June 25, 2013 ? The next time someone snubs you at a party and you think hiding is the solution to escape your feelings of rejection, think again. Scientists have shown that reaching out to other people during a stressful event is an effective way to improve your mood, and researchers at Concordia University suggest that the hormone oxytocin may help you accomplish just that.
Mark Ellenbogen and Christopher Cardoso, researchers in Concordia's Centre for Research in Human Development are taking a closer look at oxytocin, a hormone traditionally studied for its role in childbirth and breastfeeding, and more recently for its effect on social behaviour. Their latest study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, shows that oxytocin can increase a person's trust in others following social rejection.
Explains Ellenbogen, "that means that instead of the traditional 'fight or flight' response to social conflict where people get revved up to respond to a challenge or run away from it, oxytocin may promote the 'tend and befriend' response where people reach out to others for support after a stressful event. That can, in turn, strengthen social bonds and may be a healthier way to cope."
In a double-blind experiment, 100 students were administered either oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray, then subjected to social rejection. In a conversation that was staged to simulate real life, researchers posing as students disagreed with, interrupted and ignored the unsuspecting participants. Using mood and personality questionnaires, the data showed that participants who were particularly distressed after being snubbed by the researchers reported greater trust in other people if they sniffed oxytocin prior to the event, but not if they sniffed the placebo. In contrast, oxytocin had no effect on trust in those who were not emotionally affected by social rejection.
Cardoso, who is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology, says that studying oxytocin may provide future options for those who suffer from mental health conditions characterized by high levels of stress and low levels of social support, like depression. "If someone is feeling very distressed, oxytocin could promote social support seeking, and that may be especially helpful to those individuals," he says, noting that people with depression tend to naturally withdraw even though reaching out to social support systems can alleviate depression and facilitate recovery.
For Ellenbogen, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Developmental Psychopathology, the contribution of stress the development of mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder has long been a research focus. "I'm concerned with the biological underpinnings of stress, particularly interpersonal stress, which is thought to be a strong predictor of these mental disorders. So, oxytocin is a natural fit with my interests," says Ellenbogen. "The next phase of research will begin to study oxytocin's effects in those who are at high risk for developing clinical depression."
Cardoso says reactions to oxytocin seem to be more variable depending on individual differences and contextual factors than most pharmaceuticals, so learning more about how the hormone operates can help scientists to figure out how it might be used in future treatments.
"Previous studies have shown that natural oxytocin is higher in distressed people, but before this study nobody could say with certainty why that was the case," Cardoso says, "In distressed people, oxytocin may improve one's motivation to reach out to others for support. That idea is cause for a certain degree of excitement, both in the research community and for those who suffer from mood disorders."
You expect rock stars to live insulated lives, with hardly any real idea of what's happening in the real world, but Mick Jagger, of all people, is always up on the day's big stories. The Rolling Stones were playing in D.C. last night, and the oldest surviving mega-frontman in rock and roll cracked wise at President Obama's expense. The Stones brought their 50 and Counting tour?to the Verizon Center in the nation's capital on Monday night for (potentially) their last show on U.S. soil, ever. (Unless they tour again, which, you know, these guys don't really age. ...
Contact: Sue Nichols Nichols@msu.edu 517-432-0206 Michigan State University
Global sustainability is like a high-stakes jigsaw puzzle and an international group of scientists have created a new framework to assemble the big picture without losing pieces.
Scientists led by Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Michigan State University's Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, have built an integrated way to study a world that has become more connected with faster and more socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. They say "telecoupling" describes how distance is shrinking and connections are strengthening between nature and humans.
In Ecology and Society, Liu, director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS), and his colleagues lay the groundwork to understand how an action on one side of the world has enormous socioeconomic and environmental consequences thousands of miles away and how it doesn't stop there. Telecoupling shows how environmental and socioeconomic actions lead to reactions and feedbacks and then to more repercussions that reverberate globally.
For a world struggling to balance the needs of people and the environment in the face of critical challenges like climate change, food security, water security, energy security, environmental pollution, poverty, biodiversity loss and species invasion, Liu says an integrated framework of telecoupling is essential.
"It has been traditional to focus on either the socioeconomic or environmental impact of an action," Liu said. "But the lack of a holistic understanding of an action means that you really cannot manage a system well for both socioeconomic and environmental sustainability.
The article "Framing Sustainability in a Telecoupled World" lays out a comprehensive telecoupling framework a map for the trip to sustainable development across the world.
The authors use the trading of soybeans as an example of the far-reaching complexities that result.
Soybeans are a booming commodity in China used for food, vegetable oil and animal feed. The telecoupling framework uses five components (systems, agents, flows, causes, and effects) critical to assembling the whole picture.
Systems are where humans and nature interact. Explosive growth and increasing urbanity has sent the Chinese shopping elsewhere for soybeans. Brazil has stepped up to the plate to meet the demands and has suffered environmental consequences as delicate rainforests are converted to farmland. China, on the other hand, has been converting farmlands back to forests.
The telecoupling framework tracks how one change leads to another and can spill over into other countries. For example, the United States found itself losing market share in soybeans, leading to economic repercussions and environmental changes as farmers shifted gears.
Flows are the materials, information and energy that pass back and forth between systems. China and Brazil have trade agreements, financial transactions and the use of fuel and water to grow and transport the beans.
The telecoupling framework also factors in the actions of agents the individuals, decision-make groups, or even herds of animals -- whose actions have an impact, big and small, what they do in China can resonate in Brazil and visa versa -- or somewhere in between.
Then there are causes and effects supply, demand and the cultural tastes that drive demand are among many causes. Effects can be the impact of insecticides and fertilizers used to grow the beans in Brazil or displacement of farmers in China who no longer grow soybeans due to the lower price of soybeans from Brazil.
Besides soybean trade, telecouplings may emerge through other types of trade, and other distant interactions such as foreign investment, tourism, transnational land tenure transfer, knowledge dissemination, technology transfer, migration of humans and animals, water transfer, waste transfer, pollutant transfer, atmospheric circulation, and species invasion.
The point, Liu said, is that everything everywhere needs to be factored in.
"This is a big step to figure out how to quantify everything everywhere, but it's important," Liu said. "The telecoupling framework not only allows us to understand socioeconomic and environmental sustainability in one place, but it enables us to evaluate sustainability in all relevant places simultaneously.
"It provides a useful foundation to protect our environment while allowing people to thrive globally."
###
Joining Liu in writing the article is Vanessa Hull, Thomas Dietz, Shuxin Li, William McConnell, Emilio Moran and Cynthia Simmons, all from MSU; Mateus Batistella from Brazil's EMBRAPA; Ruth DeFries of Columbia University; Feng Fu and Karen Polenske of MIT; Thomas Hertel of Purdue University; Roberto Izaurralde of the Joint Global Change Research Institute; Eric Lambin, Rosamond Naylor and Peter Vitousek of Stanford; Luiz Martinelli of the University of So Paulo, Brazil; Zhiyun Ouyang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Anette Reenberg of the University of Copenhagen; Gilberto Rocha of Federal University of Par, Brazil; Peter Verburg of VU University of Amsterdam; Fusuo Zhang of China Agricultural University and Chunquan Zhu of International Union for Conservation of Nature in China.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Michigan State University, and Michigan AgBioResearch.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Sue Nichols Nichols@msu.edu 517-432-0206 Michigan State University
Global sustainability is like a high-stakes jigsaw puzzle and an international group of scientists have created a new framework to assemble the big picture without losing pieces.
Scientists led by Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Michigan State University's Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, have built an integrated way to study a world that has become more connected with faster and more socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. They say "telecoupling" describes how distance is shrinking and connections are strengthening between nature and humans.
In Ecology and Society, Liu, director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS), and his colleagues lay the groundwork to understand how an action on one side of the world has enormous socioeconomic and environmental consequences thousands of miles away and how it doesn't stop there. Telecoupling shows how environmental and socioeconomic actions lead to reactions and feedbacks and then to more repercussions that reverberate globally.
For a world struggling to balance the needs of people and the environment in the face of critical challenges like climate change, food security, water security, energy security, environmental pollution, poverty, biodiversity loss and species invasion, Liu says an integrated framework of telecoupling is essential.
"It has been traditional to focus on either the socioeconomic or environmental impact of an action," Liu said. "But the lack of a holistic understanding of an action means that you really cannot manage a system well for both socioeconomic and environmental sustainability.
The article "Framing Sustainability in a Telecoupled World" lays out a comprehensive telecoupling framework a map for the trip to sustainable development across the world.
The authors use the trading of soybeans as an example of the far-reaching complexities that result.
Soybeans are a booming commodity in China used for food, vegetable oil and animal feed. The telecoupling framework uses five components (systems, agents, flows, causes, and effects) critical to assembling the whole picture.
Systems are where humans and nature interact. Explosive growth and increasing urbanity has sent the Chinese shopping elsewhere for soybeans. Brazil has stepped up to the plate to meet the demands and has suffered environmental consequences as delicate rainforests are converted to farmland. China, on the other hand, has been converting farmlands back to forests.
The telecoupling framework tracks how one change leads to another and can spill over into other countries. For example, the United States found itself losing market share in soybeans, leading to economic repercussions and environmental changes as farmers shifted gears.
Flows are the materials, information and energy that pass back and forth between systems. China and Brazil have trade agreements, financial transactions and the use of fuel and water to grow and transport the beans.
The telecoupling framework also factors in the actions of agents the individuals, decision-make groups, or even herds of animals -- whose actions have an impact, big and small, what they do in China can resonate in Brazil and visa versa -- or somewhere in between.
Then there are causes and effects supply, demand and the cultural tastes that drive demand are among many causes. Effects can be the impact of insecticides and fertilizers used to grow the beans in Brazil or displacement of farmers in China who no longer grow soybeans due to the lower price of soybeans from Brazil.
Besides soybean trade, telecouplings may emerge through other types of trade, and other distant interactions such as foreign investment, tourism, transnational land tenure transfer, knowledge dissemination, technology transfer, migration of humans and animals, water transfer, waste transfer, pollutant transfer, atmospheric circulation, and species invasion.
The point, Liu said, is that everything everywhere needs to be factored in.
"This is a big step to figure out how to quantify everything everywhere, but it's important," Liu said. "The telecoupling framework not only allows us to understand socioeconomic and environmental sustainability in one place, but it enables us to evaluate sustainability in all relevant places simultaneously.
"It provides a useful foundation to protect our environment while allowing people to thrive globally."
###
Joining Liu in writing the article is Vanessa Hull, Thomas Dietz, Shuxin Li, William McConnell, Emilio Moran and Cynthia Simmons, all from MSU; Mateus Batistella from Brazil's EMBRAPA; Ruth DeFries of Columbia University; Feng Fu and Karen Polenske of MIT; Thomas Hertel of Purdue University; Roberto Izaurralde of the Joint Global Change Research Institute; Eric Lambin, Rosamond Naylor and Peter Vitousek of Stanford; Luiz Martinelli of the University of So Paulo, Brazil; Zhiyun Ouyang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Anette Reenberg of the University of Copenhagen; Gilberto Rocha of Federal University of Par, Brazil; Peter Verburg of VU University of Amsterdam; Fusuo Zhang of China Agricultural University and Chunquan Zhu of International Union for Conservation of Nature in China.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Michigan State University, and Michigan AgBioResearch.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
As personal drones become more usable - and more ubiquitous - I think we'll see more and more scenes like this one. The video, taken in Istanbul by a protester named Jenk Kose, shows the quadcopter falling out of the sky after being shot at by the police. The quadcopter's camera failed when it was hit but Jenk was able to save some of the footage.
According to the most recent estimates, Hurricane Sandy inflicted upwards of $60 billion in damage to the Northeast when it hit last October ? one of the most destructive storms in history. In addition to the life and property losses, officials believe that more than 200,000 vehicles in the New York area alone were damaged by water from storm surges, flooding and rain.
Parked on the tarmac, taxiways and runways 14/32 and 5/23 at Calverton Executive Airpark in Riverhead, NY, are 15,000 of those vehicles ? representing just a small portion of the total affected ? awaiting their fate. The water didn't distinguish between make or model, raging its destruction on everything in its path, regardless of sticker price. According to officials, the least damaged cars and trucks will be sold at auction to the highest bidder and most will be repaired and registered again (understandably with a "flood" warning on the title, buyer beware). Those with more significant damage will be picked for parts or scrapped.
As you click through the pictures, keep in mind that the runways covered in vehicles are large enough to handle heavy commercial traffic (the first is 10,000 feet long and the second is 7,000 feet in length, both are 200 feet wide). It truly is a somber sight.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? An Iranian navy commander claims Iran captured two small U.S. drones in past missions in addition to at least four others reported earlier.
Adm. Amir Rastgari says the two drones were of the small, low-altitude RQ-11 type, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency. He said one was captured in summer of 2011 and the other Nov. 2012.
Rastgari claimed most of the data from the unmanned aircraft was recovered.
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said last month that it captured a ScanEagle American drone after it entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf. At the same time, Iran claimed it had taken possession of two other simple, small ScanEagles.
In 2011, Iran claimed it brought down a more sophisticated CIA spy drone after it entered Iranian airspace from Afghanistan.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., left, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, right, confer at the start of a meeting on the new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, which regulates Internet websites that collect information from children under the age of thirteen, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., left, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, right, confer at the start of a meeting on the new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, which regulates Internet websites that collect information from children under the age of thirteen, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? New online child privacy rules will keep anonymous advertisers and marketers from siphoning personal information about preteens but won't restrain innovation among technology companies and businesses that rely on the Internet to reach consumers, government officials said Wednesday.
But those assurances failed to win over software developers who said the cost of complying with the new regulations and the risk of violating them will cause many responsible businesses to abandon the children's marketplace.
Information about children that cannot be collected unless a parent first gives permission now includes the location data that a cellphone generates, as well as photos, videos, and audio files containing a human image or voice, according to the rules announced Wednesday. Data known as "persistent identifiers" that allow a person to be tracked over time and across various websites are also considered personal data and covered by the rules, the agency said.
The rules offer several new methods for verifying a parent's consent, including electronically scanned consent forms, video conferencing and email.
The rules issued by the Federal Trade Commission ensure that a 14-year-old law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, keeps pace with evolving technology, including cellphones, tablets, software apps, and social networking sites, the agency's chairman, Jon Leibowitz, said at a Capitol Hill press conference.
The agency tried to achieve a balance between protecting kids and ensuring that a key sector of the U.S. economy keeps growing, Leibowitz said.
Liability for violations of the rules won't extend to Google, Apple and other companies that operate online stores offering public access to kids' apps, the FTC said. Google and Apple had warned that if the rule were written to include their stores, they would exclude many apps specifically intended for kids. That would hurt the nation's classrooms, where new and interactive apps are used by teachers and students, Apple said.
But the Application Developers Alliance, an industry association in Washington, said the rules leave the app industry, which is made up primarily of small businesses, liable for violations. The risk may drive entrepreneurs out of the children's app marketplace, said Jon Potter, the alliance's president.
Companies are not excluded from advertising on websites directed at children, allowing business models that rely on advertising to continue, Leibowitz said. But behavioral marketing techniques that target children are prohibited unless a parent agrees to them. "You may not track children to build massive profiles," he said.
The law was passed more than a decade ago, when no one could have anticipated what the Internet would look like or how adults and children would conduct their affairs online, said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller, D-W.Va. The changes, which the FTC has been developing for the last two years, are long overdue, he said.
Public interest groups hailed the changes. The rules "will provide a stern reminder to companies and developers that they need to do more to build a trustworthy online space for kids and families," said James Steyer, chief executive officer of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that studies children's use of technology.
Release of the rules comes a week after the FTC disclosed that it was investigating an unspecified number of app developers that may have violated the law by gathering information from kids without their parent's consent. The agency examined 400 kids' apps that it purchased from the online stores operated by Google and Apple. It determined that 60 percent of them transmitted the user's unique device identification to the software company or, more frequently, to advertising networks and companies that compile, analyze and sell consumer information for marketing campaigns.
The agency included in the rules new methods for securing verifiable consent after the software industry and Internet companies raised concerns over how to confirm that the permission actually came from a parent. Electronic scans of signed consent forms are acceptable, as is video-teleconferencing between the web site operator or online service and the parent, according to the agency.
The FTC also said it is encouraging technology companies to recommend additional verification methods. Leibowitz said he expects that this will "unleash innovation around consent mechanisms."
Emailed consent is also acceptable as long as the business confirms it by sending an email back to the parent, or calling or sending a letter. In cases of email confirmation, the information collected can only be used for internal use by that company and not shared with third parties, the agency said.
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Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
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As personal drones become more usable - and more ubiquitous - I think we'll see more and more scenes like this one. The video, taken in Istanbul by a protester named Jenk Kose, shows the quadcopter falling out of the sky after being shot at by the police. The quadcopter's camera failed when it was hit but Jenk was able to save some of the footage.
