Borges and I And I

The text Borges and I by Jorge Luis Borges deals with the distinction between the private self (I) and the public persona (Borges). In the end we can not know to which extent the text was written by I or Borges, who has the "perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things". In her essay Ignorance and Mystery Gale Rhodes explores whether questions about the self and its feelings are answerable by science. According to her they are not. While they are explained to be electo-chemical reactions in the brain they do not feel like them. I disagree with Rhodes's sentiment that science is not able explain "certain mysterious domains of inquiry," as Aaron put it. While it might not be able to explain these thing satisfyingly to some people it does not change the fact that they are indeed explained. And while the sense of self might "not feel like a bunch of cells receiving correlated inputs of light or mechanical stimulation" neither does one feel the workings of much of their body.

Late Vaccinations a Worrying Trend

Parents increasingly put off vaccinating their children on schedule finds a new study by the Oregon Health Authority in Portland. The group conducting the study analyzed a medical database of nearly 100,000 children born from 2003 to 2009. By 2009 ten percent of the children had not gotten their vaccinations on schedule and 30 percent had at least one of them delayed. Amanda Dempsey, a physician and researcher at the University of Colorado Denver remarked, that this trend is "very generalizable” to the rest of the country. In the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention multiple vaccinations at the age of two, four, and six months are advised. These vaccinations protect against potentially deadly illnesses like hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, meningitis, pneumonia, polio, and flu. The increasing number of routine vaccinations since 1995 and false claims linking vaccines to autism and other problems might be what motivates parents to put off the visit to the doctor's office. While the study did not assess whether delaying immunizations leads to more illness a link seems apparent. The general trend of delayed immunizations has coincided with recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough. People who were most at risk were either unvaccinated or undervaccinated. Source:

Motivators in Religious Generosity

An interdisciplinary team of faculty in the Arizona State University's Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict has published a study on what factors motivate religious people to be generous. The study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation/University of Notre Dame Science of Generosity Initiative, which is a highly religious institution, and went out to determine how one person's kindness to others affects the recipient's kindness in the future and what makes the difference between those who are giving and those who aren't. Carolyn Warner, ASU School of Politics and Global Studies professor and principal investigator for the ASU project said that, "Generosity is an important part of human behavior that we don't know much about," and that, "It wouldn't hurt if there were more of it in the world." Comparing Muslims and Catholics they tried to find out what in the religious experience might prompt generosity. Because of their focus on these two religions they traveled to Dublin, Milan, Paris and Istanbul, where they are strongly represented. Potential factors leading to generosity in a religious context were a sense of duty to one's god, the love of Jesus or Mohammad, feelings of being blessed and the two religions are organized. The group of researchers conducted interviews, observed participation in religious group activities and conducted "experiments", which were not specified any further in the article. All of these were conducted on site with people from the respective communities. The results revealed that for members of both religions the positive experience of giving and actually connecting with the people they are helping, for example in a soup kitchen, is a powerful motivator. The same goes for a sense of giving achieved by helping out in their religious communities. Muslims feel that when they are blessed by god they have an obligation to share with those less fortunate than themselves and that they should follow in Mohammad's footsteps by being charitable. Catholics are mainly motivated by their love for Jesus. Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120620143251.htm

Money Doesn't Make You Happy - Respect and Friendship Do

In a series of studies led by Psychological scientist Cameron Anderson of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley a correlation between the level of sociometric status and happiness was found. Sociometric status is the amount of like or dislike a person evokes, as well as how well-respected and admired they are in their peer groups (friends, neighborhood, athletic team.) The research published in "Psychological Science" shows that the higher your sociometric status, the higher your subjective well-being or happiness is. In the first of the four studies 80 college students from twelve different campus groups were surveyed about their sociometric status, which was calculated through a combination of peer ratings, self-report and the number of leadership positions they held, household income and social well-being. After taking into account gender and ethnicity they found that socioeconomic status does not increase happiness, while sociometric status does. These findings were replicated in a second, larger and more diverse study. A third and fourth study showed that the relationship between sociometric status and well-being could even be manipulated in an experimental setting and that changes in sociometric status after graduation directly correspond to changes in social well-being. Unlike money the happiness gained through social status does not fade over time. Anderson said that "[...]people quickly adapt to the new level of income or wealth," which is why lottery winners return to their original level of happiness within a short time. Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120620133310.htm

Parents Are a Major Factor in How Active Their Children Are

In a study published on June 21st this year researchers at the Oregon State University have found a link between different parenting styles and the sedentary behaviour of their children. In general children have become increasingly sedentary which is not just a problem of new media. Instead parents are a major factor in this problem. The parents were grouped into one for four parenting styles: authoritarian (high warmth and control), authoritative (controlling, less warm), permissive (warm, low control), and neglectful (low control and warmth). The less time a parent spends with their child at home the more screen time, for example spend in front of a TV or playing a video game, a child gets. This increases the amount of time a child from age two to four spends sitting from four to five hours by about 30 minutes. Parents who were less participatory during the week did little to engage their children during the weekend. Instead the sitting time increased even more, to nearly one hour per day. As the lead author of the study, David Schary, said: "A half an hour each day may not seem like much, but add that up over a week, then a month, and then a year and you have a big impact." Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120621130724.htm

Fever in pregnancy linked to autism 

Women who run a high temperature during gestation may double risk of having an autistic child

 

Researchers found out that women having fever while pregnancy and not treating it are twice as likely to have a child with autism than mothers who do not report any untreated fever. Scientists assumed that there might be a link between infectuous diseases during gestation and a heightened risk of children having autism spectrum disorder, which could not be confirmed by the new study in the upcoming Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. According to Paul Patterson, a developmental neurologist at Caltech, this was the largest and most careful study that had been done on the topic of fever and influenza in autism development.

Fever in gestation was also associated with a more than doubled risk of developmental delays, report the researchers. Gestation, therefore, can be regarded as a critical period for fetal development. This was partly due to the inflammatory proteins (cytokines) that occur during fever, because they could easily pass through the placenta and might cause harm in so far as to alter the brain development of the fetus at a crucial time, study coauthor Ousseny Zerbo, an epidemiologist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research in Oakland, reports.

Moreover, the heat of the fever can cause neurons to fire more and damage the fetal brain growth.

Although this was an improved study compared to previous work on fever and autism, Patterson points out that the data are based on the mothers' memories of events that occured years earlier and that they are subject to recall bias. However, there is still a large interest in understanding why and how children might be affected by autism spectrum disorder. 

For reference see:  http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/341059/title/Fever_in_pregnancy_linked_to_autism

Nina

 Food security: our daily bread

We are facing a world that needs every bit of ingenuity in order to avoid our food supplies running out. Drought and famine are threatening the agriculture of wide regions of the world, especially the west African desert regions. What is more, only 11% of the planet's land are suitable for agriculture and they are increasingly affected by salination preventing high-yielding harvests.

Australian scientists have now tested a new strain of wheat that will be the answer to growing wheat in saline soils and that could increase yields by 25%. Through traditional cross-breeding of a salt-tolerant gene in a wild wheat ancestor into durum wheat, which is the basis of pasta, noodles etc., the scientists created a new salt-tolerant strain of wheat that has the potential to feed the nine billion people expected on the planet in 2050.

However, this new wheat represents a significant genetic modification and should therefore be treated with caution. We all know and appreciate that the new technologies are constantly trying to keep up our living standard and to work against the horror visions that one day we will run out of food supplies and struggle for live.But doesn't that make things even worse? If we already change everything we can get our hands on, we will not be able to enjoy the goods we still have but always live in the future where we will be subject to starvation. Not to mention the implications on our health if we constantly consume genetically modified food.

I strongly agree, that, regarding the growing population numbers, there must be something done. After all, if one cannot think of another possibility to handle the situation, then breeding genetically modified wheat is a method at least.


For reference see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/12/food-security-our-daily-bread
Nina