Animal Welfare Case - Intelligence & Happiness - Eleanor Maccoby Obit - Dopesick
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Breedlove, S
Dec 23, 2018, 7:17:39 AM12/23/18
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07868-y
German court dismisses animal-welfare case against leading neuroscientist
Alison Abbott
A court in Germany has dismissed a high-profile case of alleged animal cruelty brought against neuroscientist Nikos Logothetis, less than three weeks before hearings were scheduled to begin.
The administrative court in Tübingen announced the decision on 19 December, citing new information in an expert report commissioned by the defence to review the evidence. The report was provided to prosecutors and the court at the beginning of this month.
The charge against Logothetis — who is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPI-Biocyb) in Tübingen — was related to an alleged delay in euthanizing three sick research monkeys. Two other staff members, who have not been publicly named, were also accused of the same charge and have had their cases dismissed.
The three people must now pay a small settlement, which is not associated with guilt, by mid-January.
The case has roots in 2014, when an undercover animal-welfare activist infiltrated the facilities at the MPI-Biocyb and filmed the handling of some of the monkeys used in research in Logothetis’s lab. The German Animal Welfare Federation, a non-profit animal-rights organization in Bonn, used the footage to make multiple allegations of violations of animal-protection laws to police.
In August 2017 a Tübingen judge dismissed all but one of the allegations, which related to the three sick monkeys. Two of the monkeys recovered after treatment, and the third was humanely killed after staff decided that it would not recover.
© 2018 Springer Nature Publishing AG
--------------------
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/can-intelligence-buy-you-happiness/
Can Intelligence Buy You Happiness?
By Scott Barry Kaufman
In his classic 1923 essay, "Intelligence as the Tests Test It", Edwin Boring wrote "Intelligence is what the tests test." Almost a century of research later, we know that this definition is far too narrow. As long as a test is sufficiently cognitively complex and taps into enough diverse content, you can get a rough snapshot of a person's general cognitive ability-- and general cognitive ability predicts a wide range of important outcomes in life, including academic achievement, occupational performance, health, and longevity.
But what about happiness? Prior studies have been mixed about this, with some studies showing no relationship between individual IQ and happiness, and other studies showing that those in the lowest IQ range report the lowest levels of happiness compared to those in the highest IQ group. In one study, however, the unhappiness of the lowest IQ range was reduced by 50% once income and mental health issues were taken into account. The authors concluded that "interventions that target modifiable variables such as income (e.g., through enhancing education and employment opportunities) and neurotic symptoms (e.g., through better detection of mental health problems) may improve levels of happiness in the lower IQ groups."
One major limitations of these prior studies, however, is that they all rely on a single measure of happiness, notably life satisfaction. Modern day researchers now have measures to assess a much wider array of indicators of well-being, including autonomy, personal growth, positive relationships, self-acceptance, mastery, and purpose and meaning in life.
--------------------
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/obituaries/eleanor-maccoby-dead.html
Eleanor Maccoby, Pathbreaker on How Boys and Girls Differ, Dies at 101
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Eleanor Emmons Maccoby, a distinguished psychologist and a pioneer in the field of gender studies who was the first woman to head the Stanford University psychology department, died on Dec. 11 in Palo Alto, Calif. She was 101.
Her death, at a retirement community, was confirmed by her son, Mark, who said the cause was pneumonia.
Dr. Maccoby, whom the American Psychological Association listed among the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, conducted pathbreaking research in child development and gender studies. She explored a wide range of topics, including interactions between parent and child and the effect of divorce on children.
But the overarching themes of her long career were the differences between the sexes and how they develop. These were the subjects of two of her most significant books: “The Psychology of Sex Differences” (1974) and “The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together” (1998).
“She advanced our understanding of how girls and boys develop the characteristics that we think of as boy things and girl things,” Dr. John H. Flavell, a psychology professor emeritus at Stanford, said in a telephone interview.
The answer involved a complex combination of biological, cognitive and social factors, including the dynamic in which children learn from other children.
Dr. Maccoby did not initially consider herself a feminist. But she was gradually awakened by slights along the way, like being not allowed to enter the Faculty Club at Harvard through its front entrance, which was reserved for men, even though she was a member.
Asked in a video interview in 2013 how she became interested in gender issues, she replied, “We lived it.”
© 2018 The New York Times Company
--------------------
http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2018/Beth_Macys_Dopesick/
Beth Macy’s Dopesick
By: Arthur Robin Williams, M.D., and Frances R. Levin, M.D.
There's no shortage of statistics about the depth of America's opioid epidemic: 72,000 overdose deaths just last year, more than 2 million with problems, and so on. But numbers only begin to tell the whole story. Beth Macy, who has spent three decades reporting on central Appalachia—which she claims is the birthplace of the modern opioid epidemic—focuses her book on social and economic trends and how they affect ordinary people. Our reviewers, colleagues at the Columbia University Division on Substance Use Disorders, are well qualified to comment.
A new volume can be added to the panoply of books detailing the tragedies of the 21st century opioid epidemic. Beth Macy’s Dopesick (Little Brown & Co., 2018) is anchored in a handful of increasingly vocal and public Appalachia families afflicted by the expansion of opioid dealing into small towns and suburbs formerly thought immune to inner-city plagues of addiction. Dopesick largely reads as a human interest story, a series of intertwined portrayals of grief and terror as young family members descend into OxyContin (one quarter of the local high school students had reported trying the drug within two years of its 1996 market launch), then heroin, then synthetic opioids, reflecting the epidemic’ s tragic course.
These painful and personal stories form the heart of Macy’s book and make it perhaps the most empathic of the volumes regarding the epidemic. That she can represent a major drug dealer with as much compassion as the grieving families of teenagers and young adults who died because of his trade speaks to her Southern warmth. Her shrewd tirelessness as a journalist enables her to discern the fault lines of the stories that matter most.
© 2018 The Dana Foundation
--------------------
German court dismisses animal-welfare case against leading neuroscientist
Alison Abbott
A court in Germany has dismissed a high-profile case of alleged animal cruelty brought against neuroscientist Nikos Logothetis, less than three weeks before hearings were scheduled to begin.
The administrative court in Tübingen announced the decision on 19 December, citing new information in an expert report commissioned by the defence to review the evidence. The report was provided to prosecutors and the court at the beginning of this month.
The charge against Logothetis — who is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPI-Biocyb) in Tübingen — was related to an alleged delay in euthanizing three sick research monkeys. Two other staff members, who have not been publicly named, were also accused of the same charge and have had their cases dismissed.
The three people must now pay a small settlement, which is not associated with guilt, by mid-January.
The case has roots in 2014, when an undercover animal-welfare activist infiltrated the facilities at the MPI-Biocyb and filmed the handling of some of the monkeys used in research in Logothetis’s lab. The German Animal Welfare Federation, a non-profit animal-rights organization in Bonn, used the footage to make multiple allegations of violations of animal-protection laws to police.
In August 2017 a Tübingen judge dismissed all but one of the allegations, which related to the three sick monkeys. Two of the monkeys recovered after treatment, and the third was humanely killed after staff decided that it would not recover.
© 2018 Springer Nature Publishing AG
--------------------
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/can-intelligence-buy-you-happiness/
Can Intelligence Buy You Happiness?
By Scott Barry Kaufman
In his classic 1923 essay, "Intelligence as the Tests Test It", Edwin Boring wrote "Intelligence is what the tests test." Almost a century of research later, we know that this definition is far too narrow. As long as a test is sufficiently cognitively complex and taps into enough diverse content, you can get a rough snapshot of a person's general cognitive ability-- and general cognitive ability predicts a wide range of important outcomes in life, including academic achievement, occupational performance, health, and longevity.
But what about happiness? Prior studies have been mixed about this, with some studies showing no relationship between individual IQ and happiness, and other studies showing that those in the lowest IQ range report the lowest levels of happiness compared to those in the highest IQ group. In one study, however, the unhappiness of the lowest IQ range was reduced by 50% once income and mental health issues were taken into account. The authors concluded that "interventions that target modifiable variables such as income (e.g., through enhancing education and employment opportunities) and neurotic symptoms (e.g., through better detection of mental health problems) may improve levels of happiness in the lower IQ groups."
One major limitations of these prior studies, however, is that they all rely on a single measure of happiness, notably life satisfaction. Modern day researchers now have measures to assess a much wider array of indicators of well-being, including autonomy, personal growth, positive relationships, self-acceptance, mastery, and purpose and meaning in life.
--------------------
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/obituaries/eleanor-maccoby-dead.html
Eleanor Maccoby, Pathbreaker on How Boys and Girls Differ, Dies at 101
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Eleanor Emmons Maccoby, a distinguished psychologist and a pioneer in the field of gender studies who was the first woman to head the Stanford University psychology department, died on Dec. 11 in Palo Alto, Calif. She was 101.
Her death, at a retirement community, was confirmed by her son, Mark, who said the cause was pneumonia.
Dr. Maccoby, whom the American Psychological Association listed among the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, conducted pathbreaking research in child development and gender studies. She explored a wide range of topics, including interactions between parent and child and the effect of divorce on children.
But the overarching themes of her long career were the differences between the sexes and how they develop. These were the subjects of two of her most significant books: “The Psychology of Sex Differences” (1974) and “The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together” (1998).
“She advanced our understanding of how girls and boys develop the characteristics that we think of as boy things and girl things,” Dr. John H. Flavell, a psychology professor emeritus at Stanford, said in a telephone interview.
The answer involved a complex combination of biological, cognitive and social factors, including the dynamic in which children learn from other children.
Dr. Maccoby did not initially consider herself a feminist. But she was gradually awakened by slights along the way, like being not allowed to enter the Faculty Club at Harvard through its front entrance, which was reserved for men, even though she was a member.
Asked in a video interview in 2013 how she became interested in gender issues, she replied, “We lived it.”
© 2018 The New York Times Company
--------------------
http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2018/Beth_Macys_Dopesick/
Beth Macy’s Dopesick
By: Arthur Robin Williams, M.D., and Frances R. Levin, M.D.
There's no shortage of statistics about the depth of America's opioid epidemic: 72,000 overdose deaths just last year, more than 2 million with problems, and so on. But numbers only begin to tell the whole story. Beth Macy, who has spent three decades reporting on central Appalachia—which she claims is the birthplace of the modern opioid epidemic—focuses her book on social and economic trends and how they affect ordinary people. Our reviewers, colleagues at the Columbia University Division on Substance Use Disorders, are well qualified to comment.
A new volume can be added to the panoply of books detailing the tragedies of the 21st century opioid epidemic. Beth Macy’s Dopesick (Little Brown & Co., 2018) is anchored in a handful of increasingly vocal and public Appalachia families afflicted by the expansion of opioid dealing into small towns and suburbs formerly thought immune to inner-city plagues of addiction. Dopesick largely reads as a human interest story, a series of intertwined portrayals of grief and terror as young family members descend into OxyContin (one quarter of the local high school students had reported trying the drug within two years of its 1996 market launch), then heroin, then synthetic opioids, reflecting the epidemic’ s tragic course.
These painful and personal stories form the heart of Macy’s book and make it perhaps the most empathic of the volumes regarding the epidemic. That she can represent a major drug dealer with as much compassion as the grieving families of teenagers and young adults who died because of his trade speaks to her Southern warmth. Her shrewd tirelessness as a journalist enables her to discern the fault lines of the stories that matter most.
© 2018 The Dana Foundation
--------------------
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