Dance Your Ph.D.: When Science People Shake A Tail Feather, Everybody Wins

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UPDATE: The grand prize winner is Joel Miller, for his "Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story." See that and the other winners here.

Every now and then, you learn about something so amazing that you're instantly (1) cheered that you know about it now, and (2) sad for yourself that you never knew about it before.

That's how I felt when Andrew Prince at NPR's science desk told me about Dance Your Ph.D., a contest in which people who work in the sciences — physics, chemistry, biology and social science — create videos of dance interpretations of their Ph.D. theses, and they compete for a $1,000 prize. (NPR covered the contest back in 2008; I was somehow in bed at the time.)

Now, the risk, naturally, is that this will just become a contest to make the most slickly produced music video, so they have a rule. As stated in the FAQ, "The author of the Ph.D. thesis has to be one of the dancers." So there's no hiring all your hot friends to do the dancing while you do the thinking. No no! This is Dance YOUR Ph.D., not Dance Your Less Coordinated Friend's Ph.D.

This year's winner is being announced today in Brussels (where else would you do it?). You can watch the finalists here, including this man-teaches-robot-to-dance video that utterly delighted me. The technical title is "Human-Based Percussion and Self-Similarity Detection in Electroacoustic Music." You can probably tell that from the dancing, though.

Then there's this one. I don't understand it, but I like it. "The Effect Of Western-Style Diet Consumption On Epigenetic Patterns." (So don't steal that title for YOUR YouTube video.)

Later this afternoon, we'll be back with an update on the winner. But let's face it: these people are all winners already, and I mean that with nothing but sincerity.

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Disabled people benefits warning

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21 October 2011 Last updated at 02:10 GMT Some 3.2 million people, including children, receive disability living allowance Many disabled people risk losing essential payments under planned benefits changes, a charity has warned.

Scope says the proposed test of claimants' need is flawed for focusing on the disability but ignoring relevant factors like housing and transport.

Thousands could be left with little or no financial support, Scope warns.

The government argues new payments will be more effectively targeted to those in greatest need, while cutting overpayments of £600m a year.

Some 3.2 million disabled people, including children, receive the existing disability living allowance.

It is in line to be replaced by the personal independence payment, which features in the government's Welfare Reform Bill.

A new medical assessment has been drawn up that will be carried out on disabled people of working age, of whom there are about two million.

But, according to Scope, that assessment "doesn't take into consideration all the barriers that disabled people face in daily life".

Continue reading the main story

I want to see money really getting to disabled people who need the help the most”

End Quote Maria Miler Minister for disabled people It highlights examples including unsuitable housing, inaccessible public transport, and a lack of informal support networks that "create significant extra costs for disabled people that in most cases are not related to the direct effect of an individual's condition and impairment".

Scope chief executive Richard Hawkes said: "We recognise that disability living allowance needs reforming and we fully support the government's ambitions to create a more active and enabling benefit."

But he added: "Without understanding the extent of barriers people face, the government has no hope to overcome them and genuinely enable people to take part in daily life."

The charity has designed an alternative assessment system that, it says, "will give disabled people the opportunity to address the barriers they face and therefore drive down costs in the long term, rather than placing a sticking plaster over them".

In response to the Scope report, minister for disabled people Maria Miller said: "At the moment disability living allowance doesn't have an in-built reassessment as part of it and we have £600m a year going out in overpayments as a result.

"I want to see that change so that the money is really getting to disabled people who need the help the most."

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Using Magnets Aimed at the Brain to Influence Whether People Lie

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Zap one part of the brain with a magnetic pulse and people become more likely to lie. Stimulate the opposite side of the region and truth-telling increases, according to new research.

In the study, 16 participants were asked to view red or blue colored disks on a computer monitor and, at their own discretion, to sometimes lie about the color and identify red as blue, or vice versa.

While the volunteers made these choices, researchers applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to their brains. The small rTMS device uses magnets to generate weak electrical fields, and researchers place it near the head to administer the non-invasive pulses. This affects communication between brain cells in targeted regions.

Doctors use rTMS as a treatment for depression that fails to respond to drugs or therapy, and it is also being studied for other psychiatric and neurological disorders. Side effects can include some twitching, but the treatment is not generally reported to be painful.

In the new study, researchers administered rTMS to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — a region involved in planning, memory and self-control — either in the right or left hemisphere of the brain. When rTMS was used on the right hemisphere, participants were more likely to tell the truth. When the stimulation was applied to the left side of that region, the probability of lying increased. Stimulation applied to other brain regions in the study's control participants had no effect on their honesty.

MORE: The Criminal Mind: How Drugs and Violence May Affect the Brain

Because the number of participants was so small, it's hard to draw firm conclusions from the research. Even if the study were replicated in a much larger group, however, it might not translate directly to the real world. Stimulation of the brain could have a different effect when the stakes of lying — say, to avoid being sent to prison — are higher than simply participating in an experiment. The brain's responses to experience are different depending on the person's emotional state.

Nonetheless, the potential ability to detect or even control people's deceitfulness would be of tremendous interest to those working in professions like law or national security—as well as having terrifying civil liberties implications. Study co-author Talis Bachmann of the University of Tartu in Estonia spoke with the U.K.'s Guardian about the potential legal repercussions of using rTMS to get people to tell the truth:

Provided that the method is validated and legal norms are established, it could perhaps be allowed and justified ... but this should not become a routinely used technique. Basic human rights include cognitive privacy and this would be a clear infringement. If a subject freely agrees, maybe it would make sense, but I foresee heated debates on whether 'knocking truth out of the fellow' can be legalized in principle.

Quite an understatement, I'd say! Let's hope the ethicists keep close tabs on this technology.

The study was published in Behavioral Brain Research.

[h/t: Mo Costandi of the Guardian's excellent Neurophilosophy blog]

MORE: Mind Reading: When You Go Hunting for Psychopaths, They Turn Up Everywhere

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

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Wealth Matters: People with Stuff Are More Likely to Marry

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People who have more personal wealth — in the form of a car, say, or a small nest egg — are more likely to get married than those who have less, according to a new analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It's further evidence, as if it were needed, that money and marriage are becoming increasingly intertwined in ways that are not yet fully understood.

One of the most striking sociological trends to emerge in recent decades is the widening wealth gap between those who are married and those who aren't. The marrying kind tend to be more educated, wealthier and whiter — so they often start with more advantages. But because marriage often brings with it extra benefits to health, finances and family, the economically disadvantaged unmarried are set back doubly, and the gap between the well-off and the struggling grows ever wider.

Marriage rates have been falling across the board since the 1980s, but particularly so among certain groups. "What is perhaps most striking is the increasing stratification in marriage by race and education," said Daniel Schneider, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University and the author of the study, in a statement. "From 1980 to 2000, the percentage of white women who had been married by ages 25 to 29 had dropped by 13 percentage points to 68%, but the drop was far larger for blacks, dropping 25 points, to just 38%."

Indeed, the historically low rates of marriage among African Americans — U.S. Census data suggests that 40% of black women will not be married by the age of 40 — has led to a lot of debate in recent weeks, stirred partly by the publication of the not-at-all-controversially titled book Is Marriage for White People?

MORE: Q&A: Is Marriage for White People?

Researchers have tried to narrow down exactly what it is that makes people more likely to marry, and often they settle on education and income as the critical factors. Since blacks and the less educated traditionally face disadvantages in the job market, they may tend delay marriage longer, increasing gaps in marriage rates. But Schneider's study, published in the American Journal of Sociology, suggests that income explains only part of the gap. Personal assets may account for more of the willingness to wed, Schneider says, especially among men.

This makes intuitive sense. Marriage is not something to be entered into lightly — as the preachers like to say. And it requires quite a lot of optimism and hope — as the celebrants at second weddings like to say. It's much easier to imagine other people depending on you in the future, if you have even a little something to fall back on.

Schneider hypothesized that if accumulated riches matter in people's decisions to marry, then the fact that blacks often start off with less than whites would explain some of the disparity in marriage rates. To test this theory, he looked at whether personal wealth, such as having a car, money in a savings account or financial assets like stocks and bonds, was associated with the likelihood of entering into first marriage in any given year.

MORE: The Fathering Gap: Pitfalls of Modern Fatherhood

After controlling for income, employment and family background, Schneider found that, indeed, owning a car or having financial assets increased the probability that a man would get married in a given year. The effect was also true of women, but less so. Based on his analysis, Schneider concluded that personal wealth further accounted for a significant part of the racial gap in marriage rates; he estimates that about 30% of the gap could be attributed to accumulated wealth, while 20% could be explained by income, employment and public benefits. "What people own, not just what they earn or know, shapes entrance into marriage and so may perpetuate disadvantage across generations," writes Schneider.

What to do? Programs that help poorer people to accrue some assets, no matter how small should be encouraged, he believes. "Even small amounts of wealth may help disadvantaged men and women meet the economic standard of marriage," he said.

MORE: Whites and Blacks Are Intermarrying More Often

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WHO: Number of people with TB falls for 1st time

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LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization says the number of people with tuberculosis has fallen for the first time.

In a report issued Tuesday, WHO estimated 8.8 million people fell ill last year, dropping from a peak of about 9 million in 2005. Officials said fewer people are now dying from the disease, but that a third of cases worldwide are probably not reported.

The small decline in reported cases is partly due to increased availability of medical treatment for TB, WHO said. The U.N. health agency also said estimates are now more accurate because countries have better surveillance of tuberculosis patients.

The TB death rate is expected to be reduced by half by 2015 everywhere except Africa, where the AIDS epidemic has also fueled a spike in tuberculosis. India and China account for about 40 percent of the world's tuberculosis cases.

In recent years, health experts have also warned of the increasing threat of drug-resistant tuberculosis, a signal that many people with TB aren't being treated properly.

Last month, officials warned that drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading fast in Europe and that there are few drugs left to treat it. WHO estimated countries need another $1 billion to fund tuberculosis programs in 2012.

In the report, officials said they didn't have enough data to know whether the global outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis is increasing, decreasing or stable.

Last year, a new rapid test for drug-resistant TB was unveiled in more than two dozen countries, allowing patients to be treated sooner and stopping the disease's spread.

"But the promise of testing more people must be matched with the commitment to treat all detected," Mario Raviglione, the director of WHO's TB department, said in a statement. "It would be a scandal to leave diagnosed patients without treatment."

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What's behind the backlash against transgender people?

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Story on transgender children generates heated commentsHostility toward transgender people comes from challenging gender conventionsDiscomfort for transgender also stems from religious views

(CNN) -- Tuesday's CNN.com story about transgender children and their families shed light on an emotional topic and provoked strong response.

"Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are" centered on identity, gender, health, parenting and child development. It's not unusual for a popular story on CNN.com to have hundreds or thousands of responses, but the overwhelmingly negative tone of Tuesday's comments raised the question about the root of the hostility. What exactly provoked such harsh opinions?

The discomfort toward transgender people comes from challenging conventions, said one academic who focuses on social attitudes and behavior.

In American culture, sex and gender belong in one of two categories, said Diane Everett, professor of sociology at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. As soon as humans are born, the first thing people ask is whether the baby is a boy or girl.

"We tend as a society to put people into boxes," she said. "Someone who is transgender is not only crossing gender boundaries, but also defying them. If people can't relate to you as an either-or, they have a hard time relating to you in their general comfort level."

Then there are people who for religious reasons believe transgender is fundamentally wrong, that "God created man and woman. Automatically, man is male, woman is female, and they shouldn't cross these lines."

The issues usually end up in a debate about which bathroom transgender people use, Everett said. It's a symbol of the entire controversy because it has to do with gender, sexuality and comfort level.

The discomfort stems from the view that a person is either female or male -- and in rare cases, intersex. Changing what you're born with is "basically self-mutilation," said Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, a group that works with people who no longer practice gay, lesbian or transgender lifestyles. "You're talking about surgery to alter who you really are from a biological standpoint."

People with gender identity disorder deserve proper medical and psychiatric help, she said.

Not conforming to gender is not a disorder, says group

Griggs said she has heard from parents who have transgender staff in their children's schools and that "they're being told that it's normal, natural and healthy, (that they) have to respect them and approve."

"Why are we hiring people who are cross dressing? Why should children be told that's acceptable behavior? That's where the line is being drawn. We're telling people it's natural, healthy, normal behavior and it's still classified as a mental illness."

Gender identity disorder is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the "bible" of psychiatry.

Transgender people challenge the ideas ingrained in society about gender and sex, said Mara Kiesling, founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. People are taught that boys stay as boys, girls as girls, and that boys will marry girls.

"All of those things are true for most people," she said. "It's true that most people are either male or female and it is immutable for most people. Most boys act like stereotypical boys, most girls act like girls. What we're learning now is none of those things are immutable as we were taught. It's striking at some naïve orthodoxy that people have been taught by society since our childhood."

Transgender people face minority stress, meaning that they're made to feel unwelcome or an odd minority, Kiesling said. They also face stigma, sometimes from their own family, job discrimination and bullying.

"Why in the world would anybody be so hostile about parents really trying to understand something about their children that wasn't in the original playbook as parents?" she said. "They're doing the best they can trying to do right by their kids."

The hostility can come at surprising times.

A transgender woman, Amber Yust, who changed her name from David, went to her local Department of Motor Vehicles in San Francisco to update her license last year. She received a letter from one of their employees accusing Yust of acting in a way that is "an abomination that leads to hell." That employee was identified and subsequently resigned.

Chaz Bono, born a girl to entertainers Sonny and Cher and now publicly transitioning to life as a man, has been the most recent transgender person to be the focus of news reports. When it was announced that Bono would compete on "Dancing with the Stars," conservative family groups protested and started an online campaign against the popular reality show.

A Foxnews.com contributor chimed in suggesting that parents not allow their children to watch Bono on TV, because it could inappropriately influence children.

"The last thing vulnerable children and adolescents need, as they wrestle with the normal process of establishing their identities, is to watch a captive crowd in a studio audience applaud on cue for someone whose search for an identity culminated with the removal of her breasts, the injection of steroids. ..." wrote Dr. Keith Ablow, psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.

His post got 33,000 Facebook recommends and more than 2,000 Tweets.

But not everyone on the network agreed. His views were challenged by Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who questioned his evidence.

View the original article here

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