people – Page 8

To See How Facial Features Are Controlled By Genes We Scanned The DNA Of 8,000 People

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

To See How Facial Features Are Controlled By Genes We Scanned The DNA Of 8,000 People

You might think it’s rather obvious that your facial appearance is determined by your genes. Just look in the family photo album and observe the same nose, eyes or chin on your grandparents, cousins and uncles and aunts. Perhaps you have seen or know someone with a genetic syndrome – that often results from a damaging alteration to one or more genes – and noticed the often distinctive facial features. Using 3-D facial images researchers have identified changes in the DNA that contribute to variation in facial features. Julie D. White, CC BY-SA Takeaways A new study reveals more than 130 regions in human DNA play a role in sculpting facial features. The nose is the facial feature most influenced by your genes. Understanding the link between specific genes and facial features could b...

Prejudice May Make Donors Less Generous Against People With Darker Skin

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Prejudice May Make Donors Less Generous Against People With Darker Skin

U.S. donors are inclined to give less generously to charities in developing countries when they believe those funds will help people with darker skin. That’s what I found out when I measured the implicit skin-tone bias of 750 people who completed an online survey. The donors who harbored more implicit bias against darker skin were less likely to give more than US$10 to the charity than those who were less prejudiced. How I did my work I recruited the participants through a virtual labor market known as Amazon MTurk. They were asked about their age, income and education, and other characteristics. Then I assessed their bias toward light skin or dark skin by relying on a variant of the Implicit Association Test, a common research tool for this purpose. Finally, I asked how much money they a...

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

How deadly is SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19? And what are the risks of death for people of different ages and demographics? These have been hard numbers to calculate during this pandemic. To calculate the true death rate – more accurately called the infection–fatality ratio (IFR) – you would simply divide the total number of coronavirus deaths by the total number of infections. The problem is that with so many asymptomatic cases and limited testing for much of the pandemic, finding the true number of infections has been very difficult. The easiest way to calculate more accurate infection and death rates is to perform random testing. I am a professor of health policy and management. In April, in partnership with the Indiana State Department of Health, I led a team of researc...

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

5Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

When Joe Prude called the police on his brother, he was asking for help: Daniel Prude, who suffered from mental health problems, had run almost naked out of his Rochester, New York, house into the snow. When officers arrived, new video footage shows, the March 23 encounter quickly turned violent, and Prude died from asphyxiation under a hood officers had put over his head. Two years prior, in 2018, Shukri Ali Said of Georgia also wound up dead after leaving her house during a mental health crisis on April 23, 2018. Police, called in to help, found Said standing at an intersection holding a knife. Officers shot her five times in the neck and chest, killing her. That same month, in New York, officers answered a 911 call about a black man waving something that looked like a gun. In fact, it...

Hit ’em where it hurts – how economic threats are a potent tool for changing people’s minds about the Confederate flag

17Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Hit ’em where it hurts – how economic threats are a potent tool for changing people’s minds about the Confederate flag

Activists nationwide have resumed demanding the removal of statues and symbols that are considered racially offensive – such as of slave owners, Confederate leaders and the Confederate flag. The requests – and related boycotts and threats of other economic protests – have been part of the national controversy about racism in American life and have sparked questions about how to recognize traumatic elements of U.S. history. Typically, the debate about the role of Confederate imagery in public life is seen as a political, social or racial issue. But in recent research, we discovered that economic concerns could be effective in shifting Southerners’ attitudes about Confederate symbols. Public officials and individual citizens alike are more likely to oppose the presence of Confederate symb...

Twitter posts show that people are profoundly sad – and are visiting parks to cheer up

7Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Twitter posts show that people are profoundly sad – and are visiting parks to cheer up

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is the deepest and longest period of malaise in a dozen years. Our colleagues at the University of Vermont have concluded this by analyzing posts on Twitter. The Vermont Complex Systems Center studies 50 million tweets a day, scoring the “happiness” of people’s words to monitor the national mood. That mood today is at its lowest point since 2008 when they started this project. They call the tweet analysis the Hedonometer. It relies on surveys of thousands of people who rate words indicating happiness. “Laughter” gets an 8.50 while “jail” gets a 1.76. They use these scores to measure the mood of Twitter traffic. The Hedonometer measures happiness through analysis of key words on Twitter, which is now used by one in five Americans. This chart cover...

Enslaved people’s health was ignored from the country’s beginning, laying the groundwork for today’s health disparities

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Enslaved people’s health was ignored from the country’s beginning, laying the groundwork for today’s health disparities

Some critics of Black Lives Matter say the movement itself is racist. Their frequent counterargument: All lives matter. Lost in that view, however, is a historical perspective. Look back to the late 18th century, to the very beginnings of the U.S., and you will see Black lives in this country did not seem to matter at all. Foremost among the unrelenting cruelties heaped upon enslaved people was the lack of health care for them. Infants and children fared especially poorly. After childbirth, mothers were forced to return to the fields as soon as possible, often having to leave their infants without care or food. The infant mortality rate was estimated at one time to be as high as 50%. Adult people who were enslaved who showed signs of exhaustion or depression were often beaten. As a profe...

Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent fall underscores the vulnerability of people 65 and older to falling

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent fall underscores the vulnerability of people 65 and older to falling

Chief Justice John Roberts often makes headlines for his legal opinions, but the 65-year-old recently made news for a different – and dangerous – reason. As thousands of older people do each year, Roberts fell. The fall occurred on June 21, 2020 at a Maryland country club. Roberts cut his head and was hospitalized. The event, which had two precedents, was reportedly due to dehydration. Roberts is reportedly recovered and fine. But the issue of falls, which are the leading cause of accidental death in people 65 and older, is growing more pressing each day. More adults than ever – 46 million – are 65 and older, and their numbers are increasing rapidly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in four older adults will fall each year. Besides being the leading cause...

Being Black in the U.S. Makes People More Vulnerable to Chronic Stress and COVID-19 and Other Diseases

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Being Black in the U.S. Makes People More Vulnerable to Chronic Stress and COVID-19 and Other Diseases

Racism is a chronic, uncontrollable, and unpredictable stress that can wreak havoc on the mind and body. The COVID-19 pandemic and the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are two major catastrophes that shine a light on longstanding social inequities and injustices toward African Americans. Emerging research in the field of social genomics demonstrates how social stress, such as racism and discrimination, can shift the body’s biological resources toward a state that increases risk for disease. For example, our research group has found that racial discrimination may be affecting the way genes are expressed, leading to increased levels of dangerous stress hormones. These differences were found even when social determinant factors such as poverty and other forms of stress were accounte...

What is the ‘zero gravity’ that people experience in the vomit comet or space flight?

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY

What is the ‘zero gravity’ that people experience in the vomit comet or space flight?

In the zero-gravity airplanes or vomit comet, why does stuff behave like there is no gravity when it is just falling? – Austin B., 11, Scranton, Pennsylvania People in a special airplane flight get to float like there is no gravity – just like astronauts. Steven Collicott I have flown many times in zero-gravity airplane flights. Each time I still enjoy the feeling of floating free, the ability to fly across the cabin from just one gentle push on the wall, just like astronauts in the International Space Station, and the novelty of rotating your body in whatever direction you choose. The feeling is like the brief sensation on some roller coasters or off of a diving board, but for close to half a minute and without the air rushing past you – it’s fun! People feeling weightlessness without b...