we often fall victim to two cognitive ailments—complacency and bias—that can undercut our performance and lead to mistakes. Automation complacency occurs when a computer lulls us into a false sense of security. Confident that the machine will work flawlessly and handle any problem that crops up, we allow our attention to drift.

Automation bias occurs when we place too much faith in the accuracy of the information coming through our monitors. Our trust in the software becomes so strong that we ignore or discount other information sources, including our own eyes and ears

Automation is different now. Computers can be programmed to perform complex activities in which a succession of tightly coordinated tasks is carried out through an evaluation of many variables. Many software programs take on intellectual work—observing and sensing, analyzing and judging, even making decisions—that until recently was considered the preserve of humans.

Automation turns us from actors into observers. Instead of manipulating the yoke, we watch the screen. That shift may make our lives easier, but it can also inhibit the development of expertise.

Since the late 1970s, psychologists have been documenting a phenomenon called the “generation effect.” It was first observed in studies of vocabulary, which revealed that people remember words much better when they actively call them to mind—when they generate them—than when they simply read them.

When you engage actively in a task, you set off intricate mental processes that allow you to retain more knowledge. You learn more and remember more. When you repeat the same task over a long period, your brain constructs specialized neural circuits dedicated to the activit

What looks like instinct is hard-won skill, skill that requires exactly the kind of struggle that modern software seeks to alleviate.

In many businesses, managers and other professionals have come to depend on decision-support systems to analyze information and suggest courses of action. Accountants, for example, use the systems in corporate audits. The applications speed the work, but some signs suggest that as the software becomes more capable, the accountants become less so.

You can put limits on the scope of automation, making sure that people working with computers perform challenging tasks rather than merely observing.

Experts used to assume that there were limits to the ability of programmers to automate complicated tasks, particularly those involving sensory perception, pattern recognition, and conceptual knowledge

Who needs humans, anyway? That question, in one rhetorical form or another, comes up frequently in discussions of automation. If computers’ abilities are expanding so quickly and if people, by comparison, seem slow, clumsy, and error-prone, why not build immaculately self-contained systems that perform flawlessly without any human oversight or intervention? Why not take the human factor out of the equation?

The cure for imperfect automation is total automation.

That idea is seductive, but no machine is infallible. Sooner or later, even the most advanced technology will break down, misfire, or, in the case of a computerized system, encounter circumstances that its designers never anticipated. As automation technologies become more complex, relying on interdependencies among algorithms, databases, sensors, and mechanical parts, the potential sources of failure multiply. They also become harder to detect.

conundrum of computer automation.

Because many system designers assume that human operators are “unreliable and inefficient,” at least when compared with a computer, they strive to give the operators as small a role as possible.

People end up functioning as mere monitors, passive watchers of screens. That’s a job that humans, with our notoriously wandering minds, are especially bad at

people have trouble maintaining their attention on a stable display of information for more than half an hour. “This means,” Bainbridge observed, “that it is humanly impossible to carry out the basic function of monitoring for unlikely abnormalities.”

a person’s skills “deteriorate when they are not used,” even an experienced operator will eventually begin to act like an inexperienced one if restricted to just watching.

You can program software to shift control back to human operators at frequent but irregular intervals; knowing that they may need to take command at any moment keeps people engaged, promoting situational awareness and learning.

What’s most astonishing, and unsettling, about computer automation is that it’s still in its early stages.

most software applications don’t foster learning and engagement. In fact, they have the opposite effect. That’s because taking the steps necessary to promote the development and maintenance of expertise almost always entails a sacrifice of speed and productivity.

Learning requires inefficiency. Businesses, which seek to maximize productivity and profit, would rarely accept such a trade-off. Individuals, too, almost always seek efficiency and convenience.

Abstract concerns about the fate of human talent can’t compete with the allure of saving time and money.

The small island of Igloolik, off the coast of the Melville Peninsula in the Nunavut territory of northern Canada, is a bewildering place in the winter.

, Inuit hunters have for some 4,000 years ventured out from their homes on the island and traveled across miles of ice and tundra to search for game. The hunters’ ability to navigate vast stretches of the barren Arctic terrain, where landmarks are few, snow formations are in constant flux, and trails disappear overnight, has amazed explorers and scientists for centuries. The Inuit’s extraordinary way-finding skills are born not of technological prowess—they long eschewed maps and compasses—but of a profound understanding of winds, snowdrift patterns, animal behavior, stars, and tides.

The Igloolik hunters have begun to rely on computer-generated maps to get around. Adoption of GPS technology has been particularly strong among younger Inuit, and it’s not hard to understand why.

But as GPS devices have proliferated on Igloolik, reports of serious accidents during hunts have spread. A hunter who hasn’t developed way-finding skills can easily become lost, particularly if his GPS receiver fails.

The routes so meticulously plotted on satellite maps can also give hunters tunnel vision, leading them onto thin ice or into other hazards a skilled navigator would avoid.

An Inuit on a GPS-equipped snowmobile is not so different from a suburban commuter in a GPS-equipped SUV: as he devotes his attention to the instructions coming from the computer, he loses sight of his surroundings. He travels “blindfolded,” as Aporta puts it

A unique talent that has distinguished a people for centuries may evaporate in a generation.

Computer automation severs the ends from the means. It makes getting what we want easier, but it distances us from the work of knowing. As we transform ourselves into creatures of the screen, we face an existential question: Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want?

six to ten months children have already learned to be sensitive to the basic sounds, known as phonemes, that matter in their native language.

language requires real-time mappings between words and their meanings. This requires that the sounds heard in speech – decoded in the auditory cortex – must be integrated with knowledge about what they mean – in the frontal cortex.

Modern theories on connectionism – the idea that knowledge is distributed across different parts of the brain and not tucked into dedicated modules like Broca’s area – have compelled researchers to take a closer look.

found that these differences between Mandarin Chinese and English change the way the brain’s networks work.

non-tonal language such as English, tone might convey emotional information about the speaker, but indicates nothing about the meaning of the word that is spoken

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language in which the same basic sounds can refer to vastly different things based on the tone with which it is spoken

researchers took advantage of the basic differences between Mandarin Chinese and English to investigate the differences between the language networks of native speakers of tonal and non-tonal languages. Thirty native Chinese speakers were matched on age, gender, and handedness (they were all right-handed) with a sample of native English speakers. All participants listened to intelligible and unintelligible speech and were asked to judge the gender of the speaker.

The first difference was the operation of the brain networks shared by English and Chinese speakers

English speakers showed stronger connectivity leading from Wernicke’s area to Broca’s area. This increased connectivity was attributed to English relying more heavily on phonological information, or sounds rather than tones.

Chinese speakers had stronger connections leading from an area of the brain called the anterior superior temporal gyrus – which has been identified as a “semantic hub” critical in supporting language – to both Broca’s and Wernicke’s area.

increased connectivity is attributed to the enhanced mapping of sound and meaning going on in people who speak tonal languages.

second difference showed activation in an area of the brain’s right hemisphere, but only among the Chinese speakers

findings emphasise the importance of developing a bilateral network between the two brain hemispheres to speak and understand languages, particularly for tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese.

But these concepts are difficult for many to swallow. Specialists like urologists, radiologists and oncologists, who see patients who are sick and dying from cancer, often resist the idea of doing less screening. General practitioners, who may agree with the new guidelines, worry about getting involved in long conversations with patients trying to explain why they might reconsider having a mammogram every year or a P.S.A. test at all. Some doctors fear lawsuits if they do not screen and a patient develops a fatal cancer. Patients often say they will take their chances with screening’s harms if a test can save their lives.

And comments like Dr. Brawley’s give rise to other questions as well. Is all this happening now because of worries over costs? And in any case, is all this simply an academic argument, since most doctors, faced with real patients, still suggest frequent screening and their patients agree?

One person who took part in a study into aphantasia said he had started to feel "isolated" and "alone" after discovering that other people could see images in their heads. Being unable to reminisce about his mother years after her death led to him being "extremely distraught".

Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology, wants to compare the lives and experiences of people with aphantasia and its polar-opposite hyperphantasia.His team, based at the University of Exeter, coined the term aphantasia this year

How we imagine is clearly very subjective - one person's vivid scene could be another's grainy picture.But Prof Zeman is certain that aphantasia is real. People often report being able to dream in pictures, and there have been reported cases of people losing the ability to think in images after a brain injury. He is adamant that aphantasia is "not a disorder" and says it may affect up to one in 50 people.

He has a particular habit of saying “you” and “we” as he inveighs against a dangerous “them” or unnamed other — usually outsiders like illegal immigrants (“they’re pouring in”), Syrian migrants (“young, strong men”) and Mexicans, but also leaders of both political parties.

Mr. Trump appears unrivaled in his ability to forge bonds with a sizable segment of Americans over anxieties about a changing nation, economic insecurities, ferocious enemies and emboldened minorities (like the first black president, whose heritage and intelligence he has all but encouraged supporters to malign).

“ ‘We vs. them’ creates a threatening dynamic, where ‘they’ are evil or crazy or ignorant and ‘we’ need a candidate who sees the threat and can alleviate it,”

“He appeals to the masses and makes them feel powerful again: ‘We’ need to build a wall on the Mexican border — not ‘I,’ but ‘we.’ ”

And as much as he likes the word “attack,” the Times analysis shows, he often uses it to portray himself as the victim of cable news channels and newspapers that, he says, do not show the size of his crowds.

The specter of violence looms over much of his speech, which is infused with words like kill, destroy and fight.

“Such statements and accusations make him seem like a guy who can and will cut through all the b.s. and do what in your heart you know is right — and necessary,

And Mr. Trump uses rhetoric to erode people’s trust in facts, numbers, nuance, government and the news media, according to specialists in political rhetoric.

“Nobody knows,” he likes to declare, where illegal immigrants are coming from or the rate of increase of health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act, even though government agencies collect and publish this information.

He insists that Mr. Obama wants to accept 250,000 Syrian migrants, even though no such plan exists, and repeats discredited rumors that thousands of Muslims were cheering in New Jersey during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In another pattern, Mr. Trump tends to attack a person rather than an idea or a situation, like calling political opponents “stupid” (at least 30 times), “horrible” (14 times), “weak” (13 times) and other names, and criticizing foreign leaders, journalists and so-called anchor babies

This pattern of elevating emotional appeals over rational ones is a rhetorical style that historians, psychologists and political scientists placed in the tradition of political figures like Goldwater, George Wallace, Joseph McCarthy, Huey Long and Pat Buchanan,

“His entire campaign is run like a demagogue’s — his language of division, his cult of personality, his manner of categorizing and maligning people with a broad brush,”

“If you’re an illegal immigrant, you’re a loser. If you’re captured in war, like John McCain, you’re a loser. If you have a disability, you’re a loser. It’s rhetoric like Wallace’s — it’s not a kind or generous rhetoric.”

“And then there are the winners, most especially himself, with his repeated references to his wealth and success and intelligence,”

Historically, demagogues have flourished when they tapped into the grievances of citizens and then identified and maligned outside foes, as McCarthy did with attacking Communists, Wallace with pro-integration northerners and Mr. Buchanan with cultural liberals

Mr. Trump, by contrast, is an energetic and charismatic speaker who can be entertaining and ingratiating with his audiences. There is a looseness to his language that sounds almost like water-cooler talk or neighborly banter, regardless of what it is about.

he presents himself as someone who is always right in his opinions — even prophetic, a visionary

It is the sort of trust-me-and-only-me rhetoric that, according to historians, demagogues have used to insist that they have unique qualities that can lead the country through turmoil

New research suggests that one possible answer can be found in the brain’s so-called central executive network, which helps regulate emotions, thinking and behavior

used M.R.I. to study the brains of a racially diverse group of 218 people, ages 12 to 14, living in violent neighborhoods in Chicago

the youths who had higher levels of functional connectivity in the central executive network had better cardiac and metabolic health than their peers with lower levels of connectivity

when neighborhood homicide rates went up, the young people’s cardiometabolic risk — as measured by obesity, blood-pressure and insulin levels, among other variables — also increased, but only in youths who showed lower activity in this brain network

“Active resilience happens when people who are vulnerable find resources to cope with stress and bounce back, and do so in a way that leaves them stronger, ready to handle additional stress, in more adaptive ways.”

the more medically hardy young people were no less anxious or depressed than their less fortunate peers, which suggests that while being more resilient makes you less vulnerable to adversity, it doesn’t guarantee happiness — or even an awareness of being resilient.

there is good reason to believe the link may be causal because other studies have found that we can change the activity in the self-control network, and increase healthy behaviors, with simple behavioral interventions

For example, mindfulness training, which involves attention control, emotion regulation and increased self-awareness, can increase connectivity within this network and help people to quit smoking.

n one study, two weeks of mindfulness training produced a 60 percent reduction in smoking, compared with no reduction in a control group that focused on relaxation. An M.R.I. following mindfulness training showed increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex, key brain areas in the executive self-control network

Clearly self-control is one critical component of resilience that can be easily fostered. But there are others.

One plausible explanation is that greater activity in this network increases self-control, which most likely reduces some unhealthy behaviors people often use to cope with stress, like eating junk food or smoking

she and colleagues studied the brains of depressed patients who died. They found that the most disrupted genes were those for growth factors, proteins that act like a kind of brain fertilizer.

“We came to realize that depressed people have lost their power to remodel their brains. And that is in fact devastating because brain remodeling is something we need to do all the time — we are constantly rewiring our brains based on past experience and the expectation of how we need to use them in the future,

one growth factor that is depleted in depressed brains, called fibroblast growth factor 2, also plays a role in resilience. When they gave it to stressed animals, they bounced back faster and acted less depressed. And when they gave it just once after birth to animals that had been bred for high levels of anxiety and inhibition, they were hardier for the rest of their lives.

The good news is that we have some control over our own brain BDNF levels: Getting more physical exercise and social support, for example, has been shown to increase BDNF.

Perhaps someday we might be able to protect young people exposed to violence and adversity by supplementing them with neuroprotective growth factors. We know enough now to help them by fortifying their brains through exercise, mindfulness training and support systems

Some people have won the genetic sweepstakes and are naturally tough. But there is plenty the rest of us can do to be more resilient and healthier.

there are plenty of behaviors that require self-control that have held steady or even improved in recent decades

Cigarette smoking has fallen sharply since the Mad Men days.

Alcohol consumption peaked in 1980 and has fallen back to the same level as 1960

Seat belts,

are now used by 9 out of 10 motorists.

the ratio of household consumption to household net worth just hit a postwar low: In 2018 consumption was 13.2 percent of net worth, down from 16.3 percent in 1946.

it isn’t clear that savings habits have worsened since World War II.

Nevertheless, like every generation before us, we crave more self-control.

science shows that helping people do better in the internal tug-of-war of self-control depends on creating the right external environment.

some temptations require hard paternalism

some choices are not in our best interest. Taxing, regulating, restricting or even banning especially addictive drugs may lead to more freedom

Cellphones and soda

the benefits of constraining access may, in some cases, justify the costs

we recommend nudges — subtle changes in how choices are framed that make doing what’s in our long-term interest more obvious, easier or more attractiv

deploy science-backed strategies that make self-control easier.

putting temptations out of sight and out of reach:

disabling apps that, upon reflection, do more harm than good.

Anything you can do to put time and effort between you and indulgence makes self-control easier.

Live Nation Rules Music Ticketing, Some Say With Threats

To the Stoics, contributing to public affairs was a critical duty of the philosopher. Could Seneca decline to serve because he disagreed with the emperor? Could he leave a deranged Nero unsupervised? In time, Seneca would also come to the conclusion that when “the state is so rotten as to be past helping, if evil has entire dominion over it, the wise man will not labor in vain or waste his strength in unprofitable efforts.”

My own early career involved some questionable service to businesspeople. Employed and paid by them, I planned and carried out controversial publicity stunts, and used dishonest tactics with the public and the media. When I finally left those roles, I found a knowledge of Stoic philosophy integral to my ability to assess my past actions, and set a more honorable course going forward.

Seneca seemed to realize only belatedly that one can contribute to his fellow citizens in ways other than through the state — for instance, by writing or simply by being a good man at home.

In 65 A.D., Seneca would again find that philosophy did not exist only in the ethereal world. Conspirators began to plot against Nero’s life, and Seneca, finally accepting that the monster he had helped create needed to be stopped, appears to have participated — or covered for those who did.

The effort failed but provided Seneca an opportunity: His life up to that point had contradicted many of his own teachings, but now when Nero’s guards came and demanded his life, he would be brave and wise. The man who had written much about learning how to die and facing the end without fear would comfort his friends, finish an essay he was writing and distribute some finished pieces for safekeeping. Then, he slit his veins, took hemlock and succumbed to the suffocating steam of a bath.

. “Any successful virus has to get beyond that first defense system. The more successful it is at doing that, the better off the virus is.”

A lot of researchers focused their attention on the nine mutations that alter the so-called spike protein that covers the coronavirus and allows it to invade cells

They found that lung cells with Alpha made drastically less interferon, a protein that switches on a host of immune defenses.

It’s making itself more invisible,”

They found that Alpha-infected cells make a lot of extra copies — some 80 times more than other versions of the virus — of a gene called Orf9b.

dampening the production of interferon and a full immune response. The virus, protected from attack, has better odds of making copies of itself.

people infected with Alpha have a more robust reaction than they would with other variants, coughing and shedding virus-laden mucus from not only their mouths, but also their noses — making Alpha even better at spreading.

. They may have independently evolved their own tricks for manipulating our immune system.

But studies on people who recover naturally from Covid-19 have shown that their immune systems learn to recognize other viral proteins, including Orf9b.

“It’s quite a tricky enterprise, but becoming more possible as we learn more,”

For many affected patients, brain function improves as they recover. But some are likely to face long-term disability,

The injuries resembled those from a series of tiny strokes occurring in many different areas of the brain,

To understand other, less obvious mechanisms, though, scientists needed brain tissue from patients with COVID-19 who died.

"What we found was that the very small blood vessels in the brain were leaking,"

Some patients also suffer brain damage when their lungs can no longer provide enough oxygen.

What's more, the inflammation and leaky blood vessels associated with all these symptoms may make a person's brain more vulnerable to another type of damage."We know that those are important in Alzheimer's disease and we're seeing them play a key role here in COVID-19,"

Researchers will assess patients' "behavior, their memory, their overall function" at six-month intervals, she says.

Biden has indicated he may seek to abolish federal executions.

He told the victims' families, "I would have said I was sorry before, but I didn't know how. I hope you will find peace."

Donald Salzman, an attorney for Johnson, had argued that executing Johnson would be cruel and unusual punishment due to his COVID-19 infection.

His attorneys also said Johnson had an IQ of 69. In a statement following Johnson's death, they said the government executed a person "with an intellectual disability, in stark violation of the Constitution and federal law."

"Courts have repeatedly and correctly concluded that Johnson's seven murders were planned to advance his drug trafficking and were not impulsive acts by someone incapable of making calculated judgments, and are therefore eligible for the death penalty."