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Physiology

Fears in dreams prepare you for threats while awake – Science 101

Whats the purpose of dreamsthe experiences we feel while we sleep?

Neuroscience has shown that emotions felt during dreams help us resolve emotional distress and prepare for future affective reactions.

But whether fear in dreams links adaptive responses to threatening signals while we are awake is unclear.

Now, researchers have identified brain regions activated when experiencing fear in dreams. Notably, frightening dreams adjusted the response of these same regions to threatening stimuli during wakefulness.

These findings support that emotions in dreams and wakefulness engage similar brain regions. This physically links emotional processes occurring during sleep and emotional brain functions during wakefulness.

These results lay the groundwork for studying how sleep and dreaming influence therapies for psychological disorders, such as anxiety.

Evidence from human and animal research suggests functional links between sleep and emotional processing. Chronic sleep disruption can lead to increased aggressiveness and negative mood states, whereas affective disorders such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are frequently associated with sleep abnormalities, such as insomnia and nightmares.

Together these findings indicate that sleep physiology may offer a permissive condition for affective information to be reprocessed and reorganized. Yet, it remains unsettled whether such emotion regulation processes also happen at the subjective, experiential level during sleep, and maybe expressed in dreams.

Researchers have proposed that memories from a persons affective history are replayed in the virtual and safe environment of the dream so that they can be reorganized.

From a neuroscience perspective, one key principle of these models is that experiencing emotions in dreams implicates the same brain circuits as in wakefulness.

Like during wakefulness, people experience a large variety of emotions in their dreams. For example, rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming being usually more emotionally loaded than nonrapid eye movement (NREM) dreams.

While some studies found negative emotions like fear and anxiety in dreams, other studies reported a balance of positive and negative emotions or found that joy and emotions related to approach behaviors may prevail.

When analyzing large data sets of dream reports, a clear disconnection between dreams containing basic, mostly fearrelated emotions and dreams with other more social emotionssuch as embarrassment, excitement, and frustrationwas found. This highlights the distinct dream modes, with fear in dreams representing a prevalent and biologicallyrelevant emotional category.

So, if fearcontaining dreams serve an emotion regulation function, the stronger the recruitment of fearresponsive brain regionsthe amygdala, cingulate cortex, and insuladuring dreaming, the weaker the response of these same regions to actual feareliciting stimuli during wakefulness should be.

This regulatory mechanism may also be followed by enhanced recruitment of brain regions linked to regulating emotions during wakefulness, like the medial prefrontal cortex implicated in fear extinction.

Researchers had recently reported that specific dream contentssuch as faces, places, movement, speech, and thoughtsengage similar brain networks during wakefulness.

Yet two major questions remained. First, do emotions in dreamsin particular, fearrelated emotionsengage the same neural circuits as during wakefulness? Second, is there a link between emotions experienced in dreams and brain responses to emotional stimuli during wakefulness?

In a recent study, researchers collected dream reports and functional brain measures using imaging technology with sufficient accuracy for the detection of the signal originating from deep brain structures.

Here, for the first time, researchers have shown that fearrelated experiences activated the same brain region during both dreaming and awake consciousness.

This region, the insula, is thought to contribute to the social-emotional experience and linked visceral states, possibly giving rise to conscious feelings. The insula also participates in the emotional response to distressing thoughts or gut feelings.

Insula activation during dreaming could, therefore, reflect the integration of internally generated sensory, affective, and bodily information culminating in a subjective feeling of danger.

REM sleep is characterized by activation across brain regions linked to sensation and movement. Also, REM sleep is characterized by paralysis in muscle preventing movement. So, this sleep stage provides a proper condition for the activation of threatening situations with linked emotional and motor reactions.

During REM sleep, the researchers also found activation of a brain region critically involved in responses to dangers.

After finding the brain regions linking fear in dreams and wakefulness, the researchers then asked whether frequently experiencing fear in dreams might affect sensitivity to fear during wakefulness. They found decreased activity in the insula and amygdala, both associated with fear and the perception of negative emotions during wakefulness.

Conversely, activity was increased in the regions thought to regulate the response to threatening stimuli by modulating the activity of the fear-linked amygdala. Precisely, the medial prefrontal cortex prevents expressing fear by decreasing the amygdala output.

On top of that, the medial prefrontal cortex has been linked with extinction learningwhen a neutral conditioned stimulus that previously predicted an aversive unconditioned stimulus no longer does so and the conditioned response subsequently decreases.

Consistent with the suggestion that dreaming may regulate emotion, participants who frequently but not excessively experienced frightening dreams showed a stronger inhibition of the amygdala. This may be mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex.

This interpretation is further supported by the results showing that participants who frequently reported fear in their dreams had reduced autonomic responses to aversive stimuli during wakefulness. In total, this suggests a better ability to regulate defensive and alerting reactions to threatening signals in those individuals.

Contrasting with this potentially beneficial role of negative but benign dreams, recurrent nightmares could represent a failure of the fear extinction function of dreaming. So, patients with nightmares, like those with PTSD, would be more prone to emotional dysregulation.

Besides, exerting ineffective emotional regulation strategies, like fear suppression, and elevated anxiety during wakefulness may lead to increased excitability of negativelyloaded memories at sleeponset or even during sleep. Such disruption in the regulation of emotions during wakefulness and sleep has been proposed as a major contributing factor to insomnia.

The findings in this study show that, beyond sleeping, experiencing negative emotions during dreaming is linked to betteradapted emotional responses during waking life.

The researchers show opposing neural effects of fear experience in dreams and during wakefulness. These results show that individuals who reported a high prevalence of fearrelated emotions in their dreams had stronger fear inhibition during wakefulness.

These results also support claims that dreaming beyond sleep benefits emotion regulation processes by achieving overnight recalibration to foster adapted emotional responses to dangerous reallife events.

Studying the role of positive emotions like positive social interactions in dreams and their potential links with emotional brain responses during wakefulness may be needed to further refine existing models.

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Fears in dreams prepare you for threats while awake - Science 101

Physiology

University of Birmingham academics, honorary graduates and alumni in New Year Honours – University of Birmingham

Buckingham Palace, London

University of Birmingham academics Professor Kalwant Bhopal, Professor John Nolan and Dr Melrose Stewart have been named in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to race equality in education, construction and physiotherapy.

Former chief medical officer for England Professor Dame Sally Davies has been appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath for services to public health and research, whilst Birmingham Royal Ballet former director David Bintley receives a KBE for services to dance both are honorary graduates of the University.

Birmingham alumnus Professor Leslie Brent, whose research work helped pave the way for organ transplantation, has received an MBE for his work around Holocaust commemoration.

Professor of education and social justice Kalwant Bhopal becomes an MBE. Director of the Universitys Centre for Research in Race and Education, Professor Bhopal's research focuses on the achievements and experiences of minority ethnic groups in education.

Professor Bhopal has conducted research into the lives of Black minority ethnic groups, as well as Gypsies and Travellers. Her research explores how processes of racism, exclusion and marginalisation operate - being used to inform policy making in higher education, particularly development of the Race Equality Charter mark.

Professor John Nolan receives the CBE for services to structural engineering and the construction industry. A visiting Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, John Nolan has over 40 years experience in the construction industry - starting as a labourer, followed by working as a contractors engineer and then as a consulting engineer.

Dr. Melrose Stewart has been awarded an MBE. She appeared in an expert role in the Channel 4 TV programme, Old Peoples Home for 4 year Olds and delivered a TEDx talk entitled Connecting Generations for Healthy Ageing.

A former Vice-President of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), Dr. Stewart lectures in physiotherapy at the University. She has a keen interest in the development of the subject within physiotherapy education and professional practice.

Throughout her career, Dr. Stewart has consistently promoted diversity issues and was instrumental in setting up a network group within the CSP for ethnic minority members to raise awareness of discrimination.

Born in Birmingham, Professor Dame Sally Davies was awarded an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree by the University in 2008. Dame Sally is UK Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) a particular research strength at the University of Birmingham.

She was Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK government from March 2011 to September 2019.

Professor Leslie Brent, 94, was born in Germany but ferried to England on the first Kindertransport, becoming a British citizen and enrolling at the University of Birmingham.

Mr Brent has for many years returned to Berlin to speak to school children about his experiences. He spoke at Westminster Abbey on the anniversary of Kristallnacht and at the Quakers 80th Kindertransport anniversary event in London.

A Birmingham zoology graduate, Mr Brents early work in immunology helped pave the way for organ transplantation. In the early 1950s, he began working with Sir Peter Medawar and, along with biologist Rupert Billingham, started carrying out the research that would lead to Sir Peter winning the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

University of Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood commented: We are proud that the achievements of our academics, honorary graduates and alumni have been recognised in the latest New Years Honours. These individuals have made outstanding contributions to society and thoroughly deserve the accolades bestowed upon them.

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University of Birmingham academics, honorary graduates and alumni in New Year Honours - University of Birmingham

Physiology

How do plants tell the time? – The John Innes Centre

Dr Antony Dodd joined the John Innes Centre from the University of Bristol towards the end of 2019.

With his research covering circadian rhythm and signalling in plants, we asked him how do plants tell the time and, if they have a circadian rhythm, whether plants suffer from jet lag?

Yes, plants can suffer from jet lag. If you were to fly a plant from China to London, that plants circadian rhythm would be temporarily incorrect for the time zone. The evidence we have suggests that plants are much better than mammals at readjusting their internal body clocks to their local time zone, so they get back in-sync much more quickly than we do.

Circadian rhythms are what our bodies and many other living organisms use to measure the passage of time in order to co-ordinate their daily responses to the environment around them.

My lab studies the circadian rhythms of plants, because they affect a number of important factors in plant performance; things like growth rates, seasonal flowering and the accumulation of various chemicals like starch are all controlled by the plants internal circadian clock. Understanding how these clocks work and the signalling pathways connecting a plants circadian rhythm and the rest of the organism are therefore important on both a fundamental level but can also be applied to improving crops.

The genes that encode the circadian clock in plants have a lot of commonality between plant species, and most of the key underpinning work to understand the circadian clocks in plants has been done on the model species Arabidopsis. We are now beginning to learn more about circadian rhythms in crop species and is becoming apparent that, while there are lots of similarities, there are some important differences as well.

Recently, we had a significant breakthrough when we were able to show that a plants circadian rhythm can affect the responses of plants to some herbicides that are very commonly used in agriculture. The paper; Plant circadian rhythms regulate the effectiveness of a glyphosate-based herbicide was published in Nature last year and we are now building on that work.

Other things we are interested in at the moment include the signalling pathways between a plants circadian clock and those areas of that plants physiology that are controlled by that clock, such as photosynthesis and the plants responses to environmental stress. We would like to understand the communication that happens between those aspects of the lives of plants.

We are also interested in how circadian rhythms function in natural environments. Currently, most of the work in this area has been done in the lab under tightly controlled conditions, so we are currently collaborating with the Professor Hiroshi Kudoh lab in Kyoto to conduct field studies of circadian rhythms in naturally fluctuating conditions.

Throughout my life I have been really fortunate to meet a number of really inspiring people, that have led me to pursue different paths.

When I was an Undergraduate at Newcastle University, one of my lecturers was Professor Howard Griffiths, who was a fantastic lecturer and was at the time working on a specific type of photosynthesis known as CAM which is found in cacti and other succulents and allows them to open their stomata at night. This in-turn allows them to conserve lots of water and survive in the arid conditions, they are famous for thriving in. A key feature of CAM photosynthesis is the strict timing that governs when different processes can occur and different types of enzymes can be active, all of which relies on circadian rhythms. I was hooked.

During my PhD I worked in his lab and became increasingly interested in how circadian rhythms control metabolism and signalling. I then became a Postdoc in the Professor Alex Webb lab in Cambridge that looked at circadian rhythms of signalling. This led me to the question I work on now; how can plants tell the time?

It is something we see all around us. For example, it was documented by Charles Darwin who recorded that plants shifted the positions of their leaves during the day, which he described in a book that he wrote called The Power of Movement in Plants.

Outside the lab, I love hiking particularly mountain hiking. Norfolk doesnt quite offer that, so I am really keen to head down to South America and hike there in the future. Back at home, I have recently started growing vegetables, particularly pumpkins. I am fascinated by the amazing variety of form and the diversity of the fruit you can get.

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How do plants tell the time? - The John Innes Centre

Genetics

The Face of Science – Clemson World magazine

That next day, Drake preferred sleeping over eating. But then, thats common with newborns. Tarah and Eric would wake him for feeding, careful to make sure he got plenty of nourishment.

By Saturday, these experienced parents became uneasy. Drake was just too lethargic. It was harder to wake him for feedings. The OSullivans called Drakes doctor and were assured there was nothing to be concerned about; Drake had been healthy when he left the hospital two days ago. And, the doctors office assured them, they would be checking him again on Monday at a scheduled office visit.

But the OSullivans disquiet grew by the hour. By Sunday evening, Drake would not open his eyes or respond to them. He was growing limp and struggling to breathe. The OSullivans rushed Drake to the hospital where the staff flew into emergency mode. Too sick for care at the local hospital, Drake was stabilized for transport to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Greenville Memorial Hospital. Just 72 hours after birth, Drake lapsed into a coma. And no one knew why.

That unforgettable night was the beginning of a long journey of test after test and a diagnosis by elimination.

Drake continued to decline as each negative test pushed aside another horrible possibility. You would think that eliminating terrible diseases would be a good thing, says Eric. But that just meant we were looking at something very rare.

Finally, blood tests revealed an ever-elevating level of glycine in Drakes blood, a symptom of an extremely rare, genetic metabolic disease called nonketotic hyperglycinemia or NKH.

The words nonketotic hyperglycinemia meant nothing to Tarah and Eric. But the next words were clear: Drake had a less than 10 percent chance of survival.

The diagnosis was like a starters pistol for the OSullivans. From that moment, everything would be a race against time to save Drake.

After 28 days of tests, monitors, tubes and wires, Drake was released to go home. There, as Tarah explains, Our house became a sort of lab. There were blood tests, feedings, medications and monitoring day and night, 24/7. Glycine became the OSullivans obsession as they tried desperately through medication and diet to moderate Drakes levels. They began to search for information, research, treatment, medical advice anything to save his life.

The OSullivans contacted anyone who might know about NKH, have a related research project or could tell them more. They learned that NKH affects fewer than 500 people worldwide and has no cure. There was no research underway, and no funding for research. And because there is no medically recognized cure for NKH, all treatments are considered experimental and not covered by medical insurance. Period.

So Tarah became a lay scientist. She read everything, called and emailed medical researchers and established the Drake Rayden Foundation to raise awareness for NKH, fight for better treatment and support research. She entered a world of genetics and vectors, glycine and metabolic pathways. Tarah had quit college just shy of completing her business degree. Now she desperately needed the scientific expertise that would help her understand the disease and find the cure.

Tarah decided to return to college.

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The Face of Science - Clemson World magazine

Genetics

A Note On Genetics Generation Advancement Corp.s (GTSM:4160) ROE and Debt To Equity – Simply Wall St

While some investors are already well versed in financial metrics (hat tip), this article is for those who would like to learn about Return On Equity (ROE) and why it is important. Well use ROE to examine Genetics Generation Advancement Corp. (GTSM:4160), by way of a worked example.

Our data shows Genetics Generation Advancement has a return on equity of 5.7% for the last year. One way to conceptualize this, is that for each NT$1 of shareholders equity it has, the company made NT$0.06 in profit.

Check out our latest analysis for Genetics Generation Advancement

The formula for return on equity is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) Shareholders Equity

Or for Genetics Generation Advancement:

5.7% = NT$20m NT$352m (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)

Its easy to understand the net profit part of that equation, but shareholders equity requires further explanation. It is all earnings retained by the company, plus any capital paid in by shareholders. You can calculate shareholders equity by subtracting the companys total liabilities from its total assets.

ROE looks at the amount a company earns relative to the money it has kept within the business. The return is the profit over the last twelve months. That means that the higher the ROE, the more profitable the company is. So, all else being equal, a high ROE is better than a low one. Clearly, then, one can use ROE to compare different companies.

One simple way to determine if a company has a good return on equity is to compare it to the average for its industry. Importantly, this is far from a perfect measure, because companies differ significantly within the same industry classification. The image below shows that Genetics Generation Advancement has an ROE that is roughly in line with the Biotechs industry average (5.7%).

That isnt amazing, but it is respectable. ROE doesnt tell us if the share price is low, but it can inform us to the nature of the business. For those looking for a bargain, other factors may be more important. If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Companies usually need to invest money to grow their profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the first two cases, the ROE will capture this use of capital to grow. In the latter case, the use of debt will improve the returns, but will not change the equity. Thus the use of debt can improve ROE, albeit along with extra risk in the case of stormy weather, metaphorically speaking.

Shareholders will be pleased to learn that Genetics Generation Advancement has not one iota of net debt! So although its ROE isnt that impressive, we shouldnt judge it harshly on that metric, because it didnt use debt. After all, with cash on the balance sheet, a company has a lot more optionality in good times and bad.

Return on equity is one way we can compare the business quality of different companies. In my book the highest quality companies have high return on equity, despite low debt. If two companies have around the same level of debt to equity, and one has a higher ROE, Id generally prefer the one with higher ROE.

But ROE is just one piece of a bigger puzzle, since high quality businesses often trade on high multiples of earnings. Profit growth rates, versus the expectations reflected in the price of the stock, are a particularly important to consider. Check the past profit growth by Genetics Generation Advancement by looking at this visualization of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Of course Genetics Generation Advancement may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have high ROE and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.

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A Note On Genetics Generation Advancement Corp.s (GTSM:4160) ROE and Debt To Equity - Simply Wall St

Human Behavior

Editorial: New Year’s wishes for the 2020s – Los Angeles Times

The 2020s begin today, arriving at a time of increasingly bitter political rancor a disturbing state of affairs that we hope will give way soon to the better angels of our nature. But thats hardly our only aspiration after the tumultuous 2010s, which began with the country still reeling from the Great Recession and ended with three years of spectacularly divisive leadership from President Trump. In no particular order, heres our wish list for how things might be improved during the decade ahead, if we resolve to change them:

A radical transformation in the way we produce and consume power, along with an end to our reliance on fossil fuels. This is more than just a wish; the world has known for years that human behavior is imperiling the habitability of the Earth.

A return to respect and comity, not just in politics, but in how we handle all our disagreements. We hope as well that all Americans recognize that there are such things as facts, and they should be indisputable.

A realization by the various generations of Americans that were not rival interest groups with little in common. OK, boomer? OK, millennial?

For the sake of the planet and for Los Angeles embattled commuters, a public transit renaissance in which Angelenos can leave their cars behind and enjoy fast, convenient and comfortable rides on new rail lines (especially the infamously clogged 405 corridor) and on buses that travel in their own traffic-free lanes.

A complete, global shift away from disposable plastic to packaging thats fully recyclable or compostable.

2028 Olympic Games that leave Los Angeles in the best financial and physical condition of its life.

A recognition that our support of diversity should include not just diversity of race, gender, social class and sexual orientation, but diversity of viewpoint as well.

Access to affordable healthcare in the United States as a human right. Once we embrace that idea as a society, the solutions will flow from there.

A coordinated effort by policymakers, educators, business owners and labor leaders to prepare Americans for widespread automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace, so that the technological advances of the 2020s help rather than replace employees, and ultimately make work safer and more productive.

Public schools, colleges and universities in California that are funded at a level that allows them to produce students ready for the next generation of work. The era of nickel-and-diming public education in this state needs to end.

A Chinese government that respects human rights, the dignity of the individual and the commitments it made (but routinely ignores) to abide by World Trade Organization rules. That country must stop abusing the Uighur population in western China and trampling on the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.

A California housing building boom, with lots of new homes in all shapes and sizes and prices so Californians of all income levels can find and afford to put a reliable roof over their heads. Political leaders at all levels of state government need to rally behind real solutions, rather than clinging to housing and zoning policies that have failed.

Corporate C-suites and boards of directors that reflect the gender and ethnic diversity of the U.S. itself.

Homeless and low-income Angelenos, keys in hand, walking into the 10,000 units of housing that Los Angeles voters helped finance through Proposition HHH. While were at it, how about cutting the number of people falling into homeless each day in Los Angeles from 150 to zero?

An end to federal and state policies that enable or, in some cases, promote the concentration of wealth. Once the land of the upwardly mobile, the United States has become a land of near-stagnant median incomes and intergenerational poverty, despite a steadily growing economy.

An end to the death penalty, which no civilized society should inflict on itself.

An electric grid in California that no longer causes wildfires or relies on massive preventive blackouts to deliver power safely.

A long-term fix for the looming shortfall in funding for Social Security benefits. Longer lifespans and an aging population are combining to threaten Social Security benefits for future generations, and the longer policymakers wait to fix the problem, the harder it will be to solve.

An end to the terrorizing of the Rohingya Muslims by the government of Myanmar, whose security forces have burned villages, committed mass murder and raped civilians, according to human rights groups.

An end to the forever wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan and the Korean peninsula.

U.S. elections free of both voter suppression and voter apathy.

A solution to the unsustainable growth in college debt. The heavy burden of this debt is distorting peoples career choices and slowing the economy.

Comprehensive immigration reforms that secure the countrys borders while providing a path to legal residency for people who have been living in the shadows for a decade or more.

Sensible and workable approaches to gun control, including banning combat-style firearms for civilian use. With Congress approving $25 million in funding for gun safety research, and the National Rifle Assn. reeling from external investigations and internal turmoil, were hoping the tide has finally turned.

An end to the stalemate between Israelis and Palestinians that has left the once-promising two-state solution moribund and the century-old conflict as far from resolution as ever.

A reversal of the habitat destruction and other forces that have threatened the existence of orangutans, vaquita porpoises, western lowland gorillas and other endangered species.

A new determination to lift more people out of poverty in this land of plenty. That means finding and funding programs that work, rather than cutting holes in the safety net and expecting those who fall out to land on their feet.

Ratification, at long last, of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

A Russian government that abandons Vladimir Putins military expansionism and intrusive meddling in foreign elections, choosing instead to be a responsible player on the world stage.

An end to the politically expedient attacks on American public servants. There is no deep state, nor any vast conspiracy of government employees determined to make their elected leaders fail.

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Editorial: New Year's wishes for the 2020s - Los Angeles Times

Human Behavior

Emotional Intelligence Is The Skill We Need For The Future – The Good Men Project

When artificial intelligence becomes a major part of society, emotional intelligence is going to be much more important for humans.

As technology advances exponentially, our human minds only progress linearly, which means the gap between people and technology will only increase. How will humans keep up?

One thing we can do is increase our emotional intelligence. As artificial intelligence is already automating most of our monotonous and repetitive tasks (e.g. data entry/analysis, audio transcription, email marketing, bartending, vacuum cleaners, autonomous vehicles, etc), humans will need to become more competitive by creating solutions to the more complex problems that require creativity or insight on human behavior.

Humans are social, emotional beings and we will always have to interact with each other in some capacity, even when technology might be doing most of it for us. Humans will always need each other, so we will need the skills to be able to develop ourselves and our relationships productively.

Unfortunately, were already seeing how technology has been disconnecting us from each other, creating siloed camps of thought, perspectives, and beliefs. We see people who prefer to scroll through their phones at dinner rather than become curious about their company. We see people not able to handle their emotions to discuss sensitive topics. We see how convenience have fueled the introverted side of us, where our cravings can be satisfied with delivery services and instant access to a less fulfilling version of social connection.

This makes the understanding of our individuality that much more important because our emotions heavily influence how we think, behave, and communicate with one another. If you allow your emotions to fluster you, youre more likely to react poorly to that co-worker, your parents, even yourself, harming your relationships and self-regard. And if your instinct is to then retreat or suppress, life will start feeling shallow and unfulfilling.

This is not meant to sound anti-technology. In modern society, its unrealistic to completely avoid technology. Doing so actually puts you at a competitive disadvantage, where those around you would be able to learn, create, and connect more efficiently than if they didnt have these tools. But moving forward, it would benefit us to also look at the effectiveness of technology, as well as its impact on mental and emotional well-being. We need to start thinking about how to use tech with intention rather than allowing it to consume us, both socially and professionally.

Technology is a tool that has been augmenting human performance and progress for centuries. A farmer would not be able to plant her crops efficiently enough to produce enough revenue to support her family if she didnt even have a shovel. To be even more effective, she could upgrade to a tractor, optimizing the farm and giving her time to spend with her family.

When given the opportunity, everyone would choose to save time. Instinctively, we know that time is our most precious resource. Its the only currency that we cant get back. And it makes sense that we want to automate as much as we could, especially the menial tasks that are unfulfilling or cause burn out.

This is the key perspective shift. Automation exists to help us perform certain tasks more efficiently, freeing up time for us to engage in other, more meaningful parts of not just our jobs but our personal lives, the more human parts. Talking to people, being creative/experimental, producing something, exercising, being of service to others, volunteering, spending time with loved ones, staying active in hobbies.

The crucial ingredient to those human parts of life is emotional intelligence (which Ive defined here for you). When we get out of the mindset of scarcity and basic survival mode, well have the physical and mental space to explore deeper. We can then go from stagnation to thriving, taking full advantage of what the human experience has to offer. And the first step is being honest with how youre feeling.

Emotional intelligence is more than being smart with our emotions, or being touchy-feely. Its about understanding who we are at a deeper level and what powers us so that we can show up as our unique and best self to the people around us.

Many people will prioritize acquiring the hard skills needed to perform the job, or the perfect body and looks to impress people on the outside. But not everyone goes through the more intangible, deep, personal work of understanding who they are, how they want to align their interests, skills, and values, and how that all fits into that business or relationship.

That emotional intelligence is what makes you stand apart from the technological future. Its what makes you more human than the future human and robot drones. Every human is unique. Only you have the skills, the training, the practice, the experience, the history, the upbringing, the relationships, the resources, the interest, the gumption to do what you do. It will be different than your siblings, your parents, your co-worker, your boss, that random social media personality you scrolled past.

But you cant find that uniqueness, you have to create it. And you create it by getting a better understanding of how you feel and how thats affecting your habits and behavior.

Besides time, its safe to say that most humans value relationships over anything else. In the end, we can acquire all the knowledge, money, and toys in the world, but it doesnt mean much when we cant share it with anyone.

Theres something satisfying about natural human connection. We can interact with people all day on social media, for example, but for many of us, it isnt as fulfilling as a deep conversation with a good friend in-person.

As technology becomes even more ubiquitous than it already is, there wont be as many opportunities to have these meaningful interactions. Which means the muscle for authentic social and emotional connection will atrophy.

To train that muscle, we have to practice sitting with what we feel. It might be easy and convenient to distract ourselves from any negative emotion that comes up, like boredom, anger, sadness, stress, but we have to learn to stretch those emotions so that we can better understand their stories and validity. Having better emotional self-awareness will help us have better relationships with ourselves, which will then create better relationships with others. When we have a healthy grip on our emotions, as well as the empathy to understand those of others, it will become that much easier to foster the relationships that we want in our lives

The technology has the potential to do so much for us. Its now our responsibility to make the most of it.

Previously published here and reprinted with the authors permission.

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Emotional Intelligence Is The Skill We Need For The Future - The Good Men Project

Human Behavior

Five Different Types of Psychology and What They Mean – The Good Men Project

Psychology is the field that teaches us about how human beings act and the reasons for those actions. Its the study of human behavior, and it helps us understand ourselves on a deeper level. But did you know that there are different types of psychology? When we think of psychology, we might think about learning about different kinds of mental health disorders. But there are so many different types of psychology out there. In this article, were going to examine five different types of psychology that you may not know about, and you can learn more.

Clinical psychology deals with science and handling psychological issues. Its also called psychotherapy or counseling. Clinical psychologists diagnose and treat mental health disorders. They also perform research and find ways to help us learn more in-depth about human behavior. A clinical psychologist does not prescribe medication to clients, but they utilize various psychological techniques. They might practice a kind of behavior therapy or psychoanalysis. Typically clinical psychologists hold a Ph.D., and they may see clients in a private practice setting. If theyre not working in prior practice, they will be conducting psychological research or testing, and you may find them working at universities teaching psychology to students.

Biopsychology examines the brain and how it influences the way that we think and feel its a combination of neuroscience and clinical psychology. We know so little about the brain, and we are learning more every day. Biopsychologists focus on the mind-body connection. They want to understand how our brains influence our emotions and cognitive processes. They can be found researching to understand how our brains are impacting our daily functioning and our emotional life. Biopsychologists may become neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists, or comparative psychologists.

Experimental psychologists are like detectives. They work to understand the underlying causes of human behavior. They often work in laboratories and conduct research. They study humans and animals and understand their subjects by creating various trials. They focused a lot on evolution and understanding the significance behind certain types of human behavior. As the term would suggest, they perform a lot of experiments. Experimental psychologists Are a bit like philosophers. They study theoretical topics and work to understand our perceptions, memories, and cognitive processes. Some experimental psychologist hyper-focused on one question and spend years researching that hypothesis. This is one of the fields that focuses heavily on research.

Educational psychology explores human behavior in an educational environment. These clinicians analyze learning disabilities and actions that can be problematic in the teen years. Educational psychologists focus primarily on a younger age group, such as children and adolescents. You can find them conducting assessments in various settings. Some educational psychologists work in preschools, some of them work in community centers, as private consultants, or in college environments. Many educational psychologists work with children on a one on one basis. They can also involve the parents as well as the teachers in their treatment plans.

Social psychologists focus on people that live in a community. They are similar to a sociologist. They explore how people within a community are interdependent on one another. They focus on political issues and environmental factors. Social psychologists rely on the scientific method. They focus on gaining empirical evidence for their hypotheses. This type of mental health professional studies how human behavior is caused or affected by the community around them. They take into account social and cultural norms.

Psychology is a fascinating field. It is the study of human behavior, and it has many sub-specialty is. Whether you are an educational psychologist or a clinical psychologist, youre still studying the way that humans think and act. Another way to gain insight into your behavior is to go to therapy or counseling. Whether you see a counselor in your local area or try online therapy, you can better understand your motivations by going to therapy.

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Five Different Types of Psychology and What They Mean - The Good Men Project

Human Behavior

After 20 Years of Trading, You Learn That You Actually Know Nothing – Newsmax

You ever notice rhat some memories tend to be stronger than others?

What sort of things do you remember?

You remember events in your life that had a lot of feelings associated with them.

You remember the death of your pet like it was yesterday. All the nights spent sitting on the couch watching "Wheel Of Fortune" i ts just a blur.

Researchers have studied this in rats. They found that rats remembered things better if they experienced a rush of adrenaline.

In those moments with strong memories, it feels like time slows down. Time doesnt actually slow down time is linear. But human beings experience time as flexible. Time also speeds up when things are boring.

Im fond of saying that all of finance, or at least the interesting part, is about human behavior. I find the daily fluctuations of stocks and credit spreads less interesting the older I get. And I think finance is more depraved the older I get. But the human behavior part fascinates me.

Millers Planet

The fact that time stretches and compresses isnt news to anyone whos traded options.

In the world of options, time and volatility work in opposite directions. As time passes, options decay. As volatility increases, options increase in value. All stuff you learned in class.

But if you think about it, volatility increasing is another way of saying that theres a lot of s--- going on. Things are crazy. Options increase in valuewhich is really like saying that time is slowing down.

Which is exactly how we experience it. Of all my days trading on Wall Street, what are the times that I remember most? The financial crisis, naturally. There was a lot of adrenaline associated with that.

We all have strong memories of it. And while we experienced it, it seemed like time was slowing down which was reflected in options prices. They were the highest in recorded history.

Finance is simply human behavior.

If I think back over the last 10 years, what do I remember?

All the crazy times. Nobody remembers the stuff in between. Old-timers like me remember all the way back to 1997 and 1998, with the Asian Financial Crisis and LTCM and the Russian debt default. Its the accidents that help us mark our time in the markets.

Perspective

We all perceive things differently. As I just demonstrated, we all perceive time differently.

We also might perceive color differently we just dont know. There is no way to know that the red I see is the red you see.

We all have different perspectives, especially when it comes to financial markets. I might find a stock attractive that you find unattractive. Happens all the time.

A lot of financial analysis is searching for some objective truth in the markets. This is what the value people try to do. They try to identify the correct value of a security and then buy it if its underpriced.

But there really is no objective truth in finance just a set of ever-changing perspectives.

Some examples:

Target is up over 90%, year to date:

Is Targets business 90% better? Is it earning 90% more revenue? Of course not more people find the stock attractive and fewer find it unattractive.

Pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers is up 48% in the last couple of months:

Again, is their business 50% better? No.

People have created several models to explain stock market behavior. Keyness beauty pageant is at the top of the list. I will always catch a beauty pageant if its on TV. The goal isnt picking the most attractive contestant. Its picking the contestant that the judges will find most attractive. Its a great exercise.

But I dont think thats the right model.

I came up with my own model and gave it to the world on the Bloomberg Opinion page. You can read about it here. But I feel like its incomplete, too.

Sentiment also plays a role big turning points are always at sentiment extremes.

Im not sure what the answer is or if there even is an answer. I think about it all the time. People smarter than me spend even more time thinking about it.

Maybe there is no Grand Unified Theory maybe there are regimes in the financial markets, and sometimes some things work and sometimes other things work.

Maybe the rules change all the time and there is nothing we can do about it.

I am not even sure buy-and-hold and dollar-cost averaging will work going forward.

And thats what you learn when you have 20 years of experience that you actually know nothing.

That said, one thing I do know is that the adrenaline rush reckless traders get throwing money at hot stocks is not something to aspire to. Its much better to even out your odds with a diversified, balanced portfolio and a long-term view.

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Jared Dillian writes The 10th Man, a free weekly newsletter for contrarian investors. Every Thursday, he delivers a torpedo of incisive commentary that crushes consensus thinking and exposes the true workings of Mr. Market. Subscribe now!

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After 20 Years of Trading, You Learn That You Actually Know Nothing - Newsmax

Human Behavior

Anne Dagg, pioneering giraffe biologist and feminist critic of "evolutionary psychology" receives the Order of Canada – Boing Boing

Anne Innis Dagg was the first female biologist to study giraffes; while all the men who preceded her had observed firsthand that male giraffes are super queer (their primary form of play is a game dubbed "penis fencing," which is exactly what it sounds like), only Dagg was willing to write it down and publish it.

Dagg's work on giraffes -- several of the seminal books on the animals -- was initially mocked or ignored, partly because of her pioneering approach of living among the animals (as opposed to observing them at a distance) offended the establishment; partly because of her gender.

Though Dagg earned a PhD and taught for decades, she was denied tenure. She continued to produce challenging, brave, brilliant work at the intersection of biology and gender politics, ranging over both scholarly and popular works. In particular, she specialized in pointing out the lack of rigor in her male colleagues' work when discussing sex and gender among animals, and how that spilled over into the way the field was organized, and gender bias within research institutions and in research publishing.

Her 2004 book, Love of Shopping is Not a Gene, is an absolute must-read book on the subject, addressing the total absence of rigor and falsifiability in hypotheses from male biologists to explain human gender and power roles with reference to animal behavior and/or the imaginary lives of early hominids -- howlers like "Rape is genetic" or "Black people are genetically destined to have lower IQ scores than white people."

These comforting fairy tales (I always think of them as being reducible to, "But honey, it's not my fault I'm fucking my undergrads, it's because of the chimps!") are especially in vogue today, as white nationalists, plutocrats (and their bootlickers), and other advocates for gross inequality and population-scale subjugation seek to justify their ideology by claiming that it is biologically determined, and any attempt to change it is literally unnatural. Exhibit A for this is Jordan Peterson, whose obsession with a single species of lobsters is the founding myth of a transphobic, misogynist cult.

Dagg anticipated this debate decades in advance and repeatedly demolished its arguments for anyone who would listen, wielding science to slice through the self-serving bullshit of mediocre thinkers who want so desperately for their privilege to be the result of a biological process and not their own sociopathy.

Despite organized campaigns to marginalize Dagg and her work, she never gave up and was hugely influential on all kinds of scholars and thinkers. She was my own undergrad advisor at the University of Waterloo's Independent Studies program, and was an excellent mentor to me there. More broadly, she inspired generations of largely female giraffe biologists (I just met a giraffe keeper at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom who was a fan!), serving as a mentor and inspiration.

Dagg just received the Order of Canada, the second-highest honor awarded to Canadians (after the Order of Merit). The honor comes on the heels of The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, a documentary on Dagg's life and work.

wonderful news, seriously. Dagg is such a clear, uncompromising advocate for a rigorous approach to biology both as a means of understanding other animals and as a means for understand humans -- and is such a strong tonic against those who would abuse this tool for making sense of human behavior and social organization -- and she has accepted her marginalization as the price for her commitment to the truth.

Anne Dagg, Queen of Giraffes, appointed to Order of Canada among recipients with global influence [Stephanie Levitz/The National Post]

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Anne Dagg, pioneering giraffe biologist and feminist critic of "evolutionary psychology" receives the Order of Canada - Boing Boing