Prescribing Death

Prescribing Deat

How Viruses Feign Death to Survive and Thrive

How Viruses Feign Death to Survive and Thriv

Typical Dreams: A Comparison of Dreams Across Cultures

Have you ever wondered how the content of your dreams differs from that of your friends? How about the dreams of people raised in different countries and cultures? It is not always easy to compare dreams of distinct individuals because the content of dreams depends on our personal experiences. This is why dream researchers have developed standardized dream questionnaires in which common thematic elements are grouped together. These questionnaires can be translated into various languages and used to survey and scientifically analyze the content of dreams. Open-ended questions about dreams might elicit free form, subjective answers that are difficult to categorize and analyze. Therefore, standardized dream questionnaires ask study subjects, “Have you ever dreamed of …” and provide research subjects with a list of defined dream themes such as being chased, flying, or falling

Three Seconds: Poems, Cubes, and the Brain

Temporal order can be assessed in a rather straightforward experimental manner. Research subjects can be provided sequential auditory clicks, one to each ear. If the clicks are one second apart, nearly all participants can correctly identify whether or not the click in the right ear came before the one in the left ear. It turns out that this holds true even if the clicks are only 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds) apart. The threshold for being able to correctly assign a temporal order to such brief stimuli lies around 30 milliseconds for young adults (up to 25 years old) and 60 milliseconds for older adults. Temporal integration of stimuli, on the other hand, cannot be directly measured through experiments. It is not possible to ask research subjects, “Are these two stimuli part of your now?” and expect a definitive answer because everyone has a different concept and definition of what constitutes “now” or the “subjective present.” Therefore, researchers such as Ernst Pöppel have had to resort to indirect assessments of temporal integration and ascertain what interval of time is grasped as a perceptual unit by our brain

The Long Shadow of Nazi Indoctrination: Persistence of Anti-Semitism in Germany

Anti-Semitism and the holocaust are among the central themes in the modern German secondary school curriculum. During history lessons in middle school, we learned about anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages and early modernity. Our history curriculum in the ninth and tenth grades focused on the virulent growth of anti-Semitism in 20th century Europe, how Hitler and the Nazi party used anti-Semitism as a means to rally support and gain power, and how the Nazi apparatus implemented the systematic genocide of millions of Jews. In grades 11 to 13, the educational focus shifts to a discussion of the broader moral and political context of anti-Semitism and Nazism. How could the Nazis enlist the active and passive help of millions of “upstanding” citizens to participate in this devastating genocide? Were all Germans who did not actively resist the Nazis morally culpable or at least morally responsible for the Nazi horrors? Did Germans born after the Second World War inherit some degree of moral responsibility for the crimes committed by the Nazis? How can German society ever redeem itself after being party to the atrocities of the Nazis? Anti-Semitism and Nazism were also important topics in our German literature and art classes because the Nazis persecuted and murdered German Jewish intellectuals and artists and because the shame and guilt experienced by Germans after 1945 featured so prominently in German art and literature. One purpose of extensively educating Germany schoolchildren about this dark and shameful period of German history is the hope that if they are ever faced with the reemergence of prejudice directed against Jews or any other ethnic or religious group, they will have the courage to stand up for those who are being persecuted and make the right moral choices. As such, it is part of the broader Vergangenheitsbewältigung (wrestling with one’s past) in post-war German society that takes place not only in schools but in various public venues. The good news, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth (1), is that Germans who attended school after the Second World War have shown a steady decline in anti-Semitism. The bad news: Vergangenheitsbewältigung is a bigger challenge for Germans who attended school under the Nazis because a significant proportion of them continue to exhibit high levels of anti-Semitic attitudes more than half a century after the defeat of Nazi Germany

Heat not Wet: Climate Change Effects on Human Migration in Rural Pakistan

The 2010 floods were among the worst that Pakistan has experienced in recent decades. Sadly, the country is prone to recurrent flooding, which means that in any given year, Pakistani farmers hope and pray that the floods will not be as bad as those in 2010. It would be natural to assume that recurring flood disasters force Pakistani farmers to give up farming and migrate to the cities in order to make ends meet. But a recent study (3) published in the journal Nature Climate Change by Valerie Mueller at the International Food Policy Research Institute has identified the actual driver of migration among rural Pakistanis: heat. Mueller and colleagues analyzed the migration and weather patterns in rural Pakistan from 1991 to 2012 and found that flooding had a modest to insignificant effect on migration whereas extreme heat was clearly associated with migration. The researchers found that bouts of heat wiped out a third of the income derived through farming! In Pakistan, the average monthly rural household income is 20,000 rupees (4) (roughly $200), which is barely enough to feed a typical household consisting of 6 or 7 people. It is no wonder that when heat stress reduces crop yields and this low income drops by one third, farming becomes untenable, and rural Pakistanis are forced to migrate and find alternate means to feed their families. Mueller and colleagues also identified the group that was most likely to migrate: rural farmers who did not own the land they were farming. Not owning the land makes them more mobile, but compared to the landowners, these farmers are far more vulnerable in terms of economic stability and food security when a heat wave hits. Migration may be the last resort for their continued survival

Shame on You, Shame on Me: Shame as an Evolutionary Adaptation

Can shame be good for you? We often think of shame as a shackling emotion that thwarts our individuality and creativity. A sense of shame could prevent us from choosing a partner we truly love, speaking out against societal traditions that propagate injustice, or pursuing a profession that is deemed unworthy by our peers. But if shame is so detrimental, why did we evolve with this emotion? A team of researchers led by Daniel Sznycer from the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, recently published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggests that shame is an important evolutionary adaptation. According to their research, which was conducted in the United States, Israel, and India, the sense of shame helps humans avoid engaging in acts that could lead to them being devalued and ostracized by their community

Haikus and Landays in Science

Haikus and Landays in Scienc

The Dire State of Science in the Muslim World

Universities and the scientific infrastructures in Muslim-majority countries need to undergo radical reforms if they want to avoid falling by the wayside in a world characterized by major scientific and technological innovations. This is the conclusion reached by Nidhal Guessoum and Athar Osama in their recent commentary Institutions: Revive universities of the Muslim world (1), published in the scientific journal Nature. The physics and astronomy professor Guessoum (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) and Osama, who is the founder of the Muslim World Science Initiative, use the commentary to summarize the key findings of the report Science at Universities of the Muslim World (PDF) (2) (3), which was released in October 2015 by a task force of policymakers, academic vice-chancellors, deans, professors, and science communicators. This report is one of the most comprehensive analyses of the state of scientific education and research in the 57 countries with a Muslim-majority population, which are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)

Tapping Into the Creative Potential of Our Elders

Tapping Into the Creative Potential of Our Elder