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Contents contributed and discussions participated by annabaldwin_

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How Getting Enough Sleep Can Make You Less Afraid - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...543573 REM study sleep brain-activity fear
shared by annabaldwin_ on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • A new study suggests that people who naturally get more REM sleep may be less sensitive to frightening things.
  • For the study, a team of researchers from Rutgers University sent 17 subjects home with sleep-monitoring devices—headbands that monitor their brain waves, wristbands that track arm movements, and sleep logs—and asked them to sleep as they normally would for a week. They were monitoring how much sleep they were getting—especially REM, or rapid-eye-movement sleep.
  • Each night, most people sleep about seven or eight hours, about two hours of which is REM sleep, the stage of sleep in which the body relaxes fully and most dreams occur.
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  • The researchers then conditioned the participants to be afraid of certain images by showing them pictures of ordinary-looking rooms lit with lamps of various hues, some of which were paired with a mild shock to the finger. Through the shocks, they were taught to fear the rooms that were lit by certain colors.
  • The subjects with more REM sleep also had less activity in those areas of the brain. That suggests that the more well-rested subjects may not have been hard-wiring those fears into their brains quite as strongly.
  • PTSD is already known to be associated with sleep disturbances, and past studies have shown that sleep-deprived people have more activity in their amygdalae upon being shown upsetting pictures.
  • “REM is very unique because it’s the only time that area of the brain is completely silent,” said Shira Lupkin, one of the study’s authors and a researcher with the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University.
  • Because of that, people who get plenty of REM sleep might be less reactive to emotional stimuli.
  • If the study is replicated, there could be real-world implications for stopping trauma—before it starts.
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Colombia's future involves fewer terrorists and more ecotourists - 0 views

www.economist.com/...errorists-and-more-ecotourists future progress tourism economy
shared by annabaldwin_ on 24 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Until recently, Colombia, geographically challenging and historically conflict-ridden, received little international tourism.
  • This has started to change in the past decade.
  • many of the most diverse areas in the country have remained inaccessible for tourists because they suffered armed conflict
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  • Tourism can potentially offer a fairly swift peace dividend
  • Tourism and ecosystem services offer far more promising returns for the rural economy.
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She's 26, and Brought Down Uber's C.E.O. What's Next? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...susan-fowler-uber.html inappropriate-behavior speak-out stand-up
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • a “super-women-friendly” place to work, boasting 25 percent female engineers.
  • “I only use Lyft,” he said. “Did you read that interview with the C.E.O., Travis, where he talked about how Uber helps him get girls? He’s a misogynist. I could never use his product.”
  • The essay that shook Silicon Valley was called “Reflecting on One Very, Very Strange Year at Uber,” and Ms. Fowler began by noting that it was “a strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story.”
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  • The blog post was notable for its dispassionate tone, as the young engineer who had left the company after a year walked the reader through everything that had gone very, very wrong in the brozilla culture of kegs, sexual coarseness and snaky competition.
  • Ms. Fowler took screen shots and reported the manager to human resources, thinking, “They’ll do the right thing.”
  • But they didn’t, explaining that the manager was “a high performer” and it was his first offense, something Ms. Fowler later discovered to be untrue.
  • “I didn’t really care if they branded me a troublemaker,” she says
  • In her memo, she says, “I knew I had to be super-careful about how I said it if I wanted anybody to take it seriously.
  • So I was disappointed in her because I expected her to be an advocate,”
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'Willing to Do Everything,' Mothers Defend Sons Accused of Sexual Assault - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ampus-sex-assault-mothers.html false-assault mothers-react maternal-perspective punishment-severity
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • “I was willing to do everything and anything,” Ms. Seefeld said.
  • Each had a son who had been accused at college of sexual assault.
  • The women had been meeting regularly to share notes and commiserate.
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  • A few days before, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had rescinded tough Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault, saying they violated principles of fairness, particularly for accused students like their own sons.
  • Women’s groups and victims’ advocates have deplored Ms. DeVos’s moves, saying they will allow colleges to wash their hands of the problem.
  • But a growing corps of legal experts and defense lawyers have argued that the Obama rules created a culture in which accused students, most of them men, were presumed guilty.
  • Away from the public eye, families have spent tens of thousands of dollars and dipped into retirement savings to hire lawyers and therapists for their sons.
  • Seefeld
  • “I was willing to do everything and anything,” Ms. Seefeld said.
  • The mothers’ resolve comes from their raw maternal instinct to protect their children.
  • Their sons may not have been falsely accused, the mothers said, but they had been wrongly accused. They made a distinction.
  • The most active mothers said they stepped forward because they often had more time than their husbands, and because they made a strategic decision that they could be effective on the issue of sexual assault precisely because they are women and, as some described themselves, feminists. “We recognized that power,” Ms. Seefeld said.
  • Many women, however, feel exactly the opposite way.
  • They have not been shy about expressing their view of the mothers as “rape deniers” and misogynists who blame women for inviting male violence against them.
  • But if the mothers do not defend their sons, she said, who will?
  • “And pretty much the most significant weapon I had was the weapon of public opinion, so that was the weapon I was wielding the hardest.”
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How Fiction Becomes Fact on Social Media - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...social-media-fake-news.html social media influence
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • In the coming weeks, executives from Facebook and Twitter will appear before congressional committees to answer questions about the use of their platforms by Russian hackers and others to spread misinformation and skew elections.
  • Yet the psychology behind social media platforms — the dynamics that make them such powerful vectors of misinformation in the first place — is at least as important, experts say, especially for those who think they’re immune to being duped.
  • Skepticism of online “news” serves as a decent filter much of the time, but our innate biases allow it to be bypassed, researchers have found — especially when presented with the right kind of algorithmically selected “meme.”
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  • That kind of curating acts as a fertile host for falsehoods by simultaneously engaging two predigital social-science standbys: the urban myth as “meme,” or viral idea; and individual biases, the automatic, subconscious presumptions that color belief.
  • “My experience is that once this stuff gets going, people just pass these stories on without even necessarily stopping to read them,” Mr. McKinney said.
  • “The networks make information run so fast that it outruns fact-checkers’ ability to check it.
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Dogs Pay Attention to Your Looks - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dog-expressions.html psychology physical-influence
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Sometimes a dog’s expression merely reflects yours.
  • we’re not totally in control of how we view them and the opinion we have of them
  • Physical features, like the length of their noses and making eye contact, influence how we feel about dogs, he said.
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  • “It really mirrors how our interactions occur with our own species.”
  • That kind of information can be useful, for instance, for screening would-be service dogs and in making decisions about adopting a puppy, he added.
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The Psychology of Taking a Knee - Scientific American Blog Network - 0 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...he-psychology-of-taking-a-knee psychology social-norms controversial respect symbolism
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Those are some of the scientific questions raised when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided last year to kneel, instead of stand, for “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a preseason game.
  • Police violence against unarmed black people.
  • At first glance, research into emotion and nonverbal communication suggests that there is nothing threatening about kneeling
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  • kneeling is almost always deployed as a sign of deference and respect.
  • kneeling probably derives from a core principle in mammalian nonverbal behavior
  • By transforming this ritual, the players woke us up.
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Careers for Women in Technology Companies Are a Global Challenge - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eers-technology-companies.html STEM women gender-equality
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • European women working in the technology field are very familiar with the concerns expressed by their counterparts in the United States — too few girls and young women studying science and technology in school, gender bias and sexual harassment in the workplace.
  • While American companies are primarily the ones in the spotlight, they have a global reach, not just because of their size, but because of the ways their actions resonate around the world.
  • She feels, she said, a “basic condescension” as a woman in tech. “I feel I have to convince them that I know the technology, and they’re surprised when I do.”
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A Marine Attacked an Iraqi Restaurant. But Was It a Hate Crime or PTSD? - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rodriguez-marine-portland.html Marine PTSD violence hate-crime Iraqi
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • After a Marine attacked an Iraqi restaurant inPortland, Ore., his family said he was provoked bytrauma, not hate, and that he needed help, not jail time.
  • PORTLAND, Ore
  • The Iraqi family who ran it felt welcome in this eclectic city.
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  • After about a half-hour, he got up, walked over to the cash register, began cursing about Iraq, and threw a chair at a waiter’s head, sending him dazed to the floor.
  • Portland has been on edge over a sharp increase in hate crimes this year.
  • As the case unfolded over the summer, it raised questions about what constitutes a hate crime and how effectively the legal system treats combat veterans who suffer from PTSD.
  • There is no evidence that combat veterans are more prone to committing hate crimes, but studies suggest combat veterans with PTSD commit violent acts at a much higher rate than civilians.
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End to Health Care Subsidies Puts Congress in a Tight Spot - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...acare-insurance-subsidies.html Trump healthcare USA politics injustice
shared by annabaldwin_ on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • President Trump’s decision to cut off critical payments to health insurance companies ratcheted up the pressure on Congress on Friday to take action to protect consumers from soaring premiums, while also adding a combustible new issue to negotiations to avert a government shutdown this year.
  • It came just hours after he signed an executive order that also undermined the health law by encouraging the development of lower-cost insurance policies not subject to the Affordable Care Act’s rigorous coverage standards.
  • “Our patients will ultimately pay the price,” said Dr. David O. Barbe
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  • The premium increases would be felt most by middle-class consumers who do not qualify for federal aid with either their premiums or their out-of-pocket costs.
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