Category Archives: Human Interest

You Don’t Need Words to Think

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Scholars have long contemplated the connection between language and thought—and to what degree the two are intertwined—by asking whether language is somehow an essential prerequisite for thinking.

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Evelina Fedorenko, a neuroscientist who studies language at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spent many years trying to answer these questions. She remembers being a Harvard University undergraduate in the early 2000s, when the language-begets-thought hypothesis was still highly prominent in academia.

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She recently co-authored a perspective article in Nature that includes a summary of her findings over the ensuing years. It makes clear that the jury is no longer out, in Fedorenko’s view: language and thought are, in fact, distinct entities that the brain processes separately. The highest levels of cognition—from novel problem-solving to social reasoning—can proceed without an assist from words or linguistic structures.

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Language works a little like telepathy in allowing us to communicate our thoughts to others and to pass to the next generation the knowledge and skills essential for our hypersocial species to flourish. But at the same time, a person with aphasia, who are sometimes unable to utter a single word, can still engage in an array of cognitive tasks fundamental to thought. Scientific American talked to Fedorenko about the language-thought divide and the prospects of artificial intelligence tools such as large language models for continuing to explore interactions between thinking and speaking.

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What evidence did you find that thought and language are separate systems?

The evidence comes from two separate methods. One is basically a very old method that scientists have been using for centuries: looking at deficits in different abilities—for instance, in people with brain damage.

Using this approach, we can look at individuals who have impairments in language—some form of aphasia. […] You can ask whether people who have these severe language impairments can perform tasks that require thinking. You can ask them to solve some math problems or to perform a social reasoning test, and all of the instructions, of course, have to be nonverbal because they can’t understand linguistic information anymore. Scientists have a lot of experience working with populations that don’t have language—studying preverbal infants or studying nonhuman animal species. So it’s definitely possible to convey instructions in a way that’s nonverbal. And the key finding from this line of work is that there are people with severe language impairments who nonetheless seem totally fine on all cognitive tasks that we’ve tested them on so far.

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A nicely complementary approach, which started in the 1980s and 1990s, is a brain-imaging approach. We can measure blood flow changes when people engage in different tasks and ask questions about whether the two systems are distinct or overlapping—for example, whether your language regions overlap with regions that help you solve math problems. These brain-imaging tools are really good for these questions. But before I could ask these questions, I needed a way to robustly and reliably identify language areas in individual brains, so I spent the first bunch of years of my career developing tools to do this.

And once we have a way of finding these language regions, and we know that these are the regions that, when damaged in adulthood, lead to conditions such as aphasia, we can then ask whether these language regions are active when people engage in various thinking tasks. So you can come into the lab, and I can put you in the scanner, find your language regions by asking you to perform a short task that takes a few minutes—and then I can ask you to do some logic puzzles or sudoku or some complex working memory tasks or planning and decision-making. And then I can ask whether the regions that we know process language are working when you’re engaging in these other kinds of tasks. There are now dozens of studies that we’ve done looking at all sorts of nonlinguistic inputs and tasks, including many thinking tasks. We find time and again that the language regions are basically silent when people engage in these thinking activities.

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Do the language and thinking systems interact with each other?

There aren’t great tools in neuroscience to study intersystem interactions between language and thought. But there are interesting new opportunities that are opening up with advances in AI where we now have a model system to study language, which is in the form of these large language models such as GPT-2 and its successors. These models do language really well, producing perfectly grammatical and meaningful sentences. They’re not so good at thinking, which is nicely aligning with the idea that the language system by itself is not what makes you think.

But we and many other groups are doing work in which we take some version of an artificial neural network language model as a model of the human language system. And then we try to connect it to some system that is more like what we think human systems of thought look like—for example, a symbolic problem-solving system such as a math app. With these artificial intelligence tools, we can at least ask, “What are the ways in which a system of thought, a system of reasoning, can interact with a system that stores and uses linguistic representations?” These so-called neurosymbolic approaches provide an exciting opportunity to start tackling these questions.

So what do large language models do to help us understand the neuroscience of how language works?

They’re basically the first model organism for researchers studying the neuroscience of language. They are not a biological organism, but until these models came about, we just didn’t have anything other than the human brain that does language. And so what’s happening is incredibly exciting. You can do stuff on models that you can’t do on actual biological systems that you’re trying to understand. There are many, many questions that we can now ask that had been totally out of reach: for example, questions about development.

In humans, of course, you cannot manipulate linguistic input that children get. You cannot deprive kids of language, or restrict their input in some way, and see how they develop. But you can build these models that are trained on only particular kinds of linguistic input or are trained on speech inputs as opposed to textual inputs. And then you can see whether models trained in particular ways better recapitulate what we see in humans with respect to their linguistic behavior or brain responses to language.

So just as neuroscientists have long used a mouse or a macaque as a model organism, we can now use these in silico models, which are not biological but very powerful in their own way, to try to understand some aspects of how language develops or is processed or decays in aging or whatnot.

We have a lot more access to these models’ internals. The methods we have for messing with the brain, at least with the human brain, are much more limited compared with what we can do with these models.

Source: You Don’t Need Words to Think | Scientific American

Research shows how corporate social responsibility messaging can backfire

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It’s lately been considered good business for companies to show they are responsible corporate citizens. Google touts its solar-powered data centers. Apple talks about its use of recycled materials. Walmart describes its support for local communities.

But these narratives, according to new research by Haas Associate Professor Tim McQuade, have some downsides. With Emanuele Colonnelli and Niels Gormsen of the University of Chicago, McQuade demonstrates how positive corporate messaging can evoke negative associations among consumers, in turn nudging them away from policies that support corporations in times of crisis.

“Even if you frame information in a positive way, consumers with pre-existing negative beliefs regarding might draw up mostly negative experiences from memory,” McQuade says. “In this manner, the messaging can do the opposite of what’s intended.”

Their results were published in The Review of Economic Studies.

Working with faulty memory

These results hinge on an updated model of how consumers call information to mind when making decisions. Traditionally, economists assumed consumers to be rational actors sifting through all the relevant knowledge they have when making a decision. McQuade and his colleagues draw on a more recent understanding of cognition in which people have limited recall—meaning they generally only draw on a limited set of information to make decisions—and in which specific cues can influence what information they use.

Much advertising relies on this premise. For instance, if people are cued with the old Snickers tagline, “Hungry? Why wait,” they may buy the candy simply because they are prompted to think about their hunger and not consider whether they need the calories or could better spend money on something else.

With this picture of consumer psychology in place, the researchers recruited nearly 7,000 participants to complete a four-part survey. The survey took place in May 2020, when many companies were struggling under pandemic restrictions and the federal government was discussing the possibility of bailouts.

A landscape of ‘big business discontent’

The first portion of the survey asked basic questions about socioeconomic background. The second contained four different animated videos—three of which were used to cue distinct patterns of thought, and one used to create a control group.

The watched a video detailing basic instructions to complete the survey along with definitions of concepts like “corporate ” and “stakeholders;” the rest of the videos started with this control segment but included additional content. One framed big companies as relatively bad citizens—polluting, overpaying executives, underinvesting in communities, and so forth. The second video framed them as good citizens. The third mentioned nothing of corporate citizenship but talked instead about the economic stability provided by corporate bailouts.

After participants watched one of these four videos, they were asked the degree to which they thought large companies were doing what they should when it comes to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Another section asked participants how strongly they supported economic bailouts for large corporations. (The ordering of sections three and four varied randomly.)

The raw results from this survey found that people have an overwhelmingly negative view of corporate citizenship. “Our first key contribution showed that on a variety of dimensions, there is this broad perception in society that corporations are not doing what people think they should be doing,” McQuade says. “We call this ‘big business discontent,’ and it becomes a necessary condition for what we find next.”

How positive messaging elicits negative associations

The researchers looked next at for bailouts.

They found that survey participants who were cued by videos to think about —whether the video framed this work positively or negatively—expressed much lower support for corporate bailouts than those who watched the video about stabilizing the economy. In fact, those who watched the video framing companies’ ESG efforts positively expressed lower support for bailouts than those who simply watched the control video.

“When we primed people to think about these policies through a corporate social responsibility lens, even when we put that work in a positive light, the fact that there is this pre-existing big business discontent meant that the messaging backfired relative to giving them no information at all,” McQuade says. “Because recall is imperfect, the positive framing still brings to mind negative experiences,” such as the Enron accounting scandal, various environmental disasters, or poor wages.

This effect was even stronger among the survey participants who were asked how well they thought companies were doing on ESG goals before being asked their level of support for bailouts. This particular ordering of questions, it seems, dredged up more negative memories. Lack of support for bailouts was also strongest among young people and liberals, who expressed the highest levels of big business discontent.

Finding a message that works

Survey participants who were instead shown a video discussing how bailouts contributed to economic stability expressed support for the policy. In other words, the topic that people are cued to consider—in this case ESG goals versus economic health—significantly influenced their policy preferences.

The implications extend beyond corporate messaging into all realms of influence or persuasion. As McQuade notes, groups often try to update people’s beliefs by providing positive information on some policy or action. Companies talk about their good citizenship; politicians talk about their achievements.

“But if the domain or topic they’re talking about is one that many people have negative views on, then it is probably not the most effective way to gather support, since the framing effect could outweigh any positive PR effects of the communication,” he says. “Rather, they might want to refocus attention on some other policy domain. This insight shifts the way we think about optimal communication and optimal messaging.”

More information: Emanuele Colonnelli et al, Selfish Corporations, Review of Economic Studies (2023). DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdad057

Provided by University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business

Source: Research shows how corporate social responsibility messaging can backfire

Study: Disappointment, not hatred probably driving polarization in the states

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A new study is redefining how we understand affective polarization. The study proposes that disappointment, rather than hatred, may be the dominant emotion driving the growing divide between ideological groups.

The findings are published in the journal Cognition and Emotion. The team was led by Ph.D. student Mabelle Kretchner from the Department of Psychology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the supervision of Prof. Eran Halperin and in collaboration with Prof. Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler from Reichman University and Dr. Julia Elad-Strenger from Bar Ilan University.

Affective , characterized by deepening between members of opposing ideological groups, is a major concern to democratic stability worldwide. While numerous studies have examined the causes and potential solutions to this phenomenon, the emotional underpinnings of affective polarization have remained poorly understood.

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“Disappointment is an emotion that encapsulates both positive and negative experiences,” explains Kretchner.

“While hatred is destructive and focuses on viewing the outgroup as fundamentally evil, disappointment reflects a more complex dynamic. It includes unmet expectations and a sense of loss, but also retains a recognition of shared goals and the potential for positive change. This dual nature makes it a more accurate representation of the complexity embedded in ideological intergroup relations.”

Across five studies conducted in the US and Israel, disappointment was the only emotion consistently linked to affective polarization, while other negative emotions did not show the same consistent association. Notably, hatred did not predict affective polarization in any of the studies, even during politically charged periods such as the Capitol riots, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Supreme Court hearings on Roe v. Wade.

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This finding suggests that interventions aimed at reducing affective polarization might be more effective if they target specific emotions underlying affective polarization like disappointment.

As societies across the globe grapple with rising political tensions, the insights from this study offer a fresh perspective on how to heal divisions

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More information: Eran Halperin et al, The affective gap: a call for a comprehensive examination of the discrete emotions underlying affective polarization, Cognition and Emotion (2024). DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2348028

Source: Study: Disappointment, not hatred is driving polarization in the states

It could take over 40 years for PFAS to leave groundwater

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Per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, known commonly as PFAS, could take over 40 years to flush out of contaminated groundwater in North Carolina’s Cumberland and Bladen counties, according to a new study from North Carolina State University. The study used a novel combination of data on PFAS, groundwater age-dating tracers, and groundwater flux to forecast PFAS concentrations in groundwater discharging to tributaries of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.

The researchers sampled groundwater in two different watersheds adjacent to the Fayetteville Works fluorochemical plant in Bladen County.

“There’s a huge area of PFAS contaminated groundwater — including residential and agricultural land — which impacts the population in two ways,” says David Genereux, professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State and leader of the study.

“First, there are over 7,000 private wells whose users are directly affected by the contamination. Second, groundwater carrying PFAS discharges into tributaries of the Cape Fear River, which affects downstream users of river water in and near Wilmington.”

The researchers tested the samples they took to determine PFAS types and levels, then used groundwater age-dating tracers, coupled with atmospheric contamination data from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the rate of groundwater flow, to create a model that estimated both past and future PFAS concentrations in the groundwater discharging to tributary streams.

They detected PFAS in groundwater up to 43 years old, and concentrations of the two most commonly found PFAS — hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid (HFPO−DA) and perfluoro-2-methoxypropanoic acid (PMPA) — averaged 229 and 498 nanograms per liter (ng/L), respectively. For comparison, the maximum contaminant level (MCL) issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for HFPO-DA in public drinking water is 10 ng/L. MCLs are enforceable drinking water standards.

“These results suggest it could take decades for natural groundwater flow to flush out groundwater PFAS still present from the ‘high emission years,’ roughly the period between 1980 and 2019,” Genereux says. “And this could be an underestimate; the time scale could be longer if PFAS is diffusing into and out of low-permeability zones (clay layers and lenses) below the water table.”

The researchers point out that although air emissions of PFAS are substantially lower now than they were prior to 2019, they are not zero, so some atmospheric deposition of PFAS seems likely to continue to feed into the groundwater.

“Even a best-case scenario — without further atmospheric deposition — would mean that PFAS emitted in past decades will slowly flush from groundwater to surface water for about 40 more years,” Genereux says. “We expect groundwater PFAS contamination to be a multi-decade problem, and our work puts some specific numbers behind that. We plan to build on this work by modeling future PFAS at individual drinking water wells and working with toxicologists to relate past PFAS levels at wells to observable health outcomes.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by North Carolina State University. Original written by Tracey Peake. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Craig R. Jensen, David P. Genereux, D. Kip Solomon, Detlef R. U. Knappe, Troy E. Gilmore. Forecasting and Hindcasting PFAS Concentrations in Groundwater Discharging to Streams near a PFAS Production Facility. Environmental Science & Technology, 2024; 58 (40): 17926 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c06697

Source: It could take over 40 years for PFAS to leave groundwater | ScienceDaily

How personal care products affect indoor air quality

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The personal care products we use on a daily basis significantly affect indoor air quality, according to new research by a team at EPFL. When used indoors, these products release a cocktail of more than 200 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air, and when those VOCs come into contact with ozone, the chemical reactions that follow can produce new compounds and particles that may penetrate deep into our lungs. Scientists don’t yet know how inhaling these particles on a daily basis affects our respiratory health.

The EPFL team’s findings have been published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

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In one test, the researchers applied the products under typical conditions, while the air quality was carefully monitored. In another test, they did the same thing but also injected , a reactive outdoor gas that occurs in European latitudes during the summer months.

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However, when ozone was introduced into the chamber, not only new VOCs but also new particles were generated, particularly from perfume and sprays, exceeding concentrations found in heavily polluted such as downtown Zurich.

“Some molecules ‘nucleate’—in other words, they form new particles that can coagulate into larger ultrafine particles that can effectively deposit into our lungs,” explains Licina. “In my opinion, we still don’t fully understand the health effects of these pollutants, but they may be more harmful than we think, especially because they are applied close to our breathing zone. This is an area where new toxicological studies are needed.”

Preventive measures

To limit the effect of personal care products on , we could consider several alternatives for how buildings are engineered: introducing more ventilation—especially during the products’ use—incorporating air-cleaning devices (e.g., activated carbon-based filters combined with media filters), and limiting the concentration of indoor ozone.

Another preventive measure is also recommended, according to Licina: “I know this is difficult to hear, but we’re going to have to reduce our reliance on these products, or if possible, replace them with more natural alternatives that contain fragrant compounds with low chemical reactivity. Another helpful measure would be to raise awareness of these issues among and staff working with vulnerable groups, such as children and the elderly.”

More information: Tianren Wu et al, Indoor Emission, Oxidation, and New Particle Formation of Personal Care Product Related Volatile Organic Compounds, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00353

Source: How personal care products affect indoor air quality

Scientists discover a secret to regulating our body clock, offering new approach to end jet lag, sleep quality

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Scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School and the University of California, Santa Cruz, have discovered the secret to regulating our internal clock. They identified that this regulator sits right at the tail end of Casein Kinase 1 delta (CK1δ), a protein which acts as a pace setter for our internal biological clock or the natural 24-hour cycles that control sleep-wake patterns and other daily functions, known as circadian rhythm.

Published in the journal PNAS, their findings could pave the way for new approaches to treating disorders related to our body clock.

CK1δ regulates circadian rhythms by tagging other proteins involved in our biological clock to fine-tune the timing of these rhythms. In addition to modifying other proteins, CK1δ itself can be tagged, thereby altering its own ability to regulate the proteins involved in running the body’s internal clock.

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“Our findings pinpoint to three specific sites on CK1δ’s tail where phosphate groups can attach, and these sites are crucial for controlling the protein’s activity. When these spots get tagged with a phosphate group, CK1δ becomes less active, which means it doesn’t influence our circadian rhythms as effectively. Using high-resolution analysis, we were able to pinpoint the exact sites involved — and that’s really exciting.”

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We found that the δ1 tail interacts more extensively with the main part of the protein, leading to greater self-inhibition compared to δ2. This means that δ1 is more tightly regulated by its tail than δ2. When these sites are mutated or removed, δ1 becomes more active, which leads to changes in circadian rhythms. In contrast, δ2 does not have the same regulatory effect from its tail region.”

This discovery highlights how a small part of CK1δ can greatly influence its overall activity. This self-regulation is vital for keeping CK1δ activity balanced, which, in turn, helps regulate our circadian rhythms.

The study also addressed the wider implications of these findings. CK1δ plays a role in several important processes beyond circadian rhythms, including cell division, cancer development, and certain neurodegenerative diseases. By better understanding how CK1δ’s activity is regulated, scientists could open new avenues for treating not just circadian rhythm disorders but also a range of conditions.

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“Regulating our internal clock goes beyond curing jet lag — it’s about improving sleep-quality, metabolism and overall health. This important discovery could potentially open new doors for treatments that could transform how we manage these essential aspects of our daily lives.”

The researchers plan to further investigate how real-world factors, such as diet and environmental changes, affect the tagging sites on CK1δ.

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by Duke-NUS Medical School. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Rachel L. Harold, Nikhil K. Tulsian, Rajesh Narasimamurthy, Noelle Yaitanes, Maria G. Ayala Hernandez, Hsiau-Wei Lee, Priya Crosby, Sarvind M. Tripathi, David M. Virshup, Carrie L. Partch. Isoform-specific C-terminal phosphorylation drives autoinhibition of Casein kinase 1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024; 121 (41) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2415567121

Source: Scientists discover a secret to regulating our body clock, offering new approach to end jet lag | ScienceDaily

The Untrustworthy Evidence in Dishonesty Research

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  • František Bartoš University of Amsterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2023.3987

Replicable and reliable research is essential for cumulative science and its applications in practice. This article examines the quality of research on dishonesty using a sample of 286 hand-coded test statistics from 99 articles. Z-curve analysis indicates a low expected replication rate, a high proportion of missing studies, and an inflated false discovery risk. Test of insufficient variance (TIVA) finds that 11/61 articles with multiple test statistics contain results that are “too-good-to-be-true”. Sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of the findings. In conclusion, caution is advised when relying on or applying the existing literature on dishonesty.

Source: LnuOpen | Meta-Psychology

Your brain ages at different paces according to social and physical environments – especially fast with greater inequality

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Countries with greater inequalities — whether economic, pollution or disease-based — exhibited older brain ages, according to a study published in Nature Medicine, involving the University of Surrey.

The pace at which the brain ages can vary significantly among individuals, leading to a gap between the estimated biological age of the brain and the chronological age (the actual number of years a person has lived). This difference may be affected by several things, such as environmental factors like pollution and social factors like income or health inequalities, especially in older people and those with dementia. Until now, it was unclear how these combined factors could either accelerate or delay brain ageing across diverse geographical populations.

In the study, a team of international researchers developed ways to measure brain ageing using advanced brain clocks based on deep learning of brain networks. This study involved a diverse dataset of 5,306 participants from 15 countries, including Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations and non-LAC countries. By analysing data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), the researchers quantified brain age gaps in healthy individuals and those with neurodegenerative conditions such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease, and frontotemporal lobe degeneration (FTLD).

Dr Daniel Abasolo, co-author of the study and Head of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Surrey, said:

“Our research shows that in countries where inequality is higher, people’s brains tend to age faster, especially in areas of the brain most affected by ageing. We found that factors like socioeconomic inequality, air pollution, and the impact of diseases play a big role in this faster ageing process, particularly in poorer countries.”

Participants with a diagnosis of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, exhibited the most critical brain age gaps. The research also highlighted sex differences in brain ageing, with women in LAC countries showing greater brain age gaps, particularly in those with Alzheimer’s disease

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Surrey. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Sebastian Moguilner, Sandra Baez, Hernan Hernandez, Joaquín Migeot, Agustina Legaz, Raul Gonzalez-Gomez, Francesca R. Farina, Pavel Prado, Jhosmary Cuadros, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Florencia Altschuler, Marcelo Adrián Maito, María E. Godoy, Josephine Cruzat, Pedro A. Valdes-Sosa, Francisco Lopera, John Fredy Ochoa-Gómez, Alfredis Gonzalez Hernandez, Jasmin Bonilla-Santos, Rodrigo A. Gonzalez-Montealegre, Renato Anghinah, Luís E. d’Almeida Manfrinati, Sol Fittipaldi, Vicente Medel, Daniela Olivares, Görsev G. Yener, Javier Escudero, Claudio Babiloni, Robert Whelan, Bahar Güntekin, Harun Yırıkoğulları, Hernando Santamaria-Garcia, Alberto Fernández Lucas, David Huepe, Gaetano Di Caterina, Marcio Soto-Añari, Agustina Birba, Agustin Sainz-Ballesteros, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Amanuel Yigezu, Eduar Herrera, Daniel Abasolo, Kerry Kilborn, Nicolás Rubido, Ruaridh A. Clark, Ruben Herzog, Deniz Yerlikaya, Kun Hu, Mario A. Parra, Pablo Reyes, Adolfo M. García, Diana L. Matallana, José Alberto Avila-Funes, Andrea Slachevsky, María I. Behrens, Nilton Custodio, Juan F. Cardona, Pablo Barttfeld, Ignacio L. Brusco, Martín A. Bruno, Ana L. Sosa Ortiz, Stefanie D. Pina-Escudero, Leonel T. Takada, Elisa Resende, Katherine L. Possin, Maira Okada de Oliveira, Alejandro Lopez-Valdes, Brain Lawlor, Ian H. Robertson, Kenneth S. Kosik, Claudia Duran-Aniotz, Victor Valcour, Jennifer S. Yokoyama, Bruce Miller, Agustin Ibanez. Brain clocks capture diversity and disparities in aging and dementia across geographically diverse populations. Nature Medicine, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03209-x

Source: Your brain ages at different paces according to social and physical environments

Spike mutations make it even easier for SARS-CoV-2 infect the brain

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Scientists have discovered a mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that plays a key role in its ability to infect the central nervous system. The findings may help scientists understand its neurological symptoms and the mystery of “long COVID,” and they could one day even lead to specific treatments to protect and clear the virus from the brain.

The new collaborative study between scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago uncovered a series of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (the outer part of the virus that helps it penetrate cells) that enhanced the virus’ ability to infect the brains of mice.

“Looking at the genomes of viruses found in the brain compared to the lung, we found that viruses with a specific deletion in spike were much better at infecting the brains of these animals,” said co-corresponding author Judd Hultquist, assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This was completely unexpected, but very exciting.”

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In this study, researchers infected mice with SARS-CoV-2 and sequenced the genomes of viruses that replicated in the brain versus the lung. In the lung, the spike protein looked very similar to the virus used to infect the mice. In the brain, however, most viruses had a deletion or mutation in a critical region of spike that dictates how it enters a cell. When viruses with this deletion were used to directly infect the brains of mice, it was largely repaired when it traveled to the lungs.

“In order for the virus to traffic from the lung to the brain, it required changes in the spike protein that are already known to dictate how the virus gets into different types of cells,” Hultquist said. “We think this region of spike is a critical regulator of whether or not the virus gets into the brain, and it could have large implications for the treatment and management of neurological symptoms reported by COVID-19 patients.”

SARS-CoV-2 has long been associated with various neurological symptoms, such as the loss of smell and taste, “brain fog” and “long COVID.”

“It’s still not known if long COVID is caused by direct infection of cells in the brain or due to some adverse immune response that persists beyond the infection,” Hultquist said. “If it is caused by infection of cells in the central nervous system, our study suggests there may be specific treatments that could work better than others in clearing the virus from this compartment.”

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by Northwestern University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Jacob Class, Lacy M. Simons, Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, Jazmin Galván Achi, Laura Cooper, Tanushree Dangi, Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, Egon A. Ozer, Sarah E. Lutz, Lijun Rong, Judd F. Hultquist, Justin M. Richner. Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the murine central nervous system drives viral diversification. Nature Microbiology, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01786-8

Source: Spike mutations help SARS-CoV-2 infect the brain | ScienceDaily

Strength training activates cellular waste disposal

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The elimination of damaged cell components is essential for the maintenance of the body’s tissues and organs. An international research team led by the University of Bonn has made significant findings on mechanisms for the clearing of cellular wastes, showing that strength training activates such mechanisms. The findings could form the basis for new therapies for heart failure and nerve diseases, and even afford benefits for manned space missions.

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he protein BAG3 plays a critical role in the elimination of damaged components, identifying these and ensuring that they are enclosed by cellular membranes to form an “autophagosome.” Autophagosomes are like a garbage bag in which cellular waste is collected for later shredding and recycling. The research team led by Professor Jörg Höhfeld of the University of Bonn Institute of Cell Biology has shown that strength training activates BAG3 in the muscles.

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“Impairment of the BAG3 system does indeed cause swiftly progressing muscle weakness in children as well as heart failure — one of the most common causes of death in industrialized Western nations,”

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: “We now know what intensity level of strength training it takes to activate the BAG3 system, so we can optimize training programs for top athletes and help physical therapy patients build muscle better.”

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“BAG3 is activated under mechanical force. But what happens if mechanical stimulation does not take place? In astronauts living in a weightless environment, for example, or immobilized intensive care patients on ventilation?” In such cases, the lack of mechanical stimulation rapidly leads to muscle atrophy, the cause of which Höhfeld ascribes at least in part to the non-activation of BAG3. Drugs developed to activate BAG3 might help in such situations, he believes

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Bonn. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Judith Ottensmeyer, Alessandra Esch, Henrique Baeta, Sandro Sieger, Yamini Gupta, Maximilian F. Rathmann, Andreas Jeschke, Daniel Jacko, Kirill Schaaf, Thorsten Schiffer, Bahareh Rahimi, Lukas Lövenich, Angela Sisto, Peter F.M. van der Ven, Dieter O. Fürst, Albert Haas, Wilhelm Bloch, Sebastian Gehlert, Bernd Hoffmann, Vincent Timmerman, Pitter F. Huesgen, Jörg Höhfeld. Force-induced dephosphorylation activates the cochaperone BAG3 to coordinate protein homeostasis and membrane traffic. Current Biology, 2024; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.088

Source: Strength training activates cellular waste disposal | ScienceDaily

Good sleep habits important for overweight adults, different effects for men and women

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New research from Oregon Health & Science University reveals negative health consequences for people who are overweight and ignore their body’s signals to sleep at night, with specific differences between men and women.

The study published this week in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

“This study builds support for the importance of good sleep habits,” said lead author Brooke Shafer, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Sleep, Chronobiology and Health Laboratory in the OHSU School of Nursing. “Sleep practices, like going to bed when you’re tired or setting aside your screen at night, can help to promote good overall health.”

The study recruited 30 people, split evenly between men and women. All had a body mass index above 25, which put them into an overweight or obese category.

[…]

Generally healthy participants contributed a saliva sample every 30 minutes until late in the night at a sleep lab on OHSU’s Marquam Hill campus to determine the time at which their body started naturally producing the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is generally understood to begin the process of falling asleep, and its onset varies with an individual’s internal biological clock.

Participants then went home and logged their sleep habits over the following seven days.

Researchers assessed the time difference between melatonin onset and average sleep timing for each participant, categorizing them into two groups: those who had a narrow window, with a short time duration between melatonin onset and sleep, and those with a wide window, with a longer duration between melatonin onset and sleep. A narrow window suggests someone who is staying awake too late for their internal body clock and is generally associated with poorer health outcomes.

The new study confirmed a variety of potentially harmful health measures in the group that went to sleep closer to melatonin onset.

It also found key differences between men and women. Men in this group had higher levels of belly fat and fatty triglycerides in the blood, and higher overall metabolic syndrome risk scores than the men who slept better. Women in this group had higher overall body fat percentage, glucose and resting heart rates.

[…]

Source: Good sleep habits important for overweight adults | ScienceDaily

World-first lung mRNA cancer vaccine trials launched across seven countries

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Doctors have begun trialling the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.

The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

[…]

The jab uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with tumour markers from NSCLC to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing these markers.

The aim is to strengthen a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.

[…]

six consecutive injections five minutes apart over 30 minutes at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH Clinical Research Facility on Tuesday.

Each jab contained different RNA strands. He will get the vaccine every week for six consecutive weeks, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

Lee said: “We hope adding this additional treatment will stop the cancer coming back because a lot of time for lung cancer patients, even after surgery and radiation, it does come back.”

[…]

Source: World-first lung cancer vaccine trials launched across seven countries | Lung cancer | The Guardian

Microplastics are infiltrating brain tissue, studies show

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[…] The paper also found the quantity of microplastics in brain samples from 2024 was about 50% higher from the total in samples that date to 2016, suggesting the concentration of microplastics found in human brains is rising at a similar rate to that found in the environment. Most of the organs came from the office of the medical investigator in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which investigates untimely or violent deaths.

[…]

Many other papers have found microplastics in the brains of other animal species, so it’s not entirely surprising the same could be true for humans

[…]

When it comes to these insidious particles, “the blood-brain barrier is not as protective as we’d like to think”

[…]

researchers say that individuals should try to reduce their exposure by avoiding the use of plastic in preparing food, especially when microwaving; drinking tap water instead of bottled water; and trying to prevent the accumulation of dust, which is contaminated with plastics. Some researchers advise eating less meat, especially processed products.

[…]

Source: Microplastics are infiltrating brain tissue, studies show: ‘There’s nowhere left untouched’ | Pollution | The Guardian

Study of 18 million people finds increased mental illnesses incidence following severe COVID-19, especially in unvaccinated people

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A new study that examined health data on 18 million people reveals higher incidence of mental illnesses for up to a year following severe COVID-19 in unvaccinated people. Vaccination appeared to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 on mental illnesses. The University of Bristol-led study, published in JAMA Psychiatry today [21 August], investigated associations of COVID-19 with mental illnesses according to time since diagnosis and vaccination status.

[…]

Among the 18,648,606 adults in the cohort studied during the period before vaccination was available, the average age was 49 years, 50.2 per cent were female (9,363,710) and 1,012,335 adults had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis (recorded in testing data, by a GP, in hospital or in their death record).

The authors also studied a vaccinated cohort including 14,035,286 adults, of whom 866,469 had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, with an average age of 53 years and 52.1 per cent female (7,308,556), and an unvaccinated cohort including 3,242,215 adults, of whom 149,745 had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, with an average age of 35 years and 42.1 per cent female (1,363,401).

Using these data, the researchers compared the incidence of mental illnesses in people before and after a COVID-19 diagnosis, in each cohort. Mental illnesses included in this study comprised depression, serious mental illness, general anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, addiction, self-harm, and suicide.

The team found that the incidence of most of these conditions was higher one to four weeks after COVID-19 diagnosis, compared to the incidence before or without COVID-19. This elevation in the incidence of mental illnesses, was mainly seen after severe COVID-19 that led to hospitalisation and remained higher for up to a year following severe COVID-19 in unvaccinated people.

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Bristol. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Source: Study of 18 million people finds increased mental illnesses incidence following severe COVID-19, especially in unvaccinated people | ScienceDaily

Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style

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Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable?

MIT cognitive scientists believe they have uncovered the answer to that question. Just as “magic spells” use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority, they conclude.

In a study that will appear in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that even non-lawyers use this type of language when asked to write laws.

“People seem to understand that there’s an implicit rule that this is how laws should sound, and they write them that way,” says Edward Gibson, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences and the senior author of the study.

Eric Martinez PhD ’24 is the lead author of the study. Francis Mollica, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, is also an author of the paper.

Casting a legal spell

Gibson’s research group has been studying the unique characteristics of legalese since 2020, when Martinez came to MIT after earning a law degree from Harvard Law School. In a 2022 study, Gibson, Martinez, and Mollica analyzed legal contracts totaling about 3.5 million words, comparing them with other types of writing, including movie scripts, newspaper articles, and academic papers.

That analysis revealed that legal documents frequently have long definitions inserted in the middle of sentences — a feature known as “center-embedding.” Linguists have previously found that this kind of structure can make text much more difficult to understand.

“Legalese somehow has developed this tendency to put structures inside other structures, in a way which is not typical of human languages,” Gibson says.

In a follow-up study published in 2023, the researchers found that legalese also makes documents more difficult for lawyers to understand. Lawyers tended to prefer plain English versions of documents, and they rated those versions to be just as enforceable as traditional legal documents.

“Lawyers also find legalese to be unwieldy and complicated,” Gibson says. “Lawyers don’t like it, laypeople don’t like it, so the point of this current paper was to try and figure out why they write documents this way.”

[…]

“We thought it was plausible that what happens is you start with an initial draft that’s simple, and then later you think of all these other conditions that you want to include. And the idea is that once you’ve started, it’s much easier to center-embed that into the existing provision,” says Martinez, who is now a fellow and instructor at the University of Chicago Law School.

However, the findings ended up pointing toward a different hypothesis, the so-called “magic spell hypothesis.” Just as magic spells are written with a distinctive style that sets them apart from everyday language, the convoluted style of legal language appears to signal a special kind of authority, the researchers say.

[…]

Source: Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style

Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60

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[…] The study, which tracked thousands of different molecules in people aged 25 to 75, detected two major waves of age-related changes at around ages 44 and again at 60. The findings could explain why spikes in certain health issues including musculoskeletal problems and cardiovascular disease occur at certain ages.

“We’re not just changing gradually over time. There are some really dramatic changes,”

[…]

The research tracked 108 volunteers, who submitted blood and stool samples and skin, oral and nasal swabs every few months for between one and nearly seven years. Researchers assessed 135,000 different molecules (RNA, proteins and metabolites) and microbes (the bacteria, viruses and fungi living in the guts and on the skin of the participants).

The abundance of most molecules and microbes did not shift in a gradual, chronological fashion. When the scientists looked for clusters of molecules with the largest shifts, they found these transformations tended to occur when people were in their mid-40s and early 60s.

[…]

The first wave of changes included molecules linked to cardiovascular disease and the ability to metabolise caffeine, alcohol and lipids. The second wave of changes included molecules involved in immune regulation, carbohydrate metabolism and kidney function. Molecules linked to skin and muscle ageing changed at both time points. Previous research suggested that a later spike in ageing may occur around the age of 78, but the latest study could not confirm this because the oldest participants were 75.

The pattern fits with previous evidence that the risk of many age-related diseases does not increase incrementally, with Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease risk showing a steep uptick after 60.

[…]

Source: Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60 | Medical research | The Guardian

Singing from memory shows most people can actually sing pitch perfect or very very close

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Psychologists from UC Santa Cruz wanted to study “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. So they asked people to sing out any earworms they were experiencing and record them on their phones when prompted at random times throughout the day.

When researchers analyzed the recordings, they found that a remarkable proportion of them perfectly matched the of the original songs they were based upon.

More specifically, 44.7% of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, and 68.9% were accurate within 1 semitone of the original . These findings were published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

“What this shows is that a surprisingly large portion of the population has a type of automatic, hidden ‘perfect pitch’ ability,”

[…]

“Interestingly, if you were to ask people how they thought they did in this task, they would probably be pretty confident that they had the melody right, but they would be much less certain that they were singing in the right key,” Evans said.

“As it turns out, many people with very strong pitch memory may not have very good judgment of their own accuracy, and that may be because they don’t have the labeling ability that comes with true perfect pitch.”

Evans explained that true perfect pitch is the ability to accurately produce or identify a given note on the first try and without a reference pitch. […] scientists are increasingly finding that accurate pitch memory is much more common.

[…]

“People who study memory often think about long-term memories as capturing the gist of something, where the brain takes shortcuts to represent information, and one way our brains could try to represent the gist of music would be to forget what the original key was,” explained Professor Davidenko.

“Music sounds very similar in different keys, so it would be a good shortcut for the brain to just ignore that information, but it turns out that it’s not ignored.

[…]

He noted that the pitch accuracy of participants in the study was not predicted by any objective measures of singing ability, and none of the participants were musicians or reported having perfect pitch. In other words, you don’t have to have special abilities to demonstrate this foundational musical skill.

[…]

Source: Singing from memory unlocks a surprisingly common musical superpower

New study confirms forever chemicals (PFAS) are also absorbed through human skin

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A study of 17 commonly used synthetic ‘forever chemicals’ has shown that these toxic substances can readily be absorbed through human skin.

New research, published today in Environment International proves for the first time that a wide range of PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances) — chemicals which do not break down in nature — can permeate the skin barrier and reach the body’s bloodstream.

PFAS are used widely in industries and consumer products from school uniforms to personal care products because of their water and stain repellent properties. While some substances have been banned by government regulation, others are still widely used and their toxic effects have not yet been fully investigated.

PFAS are already known to enter the body through other routes, for example being breathed in or ingested via food or drinking water, and they are known to cause adverse health effects such as a lowered immune response to vaccination, impaired liver function and decreased birth weight.

It has commonly been thought that PFAS are unable to breach the skin barrier, although recent studies have shown links between the use of personal care products and PFAS concentrations in human blood and breast milk. The new study is the most comprehensive assessment yet undertaken of the absorption of PFAS into human skin and confirms that most of them can enter the body via this route.

[…]

“The ability of these chemicals to be absorbed through skin has previously been dismissed because the molecules are ionised. The electrical charge that gives them the ability to repel water and stains was thought to also make them incapable of crossing the skin membrane.

“Our research shows that this theory does not always hold true and that, in fact, uptake through the skin could be a significant source of exposure to these harmful chemicals.”

[…]

Of the 17 PFAS tested, the team found 15 substances showed substantial dermal absorption — at least 5% of the exposure dose. At the exposure doses examined, absorption into the bloodstream of the most regulated PFAS (perfluoro octanoic acid (PFOA)) was 13.5% with a further 38% of the applied dose retained within the skin for potential longer-term uptake into the circulation.

The amount absorbed seemed to correlate with the length of the carbon chain within the molecule. Substances with longer carbon chains showed lower levels of absorption, while compounds with shorter chains that were introduced to replace longer carbon chain PFAS like PFOA, were more easily absorbed. Absorption of perfluoro pentanoic acid for example was four times that of PFOA at 59%.

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Birmingham. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Oddný Ragnarsdóttir, Mohamed Abou-Elwafa Abdallah, Stuart Harrad. Dermal bioavailability of perfluoroalkyl substances using in vitro 3D human skin equivalent models. Environment International, 2024; 188: 108772 DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2024.108772

Source: New study confirms forever chemicals are absorbed through human skin | ScienceDaily

The world’s first tooth-regrowing drug has been approved for human trials

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[…] medicine quite literally regrows teeth and was developed by a team of Japanese researchers, as reported by New Atlas. The research has been led by Katsu Takahashi, head of dentistry and oral surgery at Kitano Hospital. The intravenous drug deactivates the uterine sensitization-associated gene-1 (USAG-1) protein that suppresses tooth growth. Blocking USAG-1 from interacting with other proteins triggers bone growth and, voila, you got yourself some brand-new chompers. Pretty cool, right?

Human trials start in September, but the drug has been highly successful when treating ferrets and mice and did its job with no serious side effects. Of course, the usual caveat applies. Humans are not mice or ferrets, though researchers seem confident that it’ll work on homo sapiens. This is due to a 97 percent similarity in how the USAG-1 protein works when comparing humans to other species.

September’s clinical trial will include adults who are missing at least one molar but there’s a secondary trial coming aimed at children aged two to seven. The kids in the second trial will all be missing at least four teeth due to congenital tooth deficiency. Finally, a third trial will focus on older adults who are missing “one to five permanent teeth due to environmental factors.”

Takahashi and his fellow researchers are so optimistic about this drug that they predict the medicine will be available for everyday consumers by 2030. So in six years we can throw our toothbrushes away and eat candy bars all day and all night without a care in the world (don’t actually do that.)

While this is the first drug that can fully regrow missing teeth, the science behind it builds on top of years of related research. Takahashi, after all, has been working on this since 2005. Recent advancements in the field include regenerative tooth fillings to repair diseased teeth and stem cell technology to regrow the dental tissue of children.

Source: The world’s first tooth-regrowing drug has been approved for human trials

Stanford: Biomarkers predict weight loss on either low carb or low fat diet (one of these will work best for you) – suggest personalized diets

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Strictly following a diet – either healthy low-carb or healthy low-fat – was what mattered for short-term weight loss during the first six months. But people who maintained long-term weight loss for a year ate the same number of calories as those who regained weight or who did not lose weight during the second six months.

So what explains this difference?

According to the study, the bacteria living in your gut and the amounts of certain proteins your body makes can affect your ability to sustain weight loss. And some people, it turns out, shed more pounds on low-fat diets while others did better on low-carb diets.

Stanford Medicine researchers have identified several biomarkers that predict how successful an individual will be at losing weight and keeping it off long-term. These biomarkers include signatures from the gut microbiome, proteins made by the human body and levels of exhaled carbon dioxide. The researchers published their findings in Cell Reports Medicine Dec. 13.

[…]

The study showed that just cutting calories or exercising were not enough to sustain weight loss over a year. To try and understand why, the team turned their focus to biomarkers of metabolism.

[…]

Throughout the study, the researchers measured the ratio of inhaled oxygen to exhaled carbon dioxide, known as a respiratory quotient, which serves as a proxy for whether carbohydrates or fats are the body’s primary fuel. A lower ratio means the body burns more fat, while a higher ratio means it burns more carbohydrates. So, those who started the diet with a higher respiratory quotient lost more weight on a low-carb diet.

“There are people who can be eating very few calories but still sustain their weight because of how their bodies metabolize fuels. It is not for lack of will: It is just how their bodies work,” Perelman said.

In other words, if your body prefers carbs and you’re predominately eating fat, it will be much harder to metabolize and burn off those calories.

[…]

tracking amounts of certain gut microbe strains will be a way for people to determine which diets are best for weight loss.

We’re not there yet, so until then, according to the researchers, the focus should be on eating high-quality foods that are unprocessed and low in refined flours and sugar.

The research team identified specific nutrients that were correlated with weight loss during the first six months. Low-carb diets should be based on monounsaturated fats — such as those that come from avocados, rather than bacon — and high in vitamins K, C and E. These vitamins are in vegetables, nuts, olives, and avocados. Low-fat diets should be high in fiber, such as is found in whole grains and beans, and avoid added sugars.

“Your mindset should be on what you can include in your diet instead of what you should exclude,” Perelman said. “Figure out how to eat more fiber, whether it is from beans, whole grains, nuts or vegetables, instead of thinking you shouldn’t eat ice cream. Learn to cook and rely less on processed foods. If you pay attention to the quality of food in your diet, then you can forget about counting calories.”

Source: Biomarkers predict weight loss, suggest personalized diets – Scope

Our Brains Are in Trouble: Nearly Half the World Living with Neurological Illness

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[…]According to the authors of this new paper, published this month in The Lancet Neurology, there hasn’t yet been a full accounting of all the illnesses tied to our brain and nervous system, such as neurodevelopmental disorders. For this study, scientists looked at 37 unique conditions in total, including migraines, seizures, various forms of dementia, and more.

As of 2021, the study authors found, about 3.4 billion people (43% of the world’s population) are living with at least one of these neurological conditions. Compared to other broad groups of illness, such as infectious diseases, these conditions are estimated to be the leading cause of ill health and disability. This burden isn’t felt equally, however, with about 80% of neurological deaths and illnesses experienced in low- to middle-income countries. Some of the top 10 major contributors to the loss of healthy years include stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, dementia, and diabetic neuropathy (nerve damage caused by advanced diabetes).

[…]

Between 1990 and 2021, the study found, the rate of people living with or dying from neurological conditions has decreased, after adjusting for age—meaning that the chance of developing any one of these problems has shrunk over time. But since the global population has continued to grow, the absolute number of lost healthy years has increased 18% since then. And while the neurological harm caused by some conditions like stroke, rabies, and meningitis has decreased, the harm from others has increased, with cases of diabetic neuropathy having tripled over the past 30 years.

Though there has been some success in reducing or preventing important risk factors tied to neurological illness since 1990, such as greater vaccination coverage for certain diseases like tetanus, the authors say more can and should be done. Actions like reducing air pollution or preventing high blood pressure could substantially reduce the burden of stroke, for instance, while further eliminating lead exposure would prevent many cases of intellectual disability.

[…]

Source: Our Brains Are in Trouble: Nearly Half the World Living with Neurological Illness

Four-day week made permanent for most UK firms in world’s biggest trial

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Of the 61 organisations that took part in a six-month UK pilot in 2022, 54 (89%) are still operating the policy a year later, and 31 (51%) have made the change permanent.

More than half (55%) of project managers and CEOs said a four-day week – in which staff worked 100% of their output in 80% of their time – had a positive impact on their organisation, the report found.

For 82% this included positive effects on staff wellbeing, 50% found it reduced staff turnover, while 32% said it improved job recruitment. Nearly half (46%) said working and productivity improved.

[…]

The four-day working week report, by the thinktank Autonomy and researchers from the University of Cambridge, the University of Salford and Boston College in the US, found that “many of the significant benefits found during the initial trial have persisted 12 months on”, although they noted that it was a small sample size.

Almost all (96%) of staff said their personal life had benefited, and 86% felt they performed better at work, while 38% felt their organisation had become more efficient, and 24% said it had helped with caring responsibilities.

Organisations reduced working hours by an average of 6.6 hours to reach a 31.6-hour week. Most gave their staff one full day off a week, either universal or staggered. The report found that protected days off were more effective than those on which staff were “on call” or sometimes expected to work.

The most successful companies made their four-day week “clear, confident and well-communicated”, and co-designed their policies between staff and management, thinking carefully about how to adapt work processes, the authors wrote.

[…]

 

Source: Four-day week made permanent for most UK firms in world’s biggest trial | Work-life balance | The Guardian

Music causes similar emotions and bodily sensations across cultures

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people of different ethnic backgrounds dancing with music notes floating in the air

“Music that evoked different emotions, such as happiness, sadness or fear, caused different bodily sensations in our study. For example, happy and danceable music was felt in the arms and legs, while tender and sad music was felt in the chest area,” explains Academy Research Fellow Vesa Putkinen.

The emotions and bodily sensations evoked by music were similar across Western and Asian listeners. The bodily sensations were also linked with the music-induced emotions.

“Certain acoustic features of music were associated with similar emotions in both Western and Asian listeners. Music with a clear beat was found happy and danceable while dissonance in music was associated with aggressiveness. Since these sensations are similar across different cultures, music-induced emotions are likely independent of culture and learning and based on inherited biological mechanisms,” says Professor Lauri Nummenmaa.

“Music’s influence on the body is universal. People move to music in all cultures and synchronized postures, movements and vocalizations are a universal sign for affiliation

[…]

Source: Music causes similar emotions and bodily sensations across cultures | ScienceDaily

US states had 65,000 rape-related pregnancies after banning abortion

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Since the US Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion, estimates suggest that there have been tens of thousands of pregnancies as a result of rape in states with near-total abortion bans. Very few, if any, of those pregnancies were ended by a legal in-state abortion, even if states had exceptions for rape

[…]

To understand how this affects survivors of rape, Samuel Dickman at reproductive health non-profit Planned Parenthood of Montana and his colleagues estimated rape-related pregnancies in these states between July 2022 and January 2024.

The researchers first looked at the most recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on rape incidents, which was collected between 2016 and 2017. From that, they could approximate the proportion of rapes that resulted in pregnancy nationwide each year.

They then used data from law enforcement to estimate the number of rape-related pregnancies in each state since abortion bans were enacted. The result suggests that almost 65,000 people became pregnant as a result of rape in the 14 states. More than 90 per cent of those individuals lived in states where there weren’t exceptions that allow for an abortion in the case of rape.

Even in states with exceptions, fewer than a dozen legal abortions are being performed each month. One reason for this is that these states no longer have abortion providers, says Dickman. Plus, “most of the states with rape exceptions require some amount of reporting to law enforcement”, he says. “That’s a decision many survivors of rape choose not to do.”

Most sexual assaults go unreported due to stigma and fear of retaliation. That is also why these findings are most likely to be an underestimate, says Dickman.

[…]

 

Source: US states had 65,000 rape-related pregnancies after banning abortion | New Scientist

Investigative Report Proves What Most People Already Suspected: The ‘War On Woke & DEI’ Mostly Pushed By A Bunch Of Censorial, Racist Shitheads

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One of the dumber things we’ve seen over the last couple of years is the supposed “war on woke” and (more recently) attacks on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts (often shortened to the acronym DEI). In almost every case, these attacks misrepresent reality to generate culture war bullshit, and make a bunch of false claims about how pretty fundamental and basic efforts to make sure that organizations are cognizant of historical and systematic biases, and seek to push back against them.

Of course, one thing I’ve noticed is how many of the people who are the most vocal against such things are also (simultaneously) claiming to be free speech supporters, even as they bend over backwards to attack and silence anyone pushing ideas, content, or culture that they consider “woke.” They are not free speech supporters. They’re not simply seeking to counter views they disagree with. They’re looking to suppress speech they disagree with.

This weekend, the NY Times had an article by Nicholas Confessore, detailing how the whole “war on woke” and the “anti-DEI crusade” is almost entirely manufactured by a group of censorial, racist shitheads. (The NY Times article, unfortunately, does not admit that the NY Times itself has played a fairly major role in platforming people pushing these ideas as if they were simply honest opinions, or its willingness to suggest that the people pushing them have legitimate, intellectually honest points to make).

Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.

The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public-records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states. They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations, and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups in states like Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas.

As the Times’ report notes, one of the cornerstones of this effort (including pushing to get laws passed to suppress such content) is to claim it’s about “diversity of thought” and “intellectual freedom,” even though it’s literally the opposite. The entire purpose is to shut down diversity of thought and to stifle intellectual freedom… that these shitheads don’t like.

Yet even as they or their allies publicly advocated more academic freedom, some of those involved privately expressed their hope of purging liberal ideas, professors and programming wherever they could. They debated how carefully or quickly to reveal some of their true views — the belief that “a healthy society requires patriarchy,” for example, and their broader opposition to anti-discrimination laws — in essays and articles written for public consumption.

In candid private conversations, some wrote favorably of laws criminalizing homosexuality, mocked the appearance of a female college student as overly masculine and criticized Peter Thiel, the prominent gay conservative donor, over his sex life. In email exchanges with the Claremont organizers, the writer Heather Mac Donald derided working mothers who employed people from “the low IQ 3rd world” to care for their children and lamented that some Republicans still celebrated the idea of racially diverse political appointments.

What’s hilarious is that, in the article, they note that the folks working on this debated over how to demonize the phrase “diversity and inclusion,” saying maybe they should just focus on the last made-up bogeyman from a few years ago: “social justice.”

The documents the Times’ obtained show that there was no actual known problem with DEI efforts. It’s just that these are a bunch of censorial, racist, shitheads who wanted to attack anything that looked to make people aware of racism, and to silence them. And so, turning “woke” and “DEI” into slurs would effectively promote their racist viewpoints, while made up concerns about “harms” from these programs would push lawmakers to pass censorial laws that silenced people this crew disliked.

And, of course, they also knew that there was money in creating a new bogeyman:

“Woke” politics was not just a threat to American life. It was also a fund-raising opportunity. By spring 2021, as parents grew impatient with Covid school closures, or skeptical of “anti-racist” curriculums in the wake of the Floyd protests, Claremont officials had begun circulating urgent grant requests to right-leaning foundations.

“America is under attack by a leftist revolution disguised as a plea for justice” reminiscent of “Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution,” Claremont’s president, Ryan P. Williams, wrote in a draft proposal to the Jack Miller Family Foundation.

Basically, if you’ve ever gone around using “woke” as a pejorative, it means you’re a sucker for a grift. Congrats.

And, contrary to the claims of “academic freedom” and not pushing “ideological” content in schools, that’s exactly what these shitheads want to do:

In one exchange, some of those involved discussed how to marshal political power to replace left-wing orthodoxies with more “patriotic,” traditionalist curriculums.

“In support of ridding schools of C.R.T., the Right argues that we want nonpolitical education,” Mr. Klingenstein wrote in August 2021. “No we don’t. We want our politics. All education is political.”

Dr. Yenor appeared to agree, responding with some ideas for reshaping K-12 education. “An alternative vision of education must replace the current vision of education,” he wrote back.

I mean, I get it., These shitheads are dumb as rocks, and the grifters have been falsely claiming that public schools are indoctrinating kids with “woke” views (which is not at all what’s happening) so they publicly claim they want to take ideology out, when in reality, they want to put in their own ideology, believing it is the counter to what is actually happening. Of course, the reality is mostly that education is already non-ideological, and they’re just trying to make it so.

But the only way to justify that is to falsely claim the reverse is happening.

And, at the same time, they seek to couch all of these arguments in the framing of “academic freedom,” even when they clearly want the reverse. The Times’ piece details a conversation about how to defend a racist rant by a law professor, and so the plotters detailed how to frame the discussion around academic freedom, even if they actually hate academic freedom:

Now, Dr. Yenor advised his friend Dr. Azerrad to aim his statement at a liberal audience — to defend Dr. Wax on the grounds that if she were fired, it would only embolden red-state lawmakers to fire controversial left-wing professors.

“But don’t we want this to happen?” Dr. Azerrad asked.

“Yes,” replied Dr. Yenor. “But your audience doesn’t want it to happen.”

Basically: shithead censorial grifters.

Also making a big appearance in this mess, the American Principles Project, another group of censorial racist shitheads, which we wrote about for their strong support for “anti-big tech” laws like KOSA. Apparently, they did some polling to see if they could make “woke” and “DEI” seem bad (again, note that this has nothing to do with anything real — just what the polls say they can work), and found that most people didn’t actually give a shit:

In June, the American Principles Project circulated a memo detailing the results of several focus groups held to test different culture-war messages.

For all the conservative attacks on diversity programs, the group found, “the idea of woke or DEI received generally positive scores.”

Of course, rather than move on to a real issue, these culture war chuds decided to just see what they could do to make people hate those terms, even if there was no legitimate reason to do so.

And, as the article details, the latest attack on DEI was also planned out, trying to leverage the recent rise in antisemitism following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and hostage-taking in Israel. It wasn’t because any of these shitheads actually cared about antisemitism. They just saw it as a huge opportunity to drive a culture war wedge into things, and push forward their censorial regime.

So, the next time you see this happening, know that it’s just a bunch of shitheads grifting. It’s not about freedom. It’s inherently anti-freedom. They’re literally trying to do exactly what they falsely accuse their opponents of doing. And they’re raising tons of money to keep it going.

I recognize that the many gullible suckers they’ve played with this nonsense will insist there’s something legitimate in these complaints. But it’s all manufactured bullshit.

Source: Investigative Report Proves What Most People Already Suspected: The ‘War On Woke & DEI’ Mostly Pushed By A Bunch Of Censorial, Racist Shitheads | Techdirt