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How To Tackle Deforestation? Give Indigenous People Their Land Rights. | HuffPost - 1 views

www.huffpost.com/...nge_n_605b525cc5b6531eed00efbf climate world technology US
shared by clairemann on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Deforestation rates are significantly lower in forests protected and governed by Indigenous people, according to a new report.
  • found that, on average, forests in Indigenous and tribal territories have been much better conserved than other forests in the region.
  • Forests are huge carbon sinks and vital tools in holding back the climate crisis as well as stabilizing regional temperatures and rainfall patterns. Indigenous territories hold roughly one-third of all the carbon stored in the forests of Latin America and the Caribbean, and 14% of the carbon in tropical forests around the world. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • These communities, with generations of experience successfully protecting nature, have strong track records of guarding the forest, according to the report. They generally favor smaller-scale, more diverse farming, which extracts far less from the land than industrial operations do. 
  • “The forest provides us food, water and gives us a roof. It’s not something alien to us, but another living being,” said Rivas, who’s also been working to promote gender equality in the agroforestry sector. “We only take what we need, nothing more.”
  • “We need to center and take direction from Indigenous and tribal earth defenders in order to protect forests’ biodiversity and even prevent the next pandemic,”
  • “This scientific consensus [in the report] gives our world’s leaders a mandate to defend the rights of Indigenous and tribal communities,” said Recinos. “Otherwise, sensitive biomes and rainforests, such as the Amazon, will remain under threat or, worse, reach an irreversible tipping point.” 
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Your genetics influence how resilient you are to cold temperatures - new research - 1 views

theconversation.com/mperatures-new-research-155975 genetics science research cold knowledge
shared by cvanderloo on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Some people just aren’t bothered by the cold, no matter how low the temperature dips. And the reason for this may be in a person’s genes. Our new research shows that a common genetic variant in the skeletal muscle gene, ACTN3, makes people more resilient to cold temperatures.
  • Our recent study, conducted alongside researchers from Lithuania, Sweden and Australia, suggests that if you’re alpha-actinin-3 deficient, then your body can maintain a higher core temperature
  • While only 30% of participants with the alpha-actinin-3 protein reached the full 120 minutes of cold exposure, 69% of those that were alpha-actinin-3 deficient completed the full cold-water exposure time.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Our previous work has shown that ACTN3 variants play an important role in our muscle’s ability to generate strength. We showed that the loss of alpha-actinin-3 is detrimental to sprint performance in athletes and the general population, but may benefit muscle endurance.
  • This is because the loss of alpha-actinin-3 causes the muscle to behave more like a slower muscle fibre.
  • Our study shows that ACTN3 is more than just the “gene for speed”, but that its loss improves our muscle’s ability to generate heat and reduces the need to shiver when exposed to cold.
  • The goal of our research is to improve our understanding of how our genetics influence how our muscle works. This will allow us to develop better treatments for those who suffer from muscle diseases, like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as well as more common conditions, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.
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9-Year-Old Migrant Girl Dies Trying to Cross Rio Grande Into U.S. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...border-migrant-girl-death.html
shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • 9-Year-Old Migrant Girl Dies Trying to Cross Rio Grande Into U.S.
  • The girl was found unconscious on an island on the Mexican side of the river near the Texas border and could not be revived.
  • the first reported death of a child in a new surge of migration along the southwestern border.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • U.S. Border Patrol agents responding to a rescue call found a mother and two children, all three unconscious, on an island in the river that separates the United States from Mexico.
  • The agents were able to resuscitate the mother and the younger child, a 3-year-old boy.
  • The rescued mother was Guatemalan; her children were both Mexican nationals, the statement said.
  • n 2019, a father and his daughter from El Salvador died while attempting to cross the river near the border city of Matamoros, Mexico.
  • the second migrant to drown in the area in less than two weeks, according to the Mexican authorities.
  • Many have died of heat stroke after getting lost in the remote, rugged arid lands of Arizona.
  • Those crossing the Rio Grande typically move under cover of darkness.
  • Many pay smuggling networks hundreds or thousands of dollars to float across on inflatable rings, which are often used to hold both an adult and a child.
  • A Cuban man died Wednesday night while trying to enter the United States by swimming around the border barrier that stretches into the ocean between Tijuana and San Dieg
  • The picture of the father and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down along the banks of the Rio Grande, her tiny head tucked inside his T-shirt, an arm draped over his neck, captured worldwide attention.
  • Humanitarian groups leave water jugs in desolate areas on the migrant trail in Arizona where the terrain and heat pose great risks to crossers.
  • Since 2004, about 3,400 migrants have perished in southern Arizona.
  • Last year, 227 bodies were recovered, the most in a decade.
  • Monthly apprehensions had plummeted to 16,182 in April 2020 as the pandemic prompted former President Donald J. Trump to invoke a public-health emergency to seal the southwestern border to all but essential travel.
  • A child’s abandoned shoe lies near a river crossing point often used for illegal entries at the U.S.-Mexico border.Credit...
  • But apprehensions, the key indicator of the volumes of people trying to enter illegally, have climbed every month since then.
  • Mr. Biden has reversed or loosened some Trump-era restrictions, including the “Remain in Mexico” policy, while he and his top advisers have repeatedly urged migrants not to make the trek.
  • ut numbers have soared at the border, and Republicans have blamed his new approach for attracting the large numbers of migrants that have overwhelmed border processing facilities.
  • the Mexican state of Tamaulipas has been refusing to take them back.
  • The crush of arrivals in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest migrant gateway, is forcing the Border Patrol to release families even faster than usual to avoid the overcrowding in border processing stations that has drawn sharp criticism from immigrant and child-welfare advocates in the past.
  • “People back home were saying this is the moment to cross,”
  • “I couldn’t even make enough for us to eat, things were getting so bad,”
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Opinion | Trump May Start a Social Network. Here's My Advice. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-social-network.html
shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Trump May Start a Social Network. Here’s My Advice.
  • Recast your past failures as successes, engage in meaningless optics, and other tips from the Silicon Valley playbook.
  • So Donald Trump wants to start a social network and become a tech mogul?
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • I am an expert in all things digital, and I’m willing to help.
  • Tech is hard stuff, and new ventures should be attempted with extreme care, especially by those whose history of entrepreneurship is littered with the carcasses of, say, Trump Steaks.
  • Or Trump Water. Or Trump University. Or Trump magazine. Or Trump Casinos. Or Trump Mortgages. Or Trump Airlines. Or Trump Vodka. Or the Trump pandemic response. Or, of course, the 2020 Trump presidential campaign.
  • So, Mr. Trump, here’s my advice.
  • I advise you to embrace your myriad failures as if they’re your best friends.
  • Even if “fail” and “don’t work” are the same thing, in tech these are seen as a badge of honor rather than as a sign that you are terrible at executing a business plan and engage in only meaningless optics.
  • Engage in meaningless optics.
  • uckily, this fits right in your wheelhouse — a talent that you have displayed in spades since the beginnings of your career.
  • “genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” I might rephrase that for your entry into tech by saying, genius is 1 percent instigation and 99 percent perfidy.
  • Instigation and perfidy, in fact, make the perfect formula for a modern-day social network, so you are already well on your way, given your skill set.
  • Baseless conspiracies? Check
  • Crazy ALL-CAP declarations designed to foment anger? Check.
  • Incessant lies? Check.
  • Self-aggrandizing though badly spelled streams that actually reveal a profound lack of self-esteem? Check.
  • Link-baiting hateful memes? Double check.
  • Inciting violence over election fraud with both explicit and cryptic messages to your base, in order to get them to think they should attack the Capitol, like, for real? Checkmate
  • hate-tweet at you, and, of course, all the fake media
  • You didn’t start the fire — well, maybe you did — but you definitely need to keep stoking it.
  • A social network requires a lot of it, including servers, apps and content moderation tools. You’ll need a whole army of geeks whom you’ll have to pay real money.
  • As for your future competitors … Twitter has seen its shares rise sharply since it tossed you off for life.
  • You still might get a reprieve over at Facebook, where an oversight board is contemplating your fate. We’ll see what the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, decides after the board makes a ruling.
  • Keep in mind, Mr. Zuckerberg really is the most powerful man in the world; that was even the case when you were in the Oval Office.
  • And while he once bear-hugged your administration, he is now sidling up to President Biden.
  • Avoid MeinSpace and InstaGraft, for obvious reasons. The narcissist in you might go for The_Donald, which you might now be able to use, since Reddit banned the 800,000-member forum with that name for violating its rules against harassment, hate speech, content manipulation and more.
  • (Sounds like just the kind of folks you like and who like you.)
  • Trumpets are brash and loud, and they’re often badly played and tinny. Right on brand, I’d say.
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Opinion | Why Covid's Airborne Transmission Was Acknowledged So Late - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rus-airborne-transmission.html who cdc transmission Covid-19 Science research psychology bias
shared by Javier E on 08 May 21 - No Cached
  • A week ago, more than a year after the World Health Organization declared that we face a pandemic, a page on its website titled “Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19): How Is It Transmitted?” got a seemingly small update.
  • The revised response still emphasizes transmission in close contact but now says it may be via aerosols — smaller respiratory particles that can float — as well as droplets. It also adds a reason the virus can also be transmitted “in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings,” saying this is because “aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 meter.”
  • on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its guidance on Covid-19, clearly saying that inhalation of these smaller particles is a key way the virus is transmitted, even at close range, and put it on top of its list of how the disease spreads.
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  • But these latest shifts challenge key infection control assumptions that go back a century, putting a lot of what went wrong last year in context
  • They may also signal one of the most important advancements in public health during this pandemic.
  • If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small particles disperse more easily, as long as you avoid close, prolonged contact with others.
  • We would have tried to make sure indoor spaces were well ventilated, with air filtered as necessary.
  • Instead of blanket rules on gatherings, we would have targeted conditions that can produce superspreading events: people in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, especially if engaged over time in activities that increase aerosol production, like shouting and singing
  • We would have started using masks more quickly, and we would have paid more attention to their fit, too. And we would have been less obsessed with cleaning surfaces.
  • The implications of this were illustrated when I visited New York City in late April — my first trip there in more than a year.
  • A giant digital billboard greeted me at Times Square, with the message “Protecting yourself and others from Covid-19. Guidance from the World Health Organization.”
  • That billboard neglected the clearest epidemiological pattern of this pandemic: The vast majority of transmission has been indoors, sometimes beyond a range of three or even six feet. The superspreading events that play a major role in driving the pandemic occur overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, indoors.
  • The billboard had not a word about ventilation, nothing about opening windows or moving activities outdoors, where transmission has been rare and usually only during prolonged and close contact. (Ireland recently reported 0.1 percent of Covid-19 cases were traced to outdoor transmission.)
  • Mary-Louise McLaws, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and a member of the W.H.O. committees that craft infection prevention and control guidance, wanted all this examined but knew the stakes made it harder to overcome the resistance. She told The Times last year, “If we started revisiting airflow, we would have to be prepared to change a lot of what we do.” She said it was a very good idea, but she added, “It will cause an enormous shudder through the infection control society.”
  • In contrast, if the aerosols had been considered a major form of transmission, in addition to distancing and masks, advice would have centered on ventilation and airflow, as well as time spent indoors. Small particles can accumulate in enclosed spaces, since they can remain suspended in the air and travel along air currents. This means that indoors, three or even six feet, while helpful, is not completely protective, especially over time.
  • To see this misunderstanding in action, look at what’s still happening throughout the world. In India, where hospitals have run out of supplemental oxygen and people are dying in the streets, money is being spent on fleets of drones to spray anti-coronavirus disinfectant in outdoor spaces. Parks, beaches and outdoor areas keep getting closed around the world. This year and last, organizers canceled outdoor events for the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. Cambodian customs officials advised spraying disinfectant outside vehicles imported from India. The examples are many.
  • Meanwhile, many countries allowed their indoor workplaces to open but with inadequate aerosol protections. There was no attention to ventilation, installing air filters as necessary or even opening windows when possible, more to having people just distancing three or six feet, sometimes not requiring masks beyond that distance, or spending money on hard plastic barriers, which may be useless at best
  • clear evidence doesn’t easily overturn tradition or overcome entrenched feelings and egos. John Snow, often credited as the first scientific epidemiologist, showed that a contaminated well was responsible for a 1854 London cholera epidemic by removing the suspected pump’s handle and documenting how the cases plummeted afterward. Many other scientists and officials wouldn’t believe him for 12 years, when the link to a water source showed up again and became harder to deny.
  • Along the way to modern public health shaped largely by the fight over germs, a theory of transmission promoted by the influential public health figure Charles Chapin took hold
  • Dr. Chapin asserted in the early 1900s that respiratory diseases were most likely spread at close range by people touching bodily fluids or ejecting respiratory droplets, and did not allow for the possibility that such close-range infection could occur by inhaling small floating particles others emitted
  • He was also concerned that belief in airborne transmission, which he associated with miasma theories, would make people feel helpless and drop their guard against contact transmission. This was a mistake that would haunt infection control for the next century and more.
  • It was in this context in early 2020 that the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. asserted that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted primarily via these heavier, short-range droplets, and provided guidance accordingly
  • Amid the growing evidence, in July, hundreds of scientists signed an open letter urging the public health agencies, especially the W.H.O., to address airborne transmission of the coronavirus.
  • Last October, the C.D.C. published updated guidance acknowledging airborne transmission, but as a secondary route under some circumstances, until it acknowledged airborne transmission as crucial on Friday. And the W.H.O. kept inching forward in its public statements, most recently a week ago.
  • Linsey Marr, a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech who made important contributions to our understanding of airborne virus transmission before the pandemic, pointed to two key scientific errors — rooted in a lot of history — that explain the resistance, and also opened a fascinating sociological window into how science can get it wrong and why.
  • Dr. Marr said that if you inhale a particle from the air, it’s an aerosol.
  • biomechanically, she said, nasal transmission faces obstacles, since nostrils point downward and the physics of particles that large makes it difficult for them to move up the nose. And in lab measurements, people emit far more of the easier-to-inhale aerosols than the droplets, she said, and even the smallest particles can be virus laden, sometimes more so than the larger ones, seemingly because of how and where they are produced in the respiratory tract.
  • Second, she said, proximity is conducive to transmission of aerosols as well because aerosols are more concentrated near the person emitting them. In a twist of history, modern scientists have been acting like those who equated stinky air with disease, by equating close contact, a measure of distance, only with the larger droplets, a mechanism of transmission, without examination.
  • Since aerosols also infect at close range, measures to prevent droplet transmission — masks and distancing — can help dampen transmission for airborne diseases as well. However, this oversight led medical people to circularly assume that if such measures worked at all, droplets must have played a big role in their transmission.
  • Another dynamic we’ve seen is something that is not unheard-of in the history of science: setting a higher standard of proof for theories that challenge conventional wisdom than for those that support it.
  • Another key problem is that, understandably, we find it harder to walk things back. It is easier to keep adding exceptions and justifications to a belief than to admit that a challenger has a better explanation.
  • The ancients believed that all celestial objects revolved around the earth in circular orbits. When it became clear that the observed behavior of the celestial objects did not fit this assumption, those astronomers produced ever-more-complex charts by adding epicycles — intersecting arcs and circles — to fit the heavens to their beliefs.
  • In a contemporary example of this attitude, the initial public health report on the Mount Vernon choir case said that it may have been caused by people “sitting close to one another, sharing snacks and stacking chairs at the end of the practice,” even though almost 90 percent of the people there developed symptoms of Covid-19
  • So much of what we have done throughout the pandemic — the excessive hygiene theater and the failure to integrate ventilation and filters into our basic advice — has greatly hampered our response.
  • Some of it, like the way we underused or even shut down outdoor space, isn’t that different from the 19th-century Londoners who flushed the source of their foul air into the Thames and made the cholera epidemic worse.
  • Righting this ship cannot be a quiet process — updating a web page here, saying the right thing there. The proclamations that we now know are wrong were so persistent and so loud for so long.
  • the progress we’ve made might lead to an overhaul in our understanding of many other transmissible respiratory diseases that take a terrible toll around the world each year and could easily cause other pandemics.
  • So big proclamations require probably even bigger proclamations to correct, or the information void, unnecessary fears and misinformation will persist, damaging the W.H.O. now and in the future.
  • I’ve seen our paper used in India to try to reason through aerosol transmission and the necessary mitigations. I’ve heard of people in India closing their windows after hearing that the virus is airborne, likely because they were not being told how to respond
  • The W.H.O. needs to address these fears and concerns, treating it as a matter of profound change, so other public health agencies and governments, as well as ordinary people, can better adjust.
  • It needs to begin a campaign proportional to the importance of all this, announcing, “We’ve learned more, and here’s what’s changed, and here’s how we can make sure everyone understands how important this is.” That’s what credible leadership looks like. Otherwise, if a web page is updated in the forest without the requisite fanfare, how will it matter?
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FaceApp helped a middle-aged man become a popular younger woman. His fan base has never... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ker-faceapp-soya-azusagakuyuki identity authenticity social media fake avatar Japan psychology
shared by Javier E on 12 May 21 - No Cached
  • Soya’s fame illustrated a simple truth: that social media is less a reflection of who we are, and more a performance of who we want to be.
  • It also seemed to herald a darker future where our fundamental senses of reality are under siege: The AI that allows anyone to fabricate a face can also be used to harass women with “deepfake” pornography, invent fraudulent LinkedIn personas and digitally impersonate political enemies.
  • As the photos began receiving hundreds of likes, Soya’s personality and style began to come through. She was relentlessly upbeat. She never sneered or bickered or trolled. She explored small towns, savored scenic vistas, celebrated roadside restaurants’ simple meals.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • She took pride in the basic things, like cleaning engine parts. And she only hinted at the truth: When one fan told her in October, “It’s great to be young,” Soya replied, “Youth does not mean a certain period of life, but how to hold your heart.”
  • She seemed, well, happy, and FaceApp had made her that way. Creating the lifelike impostor had taken only a few taps: He changed the “Gender” setting to “Female,” the “Age” setting to “Teen,” and the “Impression” setting — a mix of makeup filters — to a glamorous look the app calls “Hollywood.”
  • Soya pouted and scowled on rare occasions when Nakajima himself felt frustrated. But her baseline expression was an extra-wide smile, activated with a single tap.
  • Nakajima grew his shimmering hair below his shoulders and raided his local convenience store for beauty supplies he thought would make the FaceApp images more convincing: blushes, eyeliners, concealers, shampoos.
  • “When I compare how I feel when I started to tweet as a woman and now, I do feel that I’m gradually gravitating toward this persona … this fantasy world that I created,” Nakajima said. “When I see photos of what I tweeted, I feel like, ‘Oh. That’s me.’ ”
  • The sensation Nakajima was feeling is so common that there’s a term for it: the Proteus effect, named for the shape-shifting Greek god. Stanford University researchers first coined it in 2007 to describe how people inhabiting the body of a digital avatar began to act the part
  • People made to appear taller in virtual-reality simulations acted more assertively, even after the experience ended. Prettier characters began to flirt.
  • What is it about online disguises? Why are they so good at bending people’s sense of self-perception?
  • they tap into this “very human impulse to play with identity and pretend to be someone you’re not.”
  • Users in the Internet’s early days rarely had any presumptions of authenticity, said Melanie C. Green, a University of Buffalo professor who studies technology and social trust. Most people assumed everyone else was playing a character clearly distinguished from their real life.
  • “This identity play was considered one of the huge advantages of being online,” Green said. “You could switch your gender and try on all of these different personas. It was a playground for people to explore.”
  • It wasn’t until the rise of giant social networks like Facebook — which used real identities to, among other things, supercharge targeted advertising — that this big game of pretend gained an air of duplicity. Spaces for playful performance shrank, and the biggest Internet watering holes began demanding proof of authenticity as a way to block out malicious intent.
  • The Web’s big shift from text to visuals — the rise of photo-sharing apps, live streams and video calls — seemed at first to make that unspoken rule of real identities concrete. It seemed too difficult to fake one’s appearance when everyone’s face was on constant display.
  • Now, researchers argue, advances in image-editing artificial intelligence have done for the modern Internet what online pseudonyms did for the world’s first chat rooms. Facial filters have allowed anyone to mold themselves into the character they want to play.
  • researchers fear these augmented reality tools could end up distorting the beauty standards and expectations of actual reality.
  • Some political and tech theorists worry this new world of synthetic media threatens to detonate our concept of truth, eroding our shared experiences and infusing every online relationship with suspicion and self-doubt.
  • Deceptive political memes, conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine hoaxes and other scams have torn the fabric of our democracy, culture and public health.
  • But she also thinks about her kids, who assume “that everything online is fabricated,” and wonders whether the rules of online identity require a bit more nuance — and whether that generational shift is already underway.
  • “Bots pretending to be people, automated representations of humanity — that, they perceive as exploitative,” she said. “But if it’s just someone engaging in identity experimentation, they’re like: ‘Yeah, that’s what we’re all doing.'
  • To their generation, “authenticity is not about: ‘Does your profile picture match your real face?’ Authenticity is: ‘Is your voice your voice?’
  • “Their feeling is: ‘The ideas are mine. The voice is mine. The content is mine. I’m just looking for you to receive it without all the assumptions and baggage that comes with it.’ That’s the essence of a person’s identity. That’s who they really are.”
  • But wasn’t this all just a big con? Nakajima had tricked people with a “cool girl” stereotype to boost his Twitter numbers. He hadn’t elevated the role of women in motorcycling; if anything, he’d supplanted them. And the character he’d created was paper thin: Soya had no internal complexity outside of what Nakajima had projected, just that eternally superimposed smile.
  • Perhaps he should have accepted his irrelevance and faded into the digital sunset, sharing his life for few to see. But some of Soya’s followers have said they never felt deceived: It was Nakajima — his enthusiasm, his attitude about life — they’d been charmed by all along. “His personality,” as one Twitter follower said, “shined through.”
  • In Nakajima’s mind, he’d used the tools of a superficial medium to craft genuine connections. He had not felt real until he had become noticed for being fake.
  • Nakajima said he doesn’t know how long he’ll keep Soya alive. But he said he’s grateful for the way she helped him feel: carefree, adventurous, seen.
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In Georgia County, Elections Bills Have Consequences : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...ctions-bills-have-consequences Georgia Ellections racism bias
shared by cvanderloo on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Long before Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a 98-page law that enacted drastic changes to election rules in Georgia this week, some lawmakers were already facing pushback amid an inflamed debate over voting rights.
  • Hancock County is about 100 miles east of Atlanta and one of the poorest in the country.
  • "He knows how important absentee voting and early voting is to this community," he said. "And he goes and introduces legislation to make it harder, more difficult for the very people to vote that are paying him as county attorney!"
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Thornton said he believes that an attorney should be an advocate, not an adversary, and others agree
  • One bill Fleming introduced, HB 531, would have curbed Sunday early voting, restricted mail-in voting, even made handing out food and water to voters a misdemeanor crime.
  • Fleming was county attorney that year when about 20% of Sparta's voters — all Black — had their voter registrations challenged before a mayoral race.
  • While Republicans have proposed hundreds of restrictive bills across the country, Warren says the particular measures discussed in Georgia are personal for Black people like himself that experienced Jim Crow laws firsthand.
  • Warren said Facebook posts and meetings with community members helped mobilize action before the county commission, and now says other local jurisdictions that have hired Fleming as attorney are considering dropping him, too.
  • In the short term at least, it appears that some Republicans are paying attention. The bill signed into law Thursday reversed course on some of the harshest measures, keeping no-excuse absentee voting and actually expanding in-person early voting access.
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The Moral Ill Effects of Teaching Economics | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...moral-ill-effects-of_b_6902158
shared by kaylynfreeman on 15 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Other studies have found economics students to exhibit a stronger tendency towards anti-social positions compared to their peers.
  • Carter and Irons found that, relative to non-economics students, economics students were much more likely to offer their partners small sums, and, thus, deviate from a “fair” 50/50 spilt.
  • The authors found that, after taking an economics class, students’ responses to the end-of-the-semester survey were more likely to reflect a decline in honest behavior than students who studied astronomy.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • They found that economics students are less likely to consider a vendor who increases the price of bottled water on a hot day to be acting “unfairly.”
  • They found ideological differences between lower-level economics students and upper-level economics students that are similar in kind to the measured differences between the ideology of economics students as a whole and their peers. He finds that upper-level students are even less likely to support egalitarian solutions to distribution problems than lower-level students, suggesting that time spent studying economics does have an indoctrination effect.
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Biden's Intended Commerce Secretary Nominee Is Gina Raimondo : Biden Transition Updates... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...bidens-commerce-secretary-pick Rhode Island Census Bureau
shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, the first woman to lead the country's smallest state, has been named President-elect Joe Biden's intended nominee for commerce secretary.
  • would oversee the U.S. Commerce Department's eclectic portfolio of federal agencies, including some that have been thrown into political hot waters during the Trump administration — most notably the Census Bureau.
  • been scrambling to prepare the release of the first set of 2020 census results, which was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and last-minute schedule changes by Trump administration officials.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The state population counts that determine each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes for the next decade are not expected to be out until February at the earliest,
  • Raimondo would take over the position from Wilbur Ross, a Trump appointee who has been found in contempt of Congress by the House for defying a subpoena to turn over documents about the Trump administration's efforts to add a citizenship question to census forms.
  • "The mission of the Commerce Department is a very simple one — to help spur good-paying jobs, to empower entrepreneurs to innovate and grow, to come together with working families and American businesses to create new opportunities for all of us,"
  • "Commerce Department employees are getting a terrific new boss who will listen to them, support them, lead from the trenches, and get the very best out of them by holding them to the same high standards she holds herself,"
  • "And Congress will be getting a partner who is an honest broker of unquestioned integrity."
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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Fall During Pandemic : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-drop-in-u-s-climate-emissions climate change greenhouse gas pandemic
shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • As commuters stayed home in 2020 and airplanes remained on the ground, the nationwide slowdown led to a sizable drop in heat-trapping emissions. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell by 10 percent, the largest annual drop since World War II
  • Still, the climate diet isn't likely to stick.
  • By the end of the year, Americans were already back to driving and flying more.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • the U.S. will need to make more lasting changes, like switching the nation's electric grid to solar, wind and other low-carbon energy sources.
  • "The emission reductions of 2020 have come with an enormous toll of significant economic damage and human suffering,"
  • "Without meaningful structural changes in the carbon intensity of the US economy, emissions will likely rise again as well."
  • The dip in 2020 also isn't likely to dramatically slow the rate of climate change.
  • Essentially, it's like a bathtub being filled with water. The U.S. turned down the faucet, but it was still filling the tub.
  • Transportation, the largest source of U.S. emissions, fell by almost 15 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year.
  • Once the dominant source of electricity in the country, coal-fired power plants have been shuttering in recent years, driven out of business by the low cost of natural gas and renewable energy.
  • The emissions drop in 2020 is also a sobering reminder of how far the U.S. has to go to achieve international climate targets.
  • The Biden Administration has vowed to make climate a priority, including rejoining the international agreement.
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Opinion | Pool of Thought - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pool-neuroscience.html
shared by pier-paolo on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • THERE is no drug — recreational or prescription — capable of inducing the tranquil euphoria brought on by swimming. I do all my best thinking in the pool, whether I’m trying to figure out how to treat a patient’s complicated ailment or write a paper.
  • I could flood you with facts about the physiology of swimming in an attempt to convince you of its cognitive benefits. Some point to endorphins — but the idea that exertion causes endorphin levels to rise in the brain seems to be a myth
  • Perhaps swimming improves brain function by increasing blood flow? Sure, that’s true. It also raises the level of BDNF, a protein that promotes neurogenesis, especially in the hippocampus, which supports memory. But so does nearly every form of exercise that speeds up your heart rate.
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  • And yet, immersion in water up to the level of the heart has been shown to increase blood flow to one of the brain’s major arteries by 14 percent over that which you’d expect on land. So perhaps there is something special about swimming that is distinct from exercise on land.
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Opinion | Beyond the Brain - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...brooks-beyond-the-brain.html
shared by pier-paolo on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Somebody makes an important scientific breakthrough, which explains a piece of the world. But then people get caught up in the excitement of this breakthrough and try to use it to explain everything.
  • This is what’s happening right now with neuroscience. The field is obviously incredibly important and exciting. From personal experience, I can tell you that you get captivated by it and sometimes go off to extremes, as if understanding the brain is the solution to understanding all thought and behavior.
  • Neuroscience will replace psychology and other fields as the way to understand action.
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  • Then there is the problem that one action can arise out of many different brain states and the same event can trigger many different brain reactions.
  • But the amygdala lights up during fear, happiness, novelty, anger or sexual arousal (at least in women). The insula plays a role in processing trust, insight, empathy, aversion and disbelief. So what are you really looking at?
  • The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.
  • A glass of water may be more meaningful to you when you are dying of thirst than when you are not. Your lover means more than your friend. It’s as hard to study neurons and understand the flavors of meaning as it is to study Shakespeare’s spelling and understand the passions aroused by Macbeth.
  • Right now we are compelled to rely on different disciplines to try to understand behavior on multiple levels, with inherent tensions between them. Some people want to reduce that ambiguity by making one discipline all-explaining. They want to eliminate the confusing ambiguity of human freedom by reducing everything to material determinism.
  • An important task these days is to harvest the exciting gains made by science and data while understanding the limits of science and data.
  • The brain is not the mind.
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Sports' path to return to normal may not be clear - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...rus-vaccine-political-activism covid sports
shared by colemorris on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • “It was the mental part. You want to get it right; you want to be fair; you want to be smart. It just felt like there was broken glass all around. And it wasn’t a matter of if you’re going to step on it but how deep is the cut going to be.”
  • “It was the mental part. You want to get it right; you want to be fair; you want to be smart. It just felt like there was broken glass all around. And it wasn’t a matter of if you’re going to step on it but how deep is the cut going to be.”
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      it is very interesting to hear how even though he is not the one playing the sports and is the broadcaster/ analysist he is so heavily affected by this
  • will sports be fun again — will they serve as the harmless distraction and social balm that once sustained so many?
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  • In the past, sports have served as a welcome distraction through pain or trauma. But no game could blot out what was unfolding in 2020. It all blended together, the planet’s problems disrupting the sports world, along with everything else.
  • Even when the games returned, television ratings were down almost across the board. Sports hadn’t been able to offer a respite for everyone.
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      covid really put the entire economy in shambles no matter what the business.
  • “Think about it: We took all the fundamental building blocks out of sports this year,” he said. “Anticipation, social gathering, water cooler talk, the ability to play — we took everything out.
  • Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert tested positive in March and the NBA swiftly halted its season,
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      I remember this and in the press conference right before we found out he had it he was seen mocking the disease and touching everything around him purposely.
  • A majority of fans, 56 percent, said people shouldn’t play indoor sports, according to a Marist poll this month. And 49 percent said fans shouldn’t be allowed to attend the Super Bowl.
  • McManus points out that nearly one in five sports fans, 18 percent, said they should be allowed to attend games right now and another 36 percent said they should be allowed to attend with restrictions in place.
  • “Americans, in particular, have very, very short memories,”
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      true
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How Galileo Galilei's discoveries helped create modern science - 0 views

www.zmescience.com/...ilei-life-achievements-feature
shared by caelengrubb on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Few people in history can claim as large a contribution to how we conduct and think about science as Galileo. His work revolutionized our entire outlook on what it means to study nature (and got him in some very hot water with the Roman Inquisition)
  • He is perhaps best known for his championing of Copernicus’ heliocentric model (the one that says the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun), but that is by no means the full extent of his legacy. Far, far from it.
  • Galileo earned himself a place among the stars as Europe’s global navigation satellite system bears his name
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  • Galileo is certainly among the titans of science — in many ways, he’s one of its ‘founders’. His legacy includes contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy, math, engineering, and the application of the scientific method
  • He was an accomplished mathematician and inventor, designing (among others) several military compasses and the thermoscope. He was also the one to pick up the torch of modern astronomy from Copernicus, cementing the foundations of this field of study by proving his theories right.
  • Showing others what science can do, and how one should go about it, is Galileo’s most important achievement. Its effects still ripple through the lives of every researcher to this day
  • Since the days of Aristotle, scholars in Europe believed that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Galileo showed that this wasn’t the case, using balls of the same materials but different weights and sizes. In one of his infamous experiments, he dropped two such balls from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa to show that objects of different weights accelerate just as fast towards the ground (air resistance notwithstanding).
  • The truth is Galileo’s experiments in this area used a more reliable but less flashy bunch of inclined planes that he rolled balls down on.
  • His interest regarding motion and the falling of objects were tightly linked to Galileo’s interest in planets, stars, and the solar system.
  • Apart from his theoretical pursuits, Galileo was also an accomplished engineer — meaning he could also turn his knowledge to the solving of practical problems. Most of these, historical accounts tell us, were attempts by Galileo to earn a little bit of extra cash in order to support his extended family after his father passed away.
  • Among his creations are a set of military compasses (sectors) that were simple enough for artillery crews and surveyors to use.
  • He was also an early builder and user of telescopes and microscopes. Galileo, among a few select others, was the first to ever use a refracting telescope as an instrument to observe heavenly bodies, in 1609
  • His fascination with celestial bodies and defense of the heliocentric model is what eventually led to the Inquisition cracking down on him and his works.
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Harold Bloom Is Dead. But His 'Rage for Reading' Is Undiminished. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...book-of-life-harold-bloom.html books classics reading critic language knowledge education literature
shared by Javier E on 23 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • It’s a series of meditations on what Bloom believes to be the most important novels we have, and it takes for granted that its readers already know the books under consideration; in other words, that they have already absorbed “the canon,” and are eager to reconsider it later in their lives.
  • A not atypical, almost throwaway passage for you to test the waters on: “Tolstoy, as befits the writer since Shakespeare who most has the art of the actual, combines in his representational praxis the incompatible powers of Homer and the Yahwist.” This is not Bloom showing off; it’s the way Bloom thinks and proceeds.
  • Apart from his novelists, his frame of reference rests on Shakespeare above all others, Homer, Chaucer, Dante, Montaigne, Emerson, Dr. Johnson (the “shrewdest of all literary critics”), Blake, Wordsworth, Whitman (for him, the central American writer of the 19th century), Wallace Stevens, Freud
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  • Among the novelists, Cervantes, Tolstoy (supreme), Melville, Austen, Proust, Joyce.
  • He is inevitably at his strongest when dealing with those writers he cares most about. With Jane Austen, for one. And, above all, with Tolstoy:
  • As for Dickens, whose “David Copperfield” was a direct influence on Tolstoy, to Bloom his greatest achievement is “Bleak House”
  • He pairs it with Dickens’s final complete novel, “Our Mutual Friend,” a book I care for so extravagantly that I’ve read it three times
  • The two works in which Bloom is most fully invested are “Moby-Dick” (40 pages) and “Ulysses” (54)
  • He chooses to give room to not one but two of Le Guin’s novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness” and “The Dispossessed,”
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'I Think This Guy Is, Like, Passed Out in His Tesla' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tesla-autopilot-sleeping.html tesla automation self-driving car tech metaphor safety social media
shared by Javier E on 08 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • Tesla’s response to these videos has been consistent: Autopilot is meant to function as a complement to a conscious driver, not a replacement. If you don’t keep a hand on the wheel, your Tesla is supposed to beep at you; eventually it’s supposed to slow to a stop and put its hazard lights on. Anyway, who knows if these clips were real? Couldn’t some of them be the work of pranksters?
  • of course you can still fall asleep with a hand on the wheel — or you can go on YouTube and watch Tesla drivers swap tips for using a water bottle or custom “cellphone holder” to fool the system.
  • What’s fascinating is the way the sci-fi novelty of Autopilot — combined with the deep familiarity of old-fashioned driving — manages to warp our danger-detecting radar. There are instances in which investigators have found that the Autopilot system contributed to crashes, but none of those have been captured on film.
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  • driving is already one of the more dangerous activities Americans undertake on a daily basis. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “drowsy driving” was a factor in 91,000 crashes, resulting in 50,000 people injured and 810 deaths in 2017, so it’s theoretically possible that what some of these videos are showing us is disaster averted, not disaster in motion.
  • Tesla once generated widespread good will by promising affordable electric cars that would make the world cleaner and safer. But over time, its image was tarnished by missed deadlines, worrying crash reports, signs of a cultlike corporate culture and a chief executive, Elon Musk, who habitually exaggerates progress while announcing extravagant new ideas. This was hardly the institution you would want determining the future of highway safety.
  • These technologies — and the companies that engineer them — keep turning out to be less benign than imagined. We fell in love with Amazon, but now we miss the local stores it closed. We couldn’t resist the convenience of Uber and Lyft, but now we’ve seen their effect on public transit and drivers. “Jetsons”-esque smart-home technology turned out to be riddled with glitches and vulnerable to hackers.
  • Tech companies have hollowed out old industries, shredded privacy, disregarded regulations and created new vectors for the spread of misinformation and extremism, and now there is a sense that choices we have already made — tectonic shifts already in motion, terms of service already accepted — may be changing us in ways that we are only beginning to process, ready to leap up and bite us in the collective behind.
  • It’s hard to imagine a more potent visual metaphor for this feeling than a human lulled to sleep inside a hunk of metal and glass, hurtling down a highway under the control of proprietary algorithms beamed on board from Palo Alto
  • These videos are magnetic not just because of the eerie images they contain, but also because, watching them, we can’t actually be sure what we’re seeing. Is this danger or safety or both at once? Perhaps in a different era we would have cried out in excitement: How cool! Today we are more tempted to gasp in shock and call out a warning: Wake up!
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Ancient DNA Shows Humans Settled Caribbean in 2 Distinct Waves - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dna-caribbean-islands.html caribbean dna research language origins human origins American Indian native americans
shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • Before the advent of Caribbean genetic studies, archaeologists provided most of the clues about the origins of people in the region. The first human residents of the Caribbean appear to have lived mostly as hunter-gatherers, catching game on the islands and fishing at sea while also maintaining small gardens of crops.
  • Archaeologists have discovered a few burials of those ancient people. Starting in the early 2000s, geneticists managed to fish out a few tiny bits of preserved DNA in their bones. Significant advances in recent years have made it possible to pull entire genomes from ancient skeletons.
  • “We went from zero full genomes two years ago to over 200 now,”
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  • The genes of the oldest known residents of the Caribbean link them with the earliest populations that settled in Central and South America.
  • Part of the problem is that scientists have yet to find ancient DNA in the Caribbean that is more than 3,000 years old
  • The other problem is that ancient DNA is still scarce on the Caribbean coast of the mainland.
  • About 2,500 years ago, the archaeological record shows, there was a drastic shift in the cultural life of the Caribbean. People started living in bigger settlements, intensively farming crops like maize and sweet potatoes. Their pottery became more sophisticated and elaborate. For archaeologists, the change indicates the end of what they call the Archaic Age and the start of a Ceramic Age.
  • The skeletons from the Ceramic Age largely shared a new genetic signature. Their DNA links them to small tribes still living today in Colombia and Venezuela.
  • We don’t know a lot about these languages, although some words have managed to survive. Hurricane, for example, comes from hurakán, the Taino name for the god of storms.
  • The people bearing Ceramic Age ancestry came to dominate the Caribbean, with almost no interbreeding between the two groups.
  • These words bear a striking resemblance to words from a family of languages in South America called Arawak. The DNA of the Ceramic Age Caribbeans most closely resembles that of living Arawak speakers.
  • the new DNA findings had surprised him in many ways, giving him a host of new questions to investigate.
  • Over the course of the Ceramic Age, for example, strikingly new pottery styles emerged every few centuries. Researchers have long guessed that those shifts reflect the arrival of new groups of people in the islands. The ancient DNA doesn’t support that idea, though. There’s a genetic continuity through those drastic cultural changes. It appears that the same group of people in the Caribbean went through a series of major social changes that archaeologists have yet to explain.
  • Dr. Reich and his fellow geneticists also discovered family ties that spanned the Caribbean during the Ceramic Age. They found 19 pairs of people on different islands who shared identical segments of DNA — a sign that they were fairly close relatives. In one case, they found long-distance cousins from the Bahamas and Puerto Rico, separated by over 800 miles.
  • “The original idea was that people start in one place, they establish a colony someplace else, and then they just cut all ties to where they came from,” Dr. Keegan said. “But the genetic evidence is suggesting that these ties were maintained over a long period of time.”
  • Rather than being made up of isolated communities, in other words, the Caribbean was a busy, long-distance network that people regularly traveled by dugout canoe. “The water is like a highway,”
  • The genetic variations also allowed Dr. Reich and his colleague to estimate the size of the Caribbean society before European contact. Christopher Columbus’s brother Bartholomew sent letters back to Spain putting the figure in the millions
  • The DNA suggests that was an exaggeration: the genetic variations imply that the total population was as low as the tens of thousands.
  • now, with a population of about 44 million people, the Caribbean may contain more Taino DNA than it did in 1491.
  • Dr. Aviles and his colleagues have uploaded the ancient Caribbean genomes to a genealogical database called GEDMatch. With the help of genealogists, people can compare their own DNA to the ancient genomes. They can see the matching stretches of genetic material that reveal their relatedness.
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Opinion | Beyond the Brain - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...brooks-beyond-the-brain.html brain behavior neuroscience psychology
shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Human beings are nothing but neurons, they assert. Once we understand the brain well enough, we will be able to understand behavior.
  • We will see that people don’t really possess free will; their actions are caused by material processes emerging directly out of nature.
  • Neuroscience will replace psychology and other fields as the way to understand action.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • there is the problem that one action can arise out of many different brain states and the same event can trigger many different brain reactions.
  • we have this useful concept, “working memory,” but the activity described by this concept is widely distributed across at least 30 regions of the brain.
  • It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.
  • you may order the same salad, but your brain activity will look different, depending on whether you are drunk or sober, alert or tired.
  • there is the problem of meaning. A glass of water may be more meaningful to you when you are dying of thirst than when you are not.
  • People can change their brains in unique and unpredictable ways by shifting the patterns of their attention.
  • we are compelled to rely on different disciplines to try to understand behavior on multiple levels, with inherent tensions between them.
  • They want to eliminate the confusing ambiguity of human freedom by reducing everything to material determinism.
34More

Pandemic Advice From Athletes - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...athletes-pandemic-advice.html pandemic climate change psychology endurance resilience toughness mental health goals process pacing perseverance
shared by Javier E on 08 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • There’s a special kind of exhaustion that the world’s best endurance athletes embrace. Some call it masochistic, others may call it brave. When fatigue sends legs and lungs to their limits, they are able to push through to a gear beyond their pain threshold. These athletes approach fatigue not with fear but as a challenge, an opportunity.
  • It’s a quality that allows an ultramarathoner to endure what could be an unexpected rough segment of an 100-mile race, or a sailor to push ahead when she’s in the middle of the ocean, racing through hurricane winds alone.
  • The drive to persevere is something some are born with, but it’s also a muscle everyone can learn to flex. In a way, everyone has become an endurance athlete of sorts during this pandemic, running a race with no finish line that tests the limits of their exhaustion.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • One message they all had: You are stronger than you think you are, and everyone is able to adapt in ways they didn’t think possible.
  • there are a few techniques to help you along — 100-mile race not required.
  • There’s a pacing in living day to day, just as there’s pacing in climbing.
  • Training to become an elite endurance athlete means learning to embrace discomfort. Instead of hiding from pain, athletes must learn to work with it. A lot of that comes down to pacing
  • Similarly, as you muscle through an ongoing pandemic, you must look for ways to make peace with unknowns and new, uncomfortable realities. “When we think about the coronavirus, we are in it for the long run; so how do you pace yourself?”
  • She recommends thinking about your routines, practicing positive self-talk and focusing on processes instead of outcomes
  • You don’t know when the pandemic will end, but you can take control of your daily habits
  • “always have a little in reserve.”
  • Deplete your resources early and you’ll be in trouble. Focusing on day-to-day activities will pay off in the long run.
  • If you burn out all your mental energy in one day or week, you may find it more difficult to adapt when things don’t return to normal as quickly as you would hope.
  • Pace Yourself
  • “Don’t play all your cards at once and keep a little something in reserve.”
  • Create Mini-Goals
  • Sports psychologists frequently recommend creating mini milestones en route to a big goal. There are many steps on the path from base camp to a mountain’s summit. Likewise, there are smaller, more achievable milestones to reach and celebrate as you venture ahead into the unknown.
  • Focus on Something New
  • “I’m really good at breaking things down into small increments and setting micro-goals,” he said. How micro?
  • “I break things down to 10 seconds at a time,” Mr. Woltering continued. “You just have to be present in what you are doing and you have to know that it may not be the most fun — or super painful — now, but that could change in 10 seconds down the road.”
  • And it may not change quickly. Mr. Woltering said he has spent six-hour stretches counting to 10 over and over again. “You just keep moving and keep counting,” he said. “And you have to have faith that it will change at some point.”
  • Create Structure
  • “Part of expedition life is having a routine that you’re comfortable with. When I’m on expedition, I always start the day with a basin of warm water and soap. I wash my hands, face, neck and ears and get the sand out of my eyes,” he said. “It’s something that’s repeated that gets you a sense of comfort and normalcy.”
  • During the pandemic, he has found comfort and normalcy by getting outdoors, and climbing whenever possible to “run the engine.”
  • Dee Caffari, a British sailor and the first woman to sail solo, nonstop, around the world in both directions, said structure is imperative to fight back loneliness and monotony.
  • “In your day you need structure,” Ms. Caffari said. “You need to get up in the morning knowing you’re going to make something happen.”
  • “Setting goals that are controllable makes it easier to adapt,” Dr. Meijen said. “If you set goals that are controlled by other people, goals that aren’t realistic or are tough or boring, those are much harder to adapt to.”
  • When all else fails, look to something new: a new hobby, a new goal, a new experience
  • During a particularly hard patch of a competition, some athletes say they focus on a different sense, one that perhaps is not at the forefront of their mind when the pain sets in. A runner could note the smells around her and a climber could note the way his hair is blowing in the wind.
  • When athletes are injured, sports psychologists and coaches frequently encourage them to find a new activity to engage their mind and body. The key is to adapt, adapt and then adapt again.
  • “We all want mental toughness, it’s an important part of dealing with difficult things,”
  • “The current definition of mental toughness is the ability to pivot and to be nimble and flexible.”
  • “The next moment is always completely uncertain, and it’s always been that way,” Dr. Gervais said. But adapting, adjusting expectations and discovering new goals or hobbies can allow you to continue to build the muscle that is mental toughness.
  • Bottom line? “Optimism is an antidote to anxiety,”
3More

Elephant Seal Facts (Genus Mirounga) - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/elephant-seal-facts-4154853
shared by runlai_jiang on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • The elephant seal (genus Mirounga) is the world's largest seal. There are two species of elephant seals, named according to the hemisphere in which they are found. Northern elephant seals (M. angustirostris) are found in coastal waters around Canada and Mexico, while southern elephant seals (M. leonina) are found off the coast of New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina.
  • At sea, elephant seals range solo. They return to established breeding colonies each winter. Females become mature around 3 to 6 years of age, while males mature at 5 to 6 years.However, males need to achieve alpha status to mate, which is normally between the ages of 9 and 12. Males battle each other using body weight and teeth. While deaths are rare, scarring is common. An alpha male's harem ranges from 30 to 100 females. Other males wait on the edges of the colony, sometimes mating with females before the alpha male chases them away. Males remain on land over the winter to defend territory, meaning they don't leave to hunt.
  • Elephant seals have been hunted for their meat, fur, and blubber. Both northern and southern elephant seals were hunted to the brink of extinction. By 1892, most people believed the northern seals to be extinct. But in 1910, a single breeding colony was found around Guadalupe Island off Mexico's Baja California coast. At the end of the 19th century, new marine conservation legislation was put in place to protect the
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