Worlding – Page 27 – CULTURE/PEDAGOGY/BELONGING

July 24, 2013

China’s economy slowing

China’s manufacturing activity fell to an 11-month low in July, hurt by a decline in new orders, according to the BBC

“The bank’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 47.7 from 48.2 in June. The PMI is a key indicator of activity in the sector and a reading below 50 shows contraction. This is the third month in a row that the HSBC reading has been below that level.

“The data comes amid fears of a slowdown in China’s overall economy. Data released earlier this month showed that China’s economic growth slowed in the April to June period, the second straight quarter of weaker expansion. The world’s second biggest economy grew by 7.5% compared to the previous year, down from 7.7% in the January to March period. China’s manufacturing and export sectors have been key drivers of its economic growth over the past decades. However, demand for China’s exports has slowed recently, especially from key markets such as the US and Europe as they grapple with slowing economic growth. At the same time, policymakers have found it tough to boost domestic consumption enough to offset the decline in foreign sales. Continue reading “China’s economy slowing”

July 23, 2013

Male and female alcohol recovery differences

Alcohol abuse does its neurological damage more quickly in women than in men, new research reported in Scientific American suggests.

“The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that is prompting researchers to consider whether the time is ripe for single-gender treatment programs for alcohol-dependent women and men.

“Over the past few decades scientists have observed a narrowing of the gender gap in alcohol dependence. In the 1980s the ratio of male to female alcohol dependence stood at roughly five males for every female, according to figures compiled by Shelly Greenfield, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. By 2002 the “dependence difference” had dropped to about 2.5 men for every woman. But although the gender gap in dependence may be closing, differences in the ways men and women respond to alcohol are emerging. Writing in the January 2012 issue ofAlcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, principal investigator Claudia Fahlke from the Department of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and her colleagues found that alcohol’s ability to reduce serotonin neurotransmission, was “telescoped” in alcoholic women compared with their male counterparts. Continue reading “Male and female alcohol recovery differences”

July 23, 2013July 23, 2013

Humanities career choices and gender

There’s no shortage of explanations for the so-called crisis in the humanities, and more have come to light since the publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ recent “Heart of the Matter” report on the topic. A Recent article in Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study on gender and choices of courses of study, academic majors, and implicit career aspirations

The finding is “that the humanities drain is more about women’s equality than a devaluation of the humanities – is gaining particular interest from longtime advocates of the humanities, as well as some criticism.

“Ben Schmidt, a visiting graduate fellow at the Cultural Observatory at Harvard University, argues that the decline in humanities majors since their 1970 peak can be attributed nearly entirely to the changing majors of women.

“Based on data compiled for the academy’s Humanities Indicators Project, he wrote, “I think it’s safe to say that [the] ostensible reason for the long-term collapse in humanities enrollment has to do with the increasing choice of women to enter more pre-professional majors like business, communications, and social work in the aftermath of a) the opening of the workplace and b) universal coeducation suddenly making those degrees relevant.”

“He continued: “You’d have to be pretty tone-deaf to point to their ability to make that choice as a sign of cultural malaise.”

“Looking at the often-cited drop in humanities majors from 14 percent of all degrees granted some 40 years ago to 7 percent today as a whole, commentators such as David Brooks have attributed it to a disconnect with the current pedagogy. Others say that college students are increasingly career-oriented and so are rejecting degrees that don’t promise a job upon graduation.” Continue reading “Humanities career choices and gender”

July 22, 2013July 22, 2013

U.K. national block of online porn

In a remarkable move made public today, every household in the UK is to have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they choose to receive it, David Cameron is to announce.

As discussed in a article appearing in The Guardian, “in addition, the prime minister will say possessing online pornography depicting rape will be illegal.

“In a speech, Mr Cameron is expected to warn that access to online pornography is “corroding childhood”.

“Search engines will be given until October to introduce further measures to block illegal content.

“In addition, experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) will be given enhanced powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks, and a secure database of banned child porn images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it.”

More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076

July 21, 2013

Abstinence only and “safe sinning”

Christianity Today carried the following story on the failure of “abstinence only” programs, as well as the concept of “safe-sinning.”

“As a teen, I was taught abstinence-only sex education. I pledged purity, and I made it known to all the boys around me. In my freshman year of high school, I was even voted “Most Likely to Wait Until Marriage.” The very next year, at age 15, I became pregnant.

“Today, nearly half of American high schoolers, aged 14 to 18, are sexually active, according to a Centers for Disease Controlsurvey. Even Christians aren’t waiting until marriage. One survey found that 8 in 10 unmarried adult evangelicals have had sex

“Somebody has to say it: Our approach isn’t working, and it’s time to rethink “the talk.” It’s time to expand the conversation into territory where many evangelical parents dare not go.

“The familiar Christian parenting mantra of Proverbs 22:6 tells us that if we “start children off on the way they should go, when they are old they will not turn from it.” For sex education, many evangelical moms and dads hold to this verse, teaching their kids to “just say no” and trusting they’ll stick to it. Parents set on abstinence often worry if they say, “Don’t have sex, but if you do here’s how to be safe,” children will take it as permission. This implicit go-ahead for “safe-sinning,” they say, reduces the moral efficacy of the abstinence-only message and offers teens the tools to engage in pre-marital sex without fear of consequences.

“This idea of safe-sinning, though, is a myth. An overwhelming majority of teens actually say it would be easier to abstain if parents would address sex in an open and honest way. Continue reading “Abstinence only and “safe sinning””

July 20, 2013

Drug store chains refuse Rolling Stone

Lots of buzz about the Rolling Stone over featuring Tsarnaev.

The chain stores CVS/Pharmacy and Walgreens have said that they would not sell the latest issue, which features a cover photo that some critics and Massachusetts politicians say glamorizes the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“It was explicitly the cover image, a photo of Mr. Tsarnaev that he used online, which shows him with long hair and a trim mustache and in an Armani Exchange shirt — not the lengthy article inside — that has drawn criticism. Over the day, those objections gathered momentum, aided by social media.

“Both CVS and Walgreens made their announcements on Twitter; their messages were passed on hundreds of times.

“The cover of Rolling Stone has long been a sign for rock stars, celebrities and even politicians that they have arrived, and the sight of the bombing suspect receiving similar treatment has provoked strong reaction, especially from the Boston area.

“By the afternoon, Mayor Thomas M. Menino had sent a letter to the publisher of Rolling Stone, Jann S. Wenner, objecting that the cover “rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment.” And Gov. Deval L. Patrick of Massachusetts, responding to a question from reporters, said: “I haven’t read it, but I understand the substance of the article is not objectionable. Continue reading “Drug store chains refuse Rolling Stone”

July 20, 2013

The “Tootsie” discussion

A clip of Dustin Huffman’s emotionally charged recounting of a decades-ago epiphany that cross-dressing for his role in ‘Tootsie’ forced him to recognize how men are brainwashed to value women based on their beauty above all else recently inspired rampant, viral support.

In FBomb Julie Z writes, “Some intrepid voices, however, were thoroughly unimpressed. Mansi Kathuria of Feminspire.com wrote, “Yesterday, I was cat-called on the streets of Chicago three times within a couple of hours, and Hillary Clinton’s new haircut made several news articles. Meanwhile, millions of people continued to share and watch a video of Dustin Hoffman realizing that society has taught him to value women only for their physical appearance.” Tyler Coates of Flavorwire mused, “isn’t there something a little uncomfortable in the notion that it takes being transformed into an unattractive woman to force a man to think, ‘Hey, I want to be taken seriously no matter how I look, too!’”

“These are valid reactions to a video of a very privileged, famous, white man’s discovery of an issue against which plenty of women have spent decades ardently fighting. These are reactions with which I even agree. But, these criticisms, as well as the responses embracing Hoffman as a veritable feminist activist on the basis of a few sentences, miss the bigger picture. This clip provides a model – imperfect though it admittedly is — for how to include men in a discussion about an issue that, though it affects them and requires their involvement to be solved, is currently dominated by women. Furthermore, the fact that this clip went viral indicates that we may actually be ready to embrace such discussions fully. Continue reading “The “Tootsie” discussion”

July 19, 2013

War is not innate

Primitive society was not driven by war, scientists believe.

Researchers from Abo Academy University in Finland say that violence in early human communities was driven by personal conflicts rather than large-scale battles, reports an article today posted by the BBC from a recent study. “Findings suggest that war is not an innate part of human nature, but rather a behaviour that we have adopted more recently.

“Patrik Soderberg, an author of the study, said: “This research questions the idea that war was ever-present in our ancestral past. It paints another picture where the quarrels and aggression were primarily about interpersonal motives instead of groups fighting against each other.” The research team based their findings on isolated tribes from around the world that had been studied over the last century Cut off from modern life and surviving off wild plants and animals, these groups live like the hunter gatherers of thousands of years ago.

“They are the kind of societies that don’t really rely on agriculture or domestic animals – they are primitive societies,” explained Mr Soderberg.”About 12,000 years ago, we assume all humans were living in this kind of society, and that these kind of societies made up about for about 90% of our evolutionary path.”Using the modern tribes as an analogy for earlier society, the researchers looked at cases where violent deaths had been documented. They found 148 such deaths but very few were caused by war. “Most of these incidents of lethal aggression were what we call homicides, a few were feuds and only the minority could be labelled as war,” Mr Soderberg said. Continue reading “War is not innate”

July 19, 2013

Dementia’s early warning system

The man complained of memory problems but seemed perfectly normal. No specialist he visited detected any decline, begins a frightening story in today’s New York Times

“He insisted that things were changing, but he aced all of our tests,” said Rebecca Amariglio, a neuropsychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. But about seven years later, he began showing symptoms of dementia. Dr. Amariglio now believes he had recognized a cognitive change so subtle “he was the only one who could identify it.”Patients like this have long been called “the worried well,” said Creighton Phelps, acting chief of the dementias of aging branch of the National Institute on Aging. “People would complain, and we didn’t really think it was very valid to take that into account.”

“But now, scientists are finding that some people with such complaints may in fact be detecting early harbingers of Alzheimer’s.Studies presented Wednesday at an Alzheimer’s Association conference in Boston showed that people with some types of cognitive concerns were more likely to have Alzheimer’s pathology in their brains, and to develop dementia later. Research presented by Dr. Amariglio, for example, found that people with more concerns about memory and organizing ability were more likely to have amyloid, a key Alzheimer’s-related protein, in their brains. Continue reading “Dementia’s early warning system”

July 19, 2013July 20, 2013

The trial and “post-racial” America

Shock, horror and then rage. These were the feelings experienced by tens of thousands of people across the country as they struggled to comprehend the meaning of George Zimmerman’s acquittal, writes Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in In These Times: ” How could Zimmerman be free? It was he who stalked Trayvon Martin, confronted him, pulled out a gun and ultimately murdered the unarmed teenage boy.

“Before the verdict was even determined, the mainstream media did its best to both whip up hysteria about the potential for riots in the event of a not-guilty verdict, while simultaneously broadcasting appeals to “respect” the system and whatever outcome was announced. These media-generated appeals helped to provide law enforcement with a cover to harass and intimidate protesters–and they once again shifted the blame for racially inspired violence onto the victims and away from the perpetrators.

“The media might have instead performed a public service to publicize the new warning that has issued forth as a result of the outcome of this trial: It is open season on young Black men.

“Trayvon Martin was killed in February 2012 because George Zimmerman decided he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead of Zimmerman being held accountable for his deadly act of racial profiling, Martin, his family and friends were put on trial, first in the media and then in the courtroom—and they were ultimately found guilty of being Black in a country where Black lives get next-to-no value nor respect.

“The facts surrounding this case, from its beginning to its shocking end, show the depth of racism in the United States—and yes, that’s a United States presided over by an African-American president.

“It took more than six weeks for George Zimmerman to even be arrested and charged with any crime, despite the fact that he had murdered an unarmed teenager who was doing nothing more than carrying Skittles and iced tea back from a convenience store.

“The police immediately and instinctively accepted Zimmerman’s version of events—that he acted in self-defense. His arrest only came after weeks of protests that brought thousands of ordinary people into the streets to demand justice. The outcry was so widespread that even President Barack Obama felt compelled to make a sympathetic public statement about Martin.

“The Zimmerman trial was supposed to show that the system could work in achieving justice for African Americans. Instead, lazy prosecutors—who are used to railroading boys like Trayvon—proved not to have the same vigor in prosecuting someone like Zimmerman. Meanwhile, Zimmerman’s attorneys methodically employed every racist stereotype about young Black men they could conjure up.By the end of the trial, someone who didn’t know the facts of the case might have guessed that Martin profiled, chased and killed Zimmerman—not the other way around.”

More at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15296/the_verdict_on_american_racism Continue reading “The trial and “post-racial” America”

July 18, 2013

More transgender legal victories

Transgender victims of workplace discrimination are for the first time finding restitution in a pair of decisions handed down from the federal government finding anti-trans job bias at two institutions — one a federal contractor, the other an arm of the U.S. government.

The two decisions ––reported today in the Washingon Blade––are the result of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing laws against workplace discrimination, finding last year in a historic, unanimous decision transgender workplace discrimination amounts to gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

“One of the decisions is the culmination of litigation in that very case, known as Macy v. Holder, was initiated by the Transgender Law Center after the plaintiff was told she wouldn’t receive a job at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives’s crime laboratory in Walnut Creek, Calif., after she announced she would transition from male to female.

“On July 8, the Department of Justice — to which the case was remanded after the EEOC made its decision last year — issued a final decision finding Macy indeed faced discrimination when she applied for the position and awarding her relief.

“[T]his office finds that the ATF discriminated against complainant based on her transgender status, and thus her sex, when it stopped complainant’s further participation in the hiring process for the NIBIN Ballistics Forensics Technician Laboratory position,” the decision states. Continue reading “More transgender legal victories”

July 18, 2013

Rethinking art education

“In arts education, something profound is happening that will force us to rethink what and how we teach,” writes Sean Buffington in the Chronicle of Higher Education

“Art making has changed radically in recent years. Artists have become increasingly interested in crossing disciplinary boundaries—choreographers use video, sculpture, and text; photographers create “paintings” with repurposed textiles. New technologies enable new kinds of work, like interactive performances with both live and Web-based components. International collaboration has become de rigueur. Art and design pervade the culture—witness popular television programs like Top Design, Ink Master, and—the granddaddy of them all—Project Runway.And policy makers and businesspeople have embraced at least the idea of the so-called creative economy, with cities rushing to establish arts districts, and business schools collaborating with design schools.

“Those developments are already affecting how the arts are taught: Curricula are becoming more flexible, with students encouraged to reach outside their departments to master whatever tools they need to make the art they want to make.

“But there is another shift occurring that is more subtle and more destabilizing to art colleges: Suddenly, everyone is—or can be—an artist. Continue reading “Rethinking art education”

July 17, 2013

Psychedelic academics

You don’t have to spend much time at the six-day second international Psychedelic Science conference in downtown Oakland to learn that not all its 1,900 attendees are academic scientists, and that few are strangers to the power of mind-bending drugs. So reports today’s Chronicle of Higher Education:

On my first day, boarding the conference’s sunset cruise of San Francisco Bay, I meet Chad, a middle-aged man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, who says his trips with magic mushrooms have “reawakened him to the beauty of existence. “I am here out of curiosity,” he explains, adding that he has a desire to understand what he has experienced. “It is just really nice to know they are breaking through some of the barriers with formal research. God knows there is a lot of informal research.”

“As the sun sets behind the Golden Gate Bridge, I meet Seabrook. Wearing rings in both ears and a flower badge pinned to his cap, he says he has never had a bad trip in more than 20 LSD experiences. “The main thing I love about this is it is a reunion—I have so many old friends here it is like a family,” he says.

At least half the attendees on the cruise disembark early in San Francisco to join a celebration of Bicycle Day, commemorating the day in April 1943 that the Swiss chemist Albert Hofman sampled the lysergic acid diethylamide compound that he’d discovered and then rode his bike home.

“But dotted among the conference’s psychedelic aficionados, who along with healers, artists, and activists make up the bulk of attendees, are members of another tribe. Researchers in psychiatry and psychology are here presenting their latest findings on the use of psychedelics to help treat anxiety disorders and addictions for which conventional treatments don’t always work.

“Distinguished by their suits and business dress, the researchers are for the most part keeping to themselves any personal experiences with the drugs. They stress the drugs’ dangers as well as potential benefits. And I see none disembark for Bicycle Day. “We are a bunch of serious, sober academics,” Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of California at Los Angeles medical school, told me on the phone before the conference. Grob is presenting the published results of his study using psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, to treat severe anxiety in advanced-stage cancer patients.

“I first get to know Grob—a personable man in a baggy suit with a beard and recently trimmed salt-and-pepper hair—the afternoon after the cruise, accompanying him to a nearby Starbucks to take a break from the conference’s colorful crowds and locate some hot water in which to dunk his echinacea tea bag. “People want to talk to you, they get really interested, and they kind of get in your space, and it’s like, ‘I gotta get my echinacea tea,'” he says.”

More at: http://chronicle.com/article/Psychedelic-Academe/139509/

July 17, 2013

The suicide of the humanities

You’ve probably heard the baleful reports. The number of college students majoring in the humanities is plummeting, according to a big study released last month by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

The news has provoked a flood of high-minded essays deploring the development as a symptom and portent of American decline. As reported in that bastion of humanities expertise, The Wall Street Journal, one culprit is mostly to blame. As WSJ puts it, “But there is another way to look at this supposed revelation (the number of humanities majors has actually been falling since the 1970s).The bright side is this: The destruction of the humanities by the humanities is, finally, coming to a halt. No more will literature, as part of an academic curriculum, extinguish the incandescence of literature.

“No longer will the reading of, say, “King Lear” or D.H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love” result in the flattening of these transfiguring encounters into just two more elements in an undergraduate career—the onerous stuff of multiple-choice quizzes, exam essays and homework assignments.The disheartening fact is that for every college professor who made Shakespeare or Lawrence come alive for the lucky few—the British scholar Frank Kermode kindled Shakespeare into an eternal flame in my head—there were countless others who made the reading of literary masterpieces seem like two hours in the periodontist’s chair. In their numbing hands, the term “humanities” became code for “and you don’t even have to show up to get an A.”

“When people wax plaintive about the fate of the humanities, they talk, in particular, about the slow extinction of English majors. Never mind that the preponderance of English majors go into other fields, such as law or advertising, and that students who don’t major in English can still take literature courses. In the current alarming view, large numbers of people devoting four years mostly to studying novels, poems and plays are all that stand between us and sociocultural nightfall.”

More at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323823004578595803296798048.html

July 16, 2013

On fearing young black men

Racial biases are well documented. With regard to crime, for example, one recent controlled experiment using a video game simulation found that white college students were most likely to accidentally fire at an unarmed suspect who was a black male — and most likely to mistakenly hold fire against armed white females, reports Sociological Images:

“More abstractly, people generally overestimate the risk of criminal victimization they face, but whites are more likely to do so when they live in areas with more black residents.

“The difference in racial attitudes between white men and women are limited. One analysis by prominent experts in racial attitudes concluded that “gender differences in racial attitudes are small, inconsistent, and limited mostly to attitudes on racial policy.” However, some researchers have found white men more prone than women to accept racist stereotypes about blacks, and the General Social Survey in 2002 found that white women were much more likely than men to describe their feelings toward African Americans positively. (In 2012, a minority of both white men and white women voted for Obama, although white men were more overwhelmingly in the Romney camp.)

“What about juries? The evidence for racial bias over many studies is quite strong. For example, one 2012 study found that in two Florida counties having an all-white jury pool – that is, the people from which the jury will be chosen – increased the chance that a black defendant would be convicted. Since the jury pool is randomly selected from eligible citizens, unaltered by lawyers’ selections or disqualifications, the study has a clean test of the race effect. But I can’t find any on the combined influence of race and gender. Continue reading “On fearing young black men”

July 16, 2013

Another reason for smoke-free campuses

Approximately 18.9 percent of young adults in the U.S. between the ages of 18-24 smoke.

And as documented by the 2012 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, almost no one starts smoking after age 25. Progression from occasional to daily smoking frequently occurs during the first years following high school.

Hence, an article appearing today on the website of the U.S. Department of Education, argues: “Tobacco prevention and cessation efforts should include young adults, making college and university campuses a critical target.

“College and university campuses offer unique opportunities for promoting social norms that support healthy living and lifestyle choices. The Tobacco-Free College Campus Initiative, a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the University of Michigan and the American College Health Association, encourages the voluntary adoption of tobacco-free policies at institutions of higher learning across the nation. These policies not only support the many people on college campuses who are trying to quit but also dissuade young adults from starting.

“Institutions of higher learning around the country are increasingly adopting new policies that reinforce their longstanding commitments to student health while strengthening and protecting their communities against tobacco addiction. When the initiative launched in September 2012, 774 colleges and universities were tobacco- or smoke-free, according to the Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. Today more than 1,159 university and college campuses have implemented tobacco- or smoke-free policies, reflecting exponential growth.

All are welcome to participate in the Tobacco-Free College Campus Initiative – university and college leaders, administrators, faculty members, students and student groups. For more information or to get started, please visit www.tobaccofreecampus.org.”

More at: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/07/tobacco-free-college-campuses/

July 16, 2013

Early indicators of creativity

A gift for spatial reasoning — the kind that may inspire an imaginative child to dismantle a clock or the family refrigerator — may be a greater predictor of future creativity or innovation than math or verbal skills, particularly in math, science and related fields, according to a study published Monday in the journal Psychological Science.

As discussed in today’s New York Times, “the study looked at the professional success of people who, as 13-year-olds, had taken both the SAT, because they had been flagged as particularly gifted, as well as the Differential Aptitude Test. That exam measures spatial relations skills, the ability to visualize and manipulate two-and three-dimensional objects. While math and verbal scores proved to be an accurate predictor of the students’ later accomplishments, adding spatial ability scores significantly increased the accuracy.

“The researchers, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said their findings make a strong case for rewriting standardized tests like the SAT and ACT to focus more on spatial ability, to help identify children who excel in this area and foster their talents.

“Evidence has been mounting over several decades that spatial ability gives us something that we don’t capture with traditional measures used in educational selection,” said David Lubinski, the lead author of the study and a psychologist at Vanderbilt. “We could be losing some modern-day Edisons and Fords.” Continue reading “Early indicators of creativity”

July 15, 2013

Dopamine and addiction

In a brain that people love to describe as “awash with chemicals,” one chemical always seems to stand out, writes Bethany Brookshire in Slate.com:

“Dopamine: the molecule behind all our most sinful behaviors and secret cravings.Dopamine is love. Dopamine is lust. Dopamine is adultery. Dopamine is motivation. Dopamine is attention. Dopamine is feminism. Dopamine is addiction.

“Dopamine is the one neurotransmitter that everyone seems to know about. Vaughn Bell once called it the Kim Kardashian of molecules, but I don’t think that’s fair to dopamine. Suffice it to say, dopamine’s big. And every week or so, you’ll see a new article come out all about dopamine.

“So is dopamine your cupcake addiction? Your gambling? Your alcoholism? Your sex life? The reality is dopamine has something to do with all of these. But it isnone of them. Dopamine is a chemical in your body. That’s all. But that doesn’t make it simple.

“What is dopamine? Dopamine is one of the chemical signals that pass information from one neuron to the next in the tiny spaces between them. When it is released from the first neuron, it floats into the space (the synapse) between the two neurons, and it bumps against receptors for it on the other side that then send a signal down the receiving neuron. That sounds very simple, but when you scale it up from a single pair of neurons to the vast networks in your brain, it quickly becomes complex. The effects of dopamine release depend on where it’s coming from, where the receiving neurons are going and what type of neurons they are, what receptors are binding the dopamine (there are five known types), and what role both the releasing and receiving neurons are playing.

“And dopamine is busy! It’s involved in many different important pathways. But when most people talk about dopamine, particularly when they talk about motivation, addiction, attention, or lust, they are talking about the dopamine pathway known as the mesolimbic pathway, which starts with cells in the ventral tegmental area, buried deep in the middle of the brain, which send their projections out to places like the nucleus accumbens and the cortex. Increases in dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens occur in response to sex, drugs, androck and roll. And dopamine signaling in this area is changed during the course of drug addiction. All abused drugs, from alcohol to cocaine to heroin, increase dopamine in this area in one way or another, and many people like to describe a spike in dopamine as “motivation” or “pleasure.” But that’s not quite it. Really, dopamine is signaling feedback for predicted rewards. If you, say, have learned to associate a cue (like a crack pipe) with a hit of crack, you will start getting increases in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens in response to the sight of the pipe, as your brain predicts the reward. But if you then don’t get your hit, well, then dopamine can decrease, and that’s not a good feeling. So you’d think that maybe dopamine predicts reward. But again, it gets more complex. For example, dopamine can increase in the nucleus accumbens in people with post-traumatic stress disorder when they are experiencing heightened vigilance and paranoia. So you might say, in this brain area at least, dopamine isn’t addiction or reward or fear. Instead, it’s what we call salience. Salience is more than attention: It’s a sign of something that needs to be paid attention to, something that stands out. This may be part of the mesolimbic role in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and also a part of its role in addiction.”

More at: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/what_is_dopamine_love_lust_sex_addiction_gambling_motivation_reward.html

July 15, 2013

U.S. grad programs depend on foreign students

A new report confirms the reliance of certain grad programs on high fees paid by foreign students.

According to InsideHigherEd, “International students play a critical role in sustaining quality science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate programs at U.S. universities, a new report from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) argues.

“It will come as no surprise to observers of graduate education that the report documents the fact that foreign students make up the majority of enrollments in U.S. graduate programs in many STEM fields, accounting for 70.3 percent of all full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 63.2 percent in computer science, 60.4 percent in industrial engineering, and more than 50 percent in chemical, materials and mechanical engineering, as well as in economics (a non-STEM field). However, the report, which analyzes National Science Foundation enrollment data from 2010 by field and institution, also shows that these striking averages mask even higher proportions at many individual universities. For example, there are 36 graduate programs in electrical engineering where the proportion of international students exceeds 80 percent, including seven where it exceeds 90. (The analysis is limited to those programs with at least 30 full-time students.)

“International students help many universities have enough graduate students to support research programs that help attract top faculty and that also thereby help U.S. students by having a higher-quality program than they otherwise would have,” said Stuart Anderson, NFAP’s executive director and author of the report. Without them, he said, “you’d see a shrinking across the board where you’d have just certain schools that are able to support good programs. That would lead to a shrinking of U.S. leadership in education and technology if you have many fewer programs with high-quality research and top-level professors.”

“To some extent this reflects some of what’s going on in our society within the U.S. in terms of trying to push for more interest in STEM fields,” said Jonathan Bredow, professor and chair of the electrical engineering department at the University of Texas at Arlington, a program with more than 90 percent international enrollment. “Domestic students tend to be more interested in going out and getting a job right after a bachelor’s degree. Some see a value of getting a master’s degree but in terms of the Ph.D., I think it’s largely seen as unnecessary.”

July 14, 2013

The case for cause marketing

We all are exposed to traditional and typical advertising and marketing messages every day, for everything from food to fragrances to banking to many other products and services we consume on a regular basis.

However, sometimes companies with the most powerful brands in the world take their marketing messages a step further and align them with a cause, which can be incredibly beneficial to society, reports Huffington Post Gay Voices.

“When done properly, cause marketing can change the world and help to move that cause in a positive direction, whether it is health-related, environmental, humanitarian, or social in nature.

“We are currently seeing a positive example of cause marketing by Office Depot, a leading national retailer, who has dedicated its back-to-school effort for the second consecutive year to raising awareness for anti-bullying as it specifically relates to parents, teachers, and students. The company has recently launched a campaign with worldwide music phenomenon One Direction, coinciding with their U.S. summer tour. The theme of the campaign is “1D + OD Together Against Bullying,” and has been designed to raise awareness for anti-bullying, culminating in educational programs beginning this Fall in schools across America.

“By embracing the anti-bullying cause, Office Depot is aiming to create more positive environments for three of its key consumers. First, they want to enable teachers to have more positive classroom and teaching experiences. No one can deny that teaching is a tough profession. Reducing and possibly eliminating bullying at school will take one more stress factor off of teachers’ already full plates. Continue reading “The case for cause marketing”