We evolved to experience social rejection in the same way as physical pain.

We evolved to experience social rejection in the same way as physical pain.

http://theconversation.com/loneliness-on-its-way-to-becoming-britains-most-lethal-condition-94775 Analysis of 300,000 people in 148 studies found that loneliness is associated with a 50% increase in mortality from any cause. This makes it comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and more dangerous than obesity. As the lead researcher of the analysis, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, comments: Loneliness significantly increases risk for premature mortality. Only…

Efforts to use the immune system to treat brain cancer

Efforts to use the immune system to treat brain cancer

Can #immunotherapy succeed in glioblastoma? A research update on efforts to use the immune system to treat brain cancer: https://t.co/3fmGDif0HA #CancerCurrents pic.twitter.com/MWKqdlGwfv — National Cancer Institute (@theNCI) October 4, 2018 Cancer treatments that work by engaging the immune system to attack tumors have proven to be effective against a growing number of cancers. One notable…

Evolution can move at warp speed

Evolution can move at warp speed

If there’s one thing to learn from the tuskless elephants of Mozambique, it’s that evolution can move at warp speed — The New York Times (@nytimes) September 21, 2018 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/elephants-africa-tusks-ivory-poaching-born-without-a7440706.html An increasing number of African elephants are now born tuskless because poachers have consistently targetted animals with the best ivory over decades, fundamentally altering the…

Anti-vaccination billboard like terrorism

Anti-vaccination billboard like terrorism

Immunologist bewildered by anti vaccination group's actions https://t.co/OhyljHQaNM — Karen Brown (@RNZhealth) October 2, 2018 An immunologist is bewildered by the actions of an anti-vaccination movement he has likened to organised terrorism. More than 140 complaints were sent to the Advertising Standards Authority about a billboard erected alongside Auckland’s southern motorway near Middlemore Hospital. The…

South African woman has been discovered alive — inside a morgue fridge

South African woman has been discovered alive — inside a morgue fridge

A "dead" South African woman has been discovered alive — inside a morgue fridge https://t.co/LT6kvonk74 — ABC News (@abcnews) July 3, 2018 A woman in South Africa is being treated in hospital after being found alive inside a morgue fridge. The woman was taken to Carletonville morgue in Gauteng province after being declared dead by…

Child abuse could leave ‘molecular scars’

Child abuse could leave ‘molecular scars’

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-10-child-abuse-molecular-scars-victims.html Methylation acts as a “dimmer switch” on genes, affecting the degree to which a particular gene is activated or not. Scientists are increasingly looking at this turning on and turning off of genes, known as epigenetics, because it’s believed to be influenced by external forces—a person’s environment or life experiences. The researchers decided to…

Distinction Bias: Making Bad Life Choices

Distinction Bias: Making Bad Life Choices

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/automatic-you/201803/distinction-bias-why-you-make-terrible-life-choices In comparison mode, we’re pretty good at deciding between qualitative differences. For example, we know that an interesting job is better than a boring one or that being able to walk to work is better than having to suffer driving in rush hour traffic. When I asked you to pick between Options 1 or…

Idealisation of celebrity and the avoidance of truth

Idealisation of celebrity and the avoidance of truth

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201508/the-psychology-self-deception An ego defense similar to splitting is idealization. Like the positive end of splitting, idealization involves overestimating the positive attributes of a person, object, or idea while underestimating its negative attributes. More fundamentally, it involves the projection of our needs and desires onto that person, object, or idea. A paradigm of idealization is infatuation,…

Healing through a commitment to truth and facts

Healing through a commitment to truth and facts

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/german-fuel-protest-image/ Since at least as far back as 2017, an image has been widely shared on social media with text indicating that it depicts a protest in which millions of irate Germans abandoned their cars in the street in protest of high fuel prices: However, the people who can be glimpsed in this photograph appear…