Most Saturdays we post a curated collection of notable news and awesome articles from the week. But with the year nearing its end, this Saturday and next well curate 2019 as a whole. First, in this post, well take a look at the years top articles from Singularity Hub, and next week well post some of our favorite writing from around the web.

The year was a bit of a rollercoaster. We got the Impossible Whopper, an advanced robot dog called Spot, a word processor for gene editing, and the first image of a black hole. We also marked the dubious anniversary of the first genetically modified babies, scientists called for a global moratorium on germline engineering, and big tech continued to face a backlash from within and without. Machine learning algorithms beat top players in multiplayer video games, and a former world champion in the game of Go retired, saying AI cannot be defeated. Meanwhile, prominent AI researchers suggested deep learning is fast approaching its limits.

The most popular articles on Singularity Hub looked ahead to the future of work and the end of Moores Law (and whats coming next), surveyed the augmented reality and virtual reality landscape, and covered quick progress in neuroscience, biotech, and medicine.

AI Will Create Millions More Jobs Than It Will Destroy. Heres HowByron ReeseSome fear that as AI improves, it will supplant workers, creating an ever-growing pool of unemployable humans who cannot compete economically with machines. This concern, while understandable, is unfounded. In fact, AI will be the greatest job engine the world has ever seen.

5 Discoveries That Made 2018 a Huge Year for NeuroscienceShelly Fan2018 was when neuroscience made the impossible possible. Here are five neuroscience findings from 2018 that still blow our minds as we kick off the new year. [Note: Be sure to check out this years list too2019 was another fascinating year for brain science.]

Wait, What? The First Human-Monkey Hybrid Embryo Was Just Created in ChinaShelly FanThe morality and ethics of growing human-animal hybrids are far from clear. What is clear, however, is that when it comes to human-animal chimeras, lines are being set, pushed, crossed, and crossed again.

The Worlds Most Valuable AI Companies, and What Theyre Working OnPeter Rejcekthe startups working on many of these AI technologies have seen their proverbial stock rise. More than 30of these companies are now valued at over a billion dollars, according to data research firm CB Insights, which itself employs algorithms to provide insights into the tech business world.

5 Breakthroughs Coming Soon in Augmented and Virtual RealityPeter Diamandis, MDAfter creating the virtual civilization Second Life in 2013, now populated by almost 1 million active users, Philip [Rosedale] went on to co-found High Fidelity, which explores the future of next-generation shared VR. In just the next five years, he predicts five emerging trends will take hold, together disrupting major players and birthing new ones.

How Three People With HIV Became Virus-Free Without HIV DrugsShelly FanDubbed the Berlin Patient, Timothy Ray Brown, an HIV-positive cancer patient, received a total blood stem cell transplant to treat his aggressive blood cancer back in 2008. He came out of the surgery not just free of cancerbut also free of HIV. Now, two new cases suggest Brown isnt a medical unicorn. Does this mean a cure for HIV is in sight? Heres what you need to know.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Brain Is About to Be TestedShelly FanHeres something you dont hear every day: two theories of consciousness are about to face off in the scientific fight of the century. The outlandish project is already raising eyebrows[but] even if [it] can somewhat narrow down divergent theories of consciousness, were on our way to cracking one of the most enigmatic properties of the human brain.

The Age of Solar Energy Abundance Is Coming in HotPeter Diamandis, MDAs the price-performance ratio of solar technologies begins to undercut traditional energy sources, we will soon witness the mass integration of solar cells into everyday infrastructure, meeting energy demands across the globe.

Moores Law Is Dying. This Brain-Inspired Analogue Chip Is a Glimpse of Whats NextShelly FanThis week, a team from Pennsylvania State Universitydesigned a 2D device that operates like neurons. Rather than processing yes or no, the Gaussian synapse thrives on probabilities. Similar to the brain, the analogue chip is far more energy-efficient and produces less heat than current silicon chips, making it an ideal candidate for scaling up systems.

New Progress in the Biggest Challenge With 3D Printed OrgansEdd GentWere tantalizingly close to growing organs in the lab, but the biggest remaining challenge has been creating the fine networks of blood vessels required to keep them alive. Now researchers have shown that a common food dye could solve the problem.

Image Credit:Robert Bye /Unsplash

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These Were Singularity Hub's Top 10 Articles in 2019 - Singularity Hub

Posted: Dec 27, 2019 / 09:11 PM CST / Updated: Dec 27, 2019 / 09:11 PM CST

ODESSA, Texas (Big 2/ Fox 24)- For teachers within ECISD giving children every opportunity to grow is a top priority; and, theyre doing just that with their new neuroscience program launching in 2020.

By offering very progressive approaches in education where students are answering really sophisticated real-world problems this kinda builds that career pathway and you know what some kids may choose not to go down that pathway but thats just as important as choosing something, says ECISD Chief Innovation Officer, Jason Osborne.

The training was made possible through a partnership with Chevron and the Education Foundation and now its up to the teachers to put what they learned to work in the classroom.

According to Bernadette Barragan, the 12th Grade Science Facilitator at New Tech Odessa, whenever we let the students know what we did and what they will be doing in the classroom just to see them light up and get excited about learning its the most important thing for us. We want them to be excited about learning and we want them to question things and we want them to just excel in just everything that they can.

Osborne adding that in the case of neuroscience we are working with neuroscientists that are interested in answering certain scientific questions so students and teachers can be apart of that process and incorporating real-life problems in the curriculum is important.

Our students get to, you know, take these real-world opportunities into the classroom and apply them to real-world outcomes sp hopefully we can have some really amazing research come out of this and just see what they can do with all of this information that they are going to be receiving and all of these resources, says Barragan.

The course will be offered at New Tech Odessa in 2020 with the hope that more campuses will adopt the course after seeing its success.

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ECISD announces new Neuroscience course to be offered in 2020 - KMID - Local 2 News

Change is difficult. Many of us are reminded just how challenging it is to break old habits and acquire new ones annually, when we set New Years resolutions; 80% of those who make New Years resolutions fall off the wagon within the first month, while only 8% maintain long-lasting success.

Though it might seem logical to blame failed resolutions on our action (or inaction) eating that unhealthy food we swore off, or not going to the gym when we swore we would creating positive, sustainable change in our lives often has more to do with the invisible thoughts, emotions and environmental triggers driving our behavior.

We might even assume that weve failed to change because we dont have full control of our actions. But if we first invest time in observing and understanding our internal drivers and reactions, we can then use that insight to devise better, tangible steps we can take toward change and build neural pathways that will facilitate the outcomes we desire over the long-term.

As a leadership coach for purpose-driven people and organizations, and as a student of applied neuroscience, Im passionate about helping people understand why they do what they do. Emerging research on brain plasticity shows its possible to essentially rewire our brains to better serve our goals. Here are a few tips to help you ignite this process in the new year and beyond.

Suspend judgment.

When people fail to stick to a resolution, they can beat themselves up pretty harshly. They might say negative things about themselves and after even a short while those self-criticisms start to repeat like a broken record in their minds.

Even though many people mistakenly believe shame can instill motivation, shame actually accomplishes the exact opposite. If we can, instead, look at ourselves objectively enough to observe our reactions, we can formulate strategies to break undesirable behavior patterns, linking new behaviors to old triggers.

Observe your thoughts.

Our thoughts can mimic the experience of driving a car over time, they become so automatic that we dont even realize how we got from Point A to Point B. Learning to notice your thoughts is like exercising a muscle, in that the process becomes easier and more intuitive with repetition.

Jotting down observations as they occur throughout your day can help you establish a clearer picture of the frequency with which you have certain thoughts, and the ratio of positive to negative thoughts you have over time. With greater awareness, you can challenge your automatic thought processes, particularly those negative thoughts wreaking havoc beneath the surface.

Identify triggers.

A thought record can also help you identify the people, places and things that trigger specific thoughts. For example, a negative thought about your appearance might consistently be preceded by looking in the mirror or interacting with a critical acquaintance or colleague.

Identifying triggers can help you better anticipate them and develop coping strategies in environments you cant control. For example, people often think a good strategy for sticking to their weight loss goal is to simply remove all junk food from their homes. But they can run into trouble at work or in a restaurant, where they have less or no control. We cant change people or situations that trigger us, but we can learn to marry a healthier response to a trigger by identifying and learning when to anticipate it.

Make micro goals.

Aristotle said, We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. The more you do something, the better you get at doing it. Instead of tracking your progress toward a goal or resolution with big milestones, try setting micro goals with reward structures that more frequently link action to satisfaction.

Maintaining consistency is all about establishing the right cadence. Instead of resolving to meditate for an hour every day and feeling guilty when you cant, set a micro goal of meditating for ten minutes, twice a week, and celebrate those small victories.

Paint a picture of the future.

The crux of accomplishing any goal is to find the why behind it. You have to be fired up and excited about achieving the desired outcome especially in those moments when you may be frustrated, tired or tempted to take the easy way out. By creating a vision board or any other visual representation of the future you want and keeping it in a place where youll see it often, you can constantly remind yourself of your why.

We tend to decorate our work and living spaces with photographs and memorabilia from the past. While its important to honor our past accomplishments, art and other visuals that are forward-thinking honor where were going.

Curate the company you keep.

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Surrounding yourself with people who are setting and achieving similar goals for themselves can be a huge advantage in achieving your own goals. Consciously selecting those people we want to spend the most time with means we also have to think about the people we might want or need to spend less time with.

This reinforces the importance of being forward-thinking. Many times, we hold on to people from the past, simply because we have a long history with them. But if they arent supportive of who we are becoming, or if they drain some of the vital energy we need to thrive, we may need to recalibrate.

Too often, our resolutions fall by the wayside because we believe we simply dont have the time or energy to put in the necessary work. But we all have the energy we need to succeed. The secret is to determine where your energy is flowing and make a conscious decision to redirect that flow through a new conduit.

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Using Applied Neuroscience To Achieve Goals In 2020 And Beyond - Forbes

Here at EdSurge, weve had a busy yearand so have our readers. From a readership perspective, it was our most popular year to date. At the top of the heap were many stories focusing on research and evidence-based practices. (As ever, neuroscience was an enduring favorite.)

The following stories offer a glimpse into how teachers, school leaders and researchers are using what we know about how people learn to improve schools and student outcomes that go beyond test scores, such as suspension rates and even the number of hours kids sleep at night. Features like these are an important part of our coverage, and you can expect many more of them in the new year.

Like last year, weve also added a selection of editors picksour favorite stories, op-eds and investigations from the past year spotlighting how the education system is meeting a diverse array of challenges. Happy New Year!

When a group of tenth graders turned in essays using politically slanted sources, media specialist Jacquline Whiting knew it was time for a lesson on the dangers of bias confirmation. So she created one. By removing words from a well-written op-ed and asking students to fill in the blanks, she showed them that theres power in word choiceeven when differences are subtle.

Actor and investor Ashton Kutcher closed ASCDs flagship conference with a confusing conversation on helping kids find purpose. Jam-packed with personal anecdotes and plugs for his investment companies, Kutcher dug deep to connect with educators, and shared why hed call up Elon Musk if he had a school.

Ten years ago, St. Andrews Episcopal School redesigned its daily schedule to longer but fewer classes, and a later start timeso kids can get more sleep. But the plan never moved beyond the design phase. Now the school is trying again. This time its rooted in neuroscience research to boost engagement, memory and emotional development.

Social-emotional learning has been around for years. So why has it attracted so much attention and action lately? Christina Cipriano, director of research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, breaks down what SEL is, where it came from, how to teach it and why its particularly useful for traditionally underserved populations.

Students can now register for AP exams in the fall, rather than having to wait until springjust before the exams are held. Its a simple, seemingly inconsequential change, but in pilot studies, it has led to more underrepresented and low-income students taking AP exams. Heres why.

At most schools, when students act out, they are suspended or expelled. But when eighth-grader Luz Annette got into a fight at Austin Achieve, the charter school instead provided counseling, group therapy and mindfulness trainingpart of its homegrown restorative justice program. Its an alternative disciplinary approach thats changing how students resolve conflict and manage emotions.

When new staff arrived to Langley Elementary in 2016, the school's suspension rate was at 66 percent and physical altercations were not uncommon. Then came a social-emotional learning approach called Conscious Discipline. Three years and a top-to-bottom transformation later, the school is unrecognizable. We visited the school to see what changed and how the new approach works.

Struggle may be painful for the heart. But its essential for our brainsand our livesargues Jo Boaler, a Stanford University education professor and co-founder of YouCubed. Neuroscientists have found that mistakes are helpful for brain growth and connectivity, she writes, and if we are not struggling, we are not learning.

According to neuroscientist Martha Burns, teachers change kids brains. The how has to do with the way the brain fine-tunes itself to adapt to new experiences. Even as we age, the brain is always changingand just by adding a few simple practices involving content, intensity and methodology, teachers can have a huge impact.

Danielle Arnold-Schwartz knew she wasnt burned out by teaching, but she also knew she wasnt happy. It turns out she was experiencing demoralization, which some experts say its a major cause of teacher dissatisfactionand the growing teacher shortage. At a time when the profession is facing major systemic challenges, is it possible to feel like a good, moral teacher again?

The world of online tutoring is growing fast, especially on platforms developed to connect students in China with teachers in the U.S. But in some cases teachers say they're witnessing something unexpected as they peer into faraway homes: harsh physical discipline that they describe as abusive. What can they do to respond? What should the companies do? Our six-month investigation revealed a dark side to a booming industry.

Teenagers are overwhelmed juggling school work along with their online and offline lives. But the good news is that they are aware of the issue and want help managing it all. Heres how schools can tap into students intrinsic motivation to manage digital distractionsand what adults can do to help.

During Teagan Carlsons 14 years as a teacher, she was pitched more edtech tools than she could count. But very few made it into her classroom. If the technology does not offer a clear benefit, Im not going to look into it any further, she writes. Here are the questions every teacher should ask before entertaining another pitch.

Just two percent of all teachers are Black males, a startling lack of diversity that negatively impacts all students, writes researcher Kimberly Underwood. Thats due to a leaky pipeline for recruiting and retaining these teachers. Increasing representation is urgent, she argues, considering the many benefits of Black male teachers in todays classrooms.

Four ambulances showed up at Madison County Elementary School after a student doled out stolen prescription Lyrica pills to her friends during class. The experience led the school community to recognize the need for mental-health supports. Principal Mason, who was new to Madison at the time, shares how research helped her staff better support students.

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EdSurges Year in Review: The Top 10 K-12 Stories of 2019 - EdSurge

Many people have endured the noisy, and somewhat claustrophobic experience of a conventional MRI scan. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is very similar, except its scans reveal changes in bloodflow. When used to study the brain, it shows when an area becomes more active due to the increased flow of oxygenated blood. Once the only way scientists could study the brain was in a postmortem. Now fMRI is a key tool in neuroscience, offering an unparalleled view of the brain in action, providing insights into our most basic emotions, motivations and behaviours, as well as conditions such as Parkinsons disease.

This book takes us on a whistle-stop tour through some of the most exciting scientific studies. The science and technology are still evolving but researchers have already used fMRI scans, analysed by a computer, to reconstruct a film clip watched by subjects. It was blurry and not very detailed but still remarkable.

Other experiments include attempts to read dreams, and to detect social biases such as racism and sexism; in one study, researchers achieved a 100% success rate in detecting lies. However they also showed that it was relatively easy to trick the technology: even the most accurate computer model can be fooled.

From what fMRI scans tell us about free will, to how neuromarketing reveals what consumers really think about brands, this is a fascinating guide to neuroimaging and the wonders of one of the most complex structures in the universe: our brain.

Sex, Lies & Brain Scans: How fMRI Reveals What Really Goes on in Our Minds by Barbara J Sahakian and Julia Gottwald is published by Oxford (9.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15.

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Sex, Lies & Brain Scans by Barbara J Sahakian and Julia Gottwald review thinking out of the box - The Guardian

PHILADELPHIA --Lab-grown brain organoids developed from a patient's own glioblastoma, the most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, may hold the answers on how to best treat it. A new study in Cell from researchers at Penn Medicine showed how glioblastoma organoids could serve as effective models to rapidly test personalized treatment strategies.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) remains the most difficult of all brain cancers to study and treat, largely because of tumor heterogeneity. Treatment approaches, like surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, along with newer personalized cellular therapies, have proven to slow tumor growth and keep patients disease-free for some periods of time; however, a cure remains elusive.

"While we've made important strides in glioblastoma research, preclinical and clinical challenges persist, keeping us from getting closer to more effective treatments," said senior author Hongjun Song, PhD, Perelman Professor of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "One hurdle is the ability to recapitulate the tumor to not only better understand its complex characteristics, but also to determine what therapies post-surgery can fight it in a timelier manner."

Co-senior authors include Guo-li Ming, MD, PhD, Perelman Professor of Neuroscience, and Donald O'Rourke, MD, the John Templeton, Jr., MD Professor in Neurosurgery, and director of the GBM Translational Center of Excellence at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.

Lab-grown brain organoids -- derived from human pluripotent stem cells or patient tissues and grown to a size no bigger than a pea -- can recapitulate important genetic composition, brain cell type heterogeneity, and architecture, for example. These models are allowing researchers to recreate key features of patients' diseased brains to help paint a clearer picture of their cancer, and allowing them to explore ways to best attack it.

What makes organoids so attractive in GBM is timing and the ability to maintain cell type and genetic heterogeneity. While existing in vitro models have added to researchers' understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying the cancer, they have limitations. Unlike other models, which need more time to exhibit gene expression and other histological features that more closely represent the tumor, brain tumor organoids developed by the research group grow into use much more rapidly. That's important because current treatment regimens are typically initiated one month following surgery, so having a road map sooner is more advantageous.

In the new study, the researchers removed fresh tumor specimens from 52 patients to "grow" corresponding tumor organoids in the lab. The overall success rate for generating glioblastoma organoids (GBOs) was 91.4 percent, with 66.7 percent of tumors expressing the IDH1 mutation, and 75 percent for recurrent tumors, within two weeks. These tumor glioblastoma organoids can also be biobanked and recovered later for analyses.

Genetic, histological, molecular analyses were also performed in 12 patients to establish that these new GBOs had largely retained features from the primary tumor in the patient.

Eight GBO samples were then successfully transplanted into adult mouse brains, which displayed rapid and aggressive infiltration of cancer cells and maintained key mutation expression up to three months later. Importantly, a major hallmark of GBM -- the infiltration of tumor cells into the surrounding brain tissue -- was observed in the mouse models.

To mimic post-surgery treatments, the researchers subjected GBOs to standard-of-care and targeted therapies, including drugs from clinical trials and chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell immunotherapy. For each treatment, researchers showed that the organoid responses are different and effectiveness is correlated to their genetic mutations in patient tumors. This model opens the possibility for future clinical trials for personized treatment based on individual patient tumor responses to various different drugs.

Notably, the researchers observed a benefit in the organoids treated with CAR T therapies, which have been used in ongoing clinical trials to target the EGFRvIII mutation, a driver of the disease. In six GBOs, the researchers showed specific effect to patient GBOs with the EGFRvIII mutation with an expansion of CAR T cells and reduction in EGFRvIII expressing cells.

"These results highlight the potential for testing and treating glioblastomas with a personalized approach. The ultimate goal is to work towards a future where we can study a patient's organoid and test which CAR T cell is going to be the best against their tumor, in real time." O'Rourke said. "A shorter-term goal, given the heterogeneity of glioblastomas, is that in vitro testing of various therapeutic options may also help refine patient enrollment in clinical trials, by more accurately defining mutations and selecting the appropriate, available targeted therapies for each."

Link:
Brain tumor organoids may be key to time-sensitive treatments for glioblastomas - Science Codex

So, weve reached the end of 2019. Another year gone, another decade closing. And for affiliates in the iGaming industry, theres a lot to look back on and digest.

But its also important that we learn from 2019s ongoings to build a bigger, better industry in 2020. Lets revisit three of our most important podcasts and videos over the course of this year, so you can do just that.

Social responsibility was a major talking point throughout iGaming in 2019. And its not just operators that need to get in on the act affiliates are also an important part of the jigsaw.

As part of the growing importance of player protection, weve seen numerous innovative tools enter the industry. For example, Kim Mouridsen has combined artificial intelligence with neuroscience to develop Mindway AI.

Mouridsen is a Professor in Neuroscience at Aarhus University, one of the leading universities in Denmark. So, hes got the necessary knowledge to make this tool a success. Through Mindway AI, potential problem gamblers can be discovered before issues grow. Kim talked to us in depth about the technology listen below.

Its probable that youll run into periods of low activity on your affiliate program. After building up initial momentum, you may find that not as many affiliates are signing up.

Thats when you should take some time out and look at your longtail. After doing this, you can identify where opportunities exist and next steps you should take.

In this episode of Affiliate Drive Time, Lee-Ann Johnstone offers advice on how to maximise this area of affiliate marketing. Theres also a free checklist for you in the video description.

Workshop iGB Live!: What makes a great affiliate strategy?

At iGB Live! in Amsterdam, Lee-Ann Johnstone spoke in depth about the fundamentals of a great affiliate strategy. She shared three main areas to focus on when planning your affiliate programme strategy, along with speaking about how to build a successful affiliate program launch. She also discusses the importance of patience when launching a programme from the start and when you should expect to see results, as youll find out by watching the video below.

Weve got plenty of exciting content planned for you in 2020. Make sure you dont miss the good stuff and sign up to get our weeklynewsletter.

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Our top podcasts and videos of 2019 - AffiliateINSIDER

Closing leads to reopening

CALAIS The Calais community was having a double celebration this holiday season, after the successful shareholder buyout of the Maple Corner Store.

From here on, it will be known as Maple Corner Community Store, thanks to the support of hundreds of individual donations to raise the $450,000 needed to keep the store open.

After just five months of fundraising, the closing of the buyout was Dec. 17, and there was a party to celebrate it at the Maple Corner Community Center on Saturday.

In between the closing and the party, shareholders, supporters and newly hired staff were busy stripping out some of the fixtures, repainting and resetting the layout of the interior.

Anne Marie Shea, who has worked at the store for 10 years, is the new general manager, and Caity Kaye and Jamie Moorby will be assistant managers, all responsible for the day-to-day operation of the store, which is open seven days a week.

The store reopened Friday and included a performance in The Whammy Bar music venue to celebrate the successful shareholder buyout.

The closing of the store covered the $375,000 asking price, plus inventory, closing costs and attorney fees.

The community drive followed an unsuccessful two-year effort to sell the store by owners Artie and Nancy Toulis, who bought it in 2007.

Since then, it has remained a popular pit stop and social center for locals. It is where local children board the school bus, people make a quick stop for coffee and a breakfast sandwich or lunch, and a place to find groceries and a selection of wines. Also it offers a range of home-cooking-style foods, including freshly made pizza and sandwiches and pub grub for the bar.

The Whammy Bar opened in October 2012 as a small, intimate pub and live-music venue in the back of the store.

The store generates income as well from a rural post office on site, and there is a second-floor, two-bedroom apartment with loft space and a large deck overlooking a waterfall and stream.

Artie Toulis penned a heartfelt thank you letter to the community on Front Porch Forum this week.

Our time at the store was amazing!!! Getting to know everyone and being at the center of many community events sustained and uplifted us, Toulis wrote. We were here for births, deaths, good times, bad times and everything in between.

Toulis, an accomplished guitarist and serious music lover, said he and his wife were most proud of The Whammy, which had nurtured the careers of many musicians, including their daughter, Halle.

The bonds we formed with all the amazingly talented musicians will certainly continue, Toulis said.

Toulis said he and his wife would remain in the area and continue to provide sound and lighting technical support services for local music and theater productions, and urged the community to support the store in the future.

What the Maple Corner Community Store group just accomplished was nothing short of miraculous! Toulis added. Their efforts ensured the stores long-term survival, and those of you that bought shares are now part of a great effort that is bigger that the store itself.

BARRE A Barre businessman is again spearheading an effort that will open the Barre Municipal Auditorium for a few hours on five successive Saturdays so that children of all ages can play basketball in one of the Vermonts most storied gymnasiums.

While hell look for sponsors to help share in the cost, Burnie Allen, of Allen Lumber, has locked down the Aud from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, and all four Saturdays (Jan. 4, 11, 18 and 25) next month.

Those interested in using the auditorium gym on any (or all) of those Saturdays should remember to use the rear entrance, bring sneakers and some friends for some free fun.

Smorestice celebration 2.0

MIDDLESEX A second attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest smore will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Camp Meade in Middlesex.

The second annual Camp Meade Winter Smorestice Celebration hopes to break the Guinness World Record of 267 pounds for the worlds largest smore. Last years attempt was too late to qualify, but organizers hope to make the record book this year.

The event will include music, dancers and bonfires, and the turtle oven created for the Great Vermont Bread Festival and Red Hen Bakings 30th anniversary earlier this year will be fired up to make pizza and soups. Foam Brewers are creating a specially labeled Smorestice beer.

The cracker portion of the smore will be baked on site by the bakers at Red Hen. The organic marshmallows will be provided by Monarch and Milkweed in Burlington, while Rabble Rousers chocolatiers will provide the essential chocolate for the Middlesex world record smore, which will be approximately 4 feet by 8 feet.

The fire-centric focus of the event goes beyond the giant bonfire. There will be warming barrels of fires for hanging around and a large urn of fire for a similar, more communal, experience.

The Middlesex Volunteer Fire Department will be on hand to hose things down, if needed, and on hand to speak to anyone interested in becoming a volunteer firefighter.

BURLINGTON The 11th annual Vermont Brain Bee (VBB) is looking for student and teacher participants in a statewide neuroscience contest.

Designed to encourage and inspire high school students to get interested and involved in the study of neuroscience, the written, practical and oral contest will include a Brain Bee boot camp Jan. 25, and then the VBB competition itself on Feb. 15, both at the University of Vermont.

The guest speaker at the main event will be UVM chairman of pharmacology Mark Nelson, and his talk will be on the Blood Network in the Brain.

Throughout the school year, students from the UVM and Saint Michaels College collaborate with high schools all over Vermont to teach them some of the foundations of neuroscience. Teachers interested in joining the collaboration are also encouraged to sign up for the contest.

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Talk of the Town | Local News - Barre Montpelier Times Argus

It is, for many of us, the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas cheer is that thing which is often referred to by those who believe December really is the season to be jolly. Its that feeling of joy, warmth and nostalgia people feel when the jingle bells start jingling. But what is the science behind it?

Evidence of Christmas cheer inside the brain was found during a study run at the University of Denmark in 2015. Twenty people were shown images with either a Christmas or non-Christmas theme while having their brain monitored in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The fMRI machine highlights parts of the brain when there is an increase or decrease in activity in that region. And when there was an increase of activity for this study, that region lit up like well, a Christmas tree.

When the participants saw photographs of Christmas themed images, such as mince pies, a network of brain regions lit up, leading the researchers to conclude that they had found the hub of Christmas cheer inside the human brain. What the activation in brain regions actually meant, the researchers couldnt say. One theory was that that network in the brain could be related to memories or spirituality. The scientific understanding of our internal experiences is changing and it now seems likely that Christmas cheer may be an emotion in itself.

What is an emotion?

Many scientists used to think that emotions were pre-programmed reactions, hardwired into human brains. According to the traditional view, when you see Christmas TV adverts, some dedicated part of you (a kind of happiness circuit) leaps into action to bring you Christmas cheer.

The happiness circuit was thought to be a single part of the brain responsible for making you feel that warmth in your chest, making your heart beat quickly with joy and forming an expression of happiness on your face an expression thought to be universal across peoples and cultures.

According to the traditional view, humans have a small set of core emotions, like fear and happiness. Each of these emotions has its own dedicated brain region which creates changes in physiology and behaviour changes which are similar (if not the same) across different instances of the same emotion. For example, it was thought that the happiness you feel when you see a puppy would activate the same neural and physiological systems as the happiness you feel when you spend time with your friends. And so, when activated, the happiness circuit should light up in the fMRI machine. The traditional view feels intuitive. But, in the 100 years science has been studying emotion, scientists have never been able to find a specific happiness circuit or a circuit relating to any emotion.

When it comes to Christmas cheer, this is likely the reason why there was no specific neural path found in the fMRI data. Rather, the general network of neural activation associated with Christmas cheer points to a more nuanced understanding of emotions.

Emotion on demand

The contemporary view says that emotions are the brain summing up three sources of information to create an on-demand experience. The brain combines information about your physiological state, environment and personal experiences to form a subjective feeling inside you. According to the contemporary view, when you see Christmas TV adverts, you feel positive because you associate good things with Christmas, your heart beats quicker because some part of you recognises the excitement the advert evoked in you as a child and you express the feeling physically, usually through facial expressions.

Read more: You may not believe in Christmas but once a year, we all get a touch of its magic

All of these things culminate as a feeling. A feeling which we label and categorise as an emotion. Throughout our lives we learn to label categories of emotions. This labelling is why we use the same word to describe the terror felt heading on to a rollercoaster and the terror associated with being in a car accident, despite the fact that these experiences feel completely different.

But because the brain constructs an emotion on-demand using a wide range of brain regions, there is no neural signature or physiological blueprint with which to record or measure the experience. Many different parts of the brain work together to create an emotion depending on whats going on around and inside you. This is why every experience of an emotion even the same emotion will look different in an fMRI scanner. When it comes to emotions, brain activation isnt predictable because each emotion is formed from different, unpredictable information and contexts.

At Christmas time, each person has associations with songs, foods and activities that help them use the label Christmas cheer to categorise the experience. These associations are totally unique to each person. This is why your festive family traditions dont always seem to translate when you introduce them to your friends or your significant other.

But Christmas cheer can be shared with others through rituals (such as decorating the tree) and language (through things like carol singing) to cement those emotion categories. Every time we encounter items or ideas that we relate to over Christmas because of our past, our brains create the emotion of Christmas cheer.

Bah humbug syndrome

But, of course, some people are like Ebeneezer Scrooge and just want to get through the holidays. A lack of Christmas cheer has anecdotally been called bah humbug syndrome. In the same way as Christmas cheer, bah humbug can be seen as an emotion. Perhaps its the dread of family politics or the tight, pounding chest people feel thinking about the cost of Christmas. But the brain combines these sources of information to create an emotion. So if youve had more negative experiences associated with Christmas, you are more likely to feel bah humbug than cheer.

Regardless of whether you tend to feel more of the Christmas cheer or the bah humbug emotion, there is a slither of magic in these festive emotions. In every waking moment, your brain is constructing your emotional reality. You have the power to increase your Christmas cheer or banish your feelings of bah humbug. This phenomenon is known as prediction, and its really just a numbers game. Rather than reacting to the world, your brain is running an internal model built around patterns of your previous experiences. The more instances your brain has of a positive experience relating to Christmas, the easier it is for your brain to construct Christmas cheer on-demand in the future.

So if you want to get into the Christmas spirit, spend time doing festive activities which you enjoy, share your experiences with the people you love, and do whatever rituals make sense to you. If science can give you anything this year, let it give you the gift of Christmas cheer.

Olly Robertson, Doctoral Researcher in Psychology, Keele University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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The Neuroscience Behind Christmas Cheer - The National Interest Online

Weve all been there. You are in the middle of a heated disagreement when you lose respect for the opposing party. Whether it is about the latest election or childcare, you feel like your considered arguments are not appreciated perhaps even ignored. But did you ever wonder what exactly is happening in the mind of the person on the other side?

In a recent study, just published in Nature Neuroscience, we and our colleagues recorded peoples brain activity during disagreements to find out.

In our experiment, we asked 21 pairs of volunteers to make financial decisions. In particular, they each had to assess the value of real estates and bet money on their assessments. The more confident they were in their assessment, the more money they wagered.

Each volunteer lay in a brain imaging scanner while performing the task so we could record their brain activity. The two scanners were separated by a glass wall, and the volunteers were able to see the assessments and bets of the other person on their screen.

When volunteers agreed on the price of the real estate, each of them became more confident in their assessment, and they bet more money on it. That makes sense if I agree with you then you feel more sure that you must be right. Each persons brain activity also reflected the encoding of the confidence of their partner. In particular, activity of a brain region called the posterior medial frontal cortex, which we know is involved in cognitive dissonance, tracked the confidence of the partner. We found that the more confident one volunteer was, the more confident the partner became, and vice versa.

However and this is the interesting part when people disagreed, their brains became less sensitive to the strength of others opinions. After disagreement, the posterior medial frontal cortex could no longer track the partners confidence. Consequently, the opinion of the disagreeing partner had little impact on peoples conviction that they were correct, regardless of whether the disagreeing partner was very sure in their assessment or not at all.

It was not the case that the volunteers were not paying attention to their partner when they disagreed with them. We know this because we tested our volunteers memory of their partners assessments and bets. Rather, it seems that contradictory opinions were more likely to be considered categorically wrong and therefore the strength of those opinions was unimportant.

We suspect that when disagreements are about heated topics such as politics, people will be even less likely to take note of the strength of contradictory opinions.

Our findings may shed light on some puzzling recent trends in society. For instance, over the last decade, climate scientists have expressed greater confidence that climate change is man-made. Yet, a survey by the Pew research centre shows that the percentage of Republicans who believe this notion to be true has dropped over the same period of time. While there are complex, multi-layered reasons for this specific trend, it may also be related to a bias in how the strength of other peoples opinions are encoded in our brain.

The findings can also be extrapolated to political current events. Take the recent impeachment hearings against US president Donald Trump. Our study suggests that whether a witness appears calm, confident and in command of the facts (as government official Bill Taylor was described when testifying during the hearings) or unsteady and uncertain (as the FBI chief Robert Muller was described when testifying about his special counsel investigation back in July) will matter little to those who already oppose impeachment when testimonies are unsupportive of the president. But they will affect the conviction of those who are in favour of impeachment.

So how can we increase our chances of being heard by members of an opposing group? Our study lends new support to a tried and tested recipe (as Queen Elizabeth II recently put it while addressing a country divided over Brexit) finding the common ground.

The strength of a carefully reasoned opinion is less likely to be registered when launching into a disagreement with a sturdy pile of evidence describing why we are right and the other side is wrong. But if we start from common ground that is the parts of the problem we agree on we will avoid being categorised as a disputer from the very beginning, making it more likely that the strength of our arguments will matter.

Take for example the attempt to alter the conviction of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children because they falsely believe vaccines are linked to autism. It has been shown that presenting strong evidence refuting the link does little to change their minds. Instead, focusing solely on the fact that vaccines protect children from potentially deadly disease a statement that the parents can more easily agree with can increase their intention to vaccinate their children by threefold.

So in the midst of that heated disagreement, try and remember that the key to change is often finding a shared belief or motive.

Andreas Kappes, Lecturer, City, University of London and Tali Sharot, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Professor of cognitive neuroscience details what happens in the brain when we disagree and how you can win your next argument - AlterNet