quitesciencey-blog

[quitesciencey-blog]

Madagascan Flatid Bug (Phromnia rosea)

also known as the flatid leaf bug, P. rosea is a species of planthopper that is endemic to Madagascar. P.rosea are often seen on the trunks of trees where they are feeding on sap with their sucking mouthparts.

Like most planthoppers P.rosea nymphs look completely different from their parents and instead of a bright rose color they are white with waxy substances protruding out of their abdomen. These protect the bug from avian predators. 

Phylogeny

Animalia-Arthropoda-Insecta-Hemiptera-Flatidae-Phromnia-P.rosea

Image(s): Frank Vassen

[quitesciencey-blog]

Burgundy Snails (Helix pomatia) in the mood for love The mating process occurs in five steps:

(1) With their heads up, snails circle each other and feel one another with their tentacles.

(2) After becoming stimulated, one of the snails injects a calcareous “love-dart” into the sole of the other snail. Once it becomes exhausted, the other snail does the same thing.

(3) After resting, they align in such a way that their genital openings overlap. This act further stimulates the snails.

(4) The two snails twist their bodies around one another so that the penis and vagina are connected. One snail receives a spermatophore in a process that takes four to seven minutes.

(5) In the final stage, the penis is removed. However, the two snails can remain attached with their feet together for several hours. More about these snails: Encyclopedia of Life More images of snail romance Image by Jangle1969 via Wikimedia Commons 

[quitesciencey-blog]

In honor of the departure of the first US lunar landing mission on this day in 1969, LIFE.com publishes the page spreads (i.e., the entire issue) from LIFE’s famous August 11, 1969, Special Edition: “To the Moon and Back:"

 (Photo: LIFE Magazine)

[quitesciencey-blog]

It hardly gets more geek chic than this!

DIY Abacus bracelet by HaHaBird on Instructables (the tutorial is a little involved, but we have faith in you guys!)

(via FashionablyGeek)

[quitesciencey-blog]

[quitesciencey-blog]

[quitesciencey-blog]

Over the Bahamas

[quitesciencey-blog]

[quitesciencey-blog]

The horrible psychology of solitary confinement

In the largest prison protest in California’s history, nearly 30,000 inmates have gone on hunger strike. Their main grievance: the state’s use of solitary confinement, in which prisoners are held for years or decades with almost no social contact and the barest of sensory stimuli.

The human brain is ill-adapted to such conditions, and activists and some psychologists equate it to torture. Solitary confinement isn’t merely uncomfortable, they say, but such an anathema to human needs that it often drives prisoners mad.

In isolation, people become anxious and angry, prone to hallucinations and wild mood swings, and unable to control their impulses. The problems are even worse in people predisposed to mental illness, and can wreak long-lasting changes in prisoners’ minds.

"What we’ve found is that a series of symptoms occur almost universally. They are so common that it’s something of a syndrome," said psychiatrist Terry Kupers of the Wright Institute, a prominent critic of solitary confinement. “I’m afraid we’re talking about permanent damage."

California holds some 4,500 inmates in solitary confinement, making it emblematic of the United States as a whole:  More than 80,000 US prisoners  are housed this way, more than in any other democratic nation.

Even as those numbers have swelled, so have the ranks of critics. A series of scathing reports and documentaries — from the  National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the  New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, and  Amnesty International — were released in 2012, and the US Senate held its first-ever hearings on solitary confinement. In May of this year, the US Government Accountability Office criticised the federal Bureau of Prisons for failing to consider what long-term solitary confinement did to prisoners.

What’s emerged from the reports and testimonies reads like a mix of medieval cruelty and sci-fi dystopia. For 23 hours or more per day, in what’s euphemistically called “administrative segregation" or “special housing," prisoners are kept in bathroom-sized cells, under fluorescent lights that never shut off. Video surveillance is constant. Social contact is restricted to rare glimpses of other prisoners, encounters with guards, and brief video conferences with friends or family.

For stimulation, prisoners might have a few books; often they don’t have television, or even a radio. In 2011,  another hunger strike among California’s prisoners secured such amenities as wool hats in cold weather and wall calendars. The enforced solitude can last for years, even decades.

These horrors are best understood by listening to people who’ve endured them. As one Florida teenager described in a report on solitary confinement in juvenile prisoners, “The only thing left to do is go crazy." To some ears, though, stories will always be anecdotes, potentially misleading, possibly powerful, but not necessarily representative. That’s where science enters the picture.

"What we often hear from corrections officials is that inmates are feigning mental illness," said Heather Rice, a prison policy expert at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “To actually hear the hard science is very powerful."

Scientific studies of solitary confinement and its damages have actually come in waves, first emerging in the mid-19th century, when the practice fell from widespread favour in the United States and Europe. More study came in the 1950s, as a response to reports of prisoner isolation and brainwashing during the Korean War. The renewed popularity of solitary confinement in the United States, which dates to the prison overcrowding and rehabilitation program cuts of the 1980s, spurred the most recent research.

Consistent patterns emerge, centering around the aforementioned extreme anxiety, anger, hallucinations, mood swings and flatness, and loss of impulse control. In the absence of stimuli, prisoners may also become hypersensitive to any stimuli at all. Often they obsess uncontrollably, as if their minds didn’t belong to them, over tiny details or personal grievances. Panic attacks are routine, as is depression and loss of memory and cognitive function.

According to Kupers, who is serving as an expert witness in an ongoing lawsuit over California’s solitary confinement practices, prisoners in isolation account for just 5 percent of the total prison population, but nearly half of its suicides.

When prisoners leave solitary confinement and re-enter society — something that often happens with no transition period — their symptoms might abate, but they’re unable to adjust. “I’ve called this the decimation of life skills," said Kupers. “It destroys one’s capacity to relate socially, to work, to play, to hold a job or enjoy life."

Some disagreement does exist over the extent to which solitary confinement drives people mad who are not already predisposed to mental illness, said psychiatrist Jeffrey Metzner, who helped design what became  a controversial study of solitary confinement in Colorado prisons.

In that study, led by the Colorado Department of Corrections, researchers reported that the mental conditions of many prisoners in solitary didn’t deteriorate. The  methodology has been criticised as unreliable, confounded by prisoners hiding their feelings or happy just to be talking with anyone, even a researcher.

Metzner denies that charge, but says that even if healthy prisoners in solitary confinement make it through an unarguably grueling psychological ordeal, many — perhaps half of all prisoners — begin with mental disorders. “That’s bad in itself, because with adequate treatment, they could have gotten better," Metzner said.

Explaining why isolation is so damaging is complicated, but can be distilled to basic human needs for social interaction and sensory stimulation, along with a lack of the social reinforcement that prevents everyday concerns from snowballing into psychoses, said Kupers.

He likened the symptoms seen in solitary prisoners to those seen in soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The conditions are similar, and it’s known from studies of soldiers that chronic, severe stress alters pathways in the brain.

Brain imaging studies of prisoners are lacking, though, given the logistical difficulties of conducting them in high-security conditions.

Such studies are arguably not needed, as the symptoms of solitary confinement are so well described, but could add a degree of neurobiological specificity to the discussion.

"What you get from a brain scan is the ability to point to something" concrete, said law professor Amanda Pustilnik of the University of Maryland, who specialises in the intersection of neuroscience and the legal system. “The credibility of psychology in the public mind is very low, whereas the credibility of our newest set of brain tools is very high."

Brain imaging might also convey the damages of solitary confinement in a more compelling way. “There are few people who say that mental distress is impermissible in punishment. But we do think harming people physically is impermissible," Pustilnik said.

"You can’t starve people. You can’t put them into a hotbox or maim them," she continued. “If you could do brain scans to show that people suffer permanent damage, that could make solitary look less like some form of distress, and more like the infliction of a permanent disfigurement."

Such arguments might still not be shared by people who believe criminals deserve their punishments, but there’s also a utilitarian argument. Solitary confinement is supposed to reduce prison violence, but some studies suggest that reducing its use — as in one Mississippi prison, where mentally ill prisoners were removed from solitary and given treatment — actually reduces prison-wide violence.

The demands of hunger-striking California prisoners include a five-year limit on solitary sentences, an end to indefinite sentences, and a formal chance to earn their way back to general-population housing through good behaviour.

"Most of these people will return to our communities," said Rice. “When we punish them in such a manner that they’re coming out more damaged than they went in, and are ill-equipped to re-enter communities and be productive citizens, we’re doing a disservice to society as a whole."

"If you could do brain scans to show that people suffer permanent damage, that could make solitary look less like some form of distress, and more like the infliction of a permanent disfigurement" - Amanda Pustilnik, Professor of Law at University of Maryland

[quitesciencey-blog]

Thursday : sequensizer

[quitesciencey-blog]

On The Scale Of Evil, Where Do Murderers Rate?

Columbia University professor Michael Stone knows evil. He’s a forensic psychologist - the type of expert that provides testimony on the mental state of accused murderers when a declaration of insanity can mean the difference between life and death row.

Inspired by the structure of Dante’s circles of hell, Stone has created his own 22-point “Gradations of Evil" scale, made up of murderers in the 20th century. “I thought it would be an interesting thing to do," he says.

His scale is loosely divided into three tiers. First are impulsive evil-doers: driven to a single act of murder in a moment of rage or jealousy. Next are people who lack extreme psychopathic features, but may be psychotic - that is, clinically delusional or out of touch with reality. Last are the profoundly psychopathic, or “those who possess superficial charm, glib speech, grandiosity, but most importantly cunning and manipulativeness," Stone says. “They have no remorse for what they’ve done to other people."

Stone hopes the scale could someday be used in prosecutions. “The people at the very end of the scale have certain things about their childhood backgrounds that are different," he says, from those who appear earlier in the scale. And because the scale follows a continuum of likelihood a killer will kill again, courts may be able to better categorize the risks posed by releasing a psychopath.

Conspicuously absent from Stone’s scale are wartime evil-doers. “My scale is a scale for evil in peacetime," he says. “That’s because assessing wartime evil from a criminal-psychological standpoint is more complicated because of factors like culture, history and religion."

And in war, there are often two sides. Take Hitler, Stone says. “He thought we were evil, we thought he was evil." But, he adds, “in that particular case, we were right."

Scale Of Evil:

1. Justified Homicide. The least malevolent: Those who have killed in self-defense and do not show psychopathic features.

2. Jealous Lovers, Non-Psychopathic. Though egocentric or immature, evildoers in this category committed their crimes in the heat of passion.

3. Willing Companions of Killers. Still far from psychopathic, some have antisocial traits and an aberrant personality. They’re often driven by impulse.

4. Provocative ‘Self-Defense.’ These people kill in self-defense, but they aren’t entirely innocent themselves; they may have been “extremely provocative" toward their victim.

5. Desperate Measures. These are traumatized, desperate killers of abusive relatives or others - but they lack ‘significant psychopathic traits’ and are genuinely remorseful.

6. Hot Heads. Killers who act in an impetuous moment, yet without marked psychopathic features.

7. Narcissists. Highly narcissistic killers who are often possessive, not distinctly psychopathic, but “with a psychopathic core." They typically kill loved ones or family members out of jealousy.

8. Fit of Rage. Non-psychopathic people who live with an underlying, smoldering rage, then kill when that rage is ignited.

9. Jealous lovers, Psychopathic. The scale’s first foray into psychopathic territory, these killers are jealous lovers but with marked psychopathic features.

10. "In The Way" Killers, Not Fully Psychopathic. Killers of witnesses or people who are simply “in the way." These evildoers are egocentric, but not totally psychopathic.

11. "In The Way" Psychopaths. Psychopathic killers of people “in the way." Premeditation is not usually a major factor in their killings.

12. Power-Hungry and Cornered. Power-hungry psychopaths who kill when “cornered," or placed in a situation they wouldn’t be able to escape with their power intact.

13. Inadequate And Rageful. Murderers with shortcomings that follow them throughout life, who also express psychopathic impulses and are prone to rage.

14. Schemers. Ruthlessly self-centered and psychopathic, schemers stop at nothing to deceive, con and steal.

15. Cold-Blooded Spree. Murderers who kill multiple people calmly and with a psychopathic motive. Often pathological in their denial of guilt or inability to confront reality.

16. Vicious Psychopaths. Those who commit multiple vicious acts that may also include murder, rape or mutilation.

17. The Sexually Perverse. Serial killers with some element of sexual perversion in their crimes. In males, rape is usually the primary motive and killing follows to hide the evidence. Torture is not a primary motive.

18. Torturing Murderers. Though psychotic, they do not typically prolong their torture. Murder, not torture, is their primary motivation.

19. Non-Homicidal Psychopaths. Psychopaths who fall short of murder, yet engage in terrorism, subjugation, intimidation or rape.

20. Murdering Torturers. Psychotic (legally insane) and primarily motivated by their desire to torture.

21. Pure Torturers. Not all torturers murder. These psychopaths (evaluated to be in touch with reality) are preoccupied with torture “in the extreme," but never convicted of murder.

22. Psychopathic Torture-Murderers. Defined by a primary motivation to inflict prolonged, diabolical torture. Most in this category are male serial killers.

[x]

[quitesciencey-blog]

Geek chic from the Projector Etsy store.

[quitesciencey-blog]

Toxoplasmosis associated with increased suicide risk

There’s fresh evidence that cats can be a threat to your mental health. To be fair, it’s not kitties themselves that are the problem, but a parasite they carry called . A study of more than 45,000 Danish women found that those infected with this feline parasite were 1.5 times more likely to attempt suicide than women who weren’t infected.

That’s not a huge increase, but it’s probably too big to have been caused by chance, says , a University of Maryland psychiatrist and senior author of , which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

T. gondii constructing daughter scaffolds within the mother cell (image: PLoS).

[quitesciencey-blog]

Phobias: The rationale behind irrational fears

Recently, this section featured an article about the tarantula Typhochlaena costae. While the piece was very interesting, this was likely lost on some readers, as it’s difficult to focus on details while distracted by the sound of your own screaming.

Arachnophobia is one of the more well-known phobias and can be very potent. Searching the science section for some lunchtime reading is not the sort of activity that typically includes spiders, so to be suddenly confronted, apropos of nothing, by an image of a humungous tarantula probably caught many unawares. How many tablets/phones/laptops were ruined due to being hurled across the room in a panic?

Most would consider this an overreaction. Granted, there are many dangerous species of spider but the odds of encountering one are, in the UK at least, vanishingly small. And even then, the biggest spider is physically no match for a person; a rolled up newspaper is not considered a lethal weapon among humans. Arachnophobes substantially outnumber people who have been genuinely injured by spiders, and yet the irrational fear of spiders is commonplace.

Phobias are psychologically interesting. There are three possible types: specific phobias, social phobias and agoraphobia. Agoraphobia isn’t just a fear of open spaces; it describes a fear of any situation where escape would be difficult and/or help wouldn’t be forthcoming. The fact that most such situations occur outside the sufferer’s home results in them not going out much, which is probably where the “open spaces" confusion comes from.

Specific phobias are probably the most recognised. Specific phobias are an irrational fear of a specific thing or situation. Specific phobias can be further subdivided into situational (eg claustrophobia), natural environment (eg acrophobia), animal (eg the aforementioned arachnophobia) or blood-injection-injury types (eg … blood and injections). You could still have a phobia which doesn’t fit any of these descriptors though. Maybe you’ve got an irrational fear of being categorised? If so, sorry.

Social phobias are where you have an irrational fear of how people will react to you in a situation. The fear of rejection or judgement from others is a powerful force for humans; much of how we think and behave is calibrated around the views and behaviours of others. There’s a whole discipline about it. People value the views of others differently of course. One way to reduce the value you place on the opinions of strangers is to read the comments on the internet. Any comments, anywhere.

How do we even develop a fear that is by definition irrational? One explanation is classical conditioning; you experience something bad involving a thing, you associate the bad experience with that thing, then you become afraid of that thing. But clever humans can also learn by observation; you see your mother panicking frantically in response to a wasp when you’re a child, you’ll likely be afraid of wasps too.

If we are given enough (possibly inaccurate) information, we may just “figure out" things are scary via instructional fear acquisition. Certain horror films are particularly good at this, presenting everyday things like birds as things to be feared, associations which stay with people for a long time. The Final Destination series is particularly cruel in that it tries to make people terrified of “not dying". We may even have evolved to acquire some phobias. Research has shown that primates tend to learn to fear snakes very quickly when compared to other stimuli. If you’re evolving in an environment where snakes are a genuine but subtle threat, this tendency would help no doubt. It might explain the spider thing too.

Not so sure about aerophobia though, we probably didn’t need to worry about that on the African Savannah

What can you do about this? It’s not like those with phobias aren’t aware of them. One of the criteria in the DSM-IV for diagnosing phobias is that the sufferer is aware of the irrational nature of their fear. There are a lot of brain regions involved, like the insular cortex and amygdala. And you can’t simply make someone encounter the thing they’re afraid of to show them it’s harmless. As far as the brain is concerned, the fear response IS a negative physical consequence, so on a subconscious level the phobia is self-fulfilling.

There are methods of treating phobias if they’re genuinely debilitating.Systematic desensitisation is one approach (where the source of the phobia is introduced in easily-managed stages), cognitive behavioural therapy, even antidepressants if all else fails.

[quitesciencey-blog]

Schrödinger

[quitesciencey-blog]

shit

[quitesciencey-blog]

this occurs commonly in proteins