Group items tagged

Unclean, taking particular issue with the words and metaphors Christians use to frame sexual sin, especially for women. Beck argues that using the metaphor of purity imports a "psychology of contamination into our moral and spiritual lives," and this contamination is viewed as a permanent state, one beyond restoration.

Moreover, while women are subjected to the language of purity and seen as irreparably contaminated after having sex, the same is not true for men. According to Beck, a boy losing his virginity is seen as a "mistake, a stumbling," a mode of behavior that can be changed and rehabilitated. This, he argues, exposes a double standard at work in the language of sexual purity: women who have sex are seen as "damaged goods," but men who have sex are not.

Broadway proposes emphasizing an overarching ideal of "self-giving love" rather than abstinence, which would put a positive spin on premarital chastity, as well as cultivate deeper awareness of "unhealthy sexual dynamics within marriage," from sexual selfishness to "outright abuse."

Nestlé Prepared Foods is recalling certain pepperoni Hot Pockets over concerns they may be contaminated with pieces of glass and hard plastic,

health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death,"

There are four consumer complaints of extraneous materials inside the Hot Pockets, the Food Safety and Inspection Service said.

What’s startling is how many mystery infections still exist today.

More than a third of acute respiratory illnesses are idiopathic; the same is true for up to 40 percent of gastrointestinal disorders and more than half the cases of encephalitis (swelling of the brain).

Up to 20 percent of cancers and a substantial portion of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, are thought to have viral triggers, but a vast majority of those have yet to be identified.

New research sheds light on spotting false memories of emotional events.

Have you heard people 'remember' things about the COVID-19 crisis that you know can't be right?

Or maybe you have a friend who keeps merging memories of social distancing guidelines?

Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak some places have fully embraced wearing face masks, and anyone caught without one risks becoming a social pariah.But in many other parts of the world, from the UK and the US to Sydney and Singapore, it's still perfectly acceptable to walk around bare-faced.

the official advice from the World Health Organization has been clear. Only two types of people should wear masks: those who are sick and show symptoms, and those who are caring for people who are suspected to have the coronavirus.

a mask is not seen as reliable protection, given that current research shows the virus is spread by droplets and contact with contaminated surfaces. So it could protect you, but only in certain situations such as when you're in close quarters with others where someone infected might sneeze or cough near your face.

GIVEN the complexities of the modern world, we all have to rely on expert opinion. Are G.M.O. foods safe? Is global warming real? Should children be vaccinated for measles? We don’t have the time or the training to adjudicate these questions ourselves. We defer to the professionals.

And to find out what the experts think, we typically rely on the news media. This creates a challenge for journalists: There are many issues on which a large majority of experts agree but a small number hold a dissenting view. Is it possible to give voice to experts on both sides — standard journalistic practice — without distorting the public’s perception of the level of disagreement?

This can be hard to do. Indeed, critics argue that journalists too often generate “false balance,” creating an impression of disagreement when there is, in fact, a high level of consensus. One solution, adopted by news organizations such as the BBC, is “weight of evidence” reporting, in which the presentation of conflicting views is supplemented by an indication of where the bulk of expert opinion lies.

psychologist Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California–Irvine, has made her name working on false memory. She tells Alison George how recollections can be conjured up,

What exactly is going on when we retrieve a memory? EL: When we remember something, we're taking bits and pieces of experience—sometimes from different times and places—and bringing it all together to construct what might feel like a recollection but is actually a construction. The process of calling it into conscious awareness can change it, and now you're storing something that's different

The memory of witnesses to crimes and accidents was a natural place to go. In particular I looked at what happens when people are questioned about their experiences. I would ultimately see those questions as a means by which the memories got contaminated.

according to Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Convicting the Innocent, eyewitness misidentifications have played a leading role in nearly 75 percent of 250 convictions overturned by DNA evidence between 1989 and 2010. In more than one-half of those exonerations, the eyewitnesses start off unsure, a “glaring sign” of potential trouble as Garrett puts it, yet appear to become increasingly certain over time. This often corresponds with police practices like suggestive photo arrays, lineups, and even well-intentioned comments like “Good job!” after a witness makes an identification, however tentative. All of this can cause “contamination” of memory, Garrett says so that “there is no way to know after the fact whether the eyewitness could have actually picked the person with any degree of confidence.”

Special K for breakfast. Liverwurst and cheese for lunch. And I remember the song ‘You've Got Personality’ was playing as on the radio as I pulled up for work,” said Healy, one of 50 confirmed people in the United States with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, an uncanny ability to remember dates and events.

New research released this week has found that even people with phenomenal memory are susceptible to having “false memories,” suggesting that “memory distortions are basic and widespread in humans, and it may be unlikely that anyone is immune,” according to the authors of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Professor Elizabeth Loftus, who has spent decades researching how memories can become contaminated with people remembering—sometimes quite vividly and confidently—events that never happened. Loftus has found that memories can be planted in someone’s mind if they are exposed to misinformation after an event, or if they are asked suggestive questions about the past

A week ago, more than a year after the World Health Organization declared that we face a pandemic, a page on its website titled “Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19): How Is It Transmitted?” got a seemingly small update.

The revised response still emphasizes transmission in close contact but now says it may be via aerosols — smaller respiratory particles that can float — as well as droplets. It also adds a reason the virus can also be transmitted “in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings,” saying this is because “aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 meter.”

on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its guidance on Covid-19, clearly saying that inhalation of these smaller particles is a key way the virus is transmitted, even at close range, and put it on top of its list of how the disease spreads.

Despite senses being the only window to the outside world, people do rarely question how faithfully they represent the external physical reality.

Despite senses being the only window to the outside world, people do rarely question how faithfully they represent the external physical reality.

the cerebral cortex constantly generates predictions on what will happen next, and that neurons in charge of sensory processing only encode the difference between our predictions and the actual reality.

Primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a deadly disease caused by the "brain-eating amoeba" Naegleria fowleri, is becoming more common in some areas of the world, and it has no effective treatment.

Primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a deadly disease caused by the "brain-eating amoeba" Naegleria fowleri, is becoming more common in some areas of the world, and it has no effective treatment.

Inula viscosa or "false yellowhead," kills the amoebae by causing them to commit cell suicide in lab studies, which could lead to new treatments.

Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was charged Wednesday for his role in the Flint water crisis

Snyder is facing two counts of willful neglect of duty and if convicted he could face up to a year in prison and as much as a $1,000 fine.

referred to them as "a politically motivated smear campaign,"

focused on a part of cognition called working memory, the brain system that holds information for short periods while we are making decisions or performing calculations.

One factor in this decline is thought to be a disconnection between two brain networks, known as the prefrontal and temporal regions.

After the intervention, working memory in the older adults improved to match the younger group and the effect appeared to last for 50 minutes after the stimulation.

In another part of the study, the researchers determined that defining vaccination in terms of contamination—“the seasonal flu vaccine involves injecting people with the seasonal flu virus”—increased prejudice in subjects concerned about disease, whereas defining it in terms of protection—“the seasonal flu vaccine protects people from the seasonal flu virus”—had no such effect. Initiatives that minimize disease, the researchers concluded, might also end up minimizing discrimination.

It was only a matter of time before Donald Trump enlisted such language to serve his nativist agenda. Although COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed more than twenty thousand people and affected countries around the world, Trump’s fixation on its origins in Wuhan, China, has encouraged a rash of anti-Asian bigotry in the United States.

This month, Trump has taken to referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” presenting the label as a corrective to Beijing officials’ claims that the American military was the source of the outbreak.

But human memory is inherently flawed, and eyewitness misidentification plays a role in two-thirds of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide.

Although most of us trust our recollections, cognitive scientists like Elizabeth Loftus have shown that suggestions and post-event information can modify memories

Eyewitness testimony is particularly powerful precisely because the emotion fueling it is often completely genuine. The person delivering the testimony may believe in its fidelity regardless of its accuracy. But as Ms. Beerntsen’s case reminds us, it’s devastatingly easy for a witness to misidentify, so we need safeguards to ensure that those convicted are genuinely deserving.

The moments we remember from the first years of our lives are often our most treasured because we have carried them longest. The chances are, they are also completely made up.

Around four out of every 10 of us have fabricated our first memory, according to researchers. This is thought to be because our brains do not develop the ability to store autobiographical memories at least until we reach two years old.

Yet a surprising number of us have some flicker of memory from before that age

When was the last time you disinfected your phone? According to a 2017 study, high levels of bacterial contamination can be found on the surface of cell phones.

Time magazine suggests that your phone could be 10 times dirtier than your toilet seat.

Frequently looking down at your phone for extended periods of time puts a strain on your neck

A team of scientists hunting dark matter has recorded suspicious pings coming from a vat of liquid xenon underneath a mountain in Italy

If the signal is real and persists, the scientists say, it may be evidence of a species of subatomic particles called axions — long theorized to play a crucial role in keeping nature symmetrical but never seen — streaming from the sun.

Instead of axions, the scientists may have detected a new, unexpected property of the slippery ghostly particles called neutrinos. Yet another equally likely explanation is that their detector has been contaminated by vanishingly tiny amounts of tritium, a rare radioactive form of hydrogen.