Monthly Archives: January 2020

Human Behavior

Neuroscience study finds the brains response to emotional conflict predicts antidepressant treatmen … – PsyPost

Neuroimaging data from a large randomized controlled trial indicates that how people respond to antidepressant medication is predicted by how their brain processes conflicting emotional information. The findings have been published in Nature Human Behaviour.

This study addressed two questions central to the ability to meaningfully use biology to understand and guide psychiatric treatment and drug development, said study author Amit Etkin, the founder and CEO of Alto Neuroscience as well as a professor at Stanford University.

One was whether there are identifiable biological differences between patients with depression that determine who responds to an antidepressant compared to a placebo. The second was what role emotion regulation plays in defining those biological attributes.

Prior to this study, it has been unclear whether the apparent small difference in treatment outcome between antidepressants and placebo historically have been due to problems with the medications (i.e. they are not particularly effective) or problems with the diagnosis (i.e. definition of the disorder in broad clinical terms lumps together people with very different biology.)

The researchers examined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from the EMBARC trial. EMBARC is by far the largest placebo-controlled neuroimaging study of antidepressants, Etkin said.

The trial randomly assigned 309 depressed outpatients to receive either the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor sertraline or placebo for 8 weeks.

The participants also underwent brain imaging prior to treatment, during which they were shown photographs in quick succession that offered sometimes conflicting messages such as an fearful face with the word happy or a smiling face with the word fear. The participants were instructed to identify the facial emotion with a key press, while trying to ignore the word.

The researchers then used machine learning analyses to identify specific brain regions that predicted whether participants would benefit from the SSRI treatment. The results showed that participants who had abnormal neural responses during emotional conflict were less likely to improve within eight weeks of starting the medication.

We found two very interesting things. First, it was very clear from our results that there are strong biological reasons for why a depressed patient responds to an antidepressant versus to a placebo, Etkin told PsyPost.

In other words, it seems that it is the catch-all way we make the clinical diagnosis of depression that is imprecise, and there are people for whom antidepressants work much better than placebo but others for whom there is no such difference. We were able to define these brain signatures in people using both conventional and machine learning analyses.

Second, we found that the reason people respond better to an antidepressant is that they seem to be better able to regulate emotion processing in an automatic manner. The better their brains did this, the greater the difference between the antidepressant and placebo, Etkin explained.

Another analysis of EMBARC data, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, found that patterns of functional connectivity in the brain appear to play an important role in identifying a favorable response for a drug treatment for major depressive disorder.

But there is still a need for more research.

As with any study, even one of a large population of patients studied over the course of a very detailed and exhaustive study, replication is needed to confirm the results. Such replications are unlikely to take the same form as EMBARC, which was a costly and effort-intensive study, and thus care must be taken to make sure that we progressively learn through each attempt at extension and generalization of these findings, Etkin said.

It would be nice in future work to see whether this kind of signal can be found with more clinic-ready brain imaging tools, such as EEG. Likewise, we have only started to scratch the surface of what it is that makes medication responders different from those who do not respond to medication, and thus a lot more work is needed at multiple levels (genetics, behavior, sleep, etc.)

Nonetheless, the general message from this paper is that it does seem that the imprecision inherent in our diagnoses is in large part to blame for the poor outcomes of the trial-and-error approach we currently rely on in psychiatric treatment, Etkin concluded.

The study, Brain regulation of emotional conflict predicts antidepressant treatment response for depression, was authored by Gregory A. Fonzo, Amit Etkin, Yu Zhang, Wei Wu, Crystal Cooper, Cherise Chin-Fatt, Manish K. Jha, Joseph Trombello, Thilo Deckersbach, Phil Adams, Melvin McInnis, Patrick J. McGrath, Myrna M. Weissman, Maurizio Fava, and Madhukar H. Trivedi.

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Neuroscience study finds the brains response to emotional conflict predicts antidepressant treatmen ... - PsyPost

Human Behavior

‘landmark’ achievement: Scientists trace full wiring diagram of the fly brain’s core – STAT

Particle physicists are used to popping champagne corks when they make discoveries at lilliputian scales, but now its neuroscientists turn. After 12 years and more than $40 million, an eclectic team of 100 biologists, computer scientists, and neuronal proofreaders announced on Wednesday that they have mapped the connectome in the central region of the poppy-seed-sized brain of a fruit fly, working out the precise meanderings of 25,000 neurons and their 20 million connections.

The neural map covers one-third of the fly brain, making it the largest connectome, or wiring diagram, ever worked out; besides its 20 million synapses, the precise characterization of more than 4,000 cell types makes it the most detailed. All told, the feat by researchers at Google and the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute amounts to a big told you so to skeptics who said it couldnt be done this soon, this inexpensively, or this well.

With the connectome of the entire fly brain expected by 2022, the once-unimaginable rate of progress suggests that a human connectome is not the impossible dream skeptics believe.

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Its extraordinary, its huge, its a landmark in neuroscience, said Clay Reid of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who is mapping the mouse connectome but was not involved in the flys. Nothing like this has ever happened in the field. It will be completely transformative.

Thats because although the Drosophila brain has only one-ten-thousandth the volume of the human brain, it is capable of sophisticated behavior, said Janelia director Gerry Rubin, who led the project. The connectome for its central region, or hemibrain, includes circuits for learning, remembering, navigating, sleeping, and maintaining circadian rhythms. By mining the data, which is publicly available and free to all, scientists will be able to identify the sequence of neurons that fire when a fruit fly detects the irresistible aroma of rotting banana, or follows a garbage truck like a long-lost love, among many other behaviors.

This tells you the whole chain of connections, including long-distance ones, Reid said. Instead of seeing maybe 300 connections as was possible with cruder connectomes, you can see millions, allowing you to trace neural circuits at a level that was completely unimaginable.

That matters for the holy grail of neuroscience: the human connectome. Although a Human Connectome Project ran from 2009 to 2014, it was more Google Earth than Google Street View, Reid said, mapping only the brains large-scale circuitry. In contrast, the Drosophila connectome shows every country lane, overpass, cloverleaf, and roundabout made by the 25,000 neurons, as the scientists describe in a preliminary paper (more are on the way). Thats what a passionate band of neuroscientists aspire to for the human brain: mapping the meanderings of its 86 billion neurons and their trillions of connections.

To neuroscientists, the appeal of the connectome is like that of the genome for geneticists. The Human Genome Project produced a blueprint of heredity and powered discoveries of the genetic causes of diseases and drugs to treat them. A human connectome could reveal the basic wiring that underlies thinking, remembering, reacting, moving, believing, and feeling. With more and more evidence that disorders such as autism and schizophrenia are caused by brain miswiring rather than, say, imbalances of neurochemicals, many neuroscientists believe mapping the connectome is more important than ever.

This is parallel to and will likely be as impactful as the genome project, which also started with non-human animals, said neuroscientist Diane Lipscombe of Brown University, the immediate past president of the Society for Neuroscience. Its critical to have a reference that everyone in the community can refer to. Although with current technology scientists cannot map the connectome in a living brain, they can make electrical and other measurements, she pointed out, which could be compared to a reference connectome for that species.

Based on the Drosophila connectome, Rubin estimates that you could do a 1,000-fold bigger project such as a mouse connectome with only 10 times the money in 10 years roughly $500 million (in addition to Janelias $40 million, Google contributed funding for the fly project). The Human Genome Project had $3 billion in government funding, and the 2020 budget of the National Institutes of Health tops $41 billion.

With a mouse connectome, which Reids team at the Allen Institute is pursuing (immediate goal: the 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses in 1 cubic millimeter of cortex), mouse versions of autism and schizophrenia and other brain diseases could reveal much more about the neural basis of such disorders.

As for a human connectome, the possibility of using it to understand human behavior and brain disorders is only the low-hanging fruit. Some scientists have even bolder and controversial ideas. If all of a brains wiring could be preserved after death, then if researchers can decode the connectome they might be able to read its content, and an individuals memories would transcend death.

Scaling up from mouse to human would probably require another 1-million-fold improvement in mapping speed, Rubin said, on top of the 1,000-fold improvement he and his team achieved since they began the fly connectome in 2008. But there has been a 1-trillion-fold increase in the speed of DNA sequencing since I did my Ph.D. thesis in 1973, Rubin said. (The sequencing of 158 bases of yeast RNA that took him two years can now be done by machines in a millisecond.) So these big numbers dont worry me.

In fact, it was technology that got the fly connectome this far.

Mapping a connectome begins with adding special stains to a brain (or hemibrain) to make neurons and other features stand out, then embedding it in epoxy. Technicians then cut it into slabs 20 microns thick, about the width of an extremely fine human hair.

Then comes a key technological breakthrough thats the microscopic equivalent of surface mining a seam of coal in Appalachia: focused ion beam milling combined with scanning electron microscopy, or FIB-SEM to its fans. A beam of gallium ions blasts off surface atoms, the microscope takes an image of whats revealed beneath, the beam mills off another 2 nanometers (thousandths of a micron), atomic layer, over and over. Eventually, the actual chunk of brain is gone. But 26 terabytes of image data (26 million photos) record what was. The entire fly brain would amount to 100 terabytes.

Computers stack the images in the same order as the brain slices. Identifying which little blob in one image belongs to the same neuron as a blob in other images, thereby tracing its path through the brain, has long been the bottleneck for constructing connectomes. Until recently, it was beyond the abilities of computers, and its so laborious for humans that Rubin originally estimated the fly connectome would take 250 people working for 20 years to map. The only animal whose connectome has been completed is the tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, with a piddling 302 neurons making about 7,000 synapses, and that took 15 years for a rough draft (released in 1986) and another 20 for a final.

Enter image segmentation, a technology that enables machines to recognize faces and objects in images, including to interpret medical scans and to make self-driving cars see. Looking to put segmentation technology to an acid test, computer scientist Viren Jain of Google began collaborating with the connectome team at Janelia, where hed worked previously. We thought we could push the state-of-the-art in image segmentation by working on a difficult scientific problem like connectomics, he said. Specifically, they could test whether segmentation algorithms could analyze the 50 trillion pixels in the Drosophila connectome dataset well enough to trace neurons from one imaged brain slice to the next.

The Googlers developed a tracing algorithm that detects a bit of neuron passing through one slice and determines where its next piece is in the next slice, and the next one, on and on until the neurons winding journey has been mapped as completely as Homer did Odysseus.

Algorithms aside, humans remained central to the process. The algorithm was trained on neurons that had been fully traced by Janelia researchers, for instance, and dozens of proofreaders at Janelia spent two years checking the algorithms output, making sure it didnt mistake one neurons branches for anothers. (Humans are more accurate than machines at such things, though much slower.)

Whether or not connectomes can illuminate the human mind, heathy and not, technologists believe even partial connectomes can improve machine intelligence by reverse engineering the brain. To that end, U.S. intelligence agencies are pouring $100 million into connectomics, including the Allen Institute mouse project, giving hope to dreamers that if scientists can map the human connectome they might one day be able to simulate a mind in silicon.

Such a prospect is likely decades away, if that. Even a mouse connectome will require algorithms that are 1,000 time faster and better than todays, Jain said, which is not a trivial thing to do. But when I started in connectomics in 2005, we couldnt [trace] a single neuron, let alone 25,000. And now look where we are.

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'landmark' achievement: Scientists trace full wiring diagram of the fly brain's core - STAT

Human Behavior

Supernanny’s Jo Frost Takes on Modern-Day Family Issues and Wants an End to Father Knows Best – Parade

Americas favorite fictional nanny is either Mary Poppins or Fran Fine (Fran Drescher), but when it comes to real life, hands down the woman you want giving you advice on child rearing is Jo Frost, aka the Supernanny.

Supernanny has been on hiatus for a bit here in the U.S., but now its back on Lifetime with 20 all-new episodes that employ Frosts 30 years of expertise to help with the issues facing modern-day families, using her time-honored wisdom.

I change my techniques according to what the child or the parent needs, or the family as a whole needs, but as a professional, I do not move with a trend or a fad, she tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. You dont fix something thats not broken, you know?

Frosts methods are tried and true, and she uses them to help families that have so much information at their fingertips, that it often causes more problems than it solves.

A lot of parents are confused because theyre reading a lot, and they cant make up their mind on what theyre doing, Frost continues. With human behavior, you go back to what you know, you go back to what you trust, you go back to what worked, because you know it worked for you and your family. Ive been in families homes now for 15 years, sat down on their sofas, drank a cup of tea with them, sat and cried with them, laughed with them, and got real with them, you know? So, the makeup of who I am will never change, because Im an honorable, integral person, who is really passionate about the work that I do.

Interview: Jo Frost Talks About Hitting the Road as the Nanny on Tour

One aspect of modern life that is different than when Frost first hit American shores is children having access to screens. Even though we are in the technology era, Frost insists the emphasis still should be on connecting with our families, which doesnt happen with too much screen time.

Technologys there to enhance our lives in so many ways, but if we abuse it and become addicted to it, then weve just created a whole heap of problems that not just myself, but many other parental professionals, psychologists, sociologists and psychiatrists predicted was going to happen 12 years ago.

And it isnt just theoretical for Frost. It is an issue she deals with in her life with her grandson, who loves to watch Dinotrux.

He gets a couple of episodes and then were out, she says. Were playing football, painting and drawing, and playing with his cars. We need to be able to find that balance.

Another new issue Frost is seeing is children being unnecessarily medicated. It is very easy to mislabel children, so parents should take on the responsibility of understanding how children should behave at specific ages before they rush to the doctor with a supposed ADHD child.

I think were pill happy, she says. I have very strong belief in bringing Western and Eastern medicine together. It doesnt have to be polarized. I dont want to underserve the importance of medication and how it serves us in the correct way, but I also want families to understand that we must embrace peace and stillness, and if we can bring Eastern and Western together, infuse it together, then I believe it will serve the family as a whole much better.

Movie Review: Emily Blunt Soars as Disneys Magical Nanny in Mary Poppins Returns

One problem that Frost deals with this season that is an old one is the idea that father knows best. She still sees families where the mother says, Wait until your father gets home, and that is something she would like to see go by the wayside.

Id like to see mothers at home be more assertive, be unapologetic, give themselves permission, and to stand up for themselves as an equal parent, whether that is being a parent whos authoritative and needs to discipline and put healthy boundaries in, or to serve out the candy. Its important for both parents to equally hold that stance in their home, because it undermines the other parent [if they dont].

Supernanny airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime.

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Supernanny's Jo Frost Takes on Modern-Day Family Issues and Wants an End to Father Knows Best - Parade

Human Behavior

Study sheds light on the genetics of hibernation – Scope

When ground squirrels hibernate, their body temperatures drop dramatically -- roughly from 98.6 to 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks at a time.They also stop eating and enter into a state of torpor to conserve energy; their baseline physiology -- including metabolic, respiratory and heart rates -- slows to approximately 1-3% of normal function.

Arousing from that torpor and returning to their normal temperatures is an intense process akin to a heart attack, as the ground squirrels' heart rates essentially skyrocket so they can rewarm in just a couple of hours. Yet the squirrels emerge from hibernation undamaged and even protected from some conditions that are harmful to humans, such as heart attack and stroke, bone and muscle atrophy and metabolic diseases.

Though environmental factors, such as day length and temperature, influence when ground squirrels begin hibernation, individual genes also affect their behavior. In a recent paper published in Communications Biology, Stanford researchers Katharine Grabek, PhD, Carlos Bustamante, PhD, and their colleagues made strides in pinpointing the role of genetics in driving these large shifts in behavior and physiology -- insights that Grabek said could potentially be helpful in understanding humans.

"To hibernate, we think ground squirrels are using common mammalian genes shared with humans, but they are just utilizing them differently," she told me. "By identifying these genes, we can find new therapeutic avenues for human diseases."

To investigate, Grabek, Bustamante and their team took liver samples from 153 squirrels that were shipped to them by an OshKosh, Wisconsin breeder. They determined the genotype of each, and charted the familial relationships among the animals.

Then the scientists recorded the first day each subject's body temperature dropped, signaling the onset of hibernation. From there, they looked for patterns connecting the timing of hibernation with certain gene variants. They also applied a genome-wide association study -- which provided information about genetic mutations throughout each squirrel's genome to identify which genes statistically were most likely to be associated with the onset of hibernation.

The researchers found that hibernation onset in ground squirrels is strongly governed by genetics -- that is, after accounting for known environmental factors, the remaining differences in when squirrels started hibernation were due solely to genetic variation. The team also identified two genetic variants near FAM204A and EXOC4 -- both are genes shared with humans -- that are most likely responsible, as squirrels with these two mutations in their DNA went into hibernation later in the year than squirrels without the mutations. Twelve other variants also are likely associated with the onset of hibernation, according to the study, but the statistical values were not strong enough to be conclusive.

Grabek told me she was surprised by the definitive nature of the results: "I was expecting that there would be a genetic component explaining some of the variation in hibernation onset," she said, "I just didn't expect so much of variation in timing to be due to genetics."

Identifying genes behind the controlled process of torpor and hibernation could ultimately help scientists understand and develop treatments for conditions and diseases in humans, Grabek told me:

For example, prior to hibernation, the squirrels spend most of their days eating food and accumulating a lot of body fat. Then at the onset of hibernation, they stop eating altogether and, instead, use their fat reserves as a fuel source while they hibernate. Since the genes controlling this dramatic shift in food intake are likely shared with humans, after we identify them in squirrels, the human forms of the genes could be targeted with drugs to help people lose weight.

Other insights from the genes could help researchers formulate treatments to help people recover from heart attacks or strokes, or to maintain muscle mass during prolonged bouts of bed rest, she said.

Bustamante shares Grabek's excitement. He told me, "We believe this is the first of many insights that can be gleaned from studying the molecular basis of mammalian hibernation. Ultimately, we want to see this work translated into medicines and other therapies for the benefit of humankind."

Photo of a ground squirrel from the study, courtesy of Bryan Roeder and Sandra Martin

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Study sheds light on the genetics of hibernation - Scope

Human Behavior

Trump and the Evangelical Blues – Qrius

Hans-Georg Betz

Now in the final year of his first or only? presidential term, Donald Trump is in trouble. Haunted time and again by new revelations of shady, if not criminal, behavior, and ridiculed by his political peers, even including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Trump is universally loathed with few exceptions, Israels increasingly far-right government among them. In the United States, Trump is unpopular as few presidents before him, a fact which even Fox News cannot deny.

In October last year, a Fox News poll found 55% of respondents disapproving of the job he was doing. There were naturally some exceptions, for instance rural white men. The most significant exception, however, were white evangelicals. More than70% approvedof his performance as president.

Trump won a large majority of the white evangelical vote in 2016, and their allegiance to the president has not faltered scandals, corruption, and a litany of blatant and often ludicrous lies notwithstanding. In fact, whiteevangelicals are virtuallythe only voter segment that he is holding onto. For many, myself included, this smacks of idolatrous hypocrisy. Evangelicals love to take the moral high ground, as they did in Bill Clintons impeachment only a generation ago.

In recent decades, more often than not, this has meant exchanging traditional Christian notions of empathy and compassion for dogmatic zealotry and condemnation. The latter obviously does not extend to an individual who boasted that it was perfectly OK to grab women by their private parts so long as you were rich and famous. Frankly, this behavior cannot be reconciled with Christian and, for that matter, any other morals. Then again, this alone might be asking too much from those who proclaim themselves Christians in todays world.

Over the past few years, much intellectual energy has been expended to explain the rationale if indeed this is the right word behind American evangelicals infatuation with, and devotion to, Trump. After all,evangelicalsmake up about 25% of the American population (16% of these are white), and for Trump, they represent a crucial electorate one which he cannot afford to affront. Keeping them happy is critical if Trump wants to win a second term later this year.

Evangelicals and their fellow travelers have advanced a cultural concerns dear to the evangelical heart. The most prominent is the argument that Trump, although hardly qualifying as an evangelical Christian, holds many of the beliefs and principles that the religion espouses. These include, most prominently, the belief that abortion is morally wrong and should be outlawed. The fact that Trump has appointed a number of judges who hold that conviction is potentially paradigm-changing. Secondly, there is Trumpsloathing of sexual minorities, reflected in his staunch opposition to according them equal rights, particularly same-sex marriage, which, for evangelicals, go against their scriptural beliefs.

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Then there are Trumps policy initiatives designed to cut benefits for the poor in order to force them to seek gainful employment. For evangelicals, this isin linewith the Bible that teaches it is best for a citizen to work for a living. Finally, there is Trumps promotion of religious freedom by providing faith-based organizationsprivileged accessto the White House and the federal government in general. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not entirely surprising if, in early 2019, many believed thatGod had put Trump into the White Housethrough miraculous means.

These are indeed understandable reasons for supporting Trump, even if it means holding ones nose. I suspect, however, that the main reason why white evangelicals have attached themselves so tenaciously to Donald Trump lies elsewhere. In reality, their support for surely the worst president in American history reflects a deep cultural malaise and profound moral panic pervading large parts of the white, conservative Christian community.

A few years ago, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild published a book entitled Strangers in their Own Land, which explored the sentiments of Tea Party supporters in Louisiana. What she found waswidespread frustrationborn of a sense of unfairness and lack of respect, provoked by the rise of cultural pressure politics of formerly marginalised groups women, ethnic minorities, the LGTBQ community that demand recognition in law and political practice, which they saw as cutting in line.

At the same time, there was simmering anger over scorn for their non-politically correct views and beliefs by the liberal media, which made them feel like strangers in their own land. This made for an ideal breeding ground for the type of right-wing populism espoused by Trump.

Political scientists Pippa Norris from Harvard and Ronald Inglehart from the University of Michigan have made a similar point with respect to the radical populist right in Western Europe. In a recentjoint paper, they propose that the success of these parties is largely owed to their ideological appeals to traditional values prevalent among older native-born men, the religious and the less educated. These are the groups, in their judgement, most likely to feel that they have become strangers from the predominant values in their own country, left behind by progressive tides of cultural change which they do not share.

Voting for Trump, Marine Le Pen,Pauline Hansonand the like, in this view, is part of a cultural backlash much discussed by pundits. Yet at the same time, it is also an act of political payback the revenge of those dismissed asploucsFrench pejorative term for rural simpletons rednecks and yokels, who feel left behind and abandoned, their views and opinions ridiculed and discredited.

White evangelicals are a prime example of this strangers in their own land syndrome informing so much of the emotion-driven politics prevalent in Western democracies today. Recent surveys suggest that their anger and resentment are not entirely unfounded. The results come from theBarna Group,which has tracked the intersection of faith and culture for a number of decades.

A few years ago, Barna published a report under the alarmist title Five Ways Christianity Is Increasingly Viewed as Extremist. One of the most striking findings was that a growing number of Americans not only considered Christianity irrelevant but, worse, that it is bad for society. In fact, millions of Americans considered Christianity to be extremist. Among the non-religious (atheists, agnostics and religiously unaffiliated),45%agreed with that sentiment. While the report speaks about Christians in general, it is quite obvious that it speaks primarily about conservative Christians, especially Protestant evangelicals.

The report emphasizes how far from the mainstream the latter have moved, particularly on questions of sexual diversity. Cases of Christian businesses refusing to provide their services to gay couples such as cakes for same-sex weddings are but the tip of the iceberg. By contrast, for more than80% of Americansthis constitutes extreme behavior.

More recent surveys suggest that, Trump notwithstanding, things have not improved for white evangelicals. In fact, due to Trump, evangelicals are increasingly seen through a political rather than a religious lens, with potentially devastating consequences in the longer term. Reflecting the intense polarization of the American population, large numbers of liberals associate evangelicals with narrow-mindedness and homophobia, and associate a significant minority with racism and misogyny.

More importantly, perhaps, is the finding that most Americans are ever more indifferent to evangelicals. For Christians in the US and internationally this poses a major problem. As the authors of the report note, the perceptions of evangelicals represent a growing barrier to whatAmerican Christianshold most dear: persuading others to put their faith in Christ.

The evangelical alliance with Donald Trump has not gone unchallenged. Arecent editorialin Christianity Today, the leading evangelical magazine founded by the late Billy Graham, the iconic spiritual reference of the evangelical movement, made this point quite clearly:

Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trumps immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we dont reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nations leader doesnt really matter in the end?

Anopen letterto the two senators from North Carolina with respect to Trumps impeachment makes the same point. The author, a self-proclaimed conservative evangelical Republican, charges that everything Trump says or does is in direct conflict with Rev. Grahams description of scripturally sound Christian attitudes. By ignoring Trumps actions, we appear as hypocrites to the world. We are failing in our primary mission and getting essentially nothing tangible in return.

Doubtless these pleas will fall on deaf ears but they shouldnt, for the consequences really are with potentially catastrophic. Christianity Todays editorial provoked shrill condemnation from many evangelical leaders. Rather than listening, they went on the counterattack,charging that the editorialoffensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.

Joining the attack,Jenna Ellis, the senior legal adviser to Trumps 2020 campaign, came out in defense of all those evangelicals who support Trump and rightly believe he is reflecting the moral values our country was founded upon in a Judeo-Christian ethic. Christianity Today does not, in this instance, speak for most of us.Embed from Getty Images

The evangelical community can carry a weighty impact. Take the issue of climate change. Within the scientific community, there is no doubt that climate change is, to a large extent, the result of human behavior and emissions. Not so among American conservative Christians. The reason is not primarily skepticism with regard to science after all, in 2017,more than a thirdof the American population believed God created the world some 10,000 years ago but the fact that environmentalism is largely viewed as a liberal issue designed to destroy the foundations of American civilization.

In 2014, in North Carolina, the candidate for the Senate publicly denied that human activity was responsible for climate change. He won, with63% of his votersidentifying as evangelicals or born-again Christians. Ninety-five percent of them were white.

The unwavering support of a large majority of white evangelicals is perhaps the most egregious example of the moral corruption and rot that has become the hallmark of the Trump administration. At the same time, it reflects the broader malaise that has gripped significant parts of Americas white population in the face of profound demographic change.

Numbers dont lie: In the middle of the 1970s, 81% of white Americans identified as Christian, 55% as Protestants. Forty years later, white Christians account for less than half of the population, with a mere30% Protestants. In the meantime, Christians are growing older, while an increasing number among the younger generations turn their backs on the Church. In 2012, an unprecedented 30% of American young adults declared themselvesreligiously unaffiliated. The result has been a kind of moral panic, particularly among conservative Protestants, which appears to have made them desperate always an ominous sign. In 2011, less than a third of evangelicals agreed that a politician who commits immoral acts in their private lives can still govern ethically.

Five years later,more than 70% agreed. ForRobert Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, this reflected a dramatic sea change among conservative white Christians, a shift away from their traditional self-understanding as values voters to a sort of nostalgia voters attracted by Trumps promise to restore their churches and faith to power or, asJohn Fea, author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? has noted, to reclaim or restore America to its supposedly Christian roots in order to win the favor of God.

There is a strong affinity between this reactionary vision of returning to greatness and Trumps main campaign slogan, both evoking images of a past where Christianity was central to American life that is, a time before free and equal African Americans, women, sexual minorities and an increasingly other of others.

This article was originally published in Fair Observer

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Trump and the Evangelical Blues - Qrius

Human Behavior

BoJack Horseman Season 7 release? or Is it cancelled? See who decided the end for the show. – Union Journalism

Introduction:

BoJack Horseman is an American animated Comedy series that streams exclusively on Netflix. It is an adult comedy show stars a humanoid horse lost in its booze. The creator of the show is Raphael Bob- Waksberg The show was first aired in August 2014.

The main reason the show gained more attention is that it showcases problems such as racism, depression, anxiety, trauma, mental health problem which is a catchy subject to talk about when comes to human behavior. The show projects Surreal Humour, which engages more audience to watch the show. The series is mainly for adults depicting problems an average human being has. But animatedly and characterizing a humanoid horse instead of an actual human being. The character seems to be very relatable among the youth as it shows the dark side of being an adult and how many untold problems an adult goes through. The show depicts all adults problems like mental problems, panic, anxiety sarcastically, and comically. Adults find the show relieving in a way to watch. Something so relatable and comedy at the same time and forget about all the problems for a specified period.

The show has completed six seasons. Overall in those six seasons, the show has completed 69 episodes. From 2014 to present, they did very well to keep its audience binding to the show and attract for of them. The show. According to Raphael Bob- Waksberg, the creator of the show, Will Arnet, the voice behind the character BoJack Horseman, Arnet himself sometimes creates punches and lines for the character on the show. According to Raphael, Arnet is a great dramatic actor and knows very well how to play in-between emotions. Without Arnet, the success of the would-be less as to what it is now. Said in an interview.

According to the creator, the sixth and final season of the series is divided into two parts. The first half of eight episodes was premiered on Netflix on October 25, 2019, and the second half of the season consisting of eight episodes will be premiered on January 31, 2019.

According to the team, the sixth season was the final season for the show, and there will be no further seasons. Netflix decided to put the show to an end. Hence respecting the decision, the show has come to an end.

Miley Cyrus finally ends Liam Hemsworth split rumours relieving fans

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BoJack Horseman Season 7 release? or Is it cancelled? See who decided the end for the show. - Union Journalism

Human Behavior

EPPD warns drivers after recent string of speed-related crashes – KTSM 9 News

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) In light of a recent string of speed-related crashes, some of them deadly, El Paso Police are urging drivers to slow down.

Police say five of the total six traffic-related deaths in El Paso so far in 2020 have been due to speeding or failure to control speed. Now, theyre urging drivers to be more aware on the road.

As KTSM previously reported, three different car crashes last week resulted in five deaths, police saying all of them are related to speed. Authorities say this is a drastic increase from just one traffic-related death at this time in 2019.

With speed limits usually at 60-miles-per-hour on city highways, EPPD warns drivers they do not need to drive that fast, saying they need to adjust to constantly changing road conditions, such as construction, increased traffic and weather.

You cant expect to drive at the same speed and expect the same results, stopping distances are going to increase, reaction times are also going to increase so you have to drive to the conditions, said Sgt. Enrique Carillo with EPPD.

Police say its not a matter of enforcement, but human behavior. They say they issued more than 40,000 citations last year for speeding.

With Tuesdays rainy weather, EPPD says it was a perfect example of conditions requiring drivers to adjust their speeds and slow down to avoid crashes.

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EPPD warns drivers after recent string of speed-related crashes - KTSM 9 News

Human Behavior

71-Year Old Black Actress Who Made Soap Opera History in the 1980’s Refuses to Retire – BlackNews.com

Nationwide Meet Mariann Aalda, who in the early 1980s made history as one of the first African American actresses to play a professional role as a criminal defense attorney in a major daytime television soap opera. She starred as DiDi Bannister in ABCsEdge of Night, which at the time was watched by more than 10 million viewers daily. Now at 71-years old, she is still acting and shes on a mission to fight ageism and age discrimination.

Watch Her Powerful TEDx Talk:https://www.ted.com/talks/mariann_aalda_ageism_is_a_bully_stand_up_to_it

Aalda comments, Like with racism and sexism, its going to take time, effort and a change of consciousness to totally eliminate ageism, but I think Black women are uniquely equipped to handle it because weve already learned how to navigate our way around the other two. In all words that end in ism, the I-S-M stands for I Subscribe Mentally, but we know how to cancel those subscriptions.

Citing her drive to change the paradigm on women and aging, AARP has recognized Aalda twice as an Age Disruptor, including a 2017 AARP Studios mini-documentary about her reinvention as a standup comic performance artist.

About Marian Aalda

Aside from starring in Edge of Night from 1981 to 1984, her primetime success followed in sitcoms like Designing Women, Family Matters and The Royal Family, and on the big screen as rapper Kids clueless mom in the cult comedy, Class Act. But when roles became scarcer as she got older, she redirected her natural actors curiosity about human behavior and motivation into becoming a hypnotherapist.

Ironically, the positive suggestions she gave her clients prompted Aalda to return to her roots of live performing to become a positive change agent for older women particularly women of color who she saw as getting short shrift in TV and film.

Her life-affirming, solo comedy show, Gettin Old Is a B****But Im Gonna Wrestle That B**** to the Ground! broke a box-office record at the 2019 National Black Theatre Festival which attracts 60,000 visitors to Winston-Salem, NC, every other year.

PRESS CONTACT:Kathy Coley718-869-6343

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71-Year Old Black Actress Who Made Soap Opera History in the 1980's Refuses to Retire - BlackNews.com

Anatomy

Jason George previews Ben’s leadership role in the Station 19-Grey’s Anatomy crossover – Entertainment Weekly News

Jason George previews Ben's leadership role in the Station 19-Grey's Anatomy crossover | EW.com | EW.com Top Navigation Close View image

Jason George previews Ben's leadership role in the Station 19-Grey's Anatomy crossover

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Jason George previews Ben's leadership role in the Station 19-Grey's Anatomy crossover - Entertainment Weekly News

Anatomy

Release Info: Don’t Be Mad x New Balance 992 Anatomy of a Heart – KicksOnFire.com

Get a first look at the upcoming Dont Be Mad x New Balance 992 Anatomy of a Heart collab. Unveiled by Joe Freshgoods (Dont Be Mad owner), this collaborative iteration of the New Balance 992features a mix of Reds, Pinks and Beiges to create the heart inspiration/theme. In true NB fashion, the shoe is constructed out of suede, leader, and mesh. Details include the DBM branding on the tongues as well as three different sets of laces.

The Dont Be Mad x New Balance 992 Anatomy of a Heart will release onFebruary 14th. Stay tuned for more release info.

Available Now on Kixify & eBay

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Release Info: Don't Be Mad x New Balance 992 Anatomy of a Heart - KicksOnFire.com