They may seem to be running around causing havoc, defying and distressing their parents with little understanding of their actions, but according to a new study, that’s not necessarily the case. Researchers at the University of Washington found that toddlers as young as 15 months were able to pick up on anger “using visual and social cues” and used that understanding to help “guide their own behavior.”

“In the experiment, 150 toddlers at 15 months of age – an even mix of boys and girls – sat on their parents’ laps and watched as an experimenter sat at a table across from them and demonstrated how to use a few different toys.” The video is one example:

In other cases, the emoter turns their back or leaves the room right after acting angry and the toddler eagerly grabbed the beads. In many of the cases when the emoter stayed in the room, the toddler hesitated, “waiting about four seconds on average if they did reach out”, but were “less likely to imitate the actions of the experimenter. The parents filled out a questionnaire to assess their toddlers impulsivity and found that the higher a toddler scored, the more likely the toddler was to do “forbidden actions” as an “anger-prone adult” watched them.

The researchers found the toddlers were largely able to regulate their behavior and “linked the toddlers’ impulsive tendencies with their tendency to ignore other people’s anger, suggesting as early indicator for children who may become less willing to abide by rules.” The researchers acknowledged that they did not take into account whether some of the toddlers had been desensitized to violence and anger by watching TV or watching their parents argue.

The video is compelling and their hypotheses seem correct, but I still wonder if chance and third variables outweigh their findings. Desensitization to violence has become much more prevalent in younger generations, so I think a study separating the toddlers into groups according to exposure to violence would yield more credible results. Although I found the video interesting, the results don’t surprise me that much. It is during this time in a child’s life that they begin to pick up visual and social cues. However, it still raises questions about when exactly social conditioning does begin to occur. Also, commentators of the video say a major flaw was that the experimenter didn’t let the toddler play with the beads before the emoter came in to find out if the toddler was in fact interested in the beads to begin with. It seemed odd to me that the experimenter and the emoter used fake voices and as the study points out, toddlers are very perceptive to their environments, so the fake voices may have had some influence on the toddler’s action or inaction.

The video was definitely entertaining and although the results didn’t surprise me that much, it does help reinforce a toddlers capability of making individual decisions according to outside influences.

Whenever I hear “Internet troll”, I always tend to imagine a forty-year-old-guy with a lot of pent-up anger, who hasn’t gotten much out of life and the only thing that makes him feel better is to anonymously leave nasty, hate-filled, offensive comments. Although my portrayal of internet trolls may be a little far-fetched, a couple studies suggest there may be some truth behind part of my broad assumption: the “makes him feel better” part. So I pose the question: do internet trolls actually stand behind their supposed position on a subject or do they post hateful comments to incite anger from others in order to receive pleasure. In other words, are trolls sadistic?

I came across an article discussing two online studies, conducted by the same researchers and published in the same report, to explore the Dark Tetrad of personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism) among trolls.

The first study surveyed 418 people of an average age of 29 in the US, using five-point scales (strongly disagree–strongly agree), to assess sadistic tendencies including direct sadism (ie “I enjoy hurting people”) and vicarious sadism (i.e. “in video games, I like the realistic blood spurts”). Second, they assessed narcissism, Machiavellianism, and subclinical psychopathy (wide, but not entire range of psychopathic traits). Lastly, they were given a questionnaire on commenting behavior. There were also participants “who indicated that they did not spend any time posting comments and were labeled as ‘non-commenters’.”

The second study was divided into two groups, 188 Canadian psychology students with a median age of 21 and 609 US residents with the median age of 35, all given the first 2 surveys I described above. However, only a subset of the US residents completed the commenting behavior questionnaire and only the Canadian students complete a survey on the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).

The results, found by various analyses comparing and controlling the several different groups and the traits, were consistent with their hypotheses of the Dark Tetrad positively correlating with trolls. Of all the personality measures, including the Big Five, sadism was the most prominent among trolls. The report states that  “the associations between sadism and (trolling assessment) were so strong that it might be said that online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism.” “In the final analysis of Study 2, we found clear evidence that sadists tend to troll because they enjoy it.” “Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun … and the Internet is their playground!”

Their findings are certainly disturbing, to say the least. As far as I could tell, the studies were well conducted with no outstanding flaws. However, to certify the study’s credibility, it could use a few improvements. For instance, giving the surveys and questionnaires in real life might conduce better results, because I think it’s hard to assume that all the people told the truth. Because this experiment was the first of its kind to explore the Dark Tetrad among trolls, other experiments should be done to try to replicate their findings to help rule out chance. Another addition to future experiments to help rule out chance would be to actually measure brain activity in the amygdala (area of the brain linked to strong emotion) like this experiment did to distinguish psychopaths from sadists.

An “everyday sadist” may be standing next to you in line waiting for coffee, but does that necessarily mean they exhibit sadistic behavior in everyday life, or do they only take on these sadistic personas in the Internet realm? Although it might be deemed unethical, an experiment to assess and rate people’s sadistic tendencies or behavior in their everyday lives could really help understand how frequently sadism occurs among sadistic Internet trolls outside of the Internet. It would require a large number of people, classified into different groups (for example: Internet trolls, sadistic Internet trolls, regular Internet users, irregular Internet users) unaware of the real purpose of the experiment, involved in some kind of simulated situation. Maybe the internet brings out the worst in people and these “everyday sadists” rely on anonymity, but I think it would be fascinating to compare the findings of the 2 studies I discussed and one similar to what I just suggested.

I think it’s an important field to explore, considering the concern of Internet bullying and some people’s reliance on Internet communication, rather than real-life communication. What do you think? Did those studies convince you enough for more experimental pursuance of Internet troll sadism?

I’ve always been wary of rats, I think it’s safe to say most people are, because of their obvious connection to filth and a history of transferring and harboring disease. I’ve seen rats darting in and out of sewage drains and strolling along subway tracks in NYC, so it’s scary to think they could be one of the reasons behind foodborne illnesses in urban areas.

An article discussing a study done in NYC by Professor Ian Lipkin at Columbia University and his colleagues immediately caught my attention. The study examined and tested for 20 pathogens (15 of them testing positive along with the discovery of 1 known virus) on 133 rats from 5 different locations in Manhattan over the span of 1 year. There has been a lot of research concerning the spread of disease from wild animals to humans, resulting in a “wide-scale microbial surveillance”, especially in the developing world (case in point: fruits bats being the possible cause of the Ebola outbreak). However, there has been far less research on common animals like rats, even though they so often cohabitate with humans. Rats are known to carry diseases, but after finding such a diversity of pathogens, the scientists call for more “pathogen surveillance and disease monitoring in urban environments”, as well as more studies to clarify the possible “risks they may pose to human health.” [Check out the study to see exactly what diseases they found.]

The study notes there are 2.1 million cases of foodborne illnesses each year in NYC and not much data linking rats to spreading foodborne illness to humans, suggesting the possible risk. Although this assumptionis completely correlational, it’s convincing. Norway rats, the most common rats found in urban areas, are not thought to be contributing factors to these 2.1 million cases, but the study offers them as a possible reason because of the lack of data.

I most definitely think there should be more studies exploring this link by conducting randomized experiments in NYC and other major US cities. I think it would be very helpful to test a far greater number of rats and compare the results between cities with different climates and size (that is to say a city like NYC that is very packed together, while Miami and LA are more spread out).

Lipkin and his colleagues are now working with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the CDC “to look for signs of infection from some of the rat pathogens in the blood samples of New Yorkers.” It might be interesting to do an observational study on New Yorkers looking for correlations between a person that has a foodborne illness (along with the frequency at which they they get them) and the areas where they eat out most often and comparing that with which areas of NYC have the highest concentration of rats.

The study mentions that the rats were gathered over the course of 1 year, but fails to explain why this was done, but I think that could be an important factor for future studies. I think it would also be important to take into account what time of year the highest/lowest number of foodborne illness are reported. A list of the 20 “rattiest” cities (Chicago taking #1, NYC #4) was just released and reminds us that “fall is a prime time for rodents to actively seek food, water and shelter”, because of dropping temperatures and the arrival of winter. It seems to me that somehow finding a correlation between a rise in foodborne illnesses and fall weather could be a signal towards a causation of rats on foodborne illness outbreaks in urban areas.

As always, the study’s results could all be due to chance, but the only way to find out is to conduct more studies in more cities, taking more 3rd variables into account, and testing the people.

One last thing, although unrelated, it’s funny to point out… Philadelphia (my hometown) was not on the list of 20 Rattiest Cities, although both NYC and DC are high on the list as #3 and #4 and Baltimore not too far behind placing #9 . I guess “Filthadelphia” isn’t so filthy! (I think I might write a follow-up blog comparing the numbers of foodborne illnesses reported in Philly against those of a “rattier” city of similar size to Philly.)

Ebola. It’s on everyone’s mind. As a handful of cases pop up in other parts of the world (ie United States, Great Britain, Spain), the severity of the crisis is becoming even more tangible. Adam Nossiter retells his experience in the touching article in the NY Times,  “A Hospital From Hell, in a City Swamped by Ebola”. Nossiter is in a hospital in Makeni, Sierra Leone which has been ravaged by the virus, spreading quickly as “the risk of infection is high, the precautions minimal.” In over a month and a half, the district in which Makeni resides, Bombali, has gone from one confirmed case to almost two hundred. In the past few days, “at least six dozen new cases have been confirmed in the district.”

Right now, the top concern in West Africa is to isolate at least 70% of patients and put them in treatment centers so they do not infect their communities and that it does not become endemic (transmitted at low levels in humans all the time like chicken pox) creating a permanent presence in West Africa and increasing the possibility of spreading to other places.

But what is most frightening is that there is no proven medicine or vaccine for Ebola. A possible vaccine, ZMapp, was used earlier this year and was “credited as helping save lives, but it has not been subjected to a randomized clinical trial to prove its safety or its efficacy.” It has been tested on primates infected with variant of an Ebola virus different from the one in West Africa right now and was deemed successful, even stopping “replication of the Guinean strain of Ebola virus in cell cultures.” However, after being used on a few patients, the supply of ZMapp was exhausted.

Were the cases in which ZMapp is credited as having saved lives just mere chance? I mean it was only used on seven patients, maybe those seven patients were already getting over the virus, maybe they never contracted the full blown virus, just a weaker strain, so these could be Type 1 errors.

The United States just approved the experimental drug, Brincidofovir, to treat Ebola symptoms. Here, the soft points are being targeted, while the hard end points still remain a problem. I imagine because everyone is desperate that “the FDA extended Chimerix an Emergency Investigational New Drug Application, or EINDA, meaning the drug can be used in the event of an emergency without waiting for the results of more stringent agency testing” (RT News).

Another case has been in rural Liberia where a doctor has given “at least 15 Ebola patients lamivudine, which is considered a long-term and effective drug to treat HIV patients. All but two of them survived.” This again may only be treating the soft endpoints, so what about the hard endpoints?

It’s a tricky question: Is it ethical to “treat” patients with experimental drugs that may have bad, even life threatening, side effects? Or should we hold off and let patients suffer knowing that there is a drug that just might be the cure? As I discussed in the beginning of my post, cities like Makeni are in really bad shape, so why not test experimental drugs, who knows. Patients on their death-bed have very few options in West Africa, so resorting to experimental drugs like Brincidofovir couldn’t hurt. And even if they are only targeting the soft endpoints, it could buy patients more time. Unlike ZMapp, Brincidofovir is given in tablet form making it possible (or at least a lot easier) to perform a randomized control trial. Of course, the patients need to know explicitly what they are getting into. Still, it would be ethically questionable, but it would be the fastest way to know if it works and time is very important. Obviously because a patient’s life is at stake, but also, as I mentioned before, so that Ebola does not become endemic. A clinical test in the US is already in the works, but I think going ahead and doing a trial in West Africa among infected patients as well might be a good idea. Brincidofovir has been tested in more than 1,000 people for other viruses and “shows signs of effectiveness and proved relatively safe.” In Dallas, Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan is receiving Brincidofovir, but even if it does work, his case will remain an anecdote and be of no real help. Although so far there is definitely a lack of science, this might be our best bet.

Would you want to know if your child will have an incurable disorder, whether it begin at birth or affect them later in life as an adult? It’s hard to say when of course the health of your child is at stake, but your own sanity might be in jeopardy (in the case of knowing your child will get an incurable disorder when they’re an adult). Harriet A. Washington raises some questions that are as equally compelling as they are frightening.

In June and July of 2012 a couple different teams from University of Washington Seattle and then Stanford University announced they had uncovered new techniques allowing the “construction of a comprehensive genome sequence– a genetic ‘blueprint’”, available in clinics in as little as three years from now. One test only needs paternal saliva or blood and the other only maternal blood to unveil their child’s DNA. DNA tests used to unearth conditions like Down’s syndrome and cystic fibrosis already exist, but not a whole genome test that would “predict the mere possibility of disease”.

Washington asks the questions “what is ‘healthy’ anyway?”, pointing out that “males with the chromosome disorder XYY were once thought to have a high risk of violent behavior” and sometimes fetuses with XYY chromosome were aborted. She also brings up that perceptions of disorders change over time, Down’s syndrome as an example, so will our future findings with a full genome test even be necessary or useful?

Of course, the test’s ethicality comes into question as well: “Who has a right to a child’s genetic information? Should there be regulations that compel a physician or the parents to alert siblings and others who may be at high risk of harbouring the gene?” False positives will arise, only scaring the parents and causing anxiety. And do the parents even have a right to this information or is that infringing on their child’s rights?

It’s a very attractive idea, looking into your childs future, possibly even opening a market for personalized medicine and preventive medicine, but it’s also kind of a scary idea. It seems to take away the mystery of life. I agree with Washington, at least it’s still a few years away, giving us some more time to think about it. Complete prenatal genetic tests are not far away and will be accessible for many, is that a good thing? Maybe yes, if it shows that your child will be susceptible to heart disease, then you would make sure to teach them to eat healthy foods and exercise. Would you want to know that your child has the possibility of getting a disease? You decide.

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&dviSelectedPage=&limiter=&u=psucic&currPage=&source=&disableHighlighting=&displayGroups=&sortBy=&zid=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010641217

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-fetal-genome/

Apparently, yes. There have been numerous studies done over what was previously thought to be just something people laughed about. I came across a Huffington Post article describing a fascinating experiment done just last year by researcher Nakajima at Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University. Because of previous studies he did in 2009, he knew that people could match owners to their dogs just by looking at pictures of their faces. He set out to explain why.

In the new experiment, 500 people were shown two sets of photographs, “one set showed pictures of real dog-owner pairs, while the other set had random pairings of people and dogs. The participants were randomly assigned to one of five different ‘masking’ photo conditions, pictured below: no-mask (in which the human’s and the dog’s faces were unobstructed), eye-mask (the human’s eyes were blacked out), mouth-mask (the human’s mouth was blacked out), dog-eye-mask (the dog’s eyes were blacked out), and eye-only (where just the eyes of the human and the dog could be seen).”

80% of the time, people could match the pictures of owners with their dogs just by looking at the faces, 73% of the time when the owners’ mouths were covered. Chance is to blame for about 50% of people that were able to correctly identify the pairs when the eyes of either the owners or the dogs were masked. But when people were shown only the eyes of the person or the dog, they could pair them correctly 74% of the time.

I was skeptical at first, but 74% is a rather large percentage to accurately guess just on eyes alone! I consulted with a few more articles and apparently this phenomenon is due to “familiarity.” We like what we know, and I think I can safely say that most of us know our faces quite well, so if we see a dog that resembles ourselves, we are more likely to adopt that dog. Not surprisingly, it’s been noted that personal characteristics also seem to rub off onto the dog, as well as their dogs temperaments rubbing off onto their owner.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/18/people-look-like-their-dogs-study_n_5838278.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/06/dogs-and-their-owners_n_5051792.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201308/do-dogs-look-their-owners

As we all may or may not know, if the opportunity arises, sometimes (emphasis on sometimes) people will cheat on their wife/husband or /girlfriend/ boyfriend. Surprisingly, Planes major crabs will do the same. Male and female crabs will generally pair up and live in the cozy crevices between a loggerhead sea turtles’ tail and shell. Only one pair at a time will live on a turtle and will defend their turtle to the death against other crabs. It was thought that the crabs would be life-long mates, but according to a new study, the males will switch turtles and therefore mates without hesitation if the chance comes around.

The study tested an older hypothesis “that symbiotic crustaceans living in association with small, simple, sparse hosts in habitats where there is a high risk of mortality away from hosts exhibit monogamy and long-lasting heterosexual pairing” on the relationship between crabs and loggerhead sea turtles. According to previous studies, the body sizes of animals in monogamous relationships living with each other will be very similar, but this was not the case of the crabs, leading the researchers to believe there was no “extended monogamy” occuring. The study was conducted very thoroughly and involved crabs and turtles from Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru, but all in all, they found few to no correlations or consistency between their four hypotheses and the results. After reading through the study and graphs, I realized the study was conducted mainly to disprove the previous hypothesis. The only solid result they got was “the duration of pairing is likely variable”, which is not a very groundbreaking finding, but at least it rules out the previous study. Interestingly enough, the article only highlights the males tendency to stick around or not with their mate and only in the very end does it state that the “same behavior by females cannot be ruled out.”

I found this to be a very good example of what we discussed earlier in class about the importance of scientists disproving the findings of other scientists.

Article: http://smithsonianscience.org/2014/09/new-study-monogamous-crabs-switch-mates-opportunity-arises/

Study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022098114002329

Hi everyone,

My name is Eva and I’m taking this course because I have a genuine interest in science and science-related topics, but it’s not strong enough I feel I need to major in it. Math is not my strong suit, so a science major really wouldn’t work out for me, plus this seemed like a cool option as a first semester freshman.