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marleen_ueberall

Markets and Governments: A Historical Perspective - The Globalist - 0 views

www.theglobalist.com/ments-a-historical-perspective

markets governments

shared by marleen_ueberall on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The idea that competitive markets are sufficient to ensure efficient outcomes and stable economies is under heavy intellectual fire
  • The crisis has prompted a fundamental re-think of the relationship between markets and governments
  • but between competing systems of political economy and models of governance.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Striking the right balance between markets and government is the central issue in policy debates over economic developmen
  • What is the role of governments in promoting economic growth?
  • What can governments do to seize the opportunities of globalization, while minimizing its downsides?
  • we have to recognize that the tension between markets and government is not new. In fact, it has been the central issue in the evolution of political economy over the last 200 years.
  • There have been three distinct phases in this evolution.
  • Phase One: The rise of the market
  • The “rise of the market” began in the late 18th century, shaped by the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The “invisible hand” of the market guided supply and demand toward equilibrium and efficiency.
  • This phase came to an end in the 1930s, when the concept of self-correcting markets collapsed under the weight of the Great Depression.
  • Falling prices, instead of bringing demand and supply into equilibrium,
  • Phase Two: The rise of government
  • markets were inherently unstable. Left on their own, they may not always self-correct
  • Government intervention was necessary to boost aggregate demand during periods of high unemployment.
  • The 1940s also saw the advent of the welfare state.
  • The welfare state was enabled through redistributive taxation and government regulation.
  • Phase Three: The return of the market
  • This phase began with growing disenchantment with government’s ability to deliver and was driven forward mainly by U.S.-based economists
  • The stagflation of the 1970s — persistently high inflation and unemployment — called into question the ability of governments to fine-tune the economy. Meanwhile, the welfare state began to impose an unsustainable fiscal burden,
  • Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman led the charge against “Big Government.” They argued eloquently how an overreaching government dulled the fundamental human instincts that power the capitalist system:
  • In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reduced taxes, deregulated industries, privatized state-owned enterprises, curbed union power, and scaled back welfare programs. The global economy boomed.
  • Phase Four: Balancing markets and governments
  • The financial crisis has revealed significant imperfections in market mechanisms: information asymmetry, moral hazard, systemic risks and behavioral or nonrational motivators of choice.
  • In a more globalized and complex economy, governments have fewer levers to pull
  • It has also revealed the inherent limitations of governmen
  • Neither market fundamentalism nor central planning has worked.
  • Yet one thing is certain: The choice is not between big government and small government. It is about creating effective government. What matters is what governments do, not how big they are.
caelengrubb

Thomas Kuhn Paradigm Shift | Simply Psychology - 0 views

www.simplypsychology.org/Kuhn-Paradigm.html

shared by caelengrubb on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Thomas Kuhn argued that science does not evolve gradually towards truth.
  • Science has a paradigm which remains constant before going through a paradigm shift when current theories can’t explain some phenomenon, and someone proposes a new theory.
  • A scientific revolution occurs when: (i) the new paradigm better explains the observations, and offers a model that is closer to the objective, external reality; and (ii) the new paradigm is incommensurate with the old.
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  • Kuhn looked at the history of science and argued that science does not simply progress by stages based upon neutral observations
  • For Kuhn, the history of science is characterized by revolutions in scientific outlook. Scientists have a worldview or "paradigm"
  • A paradigm is a universally recognizable scientific achievement that, for a time, provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.
  • Scientists accept the dominant paradigm until anomalies are thrown up.  Scientists then begin to question the basis of the paradigm itself, new theories emerge which challenge the dominant paradigm and eventually one of these new theories becomes accepted as the new paradigm.
  • A particular work may “define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.”
  • This is where the paradigm shift occurs.
  • The pre-paradigmatic state refers to a period before a scientific consensus has been reached.
  • Phase 2: Normal Science
  • A paradigm is established which lays the foundations for legitimate work within the discipline. Scientific work then consists in articulation of the paradigm, in solving puzzles that it throws up.
  • It is necessary for normal science to be uncritical. If all scientists were critical of a theory and spent time trying to falsify it, no detailed work would ever get done.
  • Phase 1: Pre-sciencePhase 1: Pre-science
  • Phase 3: Crisis
  • "Normal Science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all of their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like
  • Anomalies become serious, and a crisis develops if the anomalies undermine the basic assumptions of the paradigm and attempts to remove them consistently fail
  • If the anomalies can be resolved, the crisis is over and normal science resumes. If not, there is a scientific revolution which involves a change of paradigm.
  • Revoluti
  • Phase 4: Revolution
  • Eventually a new paradigm will be established, but not as a result of any logically compelling justification.
  • The enormous impact of Thomas Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning.
  • For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by, but not ultimately determined by, logical processes.
  • Kuhn believed that it represented the consensus of the community of scientists
  • Successive paradigms are incommensurable. Kuhn says that a later paradigm may be a better instrument for solving puzzles than an earlier one.  But if each paradigm defines its own puzzles, what is a puzzle for one paradigm may be no puzzle at all for another
  • Science does not change its paradigm over night. Younger scientists take a new paradigm forward
Javier E

How to Remember Everything You Want From Non-Fiction Books | by Eva Keiffenheim, MSc | ... - 0 views

medium.com/...non-fiction-books-df17096d517f

books reading learning notetaking memory long-term

shared by Javier E on 05 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A Bachelor’s degree taught me how to learn to ace exams. But it didn’t teach me how to learn to remember.
  • 65% to 80% of students answered “no” to the question “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?”
  • the most-popular Coursera course of all time: Dr. Barabara Oakley’s free course on “Learning how to Learn.” So did I. And while this course taught me about chunking, recalling, and interleaving
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  • I learned something more useful: the existence of non-fiction literature that can teach you anything.
  • something felt odd. Whenever a conversation revolved around a serious non-fiction book I read, such as ‘Sapiens’ or ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ I could never remember much. Turns out, I hadn’t absorbed as much information as I’d believed. Since I couldn’t remember much, I felt as though reading wasn’t an investment in knowledge but mere entertainment.
  • When I opened up about my struggles, many others confessed they also can’t remember most of what they read, as if forgetting is a character flaw. But it isn’t.
  • It’s the way we work with books that’s flawed.
  • there’s a better way to read. Most people rely on techniques like highlighting, rereading, or, worst of all, completely passive reading, which are highly ineffective.
  • Since I started applying evidence-based learning strategies to reading non-fiction books, many things have changed. I can explain complex ideas during dinner conversations. I can recall interesting concepts and link them in my writing or podcasts. As a result, people come to me for all kinds of advice.
  • What’s the Architecture of Human Learning and Memory?
  • Human brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.
  • we store new information in terms of its meaning to our existing memory
  • we give new information meaning by actively participating in the learning process — we interpret, connect, interrelate, or elaborate
  • To remember new information, we not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what we already know.
  • Learning is dependent on memory processes because previously-stored knowledge functions as a framework in which newly learned information can be linked.”
  • Human memory works in three stages: acquisition, retention, and retrieval. In the acquisition phase, we link new information to existing knowledge; in the retention phase, we store it, and in the retrieval phase, we get information out of our memory.
  • Retrieval, the third stage, is cue dependent. This means the more mental links you’re generating during stage one, the acquisition phase, the easier you can access and use your knowledge.
  • we need to understand that the three phases interrelate
  • creating durable and flexible access to to-be-learned information is partly a matter of achieving a meaningful encoding of that information and partly a matter of exercising the retrieval process.”
  • Next, we’ll look at the learning strategies that work best for our brains (elaboration, retrieval, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing) and see how we can apply those insights to reading non-fiction books.
  • The strategies that follow are rooted in research from professors of Psychological & Brain Science around Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel. Both scientists spent ten years bridging the gap between cognitive psychology and education fields. Harvard University Press published their findings in the book ‘Make It Stick.
  • #1 Elaboration
  • “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”
  • Why elaboration works: Elaborative rehearsal encodes information into your long-term memory more effectively. The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better because you’ll be generating more cues. And the more cues they have, the easier you can retrieve your knowledge.
  • How I apply elaboration: Whenever I read an interesting section, I pause and ask myself about the real-life connection and potential application. The process is invisible, and my inner monologues sound like: “This idea reminds me of…, This insight conflicts with…, I don’t really understand how…, ” etc.
  • For example, when I learned about A/B testing in ‘The Lean Startup,’ I thought about applying this method to my startup. I added a note on the site stating we should try it in user testing next Wednesday. Thereby the book had an immediate application benefit to my life, and I will always remember how the methodology works.
  • How you can apply elaboration: Elaborate while you read by asking yourself meta-learning questions like “How does this relate to my life? In which situation will I make use of this knowledge? How does it relate to other insights I have on the topic?”
  • While pausing and asking yourself these questions, you’re generating important memory cues. If you take some notes, don’t transcribe the author’s words but try to summarize, synthesize, and analyze.
  • #2 Retrieval
  • With retrieval, you try to recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory. While retrieval practice can take many forms — take a test, write an essay, do a multiple-choice test, practice with flashcards
  • the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ state: “While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefits learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results.”
  • Whatever you settle for, be careful not to copy/paste the words from the author. If you don’t do the brain work yourself, you’ll skip the learning benefits of retrieval
  • Retrieval strengthens your memory and interrupts forgetting and, as other researchers replicate, as a learning event, the act of retrieving information is considerably more potent than is an additional study opportunity, particularly in terms of facilitating long-term recall.
  • How I apply retrieval: I retrieve a book’s content from my memory by writing a book summary for every book I want to remember. I ask myself questions like: “How would you summarize the book in three sentences? Which concepts do you want to keep in mind or apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?”
  • I then publish my summaries on Goodreads or write an article about my favorite insights
  • How you can apply retrieval: You can come up with your own questions or use mine. If you don’t want to publish your summaries in public, you can write a summary into your journal, start a book club, create a private blog, or initiate a WhatsApp group for sharing book summaries.
  • a few days after we learn something, forgetting sets in
  • #3 Spaced Repetition
  • With spaced repetition, you repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals.
  • The harder it feels to recall the information, the stronger the learning effect. “Spaced practice, which allows some forgetting to occur between sessions, strengthens both the learning and the cues and routes for fast retrieval,”
  • Why it works: It might sound counterintuitive, but forgetting is essential for learning. Spacing out practice might feel less productive than rereading a text because you’ll realize what you forgot. Your brain has to work harder to retrieve your knowledge, which is a good indicator of effective learning.
  • How I apply spaced repetition: After some weeks, I revisit a book and look at the summary questions (see #2). I try to come up with my answer before I look up my actual summary. I can often only remember a fraction of what I wrote and have to look at the rest.
  • “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”
  • How you can apply spaced repetition: You can revisit your book summary medium of choice and test yourself on what you remember. What were your action points from the book? Have you applied them? If not, what hindered you?
  • By testing yourself in varying intervals on your book summaries, you’ll strengthen both learning and cues for fast retrieval.
  • Why interleaving works: Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it, again, facilitates forgetting.
  • How I apply interleaving: I read different books at the same time.
  • 1) Highlight everything you want to remember
  • #5 Self-Testing
  • While reading often falsely tricks us into perceived mastery, testing shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Self-testing helps you identify knowledge gaps and brings weak areas to the light
  • “It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.”
  • Why it works: Self-testing helps you overcome the illusion of knowledge. “One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.”
  • How I apply self-testing: I explain the key lessons from non-fiction books I want to remember to others. Thereby, I test whether I really got the concept. Often, I didn’t
  • instead of feeling frustrated, cognitive science made me realize that identifying knowledge gaps are a desirable and necessary effect for long-term remembering.
  • How you can apply self-testing: Teaching your lessons learned from a non-fiction book is a great way to test yourself. Before you explain a topic to somebody, you have to combine several mental tasks: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate it using your own vocabulary.
  • Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore. Here are the four steps it takes to enrich your e-reading experience
  • How you can apply interleaving: Your brain can handle reading different books simultaneously, and it’s effective to do so. You can start a new book before you finish the one you’re reading. Starting again into a topic you partly forgot feels difficult first, but as you know by now, that’s the effect you want to achieve.
  • it won’t surprise you that researchers proved highlighting to be ineffective. It’s passive and doesn’t create memory cues.
  • 2) Cut down your highlights in your browser
  • After you finished reading the book, you want to reduce your highlights to the essential part. Visit your Kindle Notes page to find a list of all your highlights. Using your desktop browser is faster and more convenient than editing your highlights on your e-reading device.
  • Now, browse through your highlights, delete what you no longer need, and add notes to the ones you really like. By adding notes to the highlights, you’ll connect the new information to your existing knowledge
  • 3) Use software to practice spaced repetitionThis part is the main reason for e-books beating printed books. While you can do all of the above with a little extra time on your physical books, there’s no way to systemize your repetition praxis.
  • Readwise is the best software to combine spaced repetition with your e-books. It’s an online service that connects to your Kindle account and imports all your Kindle highlights. Then, it creates flashcards of your highlights and allows you to export your highlights to your favorite note-taking app.
  • Common Learning Myths DebunkedWhile reading and studying evidence-based learning techniques I also came across some things I wrongly believed to be true.
  • #2 Effective learning should feel easyWe think learning works best when it feels productive. That’s why we continue to use ineffective techniques like rereading or highlighting. But learning works best when it feels hard, or as the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ write: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”
  • In Conclusion
  • I developed and adjusted these strategies over two years, and they’re still a work in progress.
  • Try all of them but don’t force yourself through anything that doesn’t feel right for you. I encourage you to do your own research, add further techniques, and skip what doesn’t serve you
  • “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”— Mortimer J. Adler
tongoscar

US-China tech war to be 'defining issue of this century', despite signing of phase one ... - 0 views

www.scmp.com/...-issue-century-despite-signing

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Forget the phase one deal, a bitter superpower tech war will overshadow any minor progression in US-China relations emanating from this week’s trade agreement.That is the message contained in a new report to be released on Monday, the author of which says that tariffs are “a subset in a much larger, overarching, systemic rivalry between two superpowers, which is the defining issue of this century”.
  • The US has already used export controls to ban Chinese firms from accessing vital US technology and as smart devices, 5G and the internet of things become more pervasive, the definition of “dual use goods”, commercial products that can be used for military purposes, will widen.
  • Even while pursuing a trade accord on one hand, the US has been actively trying to reduce technological integration with China on the other.As US President Donald Trump and China’s Vice-Premier Liu He were signing the phase one deal in the White House, the US was lobbying Britain to ban Huawei from its “critical national infrastructure” and considering plans to invest at least US$1.25 billion “in Western-based alternatives to Chinese equipment providers Huawei and ZTE”.
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  • China is aiming to increase its reliance on domestic production for key components, including chips and controlling systems, to 75 per cent by 2025, the former minister said.
  • A ban on Huawei buying US tech combined with the overall market uncertainty from the tech war led to Broadcom revising down its 2019 revenue estimate by US$2 billion.However, given that the most advanced Chinese producers of semiconductor technology are two to three generations behind their US rivals, China would be the major short-term loser should decoupling continue, Capri said.
  • “While there are changes to some Chinese technology policies, phase two is unlikely to make much progress in addressing the two countries’ rivalry,” said Chris Rogers, Research Analyst at Panjiva, S&P Global Market Intelligence.
katherineharron

In race for coronavirus vaccine, hurled insults and the wisdom of Spider-Man - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 27 May 20 - No Cached
  • Ethicists and physicians are concerned that, amid a desire to put an end to the Covid-19 pandemic, developers of drugs and vaccines have become overly enthusiastic about the chances their products will work.
  • Oxford has recently walked back some of its optimism, but for months, it set a tone that its vaccine was the most promising, without any solid evidence that this was based in fact.
  • Third, one leader in the Oxford team has gone so far as to denigrate other teams trying to get a Covid vaccine on the market, calling their technology "weird" and labeling it as merely "noise." Such name-calling is highly unusual and aggressive among scientists.
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  • "At this point, the Oxford researchers have no idea whether they have something or not," Offit said. "You just get so tired of this 'science by press release.' "
  • There are currently 10 vaccines in human clinical trials worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Four of the teams are in the United States: Moderna, Pfizer, Inovio and Novavax.
  • Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel referred to the results as "positive interim Phase 1 data" and that "the Moderna team continues to focus on moving as fast as safely possible to start our pivotal Phase 3 study in July."
  • Moderna is collaborating on its vaccine development with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID, said while Moderna's numbers were limited, "it was good news" and he was "cautiously optimistic" about the vaccine.
  • Inovio and Moderna have said they expect their large-scale clinical trials, known as Phase 3 trials, to last around six months. Pfizer hasn't given a timetable for its Phase 3 trial.
  • "I've not seen anyone wrap up a Phase 3 trial in a month to six weeks," said Dr. Saad Omer, a Yale University infectious disease expert who's done clinical trials on polio, pertussis and influenza vaccines. "We need to benchmark this against realistic expectations."
  • "As vaccine researchers like to say, mice lie and monkeys exaggerate," Offit said.
  • One big stumbling block for any vaccine trial is that Covid-19 infection rates in many areas of the world are flattening out or declining.
  • The Oxford vaccine uses what's called an adenovirus vector. Adenoviruses cause the common cold, but in this case, the adenoviruses are weakened and modified to deliver genetic material that codes for a protein from the novel coronavirus. The body then produces that protein and, ideally, develops an immune response to it.
  • "Compared to previous vaccines, this method is more robust, more versatile, and yet, equally efficient," according to the blog, which notes that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $53 million in a German biotech company that specializes in RNA vaccines.
  • Inovio's technology uses a brief electrical pulse to deliver plasmids, or small pieces of genetic information, into human cells. Inovio says those cells then produce the vaccine, which leads to an immune response.
  • On April 19, the BBC's Andrew Marr said he asked Gilbert "if it's guaranteed that a workable vaccine can actually be produced."
  • "Nobody can be absolutely sure it's possible. That's why we have to do trials. We have to find out. I think the prospects are very good, but it's clearly not completely certain,"
  • "It certainly worked in monkeys," Oxford's Hill told CNN's Burnett May 15. "That was quite an impressive impact and that was our first try, if you like, with a standard dose, a single dose of vaccine."
  • "I buy that this is a pandemic and we may need to show progress and show steps, and I'm OK with making forecasts if decision makers want that, but do it with a level of uncertainty, because that's what's warranted," said Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
  • "Now researchers can't wait to step out to the microphone -- and there are so many microphones out there -- to say, 'I've got it! This looks really good!' " Offit said.
lenaurick

This is your brain on love - Vox - 0 views

www.vox.com/...love-neuroscience

psychology evolution biology science research brain science

shared by lenaurick on 13 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • "Most neuroscientific research has been devoted to negative symptoms — depression and addiction, instead of joy," says Donatella Marazziti, an Italian psychiatrist who has studied neurotransmitter levels in the brains of people who've recently fallen in love.
  • And she's found that a brain in the initial stage of love looks surprisingly like a brain experiencing a drug addiction.
  • This, Fisher says, explains the feeling of obsession many people experience when falling in love. "It's what gives you the elation and the craving that is basic to romantic love.
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  • a lack of serotonin may lead to the obsessive, irrationally jealous behavior we see in some people.
  • Given that we think of love as a positive emotion, it's a bit surprising that she found reduced levels of serotonin in these people, compared to controls. Even more surprising, though, is that they were as low as other study participants who had obsessive compulsive order — so low, she says, that "my biologists came back to me and assumed that the readings were from people who suffered from OCD."
  • When Zeki has put people who have fallen in love inside of fMRI machines and shown them photos of their lovers, he's detected reduced activity in the amygdala — a pair of brain regions that are involved in decision-making. Amygdala activity is typically heightened during fearful or stressful situations, and research suggests that we use it when making social judgements and trying to determine if other people are lying.
  • "When you're rejected in love, we still find activity in the VTA — you're still madly in love with that person, after all," she says. "But we also find elevated activity in other brain regions linked with craving, and in a part of the brain associated with the distress that goes along with physical pain."
  • One positive aspect of the study, though, was that the more time that had passed since the participants' rejection, the lower activity was in another brain region associated with attachment.
  • Activity was elevated in the VTA — just like in new lovers — but also the ventral pallidum, an area associated with maternal attachment in animal studies.
  • "Romantic love is giddiness, elation, euphoria, energy. When you're feeling a deep sense of attachment, you're much more calm, and contented."
  • It's still uncertain why people transition from the first phase of love to the second phase of attachment, but Fisher hypothesizes that they're driven by separate evolutionary mechanisms. The initial flood of obsessive love evolved, she thinks, in order to get you to focus on a single person in order to reproduce. The second phase of attachment, by contrast, evolved to link you to another person for an extended period of time, in order to raise a child.
Javier E

Opinion | There Should Be More Rituals! - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...rituals-meaning.html

ritual phase self meaning psychology

shared by Javier E on 23 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • So great is our hunger for rituals that when we come upon one of the few remaining ones — weddings, bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras — we tend to overload them and turn them into expensive bloated versions of themselves.
  • Between these lavish exceptions, daily life goes unstructured, a passing flow of moments. This means we don’t do transitions well
  • Rituals often mark doorway moments, when we pass from one stage of life to another. They acknowledge that these passages are not just external changes but involve internal transformation.
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  • ceremony honors what has taken place. But ritual is a sequence of actions that symbolically walk you through the inner change the new stage of life will require.
  • Rituals also comfort because they concretize spiritual experiences.
  • There should be a ritual for that moment, often around age 27 or 28, when the young adult leaves the wandering post-school phase and begins to get a sense for the shape and direction of his or her life
  • Rituals encourage you to be more intentional about life. People can understand their lives’ meaning only if they step out of their immediate moment and see what came before them and what they will leave behind when they are gone.
  • over 60 percent of Judaism’s 613 commandments involve physical ritual: lighting candles, ritual baths, etc. These deeds are a kind of language, a way of expressing things that are too deep for words.
  • naming your limitations, befriending your inner life, realigning your central focus. For example, young adults might create a life map of where they’ve been and hope to go, and present it to their peers
  • Maybe neighborhoods and towns could come together to make town compacts. They would vow to be a community together and lay out the specific projects
  • It could be an occasion to tell a new version of the town story; a community is a group of people who share a common story
  • Most of all, it would be an occasion for people to make promises toward one another — specific ways they are going to use their gifts to solve the common challenge
  • we’ve shed old rituals without coming up with new ones. We’ve unwittingly robbed ourselves of a social architecture that marks and defines life’s phases
  • Why do we willingly throw away chances to throw fun parties about important things?
Emily Horwitz

New Genetic Twist: 4-Stranded DNA Lurks in Human Cells | LiveScience - 1 views

www.livescience.com/-stranded-dna-human-cells.html

dna natural sciences knowledge science cells research

shared by Emily Horwitz on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Sixty years after scientists described the chemical code of life — an interweaving double helix called DNA — researchers have found four-stranded DNA is also lurking in human cells.
  • they form in regions of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that are full of guanine, one of the DNA molecule's four building blocks
  • Scientists had shown in the past that such quadruplex DNA could form in test tubes and had even been found in the cells of ciliated protozoa, or single-celled organisms with hairlike appendages. Also there were hints of its existence in human cells, though no direct proof, Lipps said.
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  • In the new study, researchers, including chemist Shankar Balasubramanian, of the University of Cambridge and Cambridge Research Institute, crafted antibody proteins specifically for this type of DNA. The proteins were marked with a fluorescent chemical, so when they hooked up to areas in the human genome packed with G-quadruplexes, they lit up.
  • Next, they incubated the antibodies with human cells in the lab, finding these structures tended to occur in genes of cells that were rapidly dividing, a telltale feature of cancer cells. They also found a spike in quadruplexes during the s-phase of the cell cycle, or the phase when DNA replicates just before the cell divides.
  • the researchers think the four-stranded DNA could be a target for personalized medicine in the future
  • "What makes me personally very happy about this work is that it again demonstrates that mechanisms first described in ciliated protozoa hold also true for other organisms up to human, demonstrating the strength of this model organism," wrote Lipps wrote.
sissij

Emotions | Being Human - 2 views

www.beinghuman.org/emotions

emotions human science research psychology

shared by sissij on 26 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • They come and go, changing like the weather in April: sunny, rainy, stormy, mild or thunderous. Usually we find a reason why we’re happy or sad, embarrassed, or proud.
  • Although most people feel that emotions are one of the most personal, intimate, private expressions, an evolutionary understanding implies that they are, instead, impersonal mechanisms that we all share.
  • The basic emotions—fear, sorrow, disgust, anger, and joy—evolved as mechanisms to instigate behaviors appropriate to the environments of our distant ancestors.
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  • Guilt signals that we’ve violated morals we believe in; embarrassment shows that we’ve made a fool out of ourselves
  • We evolved lo earn from emotions and they shape our behavior continually. Fundamentally we try to avoid unpleasant emotions and experience pleasant ones because they indicate situations that are either beneficial or harmful for us.
  • sissij on 26 Nov 16
     
    I found this article very interesting because it shows me another aspect of emotion, as a very impersonal shared knowledge that's developed by the logic of evolution. I think there are some similarities between emotions and languages as they both shape our behavior continually, and also emotion can be used a tool of communication in a way just like language. Actually, I think emotions serve as the very primitive form of communication in the early phase of human. --Sissi (11/26/2016)
johnsonle1

Scientists Find First Observed Evidence That Our Universe May Be a Hologram | Big Think - 1 views

bigthink.com/...our-universe-may-be-a-hologram

scientists science universe

shared by johnsonle1 on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • all the information in our 3-dimensional reality may actually be included in the 2-dimensional surface of its boundaries. It's like watching a 3D show on a 2D television.
  • the team found that the observational data they found was largely predictable by the math of holographic theory. 
  • After this phase comes to a close, the Universe goes into a geometric phase, which can be described by Einstein's equations.
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  • It's a new paradigm for a physical reality.
  • sissij on 06 Feb 17
     
    As we watched in the video "Spooky Science" in TOK, we saw how 2D and 3D world are very distinctive, but in this article, the author discussed another theory that our 3D reality may actually be included in the 2D surface of its boundaries. This theory is a rival to the theory of cosmic inflation. The holographic theory not only explains the abnormalities, it is also a more simple theory of the early universe. Now the scientists find that the math of holographic theory can very much predict the data, so it has the potential to be a new paradigm for a physical reality. --Sissi (2/6/2017)
  • johnsonle1 on 04 Mar 17
     
    What is the holographic universe idea? It's not exactly that we are living in some kind of Star Trekky computer simulation. Rather the idea, first proposed in the 1990s by Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft, says that all the information in our 3-dimensional reality may actually be included in the 2-dimensional surface of its boundaries. It's like watching a 3D show on a 2D television.
Javier E

Secrets of a Mind-Gamer - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mind-secrets.html

memory psychology tecnique learning

shared by Javier E on 21 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • “What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly,” Cooke said. He explained to me that mnemonic competitors saw themselves as “participants in an amateur research program” whose aim is to rescue a long-lost tradition of memory training.
  • it wasn’t so long ago that culture depended on individual memories. A trained memory was not just a handy tool but also a fundamental facet of any worldly mind. It was considered a form of character-building, a way of developing the cardinal virtue of prudence and, by extension, ethics. Only through memorizing, the thinking went, could ideas be incorporated into your psyche and their values absorbed.
  • all the other mental athletes I met kept insisting that anyone could do what they do. It was simply a matter of learning to “think in more memorable ways,” using a set of mnemonic techniques almost all of which were invented in ancient Greece. These techniques existed not to memorize useless information like decks of playing cards but to etch into the brain foundational texts and ideas.
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  • not only did the brains of the mental athletes appear anatomically indistinguishable from those of the control subjects, but on every test of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’ scores came back well within the normal range.
  • There was, however, one telling difference between the brains of the mental athletes and those of the control subjects. When the researchers looked at the parts of the brain that were engaged when the subjects memorized, they found that the mental athletes were relying more heavily on regions known to be involved in spatial memory.
  • just about anything could be imprinted upon our memories, and kept in good order, simply by constructing a building in the imagination and filling it with imagery of what needed to be recalled. This imagined edifice could then be walked through at any time in the future. Such a building would later come to be called a memory palace.
  • Memory training was considered a centerpiece of classical education in the language arts, on par with grammar, logic and rhetoric. Students were taught not just what to remember but how to remember it. In a world with few books, memory was sacrosanct.
  • In his essay “First Steps Toward a History of Reading,” Robert Darnton describes a switch from “intensive” to “extensive” reading that occurred as printed books began to proliferate.
  • Until relatively recently, people read “intensively,” Darnton says. “They had only a few books — the Bible, an almanac, a devotional work or two — and they read them over and over again, usually aloud and in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became deeply impressed on their consciousness.” Today we read books “extensively,” often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading.
  • “Rhetorica ad Herennium” underscores the importance of purposeful attention by making a distinction between natural memory and artificial memory:
  • Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t need to recall phone numbers or word-for-word instructions from their bosses or the Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum or (because they lived in relatively small, stable groups) the names of dozens of strangers at a cocktail party. What they did need to remember was where to find food and resources and the route home and which plants were edible and which were poisonous
  • What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly. Many c
  • the three stages of acquiring a new skill. During the first phase, known as the cognitive phase, we intellectualize the task and discover new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second
julia rhodes

You Can't Take It With You, but You Still Want More - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...u-but-you-still-want-more.html

psychology brain science research science knowledge education nytimes

shared by julia rhodes on 06 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • So say scholars behind research, published in the journal Psychological Science in June, that shows a deeply rooted instinct to earn more than can possibly be consumed, even when this imbalance makes us unhappy
  • Nonetheless, the researchers note that productivity rates have risen, which theoretically lets many people be just as comfortable as previous generations while working less. Yet they choose not to.
  • In the first phase, subjects sat for five minutes in front of a computer wearing a headset, and had the choice of listening to pleasant music or to obnoxious-sounding white noi
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  • All were told that there would be a second phase to the experiment, also lasting five minutes, in which they could eat the chocolate they earned. But they were told they would forfeit any chocolate they couldn’t consume, and they were asked how much they expected to be able to eat.
  • On average, people in the high-earner group predicted that they could consume 3.75 chocolates. But when it came time to “earn” chocolates, they accumulated well beyond their estimate
  • “We introduce the concept of ‘mindless accumulation,’ ” said one of the paper’s authors, Christopher Hsee, a professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Busi
  • The impulse seemed less pronounced, even mixed, with the low earners. They earned less chocolate than they predicted they could eat. But the high earners and the low earners listened to about the same amount of obnoxious noise in the five-minute period, which Dr. Hsee said strongly suggested that both groups were driven by the same thing: not by how much they need, but by how much work they could withstand.
Javier E

The Tech Industry's Psychological War on Kids - Member Feature Stories - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...gical-war-on-kids-c452870464ce

psychology tech industry smartphone social media ethics manipulation children research brain science

shared by Javier E on 16 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • she cried, “They took my f***ing phone!” Attempting to engage Kelly in conversation, I asked her what she liked about her phone and social media. “They make me happy,” she replied.
  • Even though they were loving and involved parents, Kelly’s mom couldn’t help feeling that they’d failed their daughter and must have done something terribly wrong that led to her problems.
  • My practice as a child and adolescent psychologist is filled with families like Kelly’s. These parents say their kids’ extreme overuse of phones, video games, and social media is the most difficult parenting issue they face — and, in many cases, is tearing the family apart.
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  • What none of these parents understand is that their children’s and teens’ destructive obsession with technology is the predictable consequence of a virtually unrecognized merger between the tech industry and psychology.
  • Dr. B.J. Fogg, is a psychologist and the father of persuasive technology, a discipline in which digital machines and apps — including smartphones, social media, and video games — are configured to alter human thoughts and behaviors. As the lab’s website boldly proclaims: “Machines designed to change humans.”
  • These parents have no idea that lurking behind their kids’ screens and phones are a multitude of psychologists, neuroscientists, and social science experts who use their knowledge of psychological vulnerabilities to devise products that capture kids’ attention for the sake of industry profit.
  • psychology — a discipline that we associate with healing — is now being used as a weapon against children.
  • This alliance pairs the consumer tech industry’s immense wealth with the most sophisticated psychological research, making it possible to develop social media, video games, and phones with drug-like power to seduce young users.
  • Likewise, social media companies use persuasive design to prey on the age-appropriate desire for preteen and teen kids, especially girls, to be socially successful. This drive is built into our DNA, since real-world relational skills have fostered human evolution.
  • Called “the millionaire maker,” Fogg has groomed former students who have used his methods to develop technologies that now consume kids’ lives. As he recently touted on his personal website, “My students often do groundbreaking projects, and they continue having impact in the real world after they leave Stanford… For example, Instagram has influenced the behavior of over 800 million people. The co-founder was a student of mine.”
  • Persuasive technology (also called persuasive design) works by deliberately creating digital environments that users feel fulfill their basic human drives — to be social or obtain goals — better than real-world alternatives.
  • Kids spend countless hours in social media and video game environments in pursuit of likes, “friends,” game points, and levels — because it’s stimulating, they believe that this makes them happy and successful, and they find it easier than doing the difficult but developmentally important activities of childhood.
  • While persuasion techniques work well on adults, they are particularly effective at influencing the still-maturing child and teen brain.
  • “Video games, better than anything else in our culture, deliver rewards to people, especially teenage boys,” says Fogg. “Teenage boys are wired to seek competency. To master our world and get better at stuff. Video games, in dishing out rewards, can convey to people that their competency is growing, you can get better at something second by second.”
  • it’s persuasive design that’s helped convince this generation of boys they are gaining “competency” by spending countless hours on game sites, when the sad reality is they are locked away in their rooms gaming, ignoring school, and not developing the real-world competencies that colleges and employers demand.
  • Persuasive technologies work because of their apparent triggering of the release of dopamine, a powerful neurotransmitter involved in reward, attention, and addiction.
  • As she says, “If you don’t get 100 ‘likes,’ you make other people share it so you get 100…. Or else you just get upset. Everyone wants to get the most ‘likes.’ It’s like a popularity contest.”
  • there are costs to Casey’s phone obsession, noting that the “girl’s phone, be it Facebook, Instagram or iMessage, is constantly pulling her away from her homework, sleep, or conversations with her family.
  • Casey says she wishes she could put her phone down. But she can’t. “I’ll wake up in the morning and go on Facebook just… because,” she says. “It’s not like I want to or I don’t. I just go on it. I’m, like, forced to. I don’t know why. I need to. Facebook takes up my whole life.”
  • B.J. Fogg may not be a household name, but Fortune Magazine calls him a “New Guru You Should Know,” and his research is driving a worldwide legion of user experience (UX) designers who utilize and expand upon his models of persuasive design.
  • “No one has perhaps been as influential on the current generation of user experience (UX) designers as Stanford researcher B.J. Fogg.”
  • the core of UX research is about using psychology to take advantage of our human vulnerabilities.
  • As Fogg is quoted in Kosner’s Forbes article, “Facebook, Twitter, Google, you name it, these companies have been using computers to influence our behavior.” However, the driving force behind behavior change isn’t computers. “The missing link isn’t the technology, it’s psychology,” says Fogg.
  • UX researchers not only follow Fogg’s design model, but also his apparent tendency to overlook the broader implications of persuasive design. They focus on the task at hand, building digital machines and apps that better demand users’ attention, compel users to return again and again, and grow businesses’ bottom line.
  • the “Fogg Behavior Model” is a well-tested method to change behavior and, in its simplified form, involves three primary factors: motivation, ability, and triggers.
  • “We can now create machines that can change what people think and what people do, and the machines can do that autonomously.”
  • Regarding ability, Fogg suggests that digital products should be made so that users don’t have to “think hard.” Hence, social networks are designed for ease of use
  • Finally, Fogg says that potential users need to be triggered to use a site. This is accomplished by a myriad of digital tricks, including the sending of incessant notifications
  • moral questions about the impact of turning persuasive techniques on children and teens are not being asked. For example, should the fear of social rejection be used to compel kids to compulsively use social media? Is it okay to lure kids away from school tasks that demand a strong mental effort so they can spend their lives on social networks or playing video games that don’t make them think much at all?
  • Describing how his formula is effective at getting people to use a social network, the psychologist says in an academic paper that a key motivator is users’ desire for “social acceptance,” although he says an even more powerful motivator is the desire “to avoid being socially rejected.”
  • the startup Dopamine Labs boasts about its use of persuasive techniques to increase profits: “Connect your app to our Persuasive AI [Artificial Intelligence] and lift your engagement and revenue up to 30% by giving your users our perfect bursts of dopamine,” and “A burst of Dopamine doesn’t just feel good: it’s proven to re-wire user behavior and habits.”
  • Ramsay Brown, the founder of Dopamine Labs, says in a KQED Science article, “We have now developed a rigorous technology of the human mind, and that is both exciting and terrifying. We have the ability to twiddle some knobs in a machine learning dashboard we build, and around the world hundreds of thousands of people are going to quietly change their behavior in ways that, unbeknownst to them, feel second-nature but are really by design.”
  • Programmers call this “brain hacking,” as it compels users to spend more time on sites even though they mistakenly believe it’s strictly due to their own conscious choices.
  • Banks of computers employ AI to “learn” which of a countless number of persuasive design elements will keep users hooked
  • A persuasion profile of a particular user’s unique vulnerabilities is developed in real time and exploited to keep users on the site and make them return again and again for longer periods of time. This drives up profits for consumer internet companies whose revenue is based on how much their products are used.
  • “The leaders of Internet companies face an interesting, if also morally questionable, imperative: either they hijack neuroscience to gain market share and make large profits, or they let competitors do that and run away with the market.”
  • Social media and video game companies believe they are compelled to use persuasive technology in the arms race for attention, profits, and survival.
  • Children’s well-being is not part of the decision calculus.
  • one breakthrough occurred in 2017 when Facebook documents were leaked to The Australian. The internal report crafted by Facebook executives showed the social network boasting to advertisers that by monitoring posts, interactions, and photos in real time, the network is able to track when teens feel “insecure,” “worthless,” “stressed,” “useless” and a “failure.”
  • The report also bragged about Facebook’s ability to micro-target ads down to “moments when young people need a confidence boost.”
  • These design techniques provide tech corporations a window into kids’ hearts and minds to measure their particular vulnerabilities, which can then be used to control their behavior as consumers. This isn’t some strange future… this is now.
  • The official tech industry line is that persuasive technologies are used to make products more engaging and enjoyable. But the revelations of industry insiders can reveal darker motives.
  • Revealing the hard science behind persuasive technology, Hopson says, “This is not to say that players are the same as rats, but that there are general rules of learning which apply equally to both.”
  • After penning the paper, Hopson was hired by Microsoft, where he helped lead the development of the Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming system
  • “If game designers are going to pull a person away from every other voluntary social activity or hobby or pastime, they’re going to have to engage that person at a very deep level in every possible way they can.”
  • This is the dominant effect of persuasive design today: building video games and social media products so compelling that they pull users away from the real world to spend their lives in for-profit domains.
  • Persuasive technologies are reshaping childhood, luring kids away from family and schoolwork to spend more and more of their lives sitting before screens and phones.
  • “Since we’ve figured to some extent how these pieces of the brain that handle addiction are working, people have figured out how to juice them further and how to bake that information into apps.”
  • Today, persuasive design is likely distracting adults from driving safely, productive work, and engaging with their own children — all matters which need urgent attention
  • Still, because the child and adolescent brain is more easily controlled than the adult mind, the use of persuasive design is having a much more hurtful impact on kids.
  • But to engage in a pursuit at the expense of important real-world activities is a core element of addiction.
  • younger U.S. children now spend 5 ½ hours each day with entertainment technologies, including video games, social media, and online videos.
  • Even more, the average teen now spends an incredible 8 hours each day playing with screens and phones
  • U.S. kids only spend 16 minutes each day using the computer at home for school.
  • Quietly, using screens and phones for entertainment has become the dominant activity of childhood.
  • Younger kids spend more time engaging with entertainment screens than they do in school
  • teens spend even more time playing with screens and phones than they do sleeping
  • kids are so taken with their phones and other devices that they have turned their backs to the world around them.
  • many children are missing out on real-life engagement with family and school — the two cornerstones of childhood that lead them to grow up happy and successful
  • persuasive technologies are pulling kids into often toxic digital environments
  • A too frequent experience for many is being cyberbullied, which increases their risk of skipping school and considering suicide.
  • And there is growing recognition of the negative impact of FOMO, or the fear of missing out, as kids spend their social media lives watching a parade of peers who look to be having a great time without them, feeding their feelings of loneliness and being less than.
  • The combined effects of the displacement of vital childhood activities and exposure to unhealthy online environments is wrecking a generation.
  • as the typical age when kids get their first smartphone has fallen to 10, it’s no surprise to see serious psychiatric problems — once the domain of teens — now enveloping young kids
  • Self-inflicted injuries, such as cutting, that are serious enough to require treatment in an emergency room, have increased dramatically in 10- to 14-year-old girls, up 19% per year since 2009.
  • While girls are pulled onto smartphones and social media, boys are more likely to be seduced into the world of video gaming, often at the expense of a focus on school
  • it’s no surprise to see this generation of boys struggling to make it to college: a full 57% of college admissions are granted to young women compared with only 43% to young men.
  • Economists working with the National Bureau of Economic Research recently demonstrated how many young U.S. men are choosing to play video games rather than join the workforce.
  • The destructive forces of psychology deployed by the tech industry are making a greater impact on kids than the positive uses of psychology by mental health providers and child advocates. Put plainly, the science of psychology is hurting kids more than helping them.
  • Hope for this wired generation has seemed dim until recently, when a surprising group has come forward to criticize the tech industry’s use of psychological manipulation: tech executives
  • Tristan Harris, formerly a design ethicist at Google, has led the way by unmasking the industry’s use of persuasive design. Interviewed in The Economist’s 1843 magazine, he says, “The job of these companies is to hook people, and they do that by hijacking our psychological vulnerabilities.”
  • Marc Benioff, CEO of the cloud computing company Salesforce, is one of the voices calling for the regulation of social media companies because of their potential to addict children. He says that just as the cigarette industry has been regulated, so too should social media companies. “I think that, for sure, technology has addictive qualities that we have to address, and that product designers are working to make those products more addictive, and we need to rein that back as much as possible,”
  • “If there’s an unfair advantage or things that are out there that are not understood by parents, then the government’s got to come forward and illuminate that.”
  • Since millions of parents, for example the parents of my patient Kelly, have absolutely no idea that devices are used to hijack their children’s minds and lives, regulation of such practices is the right thing to do.
  • Another improbable group to speak out on behalf of children is tech investors.
  • How has the consumer tech industry responded to these calls for change? By going even lower.
  • Facebook recently launched Messenger Kids, a social media app that will reach kids as young as five years old. Suggestive that harmful persuasive design is now honing in on very young children is the declaration of Messenger Kids Art Director, Shiu Pei Luu, “We want to help foster communication [on Facebook] and make that the most exciting thing you want to be doing.”
  • the American Psychological Association (APA) — which is tasked with protecting children and families from harmful psychological practices — has been essentially silent on the matter
  • APA Ethical Standards require the profession to make efforts to correct the “misuse” of the work of psychologists, which would include the application of B.J. Fogg’s persuasive technologies to influence children against their best interests
  • Manipulating children for profit without their own or parents’ consent, and driving kids to spend more time on devices that contribute to emotional and academic problems is the embodiment of unethical psychological practice.
  • “Never before in history have basically 50 mostly men, mostly 20–35, mostly white engineer designer types within 50 miles of where we are right now [Silicon Valley], had control of what a billion people think and do.”
  • Some may argue that it’s the parents’ responsibility to protect their children from tech industry deception. However, parents have no idea of the powerful forces aligned against them, nor do they know how technologies are developed with drug-like effects to capture kids’ minds
  • Others will claim that nothing should be done because the intention behind persuasive design is to build better products, not manipulate kids
  • similar circumstances exist in the cigarette industry, as tobacco companies have as their intention profiting from the sale of their product, not hurting children. Nonetheless, because cigarettes and persuasive design predictably harm children, actions should be taken to protect kids from their effects.
  • in a 1998 academic paper, Fogg describes what should happen if things go wrong, saying, if persuasive technologies are “deemed harmful or questionable in some regard, a researcher should then either take social action or advocate that others do so.”
  • I suggest turning to President John F. Kennedy’s prescient guidance: He said that technology “has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man.”
  • The APA should begin by demanding that the tech industry’s behavioral manipulation techniques be brought out of the shadows and exposed to the light of public awareness
  • Changes should be made in the APA’s Ethics Code to specifically prevent psychologists from manipulating children using digital machines, especially if such influence is known to pose risks to their well-being.
  • Moreover, the APA should follow its Ethical Standards by making strong efforts to correct the misuse of psychological persuasion by the tech industry and by user experience designers outside the field of psychology.
  • It should join with tech executives who are demanding that persuasive design in kids’ tech products be regulated
  • The APA also should make its powerful voice heard amongst the growing chorus calling out tech companies that intentionally exploit children’s vulnerabilities.
Javier E

Five months on, what scientists now know about the coronavirus | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...now-know-about-the-coronavirus

Covid-19 theory results research science Knowledge

shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • The Sars-CoV-2 virus almost certainly originated in bats, which have evolved fierce immune responses to viruses, researchers have discovered. These defences drive viruses to replicate faster so that they can get past bats’ immune defences. In turn, that transforms the bat into a reservoir of rapidly reproducing and highly transmissible viruses
  • “This virus probably jumped from a bat into another animal, and that other animal was probably near a human, maybe in a market,
  • Virus-ridden particles are inhaled by others and come into contact with cells lining the throat and larynx. These cells have large numbers of receptors – known as Ace-2 receptors – on their surfaces. (Cell receptors play a key role in passing chemicals into cells and in triggering signals between cells.
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  • “This virus has a surface protein that is primed to lock on that receptor and slip its RNA into the cell,”
  • Once inside, that RNA inserts itself into the cell’s own replication machinery and makes multiple copies of the virus. These burst out of the cell, and the infection spreads. Antibodies generated by the body’s immune system eventually target the virus and in most cases halt its progress.
  • “A Covid-19 infection is generally mild, and that really is the secret of the virus’s success,” adds Ball. “Many people don’t even notice they have got an infection and so go around their work, homes and supermarkets infecting others.”
  • the virus can cause severe problems. This happens when it moves down the respiratory tract and infects the lungs, which are even richer in cells with Ace-2 receptors. Many of these cells are destroyed, and lungs become congested with bits of broken cell. In these cases, patients will require treatment in intensive care.
  • Even worse, in some cases, a person’s immune system goes into overdrive, attracting cells to the lungs in order to attack the virus, resulting in inflammation
  • This process can run out of control, more immune cells pour in, and the inflammation gets worse. This is known as a cytokine storm.
  • Just why cytokine storms occur in some patients but not in the vast majority is unclear
  • Doctors examining patients recovering from a Covid-19 infection are finding fairly high levels of neutralising antibodies in their blood. These antibodies are made by the immune system, and they coat an invading virus at specific points, blocking its ability to break into cells.
  • Instead, most virologists believe that immunity against Covid-19 will last only a year or two. “That is in line with other coronaviruses that infect humans,
  • “It is clear that immune responses are being mounted against Covid-19 in infected people,” says virologist Mike Skinner of Imperial College London. “And the antibodies created by that response will provide protection against future infections – but we should note that it is unlikely this protection will be for life.”
  • “That means that even if most people do eventually become exposed to the virus, it is still likely to become endemic – which means we would see seasonal peaks of infection of this disease. We will have reached a steady state with regard to Covid-19.”
  • Skinner is doubtful. “We have got to consider this pandemic from the virus’s position,” he says. “It is spreading round the world very nicely. It is doing OK. Change brings it no benefit.”
  • In the end, it will be the development and roll-out of an effective vaccine that will free us from the threat of Covid-19,
  • the journal Nature reported that 78 vaccine projects had been launched round the globe – with a further 37 in development.
  • vaccines require large-scale safety and efficacy studies. Thousands of people would receive either the vaccine itself or a placebo to determine if the former were effective at preventing infection from the virus which they would have encountered naturally. That, inevitably, is a lengthy process.
  • some scientists have proposed a way to speed up the process – by deliberately exposing volunteers to the virus to determine a vaccine’s efficacy.
  • Volunteers would have to be young and healthy, he stresses: “Their health would also be closely monitored, and they would have access to intensive care and any available medicines.”
  • The result could be a vaccine that would save millions of lives by being ready for use in a much shorter time than one that went through standard phase three trials.
  • phase-three trials are still some way off, so we have time to consider the idea carefully.”
ilanaprincilus06

India Prepares For Massive Vaccine Drive, But Some Fear It's Moving Too Quickly : Coron... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...me-fear-its-moving-too-quickly

India vaccination Covid-19

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • some scientists have raised questions about one of the two vaccines the country of 1.4 billion people has authorized for emergency use against COVID-19.
  • More than 5 million vaccine vials arrived early Wednesday at hundreds of hospitals and clinics across India.
  • The shipments consist of two formulas: One developed by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, and another vaccine developed by an Indian company called Bharat Biotech
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  • patients will not be able to choose which of the two vaccines they get.
  • the one produced by Bharat Biotech is being deployed prematurely. It still has yet to clear phase three clinical trials, and efficacy data isn't expected until March
  • Bharat Biotech's founder & chairman, Krishna Ella, told a Jan. 4 news conference his company's vaccine is "200% safe."
  • But there's a difference between giving an experimental drug to someone who is already sick, and giving a vaccine to someone who is healthy, says public health activist Dinesh Thakur.
  • Making vaccines — or least, mass-producing them — is something India is actually famous for. It's the world's largest vaccine producer, nicknamed 'the pharmacy to the world.'
sanderk

When Will We Have a Coronavirus Vaccine? | U.S. News - 0 views

health.usnews.com/...-we-have-a-coronavirus-vaccine

education Technology news science

shared by sanderk on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • That investigational vaccine, called mRNA-1273, has been developed by Moderna Therapeutics, and the clinical trial is being conducted at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.
  • "not all potential vaccines will succeed, but there are several viable candidates."
  • "there is still much we don't know about the source of this pandemic and the complexity of this novel virus. So, we understand that one company, one vaccine, one test or one medicine will not be an effective solution to overcoming the tremendous task at hand."
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  • Regulatory review and approval. If a medication or drug is proven safe and effective in clinical trials, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gets involved to evaluate the vaccine and administer an approval. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations reports that, typically, 1 in 10 experimental vaccines make it all the way through regulatory approval.
  • Each one of those steps can take years, and a potential vaccine can get stalled indefinitely at any one of them.
  • Because of the lengthy timeline associated with vaccine development, nearly three dozen companies and academic institutions around the world are now directing resources towards the search
  • There's not a whole lot that can be done to speed up the process and still arrive at a safe and effective vaccine. Currently, most medical and public health experts say we're at least 12 to 18 months away from having a usable vaccine against COVID-19.
  • While these new approaches could speed a vaccine to market, it does raise some ethical questions about safety. It's also unclear just yet whether the rush will result in an effective vaccine faster
  • "In the beginning of the process, the research usually involves searching through tons of sources of data to uncover opportunities that may not be so obvious.
  • The trial will assess "safety and antibody production, meaning that testing various doses' safety and whether these doses are producing an immune response. This phase 1 trial is not studying the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing coronavirus infection. That will come at a later phase of the research,
  • But the sense of urgency surrounding the need for a safe, effective vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is driving public health officials, private pharmaceutical companies and others to work as quickly as they can to find a solution. The sooner these vaccines and other medications can be tested, the sooner we might have a viable vaccine that can halt a global pandemic that shows few signs of slowing on its own. But right now, experts say that it will take at least a year and likely longer before such a vaccine is available
tongoscar

Donald Trump's trade wars have not been 'easy to win'  | Financial Times - 0 views

www.ft.com/...98-36ed-11ea-a6d3-9a26f8c3cba4

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The phase one trade agreement between the US and China signed on Wednesday is only a truce in the trade war, rather than a major reversal of the tariffs imposed since 2018. Nevertheless, it halts a dangerous political momentum.
  • Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs describes this as a “subtraction of the negatives”. Paradoxically, the worse the effects on US growth rates in the past two years, the greater the scope for a bounceback this year. Mr Trump’s initial confidence about the effects of trade protection was based on a belief that China’s bilateral trade surplus with the US would force President Xi Jinping to make major policy concessions to safeguard his own export sector. The outcome was rather different: China retaliated with similar measures and this damaged American manufacturers. 
  • The damage to financial and business confidence triggered by the trade announcements hurt US growth still further. The tightening in financial conditions caused by the rising dollar and the collapse in equities late in 2018 would probably have been more severe if the Fed had not reduced policy interest rates by 75 basis points since then.
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  • The good news is that part of this overall drag may disappear before the end of 2020, boosting American GDP growthby at least half a percentage point.What about the longer-term benefits of the trade deal?The purchase of $200bn of additional US exports in the energy, agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors, spread over two years, will reduce the bilateral trade deficit with China. But many of these exports will probably be redirected from elsewhere and will not boost US domestic output in those sectors. Longer term, China’s business restrictions, including alleged unfair trading practices, appear to be easing. Given the political boost from the phase one deal, Chinese economic reformers such as vice-premier Liu He may be in the ascendancy in Beijing for a while. 
  • The trade war has significantly damaged US growth in 2018-19Since President Donald Trump became more aggressive in his threats about trade protection early in 2018, US tariffs on Chinese goods have risen markedly, prompting retaliation from China. There have been only a few comprehensive studies on the overall impact of tariffs on the US growth rate. A notable exception is the work of Jan Hatzius’s US economics team at Goldman Sachs. They have estimated the possible impact of rising tariffs on net trade flows, real incomes, financial conditions and business confidence, and have combined these effects to produce the aggregate growth estimates shown in the graph below. As the negative effects of rising tariffs fade in 2020, the US growth rate is expected to be boosted by at least half a percentage point.
tongoscar

A world trade war is brewing. The US-China deal doesn't stop it - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The United States has signed a partial trade agreement with China. But that doesn't mean simmering conflicts and uncertainty over trade won't drag down the global economy this year.
  • President Donald Trump has heralded the "phase one" US-China trade deal as a significant breakthrough.
  • The two sides are keeping substantial tariffs in place. About two-thirds of all US imports from China — roughly $370 billion worth — will still be covered by tariffs after the deal is signed, according to a December analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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  • China isn't the only world power tangling with the United States over trade.
  • New tariffs would escalate an already tense relationship between Washington and Brussels. The Trump administration imposed a 25% tariff on most European wine in October, in retaliation for government subsidies received by planemaker Airbus (EADSF).
  • An agreement that addresses these issues with Europe will be one of Trump's priorities for 2020, according to William Reinsch, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served for 15 years as president of the National Foreign Trade Council.
oliviaodon

How Do We Learn Languages? | Brain Blogger - 0 views

brainblogger.com/...how-do-we-learn-languages

knowledge languages brain

shared by oliviaodon on 31 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The use of sound is one of the most common methods of communication both in the animal kingdom and between humans.
  • human speech is a very complex process and therefore needs intensive postnatal learning to be used effectively. Furthermore, to be effective the learning phase should happen very early in life and it assumes a normally functioning hearing and brain systems.
  • Nowadays, scientists and doctors are discovering the important brain zones involved in the processing of language information. Those zones are reassembled in a number of a language networks including the Broca, the Wernicke, the middle temporal, the inferior parietal and the angular gyrus. The variety of such brain zones clearly shows that the language processing is a very complex task. On the functional level, decoding a language begins in the ear where the incoming sounds are summed in the auditory nerve as an electrical signal and delivered to the auditory cortex where neurons extract auditory objects from that signal.
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  • The effectiveness of this process is so great that human brain is able to accurately identify words and whole phrases from a noisy background. This power of analysis brings to minds the great similarity between the brain and powerful supercomputers.
  • Functional imaging of the brain revealed that activated brain parts are different between native and non-native speakers. The superior temporal gyrus is an important brain region involved in language learning. For a native speaker this part is responsible for automated processing of lexical retrieval and the build of phrase structure. In native speakers this zone is much more activated than in non-native ones.
  • infants begin their lives with a very flexible brain that allows them to acquire virtually any language they are exposed to. Moreover, they can learn a language words almost equally by listening or by visual coding. This brain plasticity is the motor drive of the children capability of “cracking the speech code” of a language. With time, this ability is dramatically decreased and adults find it harder to acquire a new language.
  • clearly demonstrated that there are anatomical brain differences between fast and slow learners of foreign languages. By analyzing a group of people having a homogenous language background, scientists found that differences in specific brain regions can predict the capacity of a person to learn a second language.
  • Until the last decade few studies compared the language acquisition in adults and children. Thanks to modern imaging and electroencephalography we are now able to address this question.
  • Language acquisition is a long-term process by which information are stored in the brain unconsciously making them appropriate to oral and written usage. In contrast, language learning is a conscious process of knowledge acquisition that needs supervision and control by the person.
  • oliviaodon on 31 Oct 16
     
    Another cool article about how the brain works and language (inductive reasoning). 
Megan Flanagan

Fearing Drugs' Rare Side Effects, Millions Take Their Chances With Osteoporosis - The N... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...osteoporosis-drugs-bones.html

drugs science research

shared by Megan Flanagan on 03 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • terrified of exceedingly rare side effects from drugs that can help them.
  • thighbones to snap in two have shaken many osteoporosis patients so much that they say they would rather take their chances with the disease.
  • “Ninety percent of patients, when you talk to them about starting one of these drugs, won’t go on,”
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  • “Ninety percent who are on the drugs want to come off. The fear factor is huge.”
  • A 50-year-old woman has a 50 percent chance of having an osteoporotic fracture in her remaining years. The drugs, meant to be started when bone density falls very low and the chance of a fracture soars, can reduce that risk by half, studies show.
  • “You only need to treat 50 people to prevent a fracture, but you need to treat 40,000 to see an atypical fracture,”
  • hopes were dashed when Amgen announced the same problems in a clinical trial of a drug called romosozumab: a sudden shattering of a thigh bone in one patient and an area of jawbone that inexplicably rotted in two.
  • She worries about another spine fracture or, even worse, a fractured hip. But she resists taking osteoporosis drugs, she said, because she tends to have side effects with almost any drug
  • Many patients with osteoporosis have multiple fractures of their spines.
  • the drugs off patent, there is no longer an aggressive advertising push to make people aware of them.
  • “I hobble around on a cane,” she said. “I am a cripple.” She called the drug she took for osteoporosis “that wretched, dreadful stuff.”
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