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The latest numbers from NWEA, an education research group, says that the average student in third through eighth grade has lost 5 to 10 percentile points in math, but remained on track for reading.

Fewer of the students in groups more likely to be negatively impacted by COVID-19 participated in the research, and early indicators suggest that Black and Hispanic students in upper elementary grades may have experienced small declines in reading scores not shared by other groups.

Scott suspects there were more children with such opportunities and that other parents had more time to help supervise or tutor.

Some of the ways in which groups of affluent parents have been using their wealth for educational advantage during the pandemic have been well-documented. Many private schools, in some areas more likely to open in-person education, have seen increased enrollment numbers

But there’s little research on how often families are taking advantage of increased tutoring or other supplemental services

But the pandemic has only further exposed the artifice that school alone has the ability to close achievement gaps. Resources and money will always play a role.

noting that students of color are more likely to have had someone close to them who suffered severely or even died from COVID-19. These students are also more likely to have been affected by high-profile instances of racism this past summer

“I think the district was insensitive about supplies because it’s used to catering to high-income families,”

“You have teachers saying, ‘Ask your parent for help if you don’t understand the work,’ but what if the parent is not available?”

the issue with the zero-sum bias is that it causes people to believe that situations are zero-sum, when that’s not actually the case.

But when the disease is real — when we see actual death tolls climbing daily, as we do with the coronavirus — another factor besides our sensitivity to losses comes into play: fear.

asked people to imagine that the United States was preparing for an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease that was expected to kill 600 citizens. To combat the disease, people could choose between two options: a treatment that would ensure 200 people would be saved or one that had a 33 percent chance of saving all 600 but a 67 percent chance of saving none. Here, a clear favorite emerged: Seventy-two percent chose the former.

Using a nationally representative sample in the months following Sept. 11, 2001, the decision scientist Jennifer Lerner showed that feeling fear led people to believe that certain anxiety-provoking possibilities (for example, a terrorist strike) were more likely to occur.

we presented sad, angry or emotionally neutral people with a government proposal to raise taxes. In one version of the proposal, we said the increased revenue would be used to reduce “depressing” problems (like poor conditions in nursing homes). In the other, we focused on “angering” problems (like increasing crime because of a shortage of police officers).

when the emotions people felt matched the emotion of the rationales for the tax increase, their attitudes toward the proposal became more positive. But the more effort they put into considering the proposal didn’t turn out to reduce this bias; it made it stronger.

Without the usual work mixers, festive holiday celebrations, far-flung vacations or casual dinners that typically mark and divide the calendar, the brain has a harder time processing and cataloging memories,

the stress of the year itself can shift how our brains experience time

there is a medical explanation for the feeling of mental haziness: Covid brain fog, a lingering combination of dementia-like symptoms including memory loss, confusion and difficulty focusing

For some who have recovered from Covid-19

Sheer monotony has the ability to warp time and tangle our memories, psychologists say, with quarantines and lockdowns robbing us of the “boundary events” that normally divide the days, like chapters in a book.

Without breaks in a repetitive routine, the mind has difficulty differentiating between memories, which psychologists call pattern separation,

t doesn’t help that so much of our lives are virtual now, happening only on screens. Instead of stimulating our senses in real life — going to shops, meeting friends for coffee, chatting with colleagues in the office — we FaceTime when the mood strikes, we binge Netflix shows from three years ago and we browse Amazon perpetually

If one problem is that there is too little going on in our lives, another problem, it seems, is that there is also too much.

The unending sense of crisis is an “ongoing, chronic stressor” that can lead to a collapse of the reassuring sense that our lives move in orderly fashion: past, present, future, which is key to mental stability.

In researching the psychological repercussions of devastating Southern California wildfires in the 1990s, Dr. Holman said that victims felt like “time slowed down" and “the days blurred together.” “Their sense of reality changes,” she said. “They’re not sure what’s real anymore. They feel a sense of a blur, like time is just a blur.”

But even people in solitary confinement will tell you that the essence of that experience is something we’re all experiencing now — the deprivation of normal social contact. And human beings really do depend on each other to structure our lives and tell us who we are.”

“We’ve all had basically enough of wearing our masks and having our lives disrupted,” Ms. Spinney said, “which is what we’re seeing now with Covid fatigue.”

Or perhaps we just need to remember that time is a human construct.

that domestication probably began around 20,000 years ago.

much more diverse genetically than modern dogs.

All European dogs appear to have descended from one group of ancient European dogs, and the great modern diversity of dog shapes and sizes indicates an emphasis by breeders on certain very powerful genes.

Modern wolves, however, do show the incorporation of some dog DNA.

The extraordinarily rich amount of information gathered from the 27 genomes provided many new perspectives on dog domestication and their association with humans.

even while they were sometimes breeding with wolves, no new wolf DNA entered their genomes.

Pigs can be a little wild but “if you’re a dog and you’ve got a little bit of wolf in you, that’s not a good thing and those things get knocked on the head very quickly or run away or disappear but they don’t get integrated into the dog population.”

But then there was the sudden loss of diversity in dogs starting around 4,000 years ago.

The exact where and when of dog domestication remain unclear, and will never be pinned down to the kind of moment in time that dog owners like to imagine, but, in terms of a period of time and geographic area, Dr. Larson said, “We’re getting closer.”

Yet behavioral targeting is, in some ways, “push” marketing carried to its extreme, with the advertiser controlling not just the content of its message but also the audience for it. Even if privacy concerns are overcome, can targeting work once consumers realize they are being “pushed”?

whose face was disfigured in an attack by her ex-husband,

More than 40 patients worldwide have received face transplants, including 16 in the United States. None of the American patients had lost their donor faces until Tarleton.

She really got lucky.”

rejected his donor face eight years after his first transplant underwent a second

She really wanted to try one more time,” said Pomahac, who led the 20-hour, second surgery. A team of around 45 clinicians removed the failing transplant and then prepared sensory nerves and blood vessels in the neck for the surgical connection. The face was then transplanted and Tarleton will gain sensory and motor function in the coming months.

a much better tissue match.

“The pain I had is gone,” she said. “It’s a new chapter in my life. I’ve been waiting for almost a year. I’m really happy. It’s what I needed. I got a great match.”

“When you look at most organ transplants, there is a shelf life,” Gastman said. “We are getting to the point where these face transplantations are hitting against the maximum number of years someone can have one in.”

Tarleton was burned on over 80% of her body and blinded in 2007 when her estranged husband, Herbert Rodgers, beat her with a baseball bat and doused her body with lye because he thought she was seeing another man.

The first transplant transformed Tarleton’s life.

don’t get stared at so easily.”

She was added back on when the state allowed elective surgeries to resume.

But by last year, the face was failing. She began experiencing scarring, tightness and pain because of a loss of blood flow to her face. Black patches appeared on her face. Her eyelids contracted and her lips began disappearing, making it difficult to eat. She was mostly housebound and resumed taking strong pain medications.

“It is strange. I am not going to lie,” she added. “I’ll have to get used to it. My sister will have to get used to it. It takes a while for my friends and family to get used to what I look like now.”

During this time, the BrainEx system not only preserved brain cell structure and reduced cell death, but also restored some cellular activity.

For example, although scientists are a long way from being able to restore brain function in people with severe brain injuries, if some restoration of brain activity is possible, "then we would have to change our definition of brain death," Singhal told Live Science.

The work also could stimulate research on ways to promote brain recovery after loss of blood flow to the brain, such as during a heart attack.

The cerebrum has two halves, or hemispheres, that are further divided into four regions, or lobes. The frontal lobes, located behind the forehead, are involved with speech, thought, learning, emotion, and movement.

Behind them are the parietal lobes, which process sensory information such as touch, temperature, and pain.

At the rear of the brain are the occipital lobes, dealing with vision

Lastly, there are the temporal lobes, near the temples, which are involved with hearing and memory.

The second-largest part of the brain is the cerebellum, which sits beneath the back of the cerebrum.

diencephalon, located in the core of the brain. A complex of structures roughly the size of an apricot, its two major sections are the thalamus and hypothalamus

The brain is extremely sensitive and delicate, and so it requires maximum protection, which is provided by the hard bone of the skull and three tough membranes called meninges.

Want more proof that the brain is extraordinary? Look no further than the blood-brain barrier.

This led scientists to learn that the brain has an ingenious, protective layer. Called the blood-brain barrier, it’s made up of special, tightly bound cells that together function as a kind of semi-permeable gate throughout most of the organ. It keeps the brain environment safe and stable by preventing some toxins, pathogens, and other harmful substances from entering the brain through the bloodstream, while simultaneously allowing oxygen and vital nutrients to pass through.

One in five Americans suffers from some form of neurological damage, a wide-ranging list that includes stroke, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy, as well as dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized in part by a gradual progression of short-term memory loss, disorientation, and mood swings, is the most common cause of dementia. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States

50 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia. While there are a handful of drugs available to mitigate Alzheimer’s symptoms, there is no cure.

Unfortunately, negative attitudes toward people who suffer from mental illness are widespread. The stigma attached to mental illness can create feelings of shame, embarrassment, and rejection, causing many people to suffer in silence.

In the United States, where anxiety disorders are the most common forms of mental illness, only about 40 percent of sufferers receive treatment. Anxiety disorders often stem from abnormalities in the brain’s hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a mental health condition that also affects adults but is far more often diagnosed in children.

ADHD is characterized by hyperactivity and an inability to stay focused.

Depression is another common mental health condition. It is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is often accompanied by anxiety. Depression can be marked by an array of symptoms, including persistent sadness, irritability, and changes in appetite.

The good news is that in general, anxiety and depression are highly treatable through various medications—which help the brain use certain chemicals more efficiently—and through forms of therapy

Experts have managed to turn people off all sorts of foods by convincing them it had made them ill when they were a child

“People have a life story, particularly as they get older and for some people it needs to stretch back to the very early stage of life,”

The prevailing account of how we come to believe and remember things is based around the concept of source monitoring. “Every time a thought comes to mind we have to make a decision – have we experienced it [an event], imagined it or have we talked about it with other people,” says Kimberley Wade

Most of the time we make that decision correctly and can identify where these mental experiences come from, but sometimes we get it wrong.

Wade admits she has spent a lot of time recalling an event that was actually something her brother experienced rather than herself, but despite this, it is rich in detail and provokes emotion

Memory researchers have shown it is possible to induce fictional autobiographical memories in volunteers, including accounts of getting lost in a shopping mall and even having tea with a member of the Royal Family

Based on my research, everybody is capable of forming complex false memories, given the right circumstances – Julia Shaw

In some situations, such as after looking at pictures or a video, children are more susceptible to forming false memories than adults. People with certain personality types are also thought to be more prone.

But carrying around false memories from your childhood could be having a far greater impact on you than you may realise too. The events, emotions and experiences we remember from our early years can help to shape who we are as adults, determining our likes, dislikes, fears and even our behaviour.

Memories before the age of three are more than likely to be false. Any that appear very fluid and detailed, as if you were playing back a home video and experiencing a chronological account of a memory, could well also be made up. It is more likely that fuzzy fragments, or snapshots of moments are real, as long as they are not from too early in your life.

We crave a cohesive narrative of our own existence and will even invent stories to give us a more complete picture

Interestingly, scientists have also found positive suggestions, such as “you loved asparagus the first time you ate it” tend to be more effective than negative suggestions like “you got sick drinking vodka”

“Miscarriage of justice, incarceration, loss of reputation, job and status, and family breakdown occur,

One of the major problems with legal cases involving false memories, is that it is currently impossible to distinguish between true and fictional recollections

Efforts have been made to analyse minor false memories in a brain scanner (fMRI) and detect different neurological patterns, but there is nothing as yet to indicate that this technology can be used to detect whether recollections have become distorted.

the most extreme case of memory implantation involves a controversial technique called “regression therapy”, where patients confront childhood traumas, supposedly buried in their subconscious

“Memories are malleable and tend to change slightly each time we revisit them, in the same way that spoken stories do,”

“Therefore at each recollection, new elements can easily be integrated while existing elements can be altered or lost.”

This is not to say that all evidence that relies on memory should be discarded or regarded as unreliable – they often provide the most compelling testimony in criminal cases. But it has led to rules and guidelines about how witnesses and victims should be questioned to ensure their recollections of an event or perpetrator are not contaminated by investigators or prosecutors.

Any memories that appear very fluid and detailed, as if you were playing back a home video, could well also be made up

While this may seem like a bit of fun, many scientists believe the “false memory diet” could be used to tackle obesity and encourage people to reach for healthier options like asparagus, or even help cut people’s alcohol consumption.

Children are more susceptible to forming false memories than adults, especially after looking at photographs or films

And we may not want to rid ourselves of these memories. Our memories, whether fictional or not, can help to bring us closer together.

Now, we don’t need to ask you anything. We can look at your brain while you go through things and we’ll discern how you feel.

The deal allows Airbus to sustain annual production at six planes, which it described as the minimum at which losses are manageable.

The bleak outlook for the A380 was punctuated late last year when the first of the jets put into operation was placed in long-term storage after Singapore Airlines opted not to extend an initial lease period. The carrier is the second biggest A380 customer, having ordered 24.

Boeing also has struggled to win orders for its biggest plane, the 747-8, leading to production cuts. For Airbus, the A400M cutback comes after years during which the company struggled to get the military transport out the door and develop some of the promised technical features. Airbus said it would build 15 of the planes this year, after delivering 19 last year. It plans to build 11 of the planes in 2019, and eight annually thereafter.

Airbus Chief Financial Officer Harald Wilhelm said last month said that lowering build rates for the A400M and the A380 would keep them in production and buy time to secure further deals.

Facebook said these News Feed modifications were not identical to those introduced last fall in six countries through its Explore program, but both alterations favor posts from friends and family over professional news sites. And what happened in those countries illustrates the unintended consequences of such a change in an online service that now has a global reach of more than two billion people every month.

The fabricated story circulated so widely that the local police issued a statement saying it wasn’t true. But when the police went to issue the warning on Facebook, they found that the message — unlike the fake news story they meant to combat — could no longer appear on News Feed because it came from an official account.Facebook explained its goals for the Explore program in Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Bolivia, Guatemala and Serbia in a blog post in October. “The goal of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content,” wrote Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook’s News Feed. “There is no current plan to roll this out beyond these test countries.”

The loss of visitors from Facebook was readily apparent in October, and Mr. Huallpa could communicate with Facebook only through a customer service form letter. He received an automatic reply in return.

ech giant may play in her country.“It’s a private company — they have the right to do as they please, of course,” she said. “But the first question we asked is ‘Why Bolivia?’ And we don’t even have the possibility of asking why. Why us?”

Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, the French idea of love was caught between celebrating l'amour in all its manifestations and cursing its bittersweet legacy of suffering, heartbreak and loss.

But Yalom's affection for the simultaneous idealism and pragmatism of l'amour a la française is infectious,

A 2017 survey of passengers commissioned by London’s Gatwick Airport found that 15% of men and 6% of women are more likely to cry while watching a film on a flight than if they were to watch that movie elsewhere.

While the number of job losses and company failures remains uncertain, Mr Gurría said countries would be dealing with the economic fallout "for years to come".

"Even if you don't get a worldwide recession, you're going to get either no growth or negative growth in many of the economies of the world, including some of the larger ones, and therefore you're going to get not only low growth this year, but also it's going to take longer to pick up in the in the future,"

the reason is that we don't know how much it's going to take to fix the unemployment because we don't know how many people are going to end up unemployed. We also don't know how much it's going to take to fix the hundreds of thousands of small and medium enterprises who are already suffering

Mr Gurría called on governments to rip up borrowing rules and "throw everything we got at it" to deal with the crisis.

However, he warned that bigger deficits and larger debt piles would also weigh on heavily indebted countries for years to come.

Mr Gurría said that just weeks ago, policymakers from the G20 club of rich nations believed the recovery would take a 'V' shape - with a short, sharp drop in economic activity followed swiftly by a rebound in growth."It was already then mostly wishful thinking," he said.

It's going to be more in the best of cases like a 'U' with a long trench in the bottom before it gets to the recovery period. We can avoid it looking like an 'L', if we take the right decisions today."

An intriguing thesis is that possessing a strong sense of life purpose provides us with that latent power to persevere and take action, even in the face of daunting odds and potential adversity. This is related to, though not identical to, the concept of resilience: the ability to bounce back from losses, failures, and disappointments

A third possibility is that life ends when the physiological systems of the body have lost the capacity to function as an integrated whole, or when this loss becomes irreversible (Belshaw 2009; DeGrazia 2014). Call this ‘integration death’.