MONDAY, Aug. 7 2017 (HealthDay News) -- A new study suggests -- but doesn't prove -- that certain players of action video games may lose gray matter in a part of the brain that's linked to mental illness.

On the other hand, the Canadian study suggests, other players may actually benefit from the games.

And a psychologist not involved with the study said there's no evidence that video games are harmful to the brain.

The results indicate that the reported benefits of playing shooting-style video games -- such as improved attention and short-term memory -- "might come at a cost" in terms of lost brain matter in some players, said the study's lead author, Gregory West. He is an assistant professor with the department of psychology at the University of Montreal.

The difference may be the style of playing, the researchers noted.

The new study aimed to better understand the brain effects of so-called first-person and third-person shooting games -- such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Killzone, or Medal of Honor -- compared to "3-D platform" games in the Super Mario series.

The researchers used a virtual-reality test, MRIs and 90 hours of game-playing involving 100 people who were either expert or nonexpert players. They also used MRIs to assess the impact on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps spatial and episodic memory.

The results showed evidence that gray matter in the hippocampus grew in those players who used so-called spatial strategies to find their way in the action video game. But the gray matter shrunk in those who navigated the same games by learned response.

Spatial players create maps in their heads to understand the geography of the world within the game, the researchers explained. And response players use an approach akin to learning a route that you travel every day -- make a right turn here, then a left, then a right -- so that you can drive on mental auto-pilot without thinking.

Those who played the Super Mario games, meanwhile, showed signs of growth in either the hippocampus or another part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex.

The study authors emphasized that they aren't saying that anyone who plays video games will develop a mental illness.

"But we know that those with less gray matter in the hippocampus are more at risk to get conditions like schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and Alzheimer's disease," said study co-author Veronique Bohbot. She is an associate professor with the department of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal.

A video game expert called brain studies of game players problematic.

"Given that there are so many areas in the brain, it stands to reason that, by chance alone, some of these areas may randomly differ between any two groups of people," said Chris Ferguson, a professor of psychology with Stetson University in DeLand, Fla.

"Researchers can sometimes make a big deal out of these random differences and ascribe them to something like video games," he said.

Ferguson noted that overall brain research into the effects of the games hasn't revealed problems.

"Despite some wild headlines and press releases from time to time, the research suggests that video game playing is entirely safe for the brain," Ferguson said.

"The aggregate of studies have not suggested that playing video games, even 'violent' ones, cause either short- or long-term brain changes that are problematic or could be called 'brain damage,' " he added.

"Most studies also don't connect the brain differences to actual behavior. So brain studies often function like Rorschach cards, telling you more about what the researchers want to believe than anything actually happening with human behavior," Ferguson suggested.

What should video game players do? Study lead author West suggests that adults play shooter games for only two to three hours a week.

Ferguson noted that research is hinting that video games may reduce stress and improve problem-solving abilities.

"Playing video games should be balanced with other activities: offline socialization, exercise, work and school, family and good sleep," he said. "As long as games are part of a balanced lifestyle, there's no evidence that they cause harmful brain changes."

The study was published in the Aug. 7 issue of Molecular Psychiatry.

Excerpt from:
Can Video Game Playing Cost You Gray Matter? - Bloomington Pantagraph

Perhaps perpetuated by folklore, Hollywood, or just human fascination, the idea that the moon effects human behavior continues to persist today.

But how much of it is fact, and how much is fiction?

When there is a full moon, people always say Oh everybody is acting strangely because its a full moon, says Sara Wilson, executive director of the St. Joseph Museums. We said Well, is that really true?

The Moon and Madness exhibit, which looks at the connections between the moon and human behavior, opened Aug. 1 at the Glore Psychiatric Museum. The family-friendly, temporary exhibit will be open through the end of the year.

The exhibit explores this idea, this fundamental belief that we have that the moon effects human behavior, Wilson says. We think about the history between our long understanding of the history of mental illness and what mental illness is and the idea that the moon has some relationship to that.

In preparation for the exhibit, the museum collected research that looked at human activity during a full moon, including psychiatric hospital admissions and crime. They worked on the exhibit for about a year before it was unveiled.

Are there more psychiatric hospital admissions during a full moon? Is there more crime during a full moon? Wilson says. Overwhelmingly, the science seems to indicate, no, theres not. But if you have friends who work for the police force or hospitals, almost all of them will say Yes, yes, there is something that happens when theres a full moon that people start to act strangely.

Although such a connection, which has been called the lunar lunacy effect or Transylvania effect, has persevered in legend, media and other places, the research didnt support a connection, Wilson says. Despite the lack of solid scientific evidence, the connection has been long standing, including in the mental health field, she says.

The state hospital, which was here in St. Joseph, which is largely what the Glore interprets, was originally called the State Lunatic Asylum. If you think about that word, lunatic, that has its roots in lunar, which is another word for moon. The notion of lunatic, the longstanding idea of what happens with lunacy, is there is some connection to the phases of the moon, she says.

One theory about a link between the moon and human behavior stems from the moons influence on the Earths tides, Wilson says, but research suggests that the same influence is not substantial on the human body.

The thing that I find most interesting is our stead-fast belief that people do act strangely during a full moon, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, Wilson says. I think there must be something to it, even though our science maybe hasnt figured out what, yet.

The interactive exhibit also looks at the solar system and the fundamentals of solar and lunar eclipses. A telescope allows visitors to view the moon, and a 3-D interactive exhibit displays the solar system.

A few floors below the exhibit, lunar sample 70035, a piece of moon rock, is on display at the museum. It was collected by astronaut Harrison Schmitt in 1972 and is estimated to be 3.75 billion years old. It will be on display through October and was brought to St. Joseph by the St. Joseph Museums and VekTek LLC.

Thats been a huge deal for St. Joseph to have a piece of the moon when the solar eclipse is coming, Wilson says. We are grateful for that.

The solar eclipse provides a unique opportunity to look at the history of the moon and mental illness, Wilson says. The St. Joseph Museums, 3406 Frederick Ave., are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission ranges from free for children under 6 to $6 for adults.

The Glore is a fantastic resource here in St. Joseph, and its inspiring, she says. Its also an important story that we share with the entire country, the history of treatment of mental illness. Its very unique.

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Glore looks at connection between moon, behavior - News-Press Now

Religion has played an important part in countless wars, conflicts, terrorist attacks, murders, and genocides, yet people seem to associate it with morality. In fact, these same peopleeven other atheistsseem to think atheists are the immoral ones.

A new study from an international team of scientists tried to add some data to the moral distrust of atheists, a prejudice that exists in America and around the world. The research surveyed 3,256 people from 13 different countries, and found that, sure enough, anti-atheist prejudices still exist among religious people and other atheists alike, in both religious and secular countries.

Entrenched moral suspicion of atheists suggests that religions powerful influence on moral judgements persists, the authors write in the article, published today in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, even among non-believers in secular societies.

The task was simple: Survey participants read about a boy who tortures animals, then murders and mutilates homeless people as an adult. They then answered questions about the mans religious beliefs in a way the experimenters specifically designed so folks werent simply choosing whether the man was a believer or non believer, which could add extra bias. Instead, some participants decided whether the man was a teacher, in general, or specifically a teacher who believed in god, and others decided whether the man was a teacher or specifically an atheist teacher.

Participants came from Australia, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Mauritius, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the amount of anti-atheist sentiment varied between countries, folks were always more likely to say the man was an atheist teacher than they were to say he was religious.

Even as secularism reduces overt religiosity in many places religion has apparently still left a deep and abiding mark on human moral intuitions, the authors write.

You might think that people simply associate immorality with disbelief in general, but further studies seem to point out that the sentiment is specifically expressed towards those who dont believe in God.

If youre an atheist, no need to worry (yet). This is just a scientific study and not necessarily a reflection of how peoples thinking actually plays out in the real world, Adam Cohen and Jordan Moon, psychologists at Arizona State University write in a Nature commentary. Atheism is rarely the only piece of information known about interaction partners, they write, and it is possible that, when included with the social information that individuals collect naturally, atheism will be perceived as less indicative of immoral behavior. In other words, survey data doesnt necessarily reflect the world as large, as is often the caveat of many lab studies.

Still, as mentioned, the data does seem to support a well-documented bias against atheists. To that I ask: What is wrong with everyone?

[Nature Human Behaviour]

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People Everywhere Think Atheists Are Bad, Says New Study - Gizmodo

BySaralyn Lyons

For young people in Baltimore who are exposed to violence regularly, violent behavior can become a conditioned response to stressful situations. But for many, it's a response that's not fully intentional.

A husband and wife team of researchers, George and Stephanie Zuo, have proposed a way to address these automatic responses in Baltimore youth through cognitive behavioral therapy, a technique already proven effective in schools and juvenile detention centers in Chicago. Their proposal aims to give young people in city schools and detention centers the tools to develop situational awareness and internalize new, healthier patterns of thinking and responding in stressful situations.

The idea has earned Stephanie, who graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in May, and George, who completed his first year as a doctoral student in economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, the 2017 Abell Award for Urban Policy, which recognizes outstanding papers that analyze a major policy issue facing Baltimore and propose feasible solutions.

The honor is accompanied by a $5,000 award. Students with ties to Johns Hopkins University have won the Abell Award 13 times since 2003.

"We wanted to work together, because we thought it would be an amazing way to use both of our skill sets to do something for Baltimore," says Stephanie, who is currently an OB/GYN resident at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

The pair met as undergrads at Harvard University, married in 2014, and moved to Baltimore to attend graduate school.

"We're both very much invested in urban, under-served neighborhoods and finding ways to improve the lives of those who live there," she says.

The crux of their proposal, says George, is correcting a common misconception about human behaviorthat all people, teenagers included, think ahead and consider consequences when they act, and that they will be deterred from violent behaviors by harsh consequences.

"We know from the wealth of literature and research on the matter this isn't actually the case," he says. "Most of the time, your brain is in this autopilot mode that has evolved over time to efficiently handle everyday life. You actually spend very little of your time actively and consciously making decisions. For kids who come from turbulent backgrounds, this autopilot mode can be useful for navigating through a tough environment at home but can also be problematic in certain contexts, like being called out by a teacher or fellow student. The CBT intervention we propose is an immersive way to help youth shift towards more deliberate thinking, especially in the heat of the moment."

To develop their proposal&titled "Juvenile Crime and the Heat of the Moment: A proposal to pilot cognitive behavioral therapy interventions to reduce youth crime and recidivism in Baltimore City"they examined research from two programs in Chicago that implemented the CBT therapy, which applies mindfulness techniques to help people identify and correct automatic responses, thoughts, and behaviors. Among the teens who received the therapy, total arrests decreased by 28 to 35 percent, and violent crime arrests decreased by 45 to 50 percent. Graduation rates increased as well at the end of the academic year.

They also analyzed violent crime in Baltimore, finding that the city has one of the highest rates of violent crime per capita among cities of comparable size. They looked at programs and trends in the amount of money spent on youth in the juvenile justice system and found that Baltimore already far outspends the daily national average on educational and mental health services for each child in a juvenile detention facility.

"Clearly," they state in their paper, "financial resources alone have not been enough to stem this problem."

They interviewed high school students, educators, and correctional workers to learn about the needs of high-risk youth in Baltimore.

"I found it incredibly moving to be able to talk to the local stakeholders in Baltimore," Stephanie says. "I really commend them for their hard workthe teachers in the Baltimore City Public School system, the staff at the Baltimore City Juvenile Detention Center, and those involved with nonprofits serving Baltimore youth. It was inspirational to listen to their stories and to hear their passion for caring for these young people."

Adds George: "We have research interests that we're passionate about, but seeing the human interest in it gave a different dimension to our work."

The duo is currently working to connect with Baltimore City officials, youth organizations, and corrections facilities to help implement and administer a pilot program.

"A project at this scaleit's ambitious," George says. "But if we get the right people at the table, I think it's definitely possible."

Read the rest here:
Proposal suggests using psychotherapy to help break cycle of violent behavior among Baltimore youth - The Hub at Johns Hopkins

Literary criticAdam Kirschis readinga page of Talmuda day, along with Jews around the world.

The Talmud is a compendium of laws and legal opinions, and it presupposes the existence of a functioning court system. But a Jewish court, a beit din, is different in fundamental ways from the court of a state like the United States or, for that matter, Israel. Instead of being appointed by the government and staffed by salaried professionals, a Jewish court is made up of expert rabbis resident in the area, who serve as volunteers. In most cases, three judges serve to constitute a court; in more serious cases, where capital or corporal punishment is on the agenda, 23 judges are required. This commingling of sacred and secular is fitting, because halakhah, Jewish law, is not simply a code for the regulation of human behavior. It is a set of commandments given by God (though elaborated by human interpreters). To be a judge is to fulfill a religious duty: God stands in the congregation of God; in the midst of the judges he judges, says Psalm 81.

Yet that duty, as Daf Yomi readers saw in chapter one of Tractate Sanhedrin, is an onerous one, for several reasons. It is unpaid labor, which makes it a financial burden: Ajudge does not do what is necessary to provide for the needs of his house, and he enters his house empty-handed, says Rav in Sanhedrin 7b. Worse, however, is the moral responsibility of judging: If only his entry will be as his departure, Rav continues, by which he means that a judge is lucky if he comes home at night as free from sin as when he left in the morning. Judges are only human, which means they will sometimes make mistakes, but these are mistakes with enormous spiritual and worldly consequences. A judge should always view himself as if a sword is placed between his thighs and Gehenna is opened up beneath him, says Rabbi Yonatan. One wrong move means going to hell.

No wonder that when Rav Huna was judging a case, he would gather and bring 10 rabbis from Ravs study hall, in order to share the burden of responsibility. As Yehoshua ben Levi says, If 10 judges are sitting in judgment, a prisoners collar hangs around all of their necks, since they will be punished by God for a false verdict: any judge who takes from this litigant and gives to that litigant unlawfully, the Holy One, Blessed be He, takes his soul from him. When he goes to the courtroom, a judge goes out to death. Indeed, the fate of the entire community rests on the actions of its judges: Every judge who does not judge according to absolute truth causes the Divine Presence to withdraw from Israel, the Gemara holds.

Yet the suspicion arises that perhaps the rabbis put such stress on the dangers of judging because the office also involved a certain temptationnot financial, but in terms of status. In Sanhedrin 7b, we read about how a convoy of scribes would follow Rav around, and crowds would carry Mar Zutra on their shoulders. The power of a judge added to the prestige of a Torah scholar is a heady mixture, and the best judges take care not to be intoxicated by it: For power is not forever, and does the crown endure for all generations? Mar Zutra would remind himself, using a verse from Proverbs.

It is because they recognized the moral responsibility of judging that the rabbis were so hesitant to impose extreme verdicts, especially the death penalty. The law code given in the Torah is full of capital crimes: everything from adultery to idol worship to violating Shabbat to disobeying your parents can be punished by death, often by the particularly horrible method of stoning. But by the Talmudic era, it is clear that judges had lost their taste for such bloody punishments. Indeed, they introduce such high barriers to the imposition of capital sentences that, in practice, the death penalty could almost never be used.

In Sanhedrin 9a, the Gemara lays down the procedural requirements for capital punishment: The court executes them only when the following elements are present: the congregation; and witnesses; and forewarning. The congregation of Israel imposes judgment by proxy, through the panel of judges. There must be two eyewitnesses to the crime, and those witnesses must have warned the suspect explicitly that he was about to commit a capital crime. Moreover, Rabbi Yehuda adds, the warning must include by which form of the death penalty he is to be killed. If the suspect is warned that he is liable to death, but not specifically liable to stoning or strangling, then he cannot be executed.

This rule raises the question of whether Jews can be expected to know Jewish law. Apparently, the rabbis believed that they could not. Even in the case of major crimes, a person would have to be explicitly informed about the potential consequences of his action, presumably because he didnt already know it. Only a minority of Jews could be assumed to be familiar with halakhah; these were the people known as chaverimliterally, friendswho were evidently a religious elite; comparable, perhaps, to the Orthodox today. So the question arises: Does a chaver need a forewarning before he commits a crime, or should it be assumed that he already knows the law? Here the rabbis disagree, with the majority sticking to the rule that forewarning is necessary. Evidently, the purpose of the warning is not only to inform the would-be criminal of the law but to give him an extra chance to desist.

Obviously, these requirements could almost never be met in real life, particularly in the case of sins like adultery, which generally take place without witnesses. But the rabbis go on to add even more barriers to a guilty verdict. According to Rabbi Meir, whose opinions usually form the basis of the Mishna, any inconsistency in the witnesses testimony, even the most trivial, is grounds for dismissing that testimony. Yochanan ben Zakkai once heard a case in which the testimony hinged, in an unexplained manner, on the stems of figsby which the Talmud seems to mean, the color and shape of the figs. When the two witnesses disagreed about this, Yochanan dismissed their testimony, causing the case to collapse.

The primary role played by witnesses in a Jewish court case raises an interesting question. Can the accused be a witness against himself? In Sanhedrin 9b, the Gemara considers of a man who is raped by another man. In this case, the victim can be considered a witness to the crime, so that only one additional witness is required to make the requisite two. These two can take it upon themselves to kill the rapist because they are carrying out Torah law.

To us, of course, the crime in this situation is the rape, not gay sex. But Leviticus holds that sodomy itself is a capital crime, even if the sex between men is consensual. This raises the question of what happens when the victim of sodomy engages in it voluntarily. Such a person, under Torah law, is considered wicked (rashah), and the Torah prohibits accepting the testimony of the wicked: Do not put your hand with a wicked person to be an unrighteous witness. So can a person convict himself of wickedness by confessing to it? There seems to be a logical contradiction involved: Acriminal who confesses is declaring himself a rashah, and the testimony of a rashah is inadmissible, so the testimony of the man that he is a rashah would be inadmissible as well.

According to Rava, this case falls under the category of testimony that is forbidden because it applies to a relative. Ordinarily, a man is not allowed to be a witness in a case involving a family member, whether he is testifying for or against the accused. Rava reasons that a person is his own relative, and so this rule extends to self-accusation: A person cannot render himself wicked by his own testimony. However, his testimony about the same incident would be considered reliable when it is directed against someone other than himself. This leads to the paradoxical result that, if two men have consensual sex, one can procure the execution of the other while remaining innocent himself. However, it can only be the passive partner in sodomy who makes the accusation, since in the eyes of the law he is the victim of the act, while the active partner is the guilty party. The absurdities of this situation are a good sign that it is criminalizing gay sex that is truly rashah.

***

Adam Kirsch embarked on theDaf Yomicycle of daily Talmud study inAugust2012. To catch up on the complete archive,click here.

Adam Kirsch is a poet and literary critic, whose books include The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature.

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Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world. - Tablet Magazine

A memo circulated by a Google engineer decrying the tech giants diversity efforts as misguided ricocheted around the Internet over the weekend. The manifesto, which accuses the company of pushing its ideological biases on its employees, drew scorn almost everyplace its landed, and triggered a response from Googles vice president of diversity.

The memo is illuminating, in part because it reveals how a segment of the tech industry still feels about the value and importance of diversity. It also demonstrates how biological determinism, the idea that human behavior is innate and rooted in evolution, remains a potent organizing philosophy.

The author, who remains anonymous, argues that the under-representation of women in Silicon Valley can be attributed to biological differences between men and women; that men are more competitive than women; and this is a truth universal across human cultures.

Except its not.

In a fascinating and ambitious 2009 study (pdf), a team of economists from the universities of Chicago and Maryland set out to determine if competition was a function of nature or nurture, using a simple field experiment in two dramatically different cultures. One experiment took place among the Khasi people of Meghalaya, a region of northeastern India, where property and status is inherited through women, and men are expected to work on behalf of their wives and her family. The other was conducted in the Arusha region of Tanzania among the Maasai people, a strict patriarchal society, where women have few rights.

In both countries, about 80 men and women were asked to toss a tennis ball into basket about 10 ft away 10 times, and told they were matched with another, anonymous participant, also playing the same game. They were given a choice of a simple payment for the taskabout 40 US centsor they could earn three times as much if they beat they the other player. Among the Maasai, half the men chose to compete, while only a quarter of the women chose to. Among the Khasi, not only were the results reversed, but Khasi women were even more competitive than the Maasai men: 54% of the women opted to compete, as did 39% of the Khasi men.

Setting aside all the anecdotal evidence that women can be as aggressive as menor more soin a range of domains from sports to politics to business, the study seems to offer hard proof that competition isnt based in biology, but culture. In a society where women control their communitys wealth, theyre more competitive then men.

Authors Uri Gneezy, Kenneth Leonard, and John List are quick to point out the limitations of study that looks at just two societies, and they note there are lots of factors that could lead to the Khasis matrilineal culture, including genetics that favor competition in women. But they do conclude it is not universally true that the average female in every society avoids competition more often than the average male in that society because we have discovered at least one setting in which this is not true.

Explaining away differences as biological is appealingly simple. Its much easier to shrug off disparities in power and status as the fault of genes, than to confront the much more complicated reasons of customs, institutions, laws, and regulations that created them.

Read this next: 12 things employers can do to improve gender equality at their workplaces

Continue reading here:
This is the study that definitely proves men aren't born more competitive than women - Quartz

A van in Arlington, Va., being used by Virginia Tech as part of a study on driverless technology. (Twitter Photo via @AdamTuss)

As a trusted journalist with years of experience in the profession, I never thought about just saying, Im with the news, dude, as a way to get a subject to talk. But my tactics might change after watching reporter Adam Tuss in action.

Tuss, with NBCs News4 out of Washington, D.C., was on the trail of what appeared to be a driverless vehicle in Arlington, Va., on Monday. Autonomous vehicle technology on public roadways is still a pretty big deal, so Tuss was certainly chasing a worthy story.

Videos by Tuss on Twitter did indeed appear to show a grey 2017 Ford Transit Connect heading down rainy streets in the Virginia suburb with no one behind the wheel. Tuss and a colleague followed the van for 20 minutes, according to a story on NBC Washington.

But when Tuss approached the stopped vehicle, he discovered that a human was doing the driving. And that human was disguised like one of the vans seats, operating the steering wheel through the bottom of the costume.

Brother, who are you? What are you doing? Im with the news, dude, Tuss said. Dude, can you pull over and we can talk for a second?

The drivers seat didnt reply, but Tuss tracked down the answers he was looking for when the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute replied to inquiries and said Monday that the van and driver are part of a study being conducted around driverless cars.

The drivers seating area is configured to make the driver less visible within the vehicle, while still allowing him or her the ability to safely monitor and respond to surroundings, the institute said in a statement to News4.

Virginia Tech provides more information online about what it hopes to achieve with the study, including studying human behavior in the presence of new technology in the real world.

Seems like this TV reporter just provided some valuable data.

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'I'm with the news, dude' watch this TV reporter try to figure out what's up with a 'driverless' car - GeekWire

On July 24, the president addressed the Boy Scouts of America during their quadrennial Jamboree in West Virginia. Would that he had offered these personal reflections to the assembled Scouts and for legions more across the country.

I admire the Boy Scouts of America, he might have begun. I applaud your long history of service to our society and nation and I believe all of America could benefit now if each of us aspired to live out your 12 Scout Laws.

A Scout is Trustworthy. I can see the value in that. Saying what you mean and meaning what you say go a long way in getting others to believe they can rely on your words. When you say one thing, act another, and then deny that you ever said the thing everybody knows you said, it makes people leery of relying on you. That creates problems for you and others.

A Scout is Loyal. I value loyalty. Some people say its a two-way street and you must give loyalty to get loyalty. Maybe so, but thats hard work. Still, anything worth having is worth working for, including earning respect.

A Scout is Helpful. We should all look for opportunities to help others in need. The world is a difficult place and not everyone begins life with advantages we may enjoy. Rather than kicking them aside as failures, it is better, I think, to help them lift themselves up.

A Scout is Friendly. We all need friends, people who like to be around us because we have developed a mutual respect, people who come to our aid when we need them. To have a friend, be a friend. You cannot just command people to like you, no matter how much money and power you have.

A Scout is Courteous. As a young lad, our first president, George Washington, copied for his penmanship lessons and his development of character a series of guidelines titled Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. Perhaps we should all read those from time to time.

A Scout is Kind. Psychologists will tell you human behaviors arise from only three emotions: fear, anger, and sadness. Joy and kindness, of course, are our natural states when we remove those other three. When you are not acting out of kindness, stop and ask yourself: Of what am I afraid? At what am I angry? Why am I sad? People will like you more when you are kinder.

A Scout is Obedient. Doing the right thing is always important; its paramount. Being obedient to the rule of law and to the United States Constitution are what keep us free of dictators and authoritarian rulers. And, yes, that could happen here. Be vigilant.

A Scout is Cheerful. People like to be around others who are hopeful and optimistic. Complaining is easy. It is the favorite refuge of the uninformed. It requires no imagination and is soon quite tiresome to others.

A Scout is Thrifty. In this world, you have two ways to be rich: have a lot of money or dont have many needs. Choosing how to manage your wants so they dont become the needs that control your life is all part of maturing into adulthood.

A Scout is Brave. Standing up for justice is not easy. Youll need courage. Standing up to bullies and liars are the times in your life you will recall with the greatest sense of accomplishment and personal pride.

A Scout is Clean. Falling prey to temptation is part of being human, but you are called to rise above those behaviors which will embarrass you and your family and bring shame on your household. Character is who you are in the dark, when no one is looking, when no one can see you.

A Scout is Reverent. We all have a relationship with some concept of the origins of mankind. But know this: there is a God and you are not it. Humility is what makes us human.

No action is more important for any president than to encourage the future of this great nation, the president might have concluded. You Scouts and all those who will come after you are part of the fabric of our future as the United States of America. I may not live out the 12 Scout Laws, he might have acknowledged, but if you love America, you will, every day. And, America thanks you, he could have said to great applause.

Randell Jones is anEagle Scout, earned in 1965. He is the author of several history books, including "From Time to Time in North Carolina" and "Thumped by History." He lives in Winston-Salem.

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Randell Jones: Scouting for character - Winston-Salem Journal

What if someone could figure out when, where and why traffic accidents occur and stop them from happening? Someone has.

Since the dawn of the automobile age, traffic accidents have been widely accepted as a tragicbut inevitableside effect of modern life. Thanks to mobile phones, the problem is getting worse, not better. Traffic fatalities are creeping up again after decades of decline. More than 40,000 Americans were killed in car accidents in 2016, a 14 percent rise since 2014, according to the National Safety Council. Thats the biggest two-year surge in five decades.

Despite the severe toll, there has been a curious lack of urgency from the public and policymakers to do something about it. Officials attempting to address the problemtraffic engineers, police officers, policymakers, public health specialistsare working with information gathered after the fatalities and injuries have already occurred, often without reliable data, resources, or much political support.

A global movement called Vision Zero takes a radically different approach. Its premise is that traffic deaths and severe injuries are all preventable and sets the goal of eliminating both in a set time frame with clear, measurable strategies. Launched in Sweden two decades ago and widely adopted in many European cities, the Vision Zero approach has finally taken off in American cities.

Ten early adopter U.S. cities have joined the new Vision Zero Focus Cities program, launched by the Vision Zero Network. The ten cities are Austin, Boston. Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

For a number of years, vehicle fleet managers, insurance companies and others have used a combination of On Board Diagnostic devices and GPS technology devicesmounted on each vehicle to pinpoint the location of their vehicles in near real time. The ODB enabled locator can also access vehicle diagnostic interface data, track speed and location, as well as detect hard braking, cornering, acceleration and capture pre and post-impact data.

What OCDs are not good at is analyzing driver behavior which, as it happens, is the most important factor of all in predicting and preventing crashes before they happen. Some 93% of collisions on the road are due to human error. One in four crashes is the result of phone use while driving.

In 2013, Jonathan Matus, who helped turn Googles Android into the worlds dominant mobile software and later led the launch of Facebooks mobile platform, teamed up with another Google engineer, Pankaj Risbood to found Zendrive, a tech company that uses sensors in smartphones to capture, analyze and then coach a driver on what they can do to be safer while behind the wheel.

Phones enabled with the Zendrives technology can relay data not only about when drivers are looking at their phones, but also how fast theyre driving at any given moment, or if they make hard turns at intersections. It detects collisions, aggressive driving, distracted driving, and more, including whether youve recently stopped at a pub.

In its short existence, Zendrive has collected and analyzed 15 billion miles of anonymized driving data. Progressive, a leader in insurance telematics, took nearly two decades to reach the same number of miles analyzed.

Largest Distracted Driver Survey

In April, Zendrive released the results of a three-month analysis of three-million anonymous U.S. drivers, making up 570-million trips and covering 5.6 billion miles. The key findings were both astounding and alarming:

In an interview with Forbes, CEO Jonathan Matus said: We were surprised to find that this risky behavior is so common. Almost 9 out of 10 car trips have some form of distracting phone use. This is truly an epidemic. It is more widespread than most people realize, and it parallels an overall trend: the number of crashes and fatalities on the road is growing at double-digit rate for the past few years. This is something we cannot ignore.

Vision Zero, Zendrive and New York City

Zendrive is working closely with New York City in its Vision Zero goal which aims to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries in New York City by 2024. In partnership with New York Universitys Tandon School of Engineering, Zendrive is using its 15-billion miles of data for predictive analytics to determine where collisions are likely to occur before they happen. (PDF)

NYU analyzed and mapped 33,450 risky driving events collected by Zendrive between July and December 2015 and 127,423 collisions reported by the NYPD between July 2012 and March 2017. During those four-plus years, over 1,200 people were killed in traffic on New York City streets.

By analyzing and mapping the data, NYU researchers found mappable correlations between driver behavior data and NYPD crash data. No real surprise here but they determined that the areas where people drive recklessly are the same areas where there are collisions. This means that it is possiblewith the right mix of interventionsto stop reckless driving before it causes collisions, injuries and deaths.

They mapped the two datasets and compared the locations and density of the events in each category. Among the useful correlations:

You cant ignore the irony that a company founded by a guy who has done as much as anyone to make mobile phones ubiquitous is now using them to save lives, but Zendrive is one of those companies that arrived in the right place with the right product at exactly the right moment.

Although OBD data collected directly from the vehicles computer is marginally more accurate in measuring the vehicles performance, it is fairly oblivious to reckless human behavior by drivers and, in the end, that is the cause of most accidents and what Zendrive measures best.

Driven in large part by young bicyclists and runners who want to claim their share of the road from dangerous automobiles, public safety initiatives like Vision Zero are becoming more visible and more popular. As with campaigns to reduce drunk driving and initiatives to increase recycling, changing cultural attitudes and ensuring political and individual accountability can make a dramatic difference.

Zendrive provides real-time big data that allows city planners to focus on mitigating the most dangerous behaviors before they result in fatalities and injuries.

And, of course, theres the companys technology bloodlines. If Zendrive were a race horse, Id put down a couple of bucks.

An earlier version of this article appeared on the technology expert blog Diginomica.

Image credit - via Zendrive

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For a dissenting view from one of our editorial board members, see below.

Our neighbors to the northwest are trying something that we can watch and learn from and then take for our own use.

Washington states new law covering driving under the influence of electronics took effect July 23. Drivers face a $136 fine for a first offense $234 for additional offenses within five years if they are seen holding or using a handheld device or watching a video while driving.

The law permits drivers the minimal use of a finger to activate an app for a device in a cradle or built into the car what one Washingtonian we know described as the one-swipe rule.

Will Washingtons new law work? Is it enough? Is it too much? Were about to find out. And thats good for Idaho, which took a good step in 2012 to ban texting while driving. But technology and human behavior have evolved, and our gadgets have proliferated. Idaho law needs to keep pace.

We dont think Washington has it all figured out, but we like the experiment unfolding there. Doing nothing as the plague of distracted driving swells is not a good option.

According to The Seattle Times, 156 of that states 537 roadway deaths in 2016 were blamed on distractions of all kinds. In Idaho in 2014, more than one in five fatalities involved a distracted driver, although the Idaho data arent broken down by distraction. Cellphone use and abuse is notoriously hard to track or to get people to be honest about. But we do know this: After seeing serious crashes and fatalities decrease per miles traveled in Idaho from 2010 to 2014, both are now ticking up.

So, Idaho legislators, lets do this when you convene in 2018: Hold a hearing. Invite Washingtons state patrol and other experts to come tell us how its going. Ask Idahos best state police and Department of Transportation brains to weigh in with their expertise and recommendations. Lets get the best Idaho data and look at Idaho tweaks. Then ask citizens.

Is the Washington approach best? Should Idaho instead make electronics an aggravating factor your penalty multiplies if you are involved in an accident or other offense while driving under the influence of electronics? Is one swipe enough? Too much?

Should we keep Idahos existing exemption for texting at a stoplight? We think its a reasonable provision and one that Washingtons new law doesnt permit.

Each of us can quibble and suggest how wed like to see the law shaped. So lets do that. And then lets put the toughest, smartest bill we can into law.

Its well established that our right to absolute freedom ends at the steering wheel. And no driver is free to be careless with the lives of other people on the road.

Yet we drivers dont recognize how our own habits put others at risk. If you have any doubt, sit at any parking lot exit and watch drivers zip past with phones glued to ears or fingers tapping away. Add the phone to the already busy, distracted driving world in which we eat, drink, brush hair, apply makeup or change clothes, and were multiplying our chances for bad outcomes.

One of these days, technology will be so good and so smooth that many of these issues will be moot. Your car will call home, order dinner, turn on Netflix and schedule your massage. Fumbling with a smart phone will be a quaint memory, like setting the stylus on the phonograph or getting up to change the TV channel.

But thats not today. We need to make setting the phone aside as common and as accepted as fastening our seat belts or buckling the kids into the car seats. To do that, lets crib from Washington state.

Talk about a slippery slope: You cant legislate away distracted driving

I closely follow the happenings in my home state, but the absurdity of Washingtons far-reaching legislative approach to the distracted driving issue is dumbfounding to me.

Since reading up on this issue, Ive taken special note of what distracts me while driving, and two of my main distractions are not addressed: dancing to awesome tunes and balking at strange behavior in the park. My point is that humans are given to distraction, and legislating down to the finger swipe is overreaching and restrictive to individual freedoms without accomplishing the underlying goal of curtailing distracted driving.

In terms of the slippery slope argument, Washington is on a 36-degree incline and in the process of applying a second coat of WD-40.

It is more effective and very possible to influence behavior without excessive legislation. Just look at the decline of cigarette use over the past 50 years. This was accomplished through a combination of incentives and strategic penalties in various areas of popular culture, not through outlawing tobacco.

Is distracted driving a problem? Yes. Does the solution rest in more legislation? In my opinion, emphatically no.

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Hey, Idaho! Let's steal Washington's driving-under-the-influence-of-electronics law - Idaho Statesman