Tag Archives: media

Immunology

RAPT Therapeutics Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results – BioSpace

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RAPT Therapeutics, Inc.. (Nasdaq: RAPT), a clinical-stage, immunology-based biopharmaceutical companyfocused on discovering, developing and commercializing oral small molecule therapies for patients with significant unmet needs in oncology and inflammatory diseases, today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020 and provided an update on recent operational and business progress.

Earlier today, we reported positive initial data from our ongoing Phase 1/2 clinical trial evaluating FLX475 in multiple cancer indications, said Brian Wong, M.D., Ph.D., President and CEO of RAPT Therapeutics. With the advancement of this program and continued enrollment for our ongoing Phase 1b study of RPT193 in atopic dermatitis, which we now expect to read out in the first half of 2021, we are well positioned for multiple catalysts in 2021.

Financial Results for the Third Quarter and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020

Third Quarter Ended September 30, 2020Net loss for the third quarter of 2020 was $14.6 million, compared to $10.0 million for the third quarter of 2019.

Research and development expenses for the third quarter of 2020 were $12.9 million, compared to $8.6 million for the same period in 2019 due to increased clinical costs for FLX475 and RPT193, increased personnel costs and stock-based compensation expense, an increase in preclinical program costs and laboratory supplies.

General and administrative expenses for the third quarter of 2020 were $3.2million, compared to $1.7million for the same period of 2019. The increase was primarily due to an increase in stock-based compensation expense, personnel costs, legal and accounting fees and insurance expense offset by a decrease in consulting costs.

Nine Months Ended September 30, 2020Net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 was $40.2 million, compared to $29.8 million for the same period in 2019.

Research and development expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 were $34.6 million, compared to $24.7 million for the same period in 2019. The increase was primarily due to an increase in clinical costs relating to FLX475 and RPT193, increased preclinical program costs as well as increased stock-based compensation and personnel expenses, offset by decreases in lab supplies and travel costs.

General and administrative expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 were $9.3million, compared to $6.1million for the same period of 2019. The increase in general and administrative expenses was primarily due to increased stock-based compensation expense, increased personnel costs, an increase in legal and accounting fees as well as insurance expense offset by a decrease in travel and consulting costs.

As of September 30, 2020, we had cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities of $122.8 million.

AboutRAPT Therapeutics, Inc.RAPT Therapeutics is a clinical stage immunology-based biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing oral small molecule therapies for patients with significant unmet needs in oncology and inflammatory diseases. Utilizing its proprietary discovery and development engine, the Company is developing highly selective small molecules designed to modulate the critical immune drivers underlying these diseases. RAPT has discovered and advanced two unique drug candidates, FLX475 and RPT193, each targeting C-C motif chemokine receptor 4 (CCR4), for the treatment of cancer and inflammation, respectively. The Company is also pursuing a range of targets, including hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1) and general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2), that are in the discovery stage of development.

Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future performances or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Each of these statements is based only on current information, assumptions and expectations that are inherently subject to change and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about clinical development progress and the timing of results from clinical trials of FLX475 and RPT193. Detailed information regarding risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by statements in this press release may be found in RAPTs most recent Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and subsequent filings made by RAPT with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. RAPT disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

RAPT Media Contact:Angela Bittingmedia@rapt.com(925) 202-6211

RAPT Investor Contact:Sylvia Wheelerswheeler@wheelhouselsa.com

Read more here:
RAPT Therapeutics Reports Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results - BioSpace

Human Behavior

The great reset meets the Internet of Bodies: manipulating human behavior with authoritarian surveillance – The Sociable

As the networking of humans and machines shows to have incredible promise towards improving overall health and well being for generations to come, the Internet of Bodies (IoB) also runs the risk of enabling a global surveillance state, the likes of which the world has never seen.

The Internet of Bodies might trigger breakthroughs in medical knowledge []Or it might enable a surveillance state of unprecedented intrusion and consequence RAND Corporation report

Following the launch of its great reset agenda, the World Economic Forum (WEF) made a push for the global adoption of the IoB, which risks enabling an authoritarian surveillance apparatus that can manipulate human behavior to achieve its desired outcomes.

According to a recent RAND corporation report, the IoB might trigger breakthroughs in medical knowledge []Or it might enable a surveillance state of unprecedented intrusion and consequence.

The IoB ecosystem is part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that the World Economic Forum (WEF) wishes to harness for its great reset agenda.

One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles [] Populations have overwhelmingly shown a willingness to make sacrifices Klaus Schwab, WEF Director

Conceived over five years ago and launched in June, 2020, the so-called great reset agenda promises to give us a better world of more sustainability and equity if we agree to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions.

Such radical changes would require a complete shift in our thinking and behavior, and what better way to modify our behavior than to monitor every move we make through a connected network of digital tracking devices?

According to RAND,Greater connectivity and the widespread packaging of IoB in smartphones and appliancessome of which might collect data unbeknownst to the userwill increase digital tracking of users across a range of behaviors.

Increased IoB adoption might also increase global geopolitical risks, because surveillance states can use IoB data to enforce authoritarian regimes RAND Corporation report

The WEF is fully behind widespread adoption of the IoB despite recognizing the enormous ethical concerns that come with having an unprecedented number of sensors attached to, implanted within, or ingested into human bodies to monitor, analyze, and even modify human bodies and behavior.

Its now time for the Internet of Bodies. This means collecting our physical data via devices that can be implanted, swallowed or simply worn, generating huge amounts of health-related information Xiao Liu, WEF

Knowing that the Internet of Bodies can be used to control human behavior while gaining access to the most sensitive health, financial, and behavioral data of every person on the planet, the Davos elite urgesstakeholders from across sectors, industries and geographies to work together to mitigate the risks in order to fully unleash the potential of the IoB, according to a WEFreport from July, 2020.

After the Internet of Things, which transformed the way we live, travel and work by connecting everyday objects to the Internet, its now time for the Internet of Bodies, wrote Xiao Liu,Fellow at the WEFs Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This means collecting our physical data via devices that can be implanted, swallowed or simply worn, generating huge amounts of health-related information.

If you think that the idea behind contact tracing apps is just for tracking people infected by viruses, think again

But while having access to huge torrents of live-streaming biometric data might trigger breakthroughs in medical knowledge or behavioral understanding, the RAND Corporation warns that the IoB could also enable a surveillance state of unprecedented intrusion and consequence.

According to RAND, Increased IoB adoption might also increase global geopolitical risks, because surveillance states can use IoB data to enforce authoritarian regimes.

For example, this is the same ecosystem that is allowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to collect DNA data from its Uyghur population, so the authoritarian regime can further spy on, imprison, and sterilize an entire ethnic minority, among other horrible atrocities.

But if you want to see how the IoB fits into a great reset, like the one the WEF is touting, look no further than Chinas social credit system that uses enormous amounts of aggregated data, including health records, on individuals to determine their trustworthiness and to incentivize desired behaviors, according to RAND.

A population that knows it is being watched will change its behavior to conform to the norms, and its citizens will police themselves.

Thus, the IoB is a tool that can serve multiple purposes it can revolutionize healthcare for the benefit of all; it can be used to monitor, track, and prevent global crises before they manifest, and it can be turned into an apparatus for manipulating human behavior in order to achieve the desired outcomes of the global elite.

Contact tracing is also a tool for complete social control, keeping tabs on a nations so-called deplorable or undesirable citizens.

Think social justice policing via contact tracing not just through mobile phones, but tracking chips implanted in the human body.

Today, the WEF is fully behind the use of the IoB, and actively supports digital health passports (CovidPass) and contract tracing apps (CommonPass).

If you think that the idea behind contact tracing apps is just for tracking people infected by viruses, think again.

The same technology was used by the CCP to develop an app that literally alerts citizens with a warning when they come within 500 meters of someone who is in debt, according to theWEF Global Risks Report 2019.

The app has created whats essentially a map of deadbeat debtors, according to Chinese state media, and shows you the debtors exact location, though its unclear if the displayed information includes a name or photo.

So, while the WEF urges greater IoB use and contact tracing, the technology is not just for tracking the spread of a virus.

Contact tracing is also a tool for complete social control that keeps tabs on a nations so-called deplorable or undesirable citizens.

Think social justice policing via contact tracing not just through mobile phones, but tracking chips implanted in the human body.

Widespread IoB use might increase the risk of physical harm, espionage, and exploitation of data by adversaries RAND Corporation report

The RAND report also warned that widespread IoB use might increase the risk of physical harm, espionage, and exploitation of data by adversaries.

You no longer need to be MI6 and issued a Walther PPK in order to assassinate someone; you just need to gain access to their medical devices Richard Staynings, Cylera

Indeed, if state-sponsored hackers or criminal organizations were to gain access to a medical device used by a high-profile target, the hackers could simply switch it off and assassinate their target.

As Richard Staynings, Chief Security Strategist at Cylera, once told The Sociable,You no longer need to be MI6 and issued a Walther PPK in order to assassinate someone; you just need to gain access to the medical devices that are keeping that individual alive.

On top of the geopolitical risks, the RAND report warned that the IoB could also increase health outcome disparities, where only people with financial means have access to any of these benefits.

However, this seems an unlikely scenario because the WEF doesnt like to see one nation gain too much power. It prefers balance. It wants every country to follow the rules. It wants a technocratic Utopia.

Authoritarianism is easier in a world of total visibility and traceability, while democracy may turn out to be more difficult WEF report

As such, the WEF would like to see the IoB regulated uniformly across the globe, and the Davos elite routinely call for its ethical governance, but that doesnt mean the surveillance would go away.

Not at all.

It just means that everybody would be spied on equally after having consented to the Draconian measures dressed-up as serving the greater good.

At its heart, the IoB is dependent upon collecting tons of biometric data, which will allow new forms of social control, according to the WEF Global Risks 2019 report.

The WEF concluded two years ago that authoritarianism is easier in a world of total visibility and traceability, while democracy may turn out to be more difficult.

Now, the WEF wants to exploit the Fourth Industrial Revolution under the great reset agenda, and it has massive support from the media, world leaders, and captains of industry alike.

Klaus Schwab, founder and director of the WEF,had already called for the great reset back in 2014(see video above), but decided in June, 2020, that this was the year to enact the scheme because the coronavirus crisis had presented a rare but narrow window of opportunity.

And in order to make the Davos elites globalist Utopia a reality, universal trust in the increasingly invasive uses of emerging technologies will be required.

If you are willing to believe that a global, un-elected body of bureaucrats based in Switzerland has your best interest at heart, then you are willing to accept that your corporeal autonomy, physical privacy, and mental freedom may be compromised to serve the greater good.

A skeptical look at the great reset: a technocratic agenda that waited years for a global crisis to exploit

Hackable humans can become godlike or fall to digital dictators lording over data colonies: WEF insights

Authoritarianism is easier in a world of total visibility: WEF report

Tech arms race will give corporations, governments the ability to hack human beings: Yuval Harari at WEF

Medicine or poison? On the ethics of AI implants in humans

Originally posted here:
The great reset meets the Internet of Bodies: manipulating human behavior with authoritarian surveillance - The Sociable

Human Behavior

Movies with Mary: Big brother really is watching – Alton Telegraph

Movies with Mary: Big brother really is watching

The Social Dilemma is a documentary about social media, airing on Netflix, that may scare the puddin out of you if you can watch it all the way through. Either that, or you will be bored and pick up your phone and turn to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Twenty-three executives, engineers, and designers from Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Foxfire, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. talk about social media, how it was designed and why it was designed, and what it has become.

At first, most of the social media websites were created to give people a way to connect with family and friends and share information, but as time went on, it became more of a market to trade on human futures. It set up algorithms to predict human behavior and to manipulate it, according to this documentary.

Everything you do is being tracked and recorded to build models that predict your behavior. The models also manipulate us to change our behavior without us even knowing they are doing it. Social Media is an addiction, just like alcohol, gambling and drugs.

People have become so addicted to social media that they arent aware of how much time they spend online. There are only two industries that call their customers users: drugs and software. Social media is a drug.

Since the advent of social media, suicide rates and self-harm of young women has skyrocketed and bullying has increased, according to this documentary.

In the last few years, our country has been divided more and more politically. Social media has played an important part in this because of the information received, it reinforces your beliefs. We are being manipulated. We receive only the news we want to see and read that instead of the truth, regardless of which party we support. If you are a Republican you receive only news that supports that point of view, and if you are a Democrat, you only receive news that supports that point of view.

At this point, social media is not regulated.

Directed by Jeff Orlowski, The Social Dilemma was written by Orlowski, Vicki Curtis and Davis Coombe.

It starts off very, very slow. Psychiatrists, former executives, computer designers each talk about what social media is doing to manipulate your behavior and why. The why is trillions of dollars annually. If you stay with it, it will scare the heck out of you. It seems that George Orwell was just about 40 years off.

Big Brother is watching!

Movie critic Mary Cox lives in Wood River and studied film at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has worked in L.A. with various directors and industry professionals. Contact Mary at mary.cox@edwpub.net.

Go here to read the rest:
Movies with Mary: Big brother really is watching - Alton Telegraph

Human Behavior

Election 2020 aftermath taught us a few things | Opinion – Foothills Focus

E

ven before the race for president was official, you could learn some early lessons from Election 2020.

Like: Our need for immediate gratification conflicts deeply with our need for election accuracy.

Every election cycle is a journey that takes four years. The cycle culminates in millions of pieces of paper marked with dozens of selections.

It should not be mystifying that it takes a few days to total those pieces of paper with zero errors.

The ranks of the impatient will scream absurdities like, If Chick-fil-A was counting this, it would have been done in an hour. This isnt whipping up a sandwich and waffle fries, people.

This is thousands of jurisdictions counting millions of ballots in thousands of races under extreme pressure.

If we want the count to be correcta premise many Americans seem to want only when the count goes their waythen we should give elections officials around the country a break.

If a once-every-four-years presidential election takes, say, four days to tabulate, youd think we might control ourselves for that brief interval.

We also learned stupid people will do stupid things and elections bring out the dummies.

On Wednesday night after Election Day, hundreds of angry pro-Trump folks gathered to protest outside the Maricopa County vote tabulation center downtownand even tried to force their way inside.

Naturally, an angry crowd of anti-Trump folks showed up for a tense standoff policed by sheriffs deputies in SWAT gear. Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Stupid, showed up to add to the clown show.

The mobs big concern? That we count every vote! Which is exactly what elections workers were doing inside the building at the time.

What next, an angry mob outside McDonalds demanding they make burgers and fries?

Speaking of pointless, its time for the media to stop calling races. On Election Eve, the Associated Press and Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden while the other networks and CNN did not. This led to widespread confusion and finger pointing.

This is great for the media, who love a dumpster fire, but not great for voters or democracy, which the media claims to serve.

Calling a race serves no official function and has no legal bearing; it simply exists to serve journalists need for suspense and to give reporters a chance to feel super important on election night.

Every race call is a predictiona sophisticated prediction, surebut still only as good as the underlying math about voter turnout, geography, political preference and human behavior.

Football broadcasters could call the Super Bowl early, too, and likely be almost perfect. But the games still get played to the final whistle and election workers still tabulate every ballot. If no one gets to call it quits, whats the point of calling the race?

We also learned pollsters also are a generally useless bunch. To be fair, the pollsters in Arizona were nowhere near as wrong on the presidential race as pollsters in other states and those making national predictions.

Most Arizona pollsters gave Joe Biden a lead in the range of three or four points on their final polls.

As we know in hindsight, that was wrongbut it was within most polls margin of error. Clearly, theres something pollsters dont understand about todays voter turnout and the behavior of Trump voters in particular.

As someone who has paid pollsters for campaigns Ive run, I think they can help provide insight into trends and the impact of certain messages. But do I believe them like I do my bank balance or a thermometer? Hell no. And neither should you.

Stay tuned, folks. Who knows, we might even have a president to discuss.

Read more here:
Election 2020 aftermath taught us a few things | Opinion - Foothills Focus

Genetics

Podcast: Polymerase chain reactionThe ‘transformative’ tool that sparked a genetics revolution – Genetic Literacy Project

Geneticist Dr. Kat Arney revisits the story and the characters behind one of the most transformativeand ubiquitous techniques in modern molecular biology: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), on the latest episode of the Genetics Unzipped podcast from the Genetics Society.

Anyone who has worked with DNA in the laboratory is undoubtedly familiar with PCR. Invented in 1985, PCR is an indispensable molecular biology tool that can replicate any stretch of DNA, copying it billions of times in a matter of hours, providing enough DNA to use for applications like forensics, genetic testing, ancient DNA analysis or medical diagnostics.

Its hard to overstate the transformation that PCR brought to the world of molecular biology and biomedical research. Suddenly, researchers could amplify and study DNA in a way that had been simply impossible before, kickstarting the genetics revolution thats still going strong today.

So where did this revolutionary technology come from? Officially, PCR was invented in 1985 by a colorful character named Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel Prize for the discovery. But, as well see, all the components of PCR were in place by the early 1980s thanks to the work of scientists like Arthur Kornberg and Har Gobind Khoranait just took a creative leap to assemble them into one blockbusting technique.

Then, the discovery of Thermus aquaticus in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park by Thomas Brock in the 1960s, the isolation of the thermostable Taq polymerase from that bacterium in 1976 by Alice Chien and John Trela from the University of Cincinnati, and the subsequent invention of automatic thermocyclers paved the way for the simple, one-step PCR process that has transformed laboratories across the world.

Full show notes, transcript, music credits and references online at GeneticsUnzipped.com.

Genetics Unzippedis the podcast from the UKGenetics Society,presented by award-winning science communicator and biologistKat Arneyand produced byFirst Create the Media. Follow Kat on Twitter@Kat_Arney,Genetics Unzipped@geneticsunzip,and the Genetics Society at@GenSocUK

Listen to Genetics Unzipped on Apple podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Original post:
Podcast: Polymerase chain reactionThe 'transformative' tool that sparked a genetics revolution - Genetic Literacy Project

Human Behavior

Election infection | News, Sports, Jobs – Lock Haven Express

Anyone who spends any amount of time online, and on social media in particular, cannot help but become bombarded by news stories, opinion posts, expert video breakdowns of whats really happening all around us.

So much of this shared virtual space seems dedicated to breaking down and reconstructing the political structure, to shared and re-shared monologues on the state of the nation, long chains of opinions and facts blurred together and passed again and again throughout the information network, facsimiles of facsimiles of facsimiles

I am reminded in all of this of a famous quote, one I found online, by president Abraham Lincoln: Dont believe everything you read on the internet.

Misinformation tactics, fake news on social media, political propaganda networks bent on pressuring the publics vision of reality consistently enough that they cant help but start conforming: these are not new subjects.

Get people to start using your words, and they will start sharing your vision, a strategy as old as political cynicism.

We probably dont need this reminder.

We certainly dont need to be told that social media is bursting with dubious content.

And yet

As has been variously reported and consistently suffered anecdotally, online misinformation spikes during election seasons.

Both internationally and domestically, bad faith actors fill the various media ecosystems with deceptive, self-serving informational junk food.

The kinds of stories and reports that push on the pleasure centers of our brain, exploiting our worst instincts and clogging the bloodstream of our democracy.

When given the option to consume easy media narratives that prove us right and them wrong and that taste like sweet retribution and savory political comeuppance, we often cant help ourselves; or rather, we dont know any better than to say no.

Online media literacy is the kind of skill that has only existed for several decades and has been widely important for even fewer.

The phrase fake news entered the public discourse sometime during the previous presidential election cycle, but instead of keying us into a heightened awareness of the way we consume media, it largely did the opposite, giving us permission to reject information we dont like as fake in favor of information we do.

Social media platforms like Facebook, meanwhile, have been designed specifically to cater to these impulses.

To a large extent, its not anyones fault that the majority of the population doesnt have this newly necessary skill of digital media literacy.

How could we?

Not that media literacy (i.e. the ability to evaluate the context and trustworthiness of things like news stories and published opinions) is something weve never cared about.

But the scale of the issue online takes proportions and evolves at rates that are difficult to fathom.

You cant blame someone for never being taught to swim, but in a world quickly filling with water, we will survive or perish depending on our ability to learn.

And thats just it, isnt it?

The existential threat of it all. This is an issue that affects the stability of our democracy, of our global ecosystem.

But perhaps most tangibly important, it threatens our local community.

One thing everyone can probably agree on is that the divisions between us and our neighbors are higher, more personal, more spiteful.

We feel like were all out to get each other, and we often are. Those political gotchas on Facebook, the pit in our stomach when someone we care about signals support for the other side, these small moments have the ability to consume entire days at a time.

We can turn away from the issue entirely, get off the social media grid, go offline.

This feels like an increasingly appealing solution, something Facebook has recently mimed with its decision to ban all political advertising on the platform up through the presidential election.

But this seems unlikely to be effective as a widespread solution. Its hard to change the course of history by appealing to the past.

The other option, then, is widespread learning.

Schools across the country have increasingly focused on these kinds of skills, and I can say from my own experience teaching college composition courses, digital media literacy has taken a central role.

Recent studies have indicated that younger age groups are less likely to share false or misleading news stories.

But in a world verging on ecological collapse, we ought to worry whether this improvement is happening quickly enough.

What else can be done to address this issue?

One helpful shortcut Ive found is to turn inward rather than outward, that is, to acknowledge the three proverbial fingers pointed back at us whenever we point out the shortcomings of others. In practice, this means recognizing when a political news story makes us feel good.

Its always a good literacy practice to learn to be especially skeptical of the ideas we most agree with.

This is how misinformation thrives and spreads, packaged and presented as exactly what we want to hear.

Were naturally less skeptical of things we agree with because, well, we already know were right.

And because we know were right, we tend not to worry if we might be wrong.

Instead of immediately sharing that news story, that monologue from the expert, repeating the opinion we heard on our favorite talk radio show, we might want to reflect on this reflex and realize just how little thought we put into the matter.

It usually isnt all that much.

We come to see how much more were focused on winning the argument than getting to the truth or resolving the issue at hand.

We realize the world is a bit more complicated than wed like it to be, and though that can be scary and paralyzing, we ought to know and try better.

It goes without saying that, though digital media literacy is an issue within contemporary politics, it is not a political issue.

This is a human behavior issue, and as we are all human, this is an issue we all face.

It is wrapped up in instincts we cannot eliminate but can at least monitor and keep in check.

Personal awareness of our media habits might seem like a small solution in the face of such large, existential problems, but its one of the few ways to make a direct and individual impact.

On its own, it probably isnt enough, but its something.

Von P. Wise II is a freelance writer formerly of Lock Haven. He can be contacted at vonpwise@gmail.com

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

Go here to read the rest:
Election infection | News, Sports, Jobs - Lock Haven Express

Human Behavior

How Facebook Can Easily Swing the Presidential Election – msnNOW

Provided by The Daily Beast Sloan Science on Screen

As millions of Americans cast their votes for the next president of the United States, all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and 35 contested seats in the U.S. Senate, its important to remember just how slim the margin of victory was in 2016, with the election decided by roughly 107,000 votes spread across three statesPennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsinand the outsized role Facebook played in swinging things in the direction of one Donald J. Trump.

In 2017, Facebook itself estimated that 126 million users were served content by Russian troll farms; that the Trump team harvested the private information of over 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge via the firm Cambridge Analytica; and that the Trump campaign brilliantly exploited Facebooks digital ads, running 5.9 million ad variations in the final months of the election compared to Hillary Clintons 66,000. Facebooks impact was so profound that the data-mining company even boasted of being responsible for Trumps victory in an internal memo.

Filmmaker Shalini Kantayyas new documentary Coded Biaspremiering Nov. 11 in virtual cinemasexamines the work of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini, who uncovered how facial-recognition AI discriminates against people of color, as well as the disturbing ways technology and social media are shaping the world that we live in.

In one alarming scene, Zeynep Tufekci, one of the worlds leading social scientists, illustrated just how big Facebooks impact can be on our democratic processor as she puts it, their power to manipulate.

Tufekci recounted how in 2010, Facebook partnered with a team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego to conduct an experiment on 61 million users ahead of the 2010 U.S. congressional elections by showing them different variations of a clickable I Voted button. Ultimately, they determined that the social message drove approximately 340,000 people to the polls.

Video: Facebook, Twitter and Google face Congress over free speech (CNET)

Facebook, Twitter and Google face Congress over free speech

Click to expand

UP NEXT

One Facebook message, shown just once, could easily turn out three times the number of people who swung the U.S. election in 2016, Tufekci says in Coded Bias. With a very light touch, Facebook can swing close elections without anybody noticing. Maybe with a heavier touch, they can swing not-so-close elections. And if they decided to do that, right now we are just depending on their word.

In recent months, the powers-that-be at Facebook (translation: Mark Zuckerberg) have made a more concerted effort to crack down on Russian disinformation surrounding the election as well as dangerous pro-Trump conspiracy-mongering. But the fight is far from over, and Facebook is still giving right-wing pundits a competitive advantage on its platform.

Weve not yet reckoned with the invisible hand of big tech in shaping human behavior, and reshaping democracy, argues Kantayya. The study results show that the subtle difference in messages shown by Facebook directly influenced the real-world voting behavior of millions of people.

Coded Bias, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, opens theatrically through virtual cinema release at New Yorks Metrograph cinema on November 11th and over 50 theaters nationally (all listings here) through Sloan Science on Screen program in the following weeks.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here

The rest is here:
How Facebook Can Easily Swing the Presidential Election - msnNOW

Anatomy

Monkey Dust and the Anatomy of a Tabloid Drug Scare Story – VICE UK

Screengrabs via North Wales Live, Stoke-on-TrentLive, Sky News, MailOnline and The Sun. Background: Pixabay

Newspapers distort the truth and dehumanise societys most vulnerable people when they report on drug scares, a new scientific study has found.

Public health experts at Liverpool John Moores University used the Monkey Dust epidemic in England during the summer of 2018 to pick apart how the media invokes the marmalade dropper drug scare story one that shocks Middle Englands newspaper readers into dropping their marmalade at breakfast in order to sell papers.

The study analysed 368 newspaper articles about the terrifying new drug in reality not one substance but a variety of potent, addictive synthetic cathinone stimulants such as MDPV and MDPHP that have been around for a while.

Researchers found that the media frenzy around Monkey Dust had all the inaccurate, hyped-up ingredients of a classic drug scare story: a brand new drug, more potent than any other, spreading to a town near you and with the power to transform people into violent sub-humans. It found that this kind of reporting not only exploited the poorest and sickest people in society for shock factor, but also made it harder for them to get help and put them in increased danger.

A swathe of 2018 newspaper reports, complete with lurid images, told readers that Monkey Dust was turning homeless people into zombie-like savages with superhuman powers. Vulnerable drug users were compared to the Incredible Hulk, while Stoke-on-Trent, the West Midlands city at the centre of the deluge of media reports, was like a scene from the Night of the Living Dead.

Monkey Dust originally the name of a satirical cartoon show in the early 2000s first appeared in a 2013 article in local Staffordshire newspaper The Sentinal about a murder case in which the perpetrator was alleged to be high on the drug known as monkey dust when he battered a man to death with a baseball bat. The drug was mentioned again in a couple of national papers in 2015, when a traveling salesman who chucked a cigarette through an elderly persons letter box and a robber dressed as Cruella de Vil were both said to be high on it.

But it was in the summer of 2018 that the Monkey Dust media feeding frenzy began. Sensationalist reports in the local and mainstream media including the BBC, Daily Mirror and The Telegraph began referring to the drug as evil, demon-like and abhorrent.

They were not sure what Monkey Dust actually was, but it was ten times stronger than coke, worse than heroin with cravings similar to meth. One local paper described it as the terrifying new street drug that turns users into zombies for just 2.

But drug users were not just zombies. According to many newspapers they were also cannibals. Alongside pictures of Hannibal Lecter, a series of articles suggested cannibalism was an effect of intoxication because it can make people who take it want to eat other peoples faces off.

Like escaped zoo animals, Monkey Dust users, newspapers said, were a highly unpredictable threat to the public who were unable to feel pain, deranged and could lash out at any time with unnatural strength. Sky News reported about a video showing one man, apparently high on the drug, leaping off the roof of a house onto a car, before getting straight up and attacking a police officer. They are just not of this world, said the Daily Mail.

Problem was, as VICE News reported at the time, and the study confirmed, the Great British Monkey Dust Panic while creating widespread clickbait alarm was not quite what it seemed.

The study found the media exaggerated the levels of use of the drug, its effects and the geographical extent of its use. Stories said people committed acts while high on Monkey Dust with little evidence they had taken it. The viral video of the man high on Monkey Dust jumping off a roof turned out to be from 2014, with no proof of what hed taken, while the line about the drug causing users to eat people had been cut and pasted from another, long ago debunked scare story from America.

Like most drug scare stories, from PCP and crystal meth to mephedrone and hippy crack, the study said local and national newspapers fed off each other. Once a false piece of information, or an outrageous quote was published, it spread across the media unchecked.

The media erroneously turned what was in reality a very localised story and a small group of disadvantaged people into a national threat. Far from plaguing the streets of the UK, Monkey Dust was largely confined to the Stoke area. Nevertheless the Daily Mail reported that all too many grim pockets of Britain were being transformed into the Incredible Hulk.

What most concerned the studys authors however was that drug scare stories such as the one about Monkey Dust have a direct, negative impact on societys most socially excluded people. Newspapers used anonymised photographs of homeless people and images of monsters to make drug users look a threat, instead of people struggling with serious problems.

Vulnerable groups were presented as the other and a group that should be excluded from city centre locations, said the study. People who use drugs were positioned as a drain on resources, through the pressures placed on public services, their perceived lack of economic contribution to society, and the negative effects of their physical presence in town centres as damaging to local economies.

Very few articles gave any explanation as to why people in Stoke-on-Trent might be getting high on drugs such as Monkey Dust, the study said. There was little mention of the austerity-fuelled social conditions, such as rising poverty and cuts to local services, that may have led to people becoming homeless and addicted to Monkey Dust in the first place, observed the study.

It might seem like harmless tabloid fun painting societys most socially excluded people as not of this world, but the study authors said these dehumanising stories have grave consequences. The study said that stigmatising drug users makes them less likely to seek help and means the authorities are less likely to give them it. Worse, it can put them in increased danger from members of the public and the police. In America, media myths about the power of drugs to make people superhuman have had a huge impact such as the killing by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis on the over-violent, and sometimes deadly, policing of drugs there.

The development of the meth zombie image in America, popularised by the use of dehumanising Faces of Meth mugshots, has been used to sew panic and injustice in communities, stigmatise the poor and hand down thousands of overly harsh sentences. The same can be said for crack in the US and for heroin in the UK. In Britain, the portrayal in the media of Spice users as inhuman zombies has made it easier for the public, police and the authorities to ignore why these people are taking drugs in such harmful way and for some to see them purely as objects of derision and disgust.

Media reporting has real life impact in that it can lead to increased police action, and in turn the further criminalisation of people who use drugs. It can have real life impact on the lived experiences of drug users by influencing public perceptions and attitudes, concluded the report.

It is important to change these narratives to prevent the negative effects of media reporting, and the need to ensure journalists report drug issues in ways that are better informed to prevent further harm to people who use drugs, and for policy makers to reconsider reactions to news media reporting that reproduce ineffective policy responses.

See the original post here:
Monkey Dust and the Anatomy of a Tabloid Drug Scare Story - VICE UK

Neuroscience

Neuroscience study finds political attitudes can influence how the brain responds to information – PsyPost

Neuroimaging research provides new insights into the neural underpinnings of how information is interpreted differently by conservatives and liberals.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found differences in activity in a key brain region among conservatives and liberals who watched an identical set of videos about immigration policy.

I think most of us have seen some demonstration of this phenomenon, or even witnessed in real life show the same news footage to people with different political affiliations, and they see something different, said researcher Yuan Chang Leong, a postdoctoral researcher at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

As an example, he pointed to a recent segment on CBS This Morning, in which conservatives and liberals were shown the same videos but had very different perceptions of who was the aggressor.

Why do people perceive and respond to the same political information differently? As a neuroscientist, I was curious as to how partisan biases relate to information processing in the brain, Leong said.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record the brain activity of 38 American participants as they watched news clips, campaign ads, and public speeches related to immigration policy. The videos were about 1 to 2 minutes long and were selected to represent both liberal and conservative viewpoints on immigration policy.

Prior to being scanned, the participants completed a questionnaire that assessed their support for six immigration policies.

After each video, the participants rated on a scale of one to five how much they agreed with the general message of the video, the credibility of the information presented and the extent to which the video made them likely to change their position and to support the policy in question.

To calculate group brain responses to the videos, the researchers used a measure known as inter-subject correlation, which can be used to measure how similarly two brains respond to the same message.

As expected, political ideology was unrelated to sensory processing. Leong and his colleagues found that the videos resulted in neural responses in the auditory and visual cortices that were shared across participants regardless of the their political attitudes.

But the researchers observed a divergence between conservative-leaning and liberal-leaning participants in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex . The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex has been implicated in a broad range of complex cognitive functions, including episodic memory retrieval, impression formation, and reasoning about other peoples mental states, the researchers said.

This divergence, which the researchers dubbed neural polarization, was increased by the use of risk-related and moral-emotional words in the videos. It was also related to whether the participants changed their views.

Brain responses diverged between conservatives and liberals watching the same videos about immigration policy. For a given individual, the closer their brain activity resembled that of the average conservative or average liberal person, the more likely they were to adopt that groups position after watching the videos, Leong told PsyPost.

This suggests that the more participants adopt the conservative interpretation of a video, the more likely they are to be persuaded to take the conservative position, and vice versa. The divergence in brain responses was strongest when the videos used language that highlighted threat, morality and emotions, suggesting that certain words are more likely to drive polarization.

Together, these results suggest a neural basis for partisan biases in interpreting political messages and the effects these biases have on attitude change. The results also highlight the type of language most likely to drive biased interpretations, Leong said.

But this neural polarization does not imply that conservatives and liberals are hardwired to disagree, Leong continued. Our experiences, and the media we consume, likely contribute to the polarized neural responses.

Future research should also examine whether the results generalize to other political issues.

We scanned participants watching videos about a single issue immigration. It would be important to study if the results would generalize to other polarizing issues, e.g., abortion, gun control. Given that those issues are also often framed in threat, moral, and emotional terms, we believe this would be the case, but we would need to run the study to know with greater certainty, Leong said.

Future research could also examine how neural polarization influences sharing behavior and the distribution of information. Leong hopes to use his findings to inform interventions aimed at narrowing the divide between conservatives and liberals.

Political beliefs have a powerful influence over how people perceive, interpret and respond to new information. People can watch the same news footage and draw completely opposite conclusions. I think this highlights why it is so difficult to bridge the partisan divide, and that trying to persuade partisans with more information might not be the most effective strategy, he explained.

If our goal is to reduce polarization and change minds, we need to think carefully about how we frame and structure political information, for example, by framing messages to appeal to the core values of the respective voter (for e.g., see Feinberg and Willer, 2012, The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes published in Psychological Science).

The study, Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content, was authored by Yuan Chang Leonga, Janice Chen, Robb Willer, and Jamil Zaki.

Visit link:
Neuroscience study finds political attitudes can influence how the brain responds to information - PsyPost

Embryology

Freezing eggs a risky business – The Conservative Woman

ACCORDING to theTimes, women are rushing to freeze their eggs because lockdown has reduced the chances of meeting a partner.

However, what the article failed to make clear is that this is a highly unreliable insurance policy for women. It is more like a gamble.

Not once did the article state that the chance of a live birth from frozen eggs is not much more than 1 per cent.The problem is not just in the ability to thaw eggs successfully but also thatnot every egg makes an embryo, not every embryo makes a pregnancy and not every pregnancy makes a baby.

I have blogged on these so-called success rates previously (see here for example)in an attempt to expose the sad reality that freezing eggs rarely leads to a live birth, particularly for older women, the age group most likely to pursue this.

At least theTimesarticle did cite some of the financial costs involved. Do not expect to spend less than 4,000-5,000 for extracting and freezing eggs, and be prepared to spend up to 8,000, then add a further 125-350 per year for storing them in a fertility clinic freezer for up to ten years.

Which brings me to a new campaign. The reason the issue of freezing eggs for social reasons (as opposed to medical reasons) is in the news once again is not solely because of the lockdown. It is because poor success rates, increasing demand fostered by fertility clinics and the media, and the expectation that having a baby is a right (at any age, for any person) have all contributed to a demand for a change in the rules for freezing eggs.

Legislation permits women to store eggs for ten years, after which they must be used or destroyed. The Government is currently deciding whether to change the law and extend storage limits.

Fertility clinicians have been pushing for this for some time; however a recent entrant to this debate is the Nuffield Council on Bioethics,which says that there is no reason not to extend the storage limits. It is likely that the Government will agree. Whether this will mean indefinite storage, or imposing another limit, is not clear at this stage.

As well as the significant financial burden for what is essentially little more than a gamble, what other reasons are there for any concern with such a change? Surely it is simply an extension of choice for women and preferable to destroying their only hope of a baby? The latter concern is certainly true but lets take a step back to answer these.

We could start with safety concerns over extracting eggs in the first place. To generate sufficient eggs, more than the normal amount, women need daily high doses of powerful hormones, which is not only highly unpleasant but carries a real risk of causingovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. Then there are complications from egg retrieval.Extracting eggs from women is apainful, invasive and risky procedure. But even more concerning,short-termand long-term safety data is lacking. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), Government and regulatory bodies all fail to follow up women who have donated eggsand egg donors are not tracked over their lifetimes, so we have no idea of the long-term effects on young womens health.Very few major peer-reviewed studies have been carried out on the long-term effects of super-ovulation on this donor population. There are however peer-reviewed studies onthepossible linkbetweenfertility drugs and uterine cancer,to name but one long-term risk.

These are high risks for a healthy woman to take.

Then, to get around the financial costs, we have the encouragement by fertility clinics for vulnerable and usually desperate women to share their eggs with another patient in exchange for a reduced price for the extraction and freezing.

Thisfreeze and share offer can result in another woman having her donors child, while the donor remains without a baby until the child reaches 18 when they can contact the donor.

This may seem unlikely, but it isnt. I know a woman who was persuaded a few years ago to share half of her eggs for someone elses fertility treatment to have reduced cost treatment for herself and partner.

Years later, she is still highly traumatised having been unsuccessful in her own treatment while knowing that her eggs resulted in a successful birth for another woman. Somewhere, she has a biological daughter whom she will never know, unless contacted by the girl after she turns 18.

Moreover this woman has never had any practical or emotional help or support from the fertility clinic.

The (in)fertility industry is not an altruistic charity.At root, it is pretty well left to its own devices,trading on the hopes and fears of childless and vulnerable women.So clinicsare being allowed to raise false hopes, using a complicit media, and put womens health and even lives at risk, all the while charging the earth for it.

Read the rest here:
Freezing eggs a risky business - The Conservative Woman