ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2012) ? The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided another outstanding image of a nearby galaxy -- NGC 4183, seen with a beautiful backdrop of distant galaxies and nearby stars. Located about 55 million light-years from the sun and spanning about eighty thousand light-years, NGC 4183 is a little smaller than the Milky Way. This galaxy, which belongs to the Ursa Major Group, lies in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs).
NGC 4183 is a spiral galaxy with a faint core and an open spiral structure. Unfortunately, this galaxy is viewed edge-on from Earth, and we cannot fully appreciate its spiral arms. But we can admire its galactic disk.
The disks of galaxies are mainly composed of gas, dust and stars. There is evidence of dust over the galactic plane, visible as dark intricate filaments that block the visible light from the core of the galaxy. In addition, recent studies suggest that this galaxy may have a bar structure. Galactic bars are thought to act as a mechanism that channels gas from the spiral arms to the center, enhancing star formation, which is typically more pronounced in the spiral arms than in the bulge of the galaxy.
British astronomer William Herschel first observed NGC 4183 on 14 January 1778.
This picture was created from visible and infrared images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 3.4 arcminutes wide.
This image uses data identified by Luca Limatola in the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States and France announced increased support for opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Friday, but there was no sign that the direct military aid the rebels want to create safe havens for civilians is on the way.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a meeting of foreign ministers in New York that the United States would provide an additional $45 million in non-lethal and humanitarian aid to the Syrian opposition.
Of this, $30 million would be for humanitarian assistance and $15 million for non-lethal help, such as radios and training. The new pledges pushed total U.S. humanitarian aid for Syria to more than $130 million, and non-lethal aid to opposition groups to almost $45 million.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the same meeting of the so-called Friends of Syria - an informal group of countries supporting Assad's ouster - that Paris was increasing its contacts with Syria's armed rebels.
"The process is complex but the Syrian people have been waiting for 18 months for the opposition to succeed to move forward," Fabius said. "It is within this perspective that France has increased its contacts with representatives of the armed opposition."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague backed an increase in practical support to Syria's political opposition, especially to those who needed to provide services in rebel areas.
The 18-month-old uprising against Assad has descended into a civil war. More than 30,000 people have been killed, according to opposition activists, and there are fears the conflict could destabilize the wider Middle East.
But despite Friday's announcements, foreign assistance to the Syrian rebels has fallen well short of the foreign-protected safe havens the opposition wants and offers little hope of relief to the worsening plight of civilians.
France started channeling aid to rebel-held parts of Syria in August so that these safe havens could administer themselves and help stanch a flow of refugees trying to escape deadly air strikes by Assad's forces.
However, credible protection for "liberated" areas would require no-fly zones patrolled by foreign aircraft and there appears little chance of this happening.
Such an intervention would require a mandate from the U.N. Security Council - something resolutely opposed by veto-wielding members Russia and China.
The council's deadlock appears unbreakable at the moment, Western diplomats say.
The deadlock led frustrated Western powers, Turkey and Gulf Arab states to establish the informal Friends of Syria group, but Western powers have said they will not supply weapons to the lightly armed Syrian rebels, who have few answers to attacks by Assad's combat planes and helicopter gunships.
CLINTON BLAMES IRAN
Clinton blamed Iran for propping up Assad, saying Tehran would do all it could to support him. "Let's be very frank here - the regime's most important lifeline is Iran," she said.
"Last week a senior Iranian official publicly acknowledged that members of the Iranian (Islamic) Revolutionary Guard Corps are operating inside Syria," Clinton said.
"There is no longer any doubt that Tehran will do whatever it takes to protect its proxy and crony in Damascus. Iran will do everything it can to evade international sanctions."
She was referring to international steps to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at producing atomic bombs. Tehran says the program is for generating electricity and other non-military purposes.
The U.N. General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders this week saw sharp clashes between Iran and Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that Israel might take military action to prevent Iran from reaching the point where it has enough enriched uranium for a bomb. On Friday, the United Nations urged all sides to tone down "shrill war talk."
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby told the Friends of Syria group, which was meeting on the sidelines of General Assembly, that the situation in Syria was becoming "more explosive."
"We need to start a transitional period," he said. "A transitional period means a change to another regime."
The Friends of Syria includes the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Russia and China, which have vetoed three U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Assad's onslaught on the opposition, are not members.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who attended the meeting, later told the U.N. General Assembly it was "the inability of the Security Council to act that still encourages the Syrian regime to kill ever more people."
"The situation in Syria has evolved into a real threat to regional peace and security," he said. "The Syrian regime deploys every instrument to turn the legitimate struggle of the Syrian people into a sectarian war, which will engulf the entire region into flames."
Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani told reporters he was not satisfied with the international response on Syria.
"We have to send a military force to stop the bloodshed, this is request from Qatar's emir," he told reporters.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called the blockage at the Security Council "unacceptable," and added: "It is necessary to unite the opposition."
Qatar said it would organize a meeting soon to try to unite all strands of the Syrian opposition in an effort to create a provisional government. Earlier this week, Qatar called for Arab nations to "interfere" in Syria.
Fabius said he wanted this government to be recognized by the Friends of Syria at its next meeting in Morocco.
Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine Al-Othmani said the meeting would probably be held on November 1, but he did not expect it to reach a plan on how to proceed.
(Additional reporting by John Irish; writing by Louis Charbonneau and David Brunnstrom; editing by Christopher Wilson and Mohammad Zargham)
BERLIN (AP) -- The road to heaven is paved with more than good intentions for Germany's 24 million Catholics. If they don't pay their religious taxes, they will be denied sacraments, including weddings, baptisms and funerals.
A decree issued last week by the country's bishops cast a spotlight on the longstanding practice in Germany and a handful of other European countries in which governments tax registered believers and then hand over the money to the religious institutions.
In Germany, Catholics, Protestants and Jews pay a surcharge of up to nine percent on their income tax bills ? or about ?56 ($72) a month for a single person earning a pre-tax monthly salary of about ?3,500 ($4,500).
For religious institutions, struggling to maintain their congregations in a secular society where the Protestant Reformation began 500 years ago, the tax revenues are vital.
The Catholic Church in Germany receives about ?5 billion ($6.5 billion) annually from the surcharge. For Protestants, the total is just above ?4 billion ($5.2 billion). Donations, in turn, represent a far smaller share of the churches' income than in the United States.
With rising prices and economic uncertainty, however, more and more Catholics and Protestants are opting to save their money and declare to tax authorities they are no longer church members, even if they still consider themselves believers.
"I quit the church already in 2007," Manfred Gonschor, a Munich-based IT-consultant, said. "It was when I got a bonus payment and realized that I could have paid myself a nice holiday alone on the amount of church tax that I was paying on it."
Gonschor added he was also "really fed up with the institution and its failures."
Such defections have hit the Catholic Church especially hard ? it has lost about 181,000 tax-paying members in 2010 and 126,000 a year later, according to official figures. Protestants, who number about 24 million nationwide, lost 145,000 registered members in Germany in 2010, the most recent year from which figures are available.
But the figures include some people who still want to baptize their children, take communion on major religious holidays, marry in a religious ceremony and receive Christian burials.
The group We are Church, which claims to represent tens of thousands of grassroots Catholics, said many Germans stop paying the tax because they disagree with the church's policies or simply want to save money ? not because they have lost their faith.
"I haven't quit because I still think that I might want to get married in a church one day, even though I know that's absurd," said Anna Ainsley, a 31-old-year banker and a Protestant from Frankfurt. "But when I see my tax declaration, then I think every year that I should finally quit."
Those are the people that Germany's Catholic bishops had in mind when they decreed on Sept. 20 that stopping the payment of religious taxes was "a serious lapse" and those who did so would then be excluded from a range of church activities.
"This decree makes clear that one cannot partly leave the Church," the bishops said in a statement. "It is not possible to separate the spiritual community of the Church from the institutional Church."
Wavering Catholics will now be sent letters reminding them of the consequences of avoiding the church tax, including losing access to all sacraments.
"Maybe you haven't considered the consequences of your decision and would like to reverse this step," a draft of the letter states.
Protestants have taken a less stern position, saying non-taxpayers are still welcome to attend services and take communion. But becoming a godparent, getting married in a church or taking a job in church-affiliated institutions such as hospitals or kindergartens are off-limits to those who stop paying their taxes.
Switzerland and Austria also tax Catholic and Protestant church members. In Denmark, the State Lutheran church collects a tax from its members. Members of Sweden's Lutheran Church pay around 1 percent of their income, collected by the national tax authorities, just as in Finland.
In Italy, tax-payers have the choice of diverting a small part of their income taxes to religious institutions, including the Catholic Church and the country's Jewish community, but the contribution is voluntary.
In none of those countries have the churches taken such a firm stand against dropouts.
So far German courts have stood by the bishops' decision. This week the country's top administrative court threw out a lawsuit against the archdiocese of Freiburg by retired theologian Hartmut Zapp, who has spent years fighting the Catholic Church over the tax.
Zapp argued that a Catholic should be free to stop paying but remain a member of the spiritual community and that his religious beliefs could not possibly be tied to a tax payment.
The archdiocese responded in a statement that "those who lack solidarity bid farewell to the community of believers."
The tax issue presents moral and ethical dilemmas to millions of German believers, even dividing couples.
Sonja Trott, a 34-year-old teacher from Munich, said she quit the Catholic Church 15 years ago because she no longer believed in its teachings.
"Now I'd like to convince my husband that he also should quit, that would save us a lot of money," she said.
But her husband, Christoph, a sales executive, says he cannot imagine refusing to pay on moral grounds because it would seem like a betrayal of his faith. "I don't like paying it, but I do because I fear the step of quitting the church."
He would prefer to donate part of the money to charities "but well, in Germany the payment determines whether I'm allowed to consider myself a Catholic or not."
For other Germans, it's unethical to stop paying the tax but continue to use the church when it suits them.
Christine Solf, a Munich-based consultant, says she doesn't attend services regularly but appreciates the church's charitable work. For her, church membership is also a family tradition.
"I know people who quit for financial reasons but then still want their children to be baptized. That's not OK in my opinion," she said.
___
Juergen Baetz can be reached on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jbaetz
CONCORD ? A lawsuit filed last year by Exeter Hospital and nine other of the state's largest hospitals over changes in Medicaid policies and reimbursements will be allowed to continue.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled against the state's motion to dismiss the suit. In his ruling, McAuliffe said he has multiple questions that still need to be answered about the case and that a hearing be scheduled on Nov. 1.
The 10 hospitals sued the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the state's Medicaid program, over changes in Medicaid policies and reimbursements. One of the suit's core arguments is the state failed to provide hospitals with notice and an opportunity to comment on the reduced rates before they were finalized. The hospitals argued the state reduced reimbursements to accommodate state budgetary preferences.
McAuliffe ruled the hospitals have proven they suffered hardships because of the cuts and are entitled to a hearing.
?(The) plaintiffs have made a substantial showing that hardship is being suffered by both providers and Medicaid eligible patients due to the reduced rates, and that continuing enforcement of those rates, if unlawful, will at some point result in irreparable injury (e.g., loss of medical care facilities, providers, and the concomitant inability of Medicaid patients to obtain needed care),? McAuliffe wrote in his hearing. McAuliffe said he wants the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to answer the following questions at the Nov. 1 hearing:
? Should the court stay the Medicaid reductions pending a federal review of the cuts.
? Do federal officials believe the proper Medicaid rules were followed by the state in making the cuts.
? Do federal officials plan to take action against the state over the cuts.
? Do federal officials plan on approving the cuts.
The biggest hit to the hospitals during the most recent budget cycle were changes made to the Medicaid Enhancement Tax. The MET is a 5.5 percent tax on net patient service revenue on all hospitals in the state. Up until recently, the tax revenue was returned to the hospitals through the Disproportionate Share program, but those reimbursements were eliminated in the recent budget, resulting in $250 million in cuts to the state's 13 largest hospitals, including Exeter.
?While state budgetary concerns cannot conclusively dictate Medicaid reimbursement rates, they do play a significant and legitimate role in the rate-setting process,? McAuliffe wrote in his ruling. ?But, even where significant state budget issues arise, still, Medicaid reimbursement rates must be set by participating states in accordance with methodologies and standards that are published in a state plan and approved by the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (currently through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), and those rates must meet minimum federal statutory standards.?
As a result of the Medicaid cuts hospitals across the state made numerous staff reductions. Exeter Hospital cut 110 full-time equivalent positions throughout Exeter Hospital, Core Physicians, Exeter Healthcare and Synergy Health & Fitness. It also closed Exeter Healthcare, a skilled nursing facility that accepted patients who need long-term access to ventilators. Eight patients using the facility were transferred elsewhere in the state.
Exeter Hospital officials applauded the most recent ruling. ?We're pleased the judge has recognized the legal merit of the case,? said Exeter Hospital spokeswoman Debra Vasapolli.
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a bit of a makeover.
The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13's key attributes -- its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands -- to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or "Bi-Fi." Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering.
Using the virus, Ortiz and Endy have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities. The advance could prove a boon to bioengineers looking to create complex, multicellular communities that work in concert to accomplish important biological functions.
Medium and message
M13 is a packager of genetic messages. It reproduces within its host, taking strands of DNA -- strands that engineers can control -- wrapping them up one by one and sending them out encapsulated within proteins produced by M13 that can infect other cells. Once inside the new hosts, they release the packaged DNA message.
The M13-based system is essentially a communication channel. It acts like a wireless Internet connection that enables cells to send or receive messages, but it does not care what secrets the transmitted messages contain.
"Effectively, we've separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community," said Ortiz, the first author of the study.
It is well-known that cells naturally use various mechanisms, including chemicals, to communicate, but such messaging can be extremely limited in both complexity and bandwidth. Simple chemical signals are typically both message and messenger -- two functions that cannot be separated.
"If your network connection is based on sugar then your messages are limited to 'more sugar,' 'less sugar,' or 'no sugar'" explained Endy.
Cells engineered with M13 can be programmed to communicate in much more complex, powerful ways than ever before. The possible messages are limited only by what can be encoded in DNA and thus can include any sort of genetic instruction: start growing, stop growing, come closer, swim away, produce insulin and so forth.
Rates and ranges
In harnessing DNA for cell-cell messaging the researchers have also greatly increased the amount of data they can transmit at any one time. In digital terms, they have increased the bit rate of their system. The largest DNA strand M13 is known to have packaged includes more than 40,000 base pairs. Base pairs, like 1s and 0s in digital encoding, are the basic building blocks of genetic data. Most genetic messages of interest in bioengineering range from several hundred to many thousand base pairs.
Ortiz was even able to broadcast her genetic messages between cells separated by a gelatinous medium at a distance of greater than 7 centimeters.
"That's very long-range communication, cellularly speaking," she said.
Down the road, the biological Internet could lead to biosynthetic factories in which huge masses of microbes collaborate to make more complicated fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful chemicals. With improvements, the engineers say, their cell-cell communication platform might someday allow more complex three-dimensional programming of cellular systems, including the regeneration of tissue or organs.
"The ability to communicate 'arbitrary' messages is a fundamental leap -- from just a signal-and-response relationship to a true language of interaction," said Radhika Nagpal, professor of computer science at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. "Orchestrating the cooperation of cells to form artificial tissues, or even artificial organisms is just one possibility. This opens a door to new biological systems and solving problems that have no direct analog in nature."
Ortiz added: "The biological Internet is in its very earliest stages. When the information Internet was first introduced in the 1970s, it would have been hard to imagine the myriad uses it sees today, so there's no telling all the places this new work might lead."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center. The original article was written by Andrew Myers.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Monica E Ortiz, Drew Endy. Engineered cell-cell communication via DNA messaging. Journal of Biological Engineering, 2012; 6 (1): 16 DOI: 10.1186/1754-1611-6-16
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Michael Richards, left, and Jerry Seinfeld chat about working together on "Seinfeld" in the last installment of the web series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee."
By Courtney Hazlett, TODAY
Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" has been a reliably hilarious glimpse into the world of Seinfeld and his famous comedian-type friends. But the recent installment, starring former "Seinfeld" co-star Michael Richards takes?a decidedly more serious turn.
If you recall, Richards was caught on tape at an L.A. comedy club responding to hecklers in the audience with a shockingly racist tirade, calling the hecklers the "n-word" and referencing a time when blacks were often victims of civil rights abuses. The fallout was immediate -- the public turned against him and he apologized, but Richards tells Seinfeld the wounds are still very present.
"I think I worked selfishly, and not selflessly," Richards said of his time on "Seinfeld." "It's not about me, it's about them (the audience). That's the lesson I learned seven years ago when I blew it in the comedy club and lost my temper because somebody interrupted my act and said some things that hurt me and I lashed out in anger. I should have been working selflessly at that time."?
Richards then clarified that the rumor that he'd done several comedy sets since is not true. "No. I busted up after that event. It broke me down. It was a selfish response, I took it too personally. I should have said (to the hecklers), 'You're absolutely right, I'm not funny, I'm going to go home' ... Inside it still kicks me around a bit."?
"That's up to you," Seinfeld replied to Richards, who he's stood behind throughout the incident. "It's up to you to say 'I've been carrying this bag long enough, I'm going to put it down.'"
At this point it's interesting to note that unlike any of the previous episodes of "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," this one begins with a caveat: "Certain events in this episode seem set up. They were not." Whether that applies to a strange mix-up at the beginning of the show when Richards and Seinfeld think they're knocking on boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard's door (it's actually the home of actor/comedian Jay Mohr) or Richards' candid remarks, or both -- who knows? But, one thing is certain: the incident in the club has forever impacted Richards. Where the rest of the "Seinfeld" cast has moved on, he's still struggling with that one awful night.
UCSB evolutionary psychologists study the purpose of punishment and reputation Public release date: 26-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrea Estrada andrea.estrada@ia.ucsb.edu 805-893-4620 University of California - Santa Barbara
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) For two decades, evolutionary scientists have been locked in a debate over the evolved functions of three distinctive human behaviors: the great readiness we show for cooperating with new people, the strong interest we have in tracking others' reputations regarding how well they treat others, and the occasional interest we have in punishing people for selfishly mistreating others.
In an article published today in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Evolutionary Psychology report new findings that may help settle the debate and provide answers to the behavioral puzzle.
As they go about their daily lives, people usually don't know the names of the people they encounter and in cities, at least typically expect never to see them again, noted Max M. Krasnow, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at UCSB and the paper's lead author. Despite the fact that these encounters are brief, anonymous, and unlikely to be repeated, however, people often behave as if they are interested in the ongoing well-being and behavior of the strangers they meet.
"Imagine that, while grocery shopping, you see someone help a wheelchair-bound person he or she doesn't know get her bags across the parking lot to her car. For many people, witnessing the action would elicit feelings of kindness toward the helper," Krasnow explained. "Equally, if people see someone driven off the road by a reckless driver, they might become angry enough to pursue and even confront the driver. Evolutionary scientists are interested in why humans have impulses to help the kind stranger or to punish the callous one. At first glance, these sometimes costly impulses seem like they would subtract from the welfare of the individual who exhibited them, and so should be evolutionarily disfavored."
Other contributors to the paper include Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, professors of psychology and anthropology, respectively, and co-directors of UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology; and Eric J. Pedersen, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Miami.
Scientists have struggled for decades to explain these behaviors in evolutionary terms, with two alternative theories gaining prominence. The first proposes that these social inclinations emerged because our ancestors lived in small populations, where every encounter even one with a stranger had a chance to develop into an ongoing relationship that yielded mutual gains from cooperation. In such a world, paying attention to how those around you treat others could help zero in on the partners most likely to cooperate with you. In addition, letting it be known that you wouldn't allow yourself to be treated poorly would increase the likelihood that you'd be treated well.
The second theory suggests that these behaviors emerged because our ancestors lived in groups that often fought with other groups interactions where groups with high levels of internal cooperation would have the advantage over groups in which the members were divisive and exploitative of each other. This theory proposes that these other-oriented social inclinations were designed to cultivate a group-wide culture of cooperation.
"The reason why the debate has dragged on so long is that previous studies unfortunately focused on situations where the two theories made very similar predictions," said Tooby. "We wanted to design studies involving situations where the theories made sharply contrasting predictions, so the results would falsify one theory or the other."
In the studies reported in this paper, over 200 participants were tested in a series of structured social interactions designed to capture the essence of real-world situations like the supermarket mentioned above. "We wanted to know exactly what kinds of information people actually use in deciding who to trust that is, who to cooperate with, and who to avoid," said Krasnow. "If our minds are designed to seek out the benefits of cooperative relationships with others, then participants should have preferred to trust those likely to cooperate with them in particular. On the other hand, if our reputational psychology is designed to support group-wide cohesion and cooperation, the participants should have resisted cooperating with those who defected on other group members."
The findings supported the individual cooperation account, not the group cooperation account. "Participants ceased responding to information about whether their partners cheated others when they had good information that their partners would not cheat them," Tooby emphasized.
The researchers were also interested in testing the diverging predictions about what situations should trigger the inclination to punish cheating. "We all recognize that punishing others is costly and unpleasant," said Cosmides. "So what benefits led it to evolve?"
The authors reasoned that tracking the triggers of punishment should illuminate which benefits favored its evolution. "If the impulse to punish evolved as a bargaining tool to defend the individual by deterring against future instances of being cheated, then participants should be inclined to punish others' defections when they themselves would be vulnerable to being cheated by that person in the future," said Kasnow. "On the other hand, if our punitive psychology is designed to defend the group against cheating, then participants should have punished those who mistreated others, regardless of their own personal exposure to continuing mistreatment by that person."
The researchers found that participants strongly conditioned their punishment of their partners' cheating on their own vulnerability to continued bad treatment from their partner. As Krasnow pointed out, people in these experiments systematically avoided expending effort to reform those who only posed a risk to others. Cosmides noted, "It's very hard to reconcile these findings with the group cooperation theory."
These results have significant implications for the science of cooperation. "The current research findings suggest that the human readiness to cooperate, our selectivity in who we cooperate with, and our tendency to respond negatively when we are cheated form an efficient package to forge and maintain strongly cooperative relationships," said Krasnow. "The human tendencies to care about how a person treats others and to protest bad treatment are not simply a thin veneer of cultural norms atop a cold and calculating core. Rather, they represent fundamental features of a universal human social nature."
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UCSB evolutionary psychologists study the purpose of punishment and reputation Public release date: 26-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrea Estrada andrea.estrada@ia.ucsb.edu 805-893-4620 University of California - Santa Barbara
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) For two decades, evolutionary scientists have been locked in a debate over the evolved functions of three distinctive human behaviors: the great readiness we show for cooperating with new people, the strong interest we have in tracking others' reputations regarding how well they treat others, and the occasional interest we have in punishing people for selfishly mistreating others.
In an article published today in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Evolutionary Psychology report new findings that may help settle the debate and provide answers to the behavioral puzzle.
As they go about their daily lives, people usually don't know the names of the people they encounter and in cities, at least typically expect never to see them again, noted Max M. Krasnow, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at UCSB and the paper's lead author. Despite the fact that these encounters are brief, anonymous, and unlikely to be repeated, however, people often behave as if they are interested in the ongoing well-being and behavior of the strangers they meet.
"Imagine that, while grocery shopping, you see someone help a wheelchair-bound person he or she doesn't know get her bags across the parking lot to her car. For many people, witnessing the action would elicit feelings of kindness toward the helper," Krasnow explained. "Equally, if people see someone driven off the road by a reckless driver, they might become angry enough to pursue and even confront the driver. Evolutionary scientists are interested in why humans have impulses to help the kind stranger or to punish the callous one. At first glance, these sometimes costly impulses seem like they would subtract from the welfare of the individual who exhibited them, and so should be evolutionarily disfavored."
Other contributors to the paper include Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, professors of psychology and anthropology, respectively, and co-directors of UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology; and Eric J. Pedersen, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Miami.
Scientists have struggled for decades to explain these behaviors in evolutionary terms, with two alternative theories gaining prominence. The first proposes that these social inclinations emerged because our ancestors lived in small populations, where every encounter even one with a stranger had a chance to develop into an ongoing relationship that yielded mutual gains from cooperation. In such a world, paying attention to how those around you treat others could help zero in on the partners most likely to cooperate with you. In addition, letting it be known that you wouldn't allow yourself to be treated poorly would increase the likelihood that you'd be treated well.
The second theory suggests that these behaviors emerged because our ancestors lived in groups that often fought with other groups interactions where groups with high levels of internal cooperation would have the advantage over groups in which the members were divisive and exploitative of each other. This theory proposes that these other-oriented social inclinations were designed to cultivate a group-wide culture of cooperation.
"The reason why the debate has dragged on so long is that previous studies unfortunately focused on situations where the two theories made very similar predictions," said Tooby. "We wanted to design studies involving situations where the theories made sharply contrasting predictions, so the results would falsify one theory or the other."
In the studies reported in this paper, over 200 participants were tested in a series of structured social interactions designed to capture the essence of real-world situations like the supermarket mentioned above. "We wanted to know exactly what kinds of information people actually use in deciding who to trust that is, who to cooperate with, and who to avoid," said Krasnow. "If our minds are designed to seek out the benefits of cooperative relationships with others, then participants should have preferred to trust those likely to cooperate with them in particular. On the other hand, if our reputational psychology is designed to support group-wide cohesion and cooperation, the participants should have resisted cooperating with those who defected on other group members."
The findings supported the individual cooperation account, not the group cooperation account. "Participants ceased responding to information about whether their partners cheated others when they had good information that their partners would not cheat them," Tooby emphasized.
The researchers were also interested in testing the diverging predictions about what situations should trigger the inclination to punish cheating. "We all recognize that punishing others is costly and unpleasant," said Cosmides. "So what benefits led it to evolve?"
The authors reasoned that tracking the triggers of punishment should illuminate which benefits favored its evolution. "If the impulse to punish evolved as a bargaining tool to defend the individual by deterring against future instances of being cheated, then participants should be inclined to punish others' defections when they themselves would be vulnerable to being cheated by that person in the future," said Kasnow. "On the other hand, if our punitive psychology is designed to defend the group against cheating, then participants should have punished those who mistreated others, regardless of their own personal exposure to continuing mistreatment by that person."
The researchers found that participants strongly conditioned their punishment of their partners' cheating on their own vulnerability to continued bad treatment from their partner. As Krasnow pointed out, people in these experiments systematically avoided expending effort to reform those who only posed a risk to others. Cosmides noted, "It's very hard to reconcile these findings with the group cooperation theory."
These results have significant implications for the science of cooperation. "The current research findings suggest that the human readiness to cooperate, our selectivity in who we cooperate with, and our tendency to respond negatively when we are cheated form an efficient package to forge and maintain strongly cooperative relationships," said Krasnow. "The human tendencies to care about how a person treats others and to protest bad treatment are not simply a thin veneer of cultural norms atop a cold and calculating core. Rather, they represent fundamental features of a universal human social nature."
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bdking writes "A typeface family commonly found on the devices installed in many modern cars is more likely to cause drivers to spend more time looking away from the road than an alternative typeface tested in two studies, according to new research from MIT's AgeLab." It seems that the closed letter forms of Grotesque type faces require slightly more time to read than open letter forms of Humanist type faces, just enough that it could be problematic at highway speeds.
There is 3 assessments plus the BAS worksheet. The freelancer will need an understanding of Australian business finances and GST. All of these assessments are related to the Australian taxation system and financial understanding of the way businesses operate in Australia. There is 3 assessments in total. All the requirements you can find in the attached documents.
TORONTO (AP) ? Canadian auto workers at Ford have voted to accept the new contract that their union leadership negotiated last week, the union said Sunday.
The Canadian Auto Workers union said 82 percent of its Ford members accepted the four-year deal. The union did not indicate how many of its 4,500 workers at Ford cast ballots.
The union leadership also reached an agreement with GM last week. GM workers are set to vote on the tentative agreement on Wednesday and Thursday.
Talks continue with Chrysler. The union wants Chrysler to match the deals they have reached with Ford and GM.
The Ford and GM contacts cut wages for new hires and freezes pay for current workers. But it also gives them lump-sum payments to cover inflation and for ratifying the deal.
Under the Ford and GM deals, the companies will pay new workers 60 percent of the current top wage of $33.89 Canadian dollars (US$34.74) an hour, according to the CAW. That would mean new workers would be paid around $20.33 Canadian ($20.84). They can move up the wage scale and reach the top wage in 10 years.
U.S. workers at the Detroit automakers approved a similar two-tier wage agreement five years ago, but in those agreements, workers don't automatically get the top wage after 10 years.
Ford said there will be significant cost-savings realized through the wage structure for new employees. Ford also said the deal creates more than 600 jobs in Canada over the life of the contract.
"By becoming more competitive in our labor costs, we are better positioned to support the growth of the Canadian economy and to provide new job opportunities," Stacey Allerton, vice president of Human Resources at Ford of Canada, said in a statement Sunday.
The auto companies had said Canada is the most expensive place in the world to make cars and trucks, and indicated they could move production south if the CAW didn't cut costs. The CAW represents about 21,000 auto workers in Canada and about 16 percent of auto production in North America.
Canada's advantages in the past ? a weak Canadian dollar and government health care ? have all but vanished compared with U.S. factories. In addition, the United Auto Workers union in the U.S. has agreed to steeper concessions than the CAW, making U.S. labor costs cheaper. Going into the talks, the Detroit automakers were paying an estimated $60 to $62 an hour for labor and benefits in Canada, compared with $50 an hour at Chrysler, $56 at Ford and $58 at GM, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit research group.
The federal Canadian and Ontario province governments worked in tandem with the U.S. government on auto bailouts in 2009 to maintain Canada's share of North American auto production. Canada's share peaked at 3.2 million cars in 1999, about 17.4 percent of North American production. In 2011, Canada produced 2.1 million vehicles, or about 16 percent.
BALTIMORE (AP) ? The brother of Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith has been killed in a motorcycle accident.
Tevin Chris Jones, 19, died late Saturday night in Westmoreland County in northeast Virginia. He was riding his motorcycle on Route 672 when he ran off the right side of the roadway and struck a utility pole, according to Virginia State Police.
Jones was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. He was wearing a helmet, and alcohol was not a factor. The accident is under investigation.
Smith was notified at the team hotel in Baltimore shortly after 1 a.m. and immediately left to be with his family.
Smith posted on his Twitter account: "I can't believe my little brother is gone...be thankful for your loved ones and tell them you love them...this is the hardest thing ever."
Ravens coach John Harbaugh said in a statement: "This is devastatingly sad, sad news. Torrey and his family are a close, special family, and our hearts and thoughts reach out to all of them. Our hearts ache today. We pray for Tevin, his mother, Torrey and the rest of the family."
Smith is one of seven children of Monica Chante Jenkins.
It was unclear whether Smith would play Sunday night for the Ravens against the New England Patriots.
"Torrey's priority is his family. We understand that completely," Harbaugh said.
If Smith does not suit up, he will be replaced by Jacoby Jones.
Now in his second season with Baltimore, Smith grew up in Virginia before attending the University of Maryland.
Jasper is one of the older dogs at Animal Rescue League in Pittsburgh in need of a home where he can enjoy his senior years.
He was surrendered, but we don't have much background information on him.
He does appear to be house-trained and he walks nicely on leash. Jasper is almost 8 years old and therefore is a calmer, more settled dog.
He also doesn't need the same level of exercise as our younger dogs, which may be a plus for some people. If you appreciate the qualities of an older dog, stop by and meet Jasper.
For inquiries about him, you can contact Sue at adoptadog.pgh@gmail.com.
In this photo taken Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, city engineer Richard Simonitch looks over rows of membranes that filter water at a desalination plant in Sand City, Calif. Not long ago, the idea of squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water was embraced warmly in thirsty California with its cycles of drought and growing population. But it has not panned out the way many hoped. Desalination plants are costing more to build; they're huge energy suckers and lingering concerns about the impact to marine life have spurred myriad lawsuits. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
In this photo taken Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, city engineer Richard Simonitch looks over rows of membranes that filter water at a desalination plant in Sand City, Calif. Not long ago, the idea of squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water was embraced warmly in thirsty California with its cycles of drought and growing population. But it has not panned out the way many hoped. Desalination plants are costing more to build; they're huge energy suckers and lingering concerns about the impact to marine life have spurred myriad lawsuits. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
In this photo taken Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, Robert James of the California American Water company looks over water samples at a desalination plant in Sand City, Calif. Not long ago, the idea of squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water was embraced warmly in thirsty California with its cycles of drought and growing population. But it has not panned out the way many hoped. Desalination plants are costing more to build; they're huge energy suckers and lingering concerns about the impact to marine life have spurred myriad lawsuits. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Map shows existing and proposed locations for desalination plants along California???s coast.
In this photo taken Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, is the exterior of a shut down desalination plant in Marina, Calif. Not long ago, the idea of squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water was embraced warmly in thirsty California with its cycles of drought and growing population. But it has not panned out the way many hoped. Desalination plants are costing more to build; they're huge energy suckers and lingering concerns about the impact to marine life have spurred myriad lawsuits. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
In this photo taken Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, Robert James of the California American Water company looks over an intake pipe from an aquifer at a desalination plant in Sand City, Calif. Not long ago, the idea of squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water was embraced warmly in thirsty California with its cycles of drought and growing population. But it has not panned out the way many hoped. Desalination plants are costing more to build; they're huge energy suckers and lingering concerns about the impact to marine life have spurred myriad lawsuits. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
MARINA, Calif. (AP) ? In the Central California coastal town of Marina, a $7 million desalination plant that can turn salty ocean waves into fresh drinking water sits idle behind rusty, locked doors, shuttered by water officials because rising energy costs made the plant too expensive.
Far to the north in well-heeled Marin County, plans were scrapped for a desalination facility despite two decades of planning and millions of dollars spent on a pilot plant.
Squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water is a worldwide phenomenon that has been embraced in thirsty California, with its cycles of drought and growing population. There are currently 17 desalination proposals in the state, concentrated along the Pacific where people are plentiful and fresh water is not.
But many projects have been stymied by skyrocketing construction costs, huge energy requirements for running plants, regulatory delays and legal challenges over environmental impacts on marine life. Only one small plant along Monterey Bay is pumping out any drinking water.
From Marin County to San Diego, some water districts are asking themselves: How much are we willing to pay for this new water?
"We found that our demand for water had dropped so much since the time we started exploring desalination, we didn't need the water," said Libby Pischel, a spokeswoman for the Marin Municipal Water District. "Right now, conservation costs less than desalination."
Desalination plants can take water from the ocean or drill down and grab the less salty, brackish water from seaside aquifers. Because of their potential impacts to marine life, the California Coastal Commission reviews each project case-by-case.
There was great fanfare in 2009 when the last regulatory hurdle was cleared to build the Western Hemisphere's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, north of San Diego.
At the time, it was proposed that the $320 million project would suck in 100 million gallons of seawater and be capable of producing 50 million gallons of drinking water a day. It was expected to come online by this year.
Since then, the plant owner, Poseidon Resources LLC, has been negotiating a water purchase agreement and is close to clinching a 30-year deal with the San Diego County Water Authority, a wholesaler to cities and agencies that provide water to 3.1 million people.
The compact is essential for Poseidon to obtain financing to build what has become a $900 million project, which includes the seaside plant and a 10-mile pipeline. The San Diego agency hopes the plant opens in 2016 and anticipates desalination will account for 7 percent of the region's supply in 2020. It estimates the cost is comparable to other new, local sources of drinking water, such as treated toilet water or briny groundwater.
Interest is still high, but "people are realizing that desalination isn't a magic fix to the state's water issues," said coastal commission water expert Tom Luster.
Water can be de-salted in different ways. Poseidon's project will use reverse osmosis. Other plants shoot ocean or brackish water at high pressure through salt-removing membrane filters. Because pumps must be used constantly to move massive amounts of water through filters, these facilities are extremely energy intensive.
Also, in many cases, desalinated water is pricier than importing water the old-fashioned way ? through pipes and tunnels. And it is cheaper to focus on conservation when possible: new technologies like low-flow toilets and stricter zoning laws that require less water-intensive landscaping have helped curb demand in communities throughout the state.
Desalination has been around for years in Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf states and Israel, which last year approved the construction of a fifth desalination plant. The hope is that the five plants together will supply 75 percent of the country's drinking water by 2013.
The process also has helped ease thirst in places such as Australia, Spain and Singapore. Experts say it has been slower to catch on in the United States, mainly because companies face tougher rules on where they can build plants and must endure longer environmental reviews. Poseidon, for example, is facing opposition by environmental groups over its proposed plans to build another facility in Huntington Beach. The company has received several permits for the Orange County project, but still needs approval from the coastal commission.
About six miles south of the ghost desalination plant in Marina, the mechanical whir coming from a nondescript cinderblock building in a Sand City industrial park is the only evidence that the state's sole operating municipal desalination plant is at work.
The $14 million facility has the ability to produce up to 600,000 gallons a day of drinkable water for the town of about 340 people. Sand City's plant now produces half that amount each day; a third is used by the city with the rest sent elsewhere in Monterey County.
City leaders hoped to develop the former military town into an artsy, Bohemian beachside destination. With no other possible water options, they turned to desalination. "We're just like Saudi Arabia. There's nowhere else to get water and we want to develop," said Richard Simonitch, the city's civil engineer.
It's not that easy in Monterey Peninsula, where regional water use from development has exceeded its yearly rainfall replenishment and desalination is one of the only options available.
Proposals have been fraught with mistakes, political infighting and scandal, and have cost Monterey area ratepayers tens of millions of dollars.
Earlier this year, state utilities regulators rejected Monterey County's desalination plan, citing problems with environmental review. The plan was also mired in alleged corruption by a county water official, who now faces criminal charges.
Still, desalination will be an important part of the Central Coast's future: the state ordered water suppliers to stop drawing from the Carmel River, its main source of the precious resource, starting in 2017. Even officials in Marina, with its shuttered plant, see a future in which demand will require their current desalination plant to resume operation and are planning another, larger plant to help make up for the expected water loss.
"Water politics in Monterey County is a blood sport," said Jim Heitzman, general manager of the Marina Coast Water District.
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Chang reported from Los Angeles; Elliott Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report. Jason Dearen can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen.
Living in North Wales doesn?t often give you a lot of great options when it comes to wining and dining. There are no recognisable brands around, other than fast food establishments, and sometimes it?s difficult to be able to tell the good from the bad when it comes to local restaurants.
I came across this restaurant when I found their beautifully designed menu; two colour letter press print on fully recycled brown paper in my house, something I would never have expected to find in North Wales and had thought my housemate brought back from London, or somewhere a little more commercialised. I visited their website and fell further in love; everything about this place seemed perfect. The decision to visit was already made. I have friends who live in Menai Bridge and missing out on an opportunity like this would?ve been a scandal.
The restaurant looked great; it had the feel of a family owned 50s seafood diner with authentic retro photos on the walls and random nautical objects dotted about the place. The outdoor seating area overlooking the Menai Straits just seals the deal on an already brilliant dining experience. Its location means that you can sail there with plenty of boat parking space in the straits.
The sea bass was done to perfection, grilled on a bed of onions and thyme, drizzled with olive oil. Although it was no match for my dad?s Lebanese recipe it was still great. It didn?t have much flavour as they left the sea bass to be understated with no additional ingredients to bring out the flavours from one of my favourite dishes.
Dylan?s markets itself as a pizzeria and it?s easy to see why. The thin, Italian style bases come with the perfect amount of tomato sauce and an array of different fresh toppings.
The only problem is the price. Dylan?s isn?t a typical student cheap meal out. Dishes fall around the ?9 mark and things don?t get much better with drinks at ?3.50 for a bottle of San Miguel and ?2.50 for a glass of cranberry juice. If you want something different, that?s guaranteed to impress then it?s definitely worth the price.
Its mix of arty Italian flair and rustic sea food diner reminiscent of the 50s is the perfect combination; it?s only a bridge away.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed flat on Friday even though investors welcomed Spain's efforts to seek a bailout and cheered Apple's newest iPhone that went on sale today, driving its shares to a record high.
Apple Inc , the world's most valuable public company in terms of market capitalization, jumped to an all-time high of $705.07 as customers lined up to buy the iPhone 5. Apple's stock ended up 0.2 percent at $700.10.
News from Spain helped lift stocks after the debt-laden country said it was considering freezing pensions and speeding up a planned rise in the retirement age as it raced to cut spending and meet conditions of an expected international sovereign aid package.
The moves, taken with the European Central Bank's efforts to spur growth in the euro zone and the Fed's recent announcement of a third round of quantitative easing, continued to underpin gains.
"The market is predominantly looking forward to the Federal Reserve and the QE infinity that the Fed promised, and the globally coordinated easing cycle," said Steve Wood, chief market strategist at Russell Investments in New York.
This week, though, the market's action has been muted, with the S&P 500 barely moving 0.6 percent in either direction daily.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 17.46 points, or 0.13 percent, to close at 13,579.47. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dipped just 0.11 of a point, or 0.01 percent, to finish at 1,460.15. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> rose 4.00 points, or 0.13 percent, to close at 3,179.96.
Earlier, the S&P 500 hit an intraday high of 1,467.07, while the Nasdaq reached a session high of 3,196.93.
A quick and sharp sell-off in spot gold shortly after midday, driven by a rumor that the CME may raise margin requirements on commodities, weighed on financial services stocks, according to Joseph Greco, managing director of Meridian Equity Partners in New York.
Many banks and other companies in the financial sector have high exposure to gold and other commodities, so any increase in margin requirements would affect them, Greco said.
Spot gold later recovered to trade up 0.6 percent at $1,777.19 an ounce by 1:11 p.m. EDT on Friday, after hitting a session high of $1,787.20 - close to its 2012 high of $1,790.30.
But financial shares were still lower by late afternoon on Friday. The S&P financial index <.gspf> ended down 0.3 percent.
The transportation sector limited the market's advance on Friday, when the Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt> fell 1 percent. Earlier this week, two large shipping companies - FedEx Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. - warned about the impact of the weakening world economy on their results.
At the close, FedEx shares slid 0.9 percent to $84.39 and Norfolk Southern shares lost 1.7 percent to $65. On Wednesday, a few brokerage firms cut their price targets on FedEx stock. On Friday, four brokers lowered their price targets on Norfolk Southern's stock.
The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> has gained 5.9 percent since the start of August, mostly on expectations for new economic stimulus measures from the world's central banks. On September 13, the Federal Reserve announced a third round of stimulus or quantitative easing, known as Q3, intended to bolster the economy and reduce U.S. unemployment.
The market was more active than usual because of "quadruple witching," the quarterly settlement and expiration of four different types of September equity futures and options contracts. Expiration can lead to greater volume and volatility as players adjust or exercise their derivative positions.
"There was a little bit of a sell-off towards the close, but nothing crazy," said JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade. "There is not much volatility because the market has been trading in a pretty tight range most of the day, and it looks like most of the players have already rolled their positions over the last two weeks."
Looking ahead to quarterly earnings, one bright spot came from the fashion front. Shares of Michael Kors Holdings Ltd shot up 9.3 percent to close at $57.35. The fashion and accessory designer's company said it will probably earn more than it expected in the second quarter as it banks on strong global sales.
Housing shares climbed, led by KB Home , up 16.4 percent at $15.26, after the fifth-largest U.S. homebuilder reported a surprising quarterly profit and said its revenue backlog hit a four-year high. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> surged 1.74 percent.
Oracle Corp gained 0.7 percent to $32.47 a day after the software maker reported first-quarter earnings, excluding items, that met Wall Street's expectations. Oracle's hardware sales, however, are expected to drop further after tumbling 24 percent from a year ago.
Volume totaled 7.92 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the Amex.
Advancers beat decliners on both the NYSE and the Nasdaq by a ratio of 3 to 2. On the NYSE, there were 303 stocks hitting new highs and eight setting new lows. On the Nasdaq, 191 stocks touched new highs while 28 stocks reached new lows.
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Public release date: 26-Sep-2012
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