Using Tide to Clean, Doesn\u27t Mean its Green: An Argument Against Greenwashing

When you wash your clothes, you choose a detergent that touts itself as an eco-friendly detergent. After all, why not help the environment with your everyday activities? You\u27ve just seen an ad for a new Tide product called Free and Gentle, a Proctor and Gamble creation, telling you all about how great Tide is for the environment. So you go to the store and spend the average $12 on a bottle that gets you approximately 30 loads. When you look at the back of the bottle, you don\u27t see a list of ingredients, but if the commercial says it\u27s good for the environment, you\u27re sure it is. The product states that it is free of harmful chemicals and scents that can cause irritation. Unfortunately, Proctor & Gamble exaggerates those claims, and when it comes to some products, including Tide Free and Gentle laundry detergent as will be seen, they are guilty of Greenwashing. Greenwashing, according to The Triple Bottom Line, a book that defines the pillars of sustainability as people, profits, and the planet, by Andrew Savitz, is defined as “a kind of corporate image-laundering in regard to the environment (Savitz, Lr Weber, 2006 pg. 136). In the easiest terms. Greenwashing occurs when marketers make claims about a product\u27s environmental attributes that are false or cannot be verified. Whether it be chemical ingredients, the amount of liquid used for proper efficiency, or unsubstantiated claims that improperly put Tide ahead of its competitors, there is really only one reason Tide can say it is better than the rest, and that is because it is designed to be easier on machines. Overall, it would seem that Proctor & Gamble know how to Greenwash a consumer into buying their eco-friendly products rather than providing a detergent that is truly green

I understand you feel that way, but I feel this way: The benefits of I-language and communicating perspective during conflict

Using hypothetical scenarios, we provided participants with potential opening statements to a conflict discussion that varied on I/you language and communicated perspective. Participants rated the likelihood that the recipient of the statement would react in a defensive manner. Using I-language and communicating perspective were both found to reduce perceptions of hostility. Statements that communicated both self- and other-perspective using I-language (e.g. ‘I understand why you might feel that way, but I feel this way, so I think the situation is unfair’) were rated as the best strategy to open a conflict discussion. Simple acts of initial language use can reduce the chances that conflict discussion will descend into a downward spiral of hostility

Emotion regulation in psychopathy

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group

The response of early neural genes to FGF signaling or inhibition of BMP indicate the absence of a conserved neural induction module

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The molecular mechanism that initiates the formation of the vertebrate central nervous system has long been debated. Studies in <it>Xenopus </it>and mouse demonstrate that inhibition of BMP signaling is sufficient to induce neural tissue in explants or ES cells respectively, whereas studies in chick argue that instructive FGF signaling is also required for the expression of neural genes. Although additional signals may be involved in neural induction and patterning, here we focus on the roles of BMP inhibition and FGF8a.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To address the question of necessity and sufficiency of BMP inhibition and FGF signaling, we compared the temporal expression of the five earliest genes expressed in the neuroectoderm and determined their requirements for induction at the onset of neural plate formation in <it>Xenopus</it>. Our results demonstrate that the onset and peak of expression of the genes vary and that they have different regulatory requirements and are therefore unlikely to share a conserved neural induction regulatory module. Even though all require inhibition of BMP for expression, some also require FGF signaling; expression of the early-onset pan-neural genes <it>sox2 </it>and <it>foxd5α </it>requires FGF signaling while other early genes, <it>sox3</it>, <it>geminin </it>and <it>zicr1 </it>are induced by BMP inhibition alone.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We demonstrate that BMP inhibition and FGF signaling induce neural genes independently of each other. Together our data indicate that although the spatiotemporal expression patterns of early neural genes are similar, the mechanisms involved in their expression are distinct and there are different signaling requirements for the expression of each gene.</p

Forensic Investigation of Cyberstalking Cases using Behavioural Evidence Analysis

Behavioural Evidence Analysis (BEA) is, in theory, useful in developing an understanding of the offender, the victim, the crime scene, and the dynamics of the crime. It can add meaning to the evidence obtained through digital forensic techniques and assist investigators with reconstruction of a crime. There is, however, little empirical research examining the application of BEA to actual criminal cases, particularly cyberstalking cases. This study addresses this gap by examining the utility of BEA for such cases in terms of understanding the behavioural and motivational dimensions of offending, and the way in which digital evidence can be interpreted. It reports on the forensic analysis of 20 cyberstalking cases investigated by Dubai Police in the last five years. Results showed that BEA helps to focus an investigation, enables better understanding and interpretation of victim and offender behaviour, and assists in inferring traits of the offender from available digital evidence. These benefits can help investigators to build a stronger case, reduce time wasted to mistakes, and to exclude suspects wrongly accused in cyberstalking cases