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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 2
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Deaths of expats
and worker are a mystery
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial investigators are hoping that a medical examiner can tell them why an expat couple and a farmhand died near Sardinal. The Fuerza Pública encountered the three bodies in the Finca la Flecha after another employee returned from a vacation in Nicaragua and called police. The dead couple were believed to be Dutch. Investigators were puzzled by the case. The individuals had been dead some time making it difficult for agents to see any signs of violence. A vehicle and household goods as well as money remained on the property, which is a forest reserve. Press release came at the wrong time By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Monday was bad day to report that bus stickups had been reduced 32 percent in 2015. The Ministerio de Seguridad Pública did that just a few hours before local television stations began airing the murder of a bus driver. The ministry said that 2015 saw 220 bus stickups in 2015 compared to 325 in 2014. The most recent bus stickup and murder took place in full view of a surveillance camera. The major television stations got the tapes. The video shows two young men entering the bus in La Carpio, and one pulled a gun. The second managed to take the foam rubber tray that drivers use to keep coins. Both the men got off the bus, but the man with the gun was not finished. He seemed distracted. Then he checked his pistol. And without warning he turned to look at the driver again and quickly delivered four shots. The man died on the way to the hospital. Bus company representatives were reported to be considering the use of electronic tokens or similar to reduce the amount of money drivers have in their possession. The low-income La Carpio area is the scene of many such stickups, police said. The dead driver was identified by the last name of Cáceres. He was 38. U.S. files civil suit against Volkeswagen By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit Monday against Volkswagen AG for installing illegal software to make diesel engines meet federal emissions standards in 600,000 suspect vehicles. A Justice Department statement described the complaint as the first stage in bringing Volkswagen to justice for failing to disclose what it said was a digital defeat device installed in the vehicles. It also described the civil complaint as a move toward the eventual assessment of civil penalties, and said it does not preclude the possibility of criminal charges against the auto giant. VW did not immediately comment on the lawsuit, which could eventually cost it billions of dollars in fines. The company first admitted in September that the cheat software was included in its diesel cars and sports utility vehicles sold since the 2009 model year. VW is currently negotiating with U.S. regulators for a massive, mandatory recall of the vehicles. Investigators said the software recognized when emission tests were under way and then activated bogus emissions controls to deceive testing officials. Findings also showed the same cars then emitted up to 40 times the permissible pollutants when returned to the open road. VW is also facing a host of private lawsuits from irate diesel car owners seeking compensation for the decreased resale value of the Volkswagen and Audi vehicles that under-reported emissions. Sugar called a risk for breast cancer By the University of Texas news staff
The high amounts of dietary sugar in the typical Western diet may increase the risk of breast cancer and metastasis to the lungs, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The findings, published in the Jan. 1 online issue of Cancer Research, demonstrated dietary sugar’s effect on mice. Previous epidemiological studies have shown that dietary sugar intake has an impact on breast cancer development with inflammation thought to play a role. “The current study investigated the impact of dietary sugar on mammary gland tumor development in multiple mouse models, along with mechanisms that may be involved,” said co-author Lorenzo Cohen, a professor. “We determined that it was specifically fructose, in table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, ubiquitous within our food system, which was responsible . . . .” Identifying risk factors for breast cancer is a public health priority, say the authors. The researchers state that moderate sugar consumption is critical, given that the per capita consumption of sugar in the U.S. has surged to over 100 pounds per year and an increase in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has been identified as a significant contributor to an epidemic of obesity, heart disease and cancer worldwide. No previous studies have investigated the direct effect of sugar consumption on the development of breast cancer using animal models or examined specific mechanisms, said Peiying Yang, an assistant professor. The team conducted four different studies in which mice were randomized to different diet groups and fed one of four diets. At six months of age, 30 percent of mice on a starch-control diet had measurable tumors, whereas 50 to 58 percent of the mice on sucrose-enriched diets had developed mammary tumors. The study also showed that numbers of lung metastases were significantly higher in mice on a sucrose- or a fructose-enriched diet, versus mice on a starch-control diet. |
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copyrighted by Consultantes Ro Colorado S.A 2065 and may not be
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 2 |
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An A.M. Costa
Rica perspective What are the factors that can protect against violence with firearms? |
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By Jay Brodell
editor of A.M. Costa Rica A fortunate fact was that my high school locker was of the long variety. Had it been shorter, I might not have been able to stow my shotgun there while I went to class. Administrators generally frown on kids bring shotguns to school these days, but in the late 1950s this was no big deal during small game hunting season. My friends and I would don our red jackets, reassemble the shotguns and head for the fields after classes ended. This clearly is one of those facts that shows how the world has changed in nearly 60 years. Many of my fellow high school students were hunters, and the only casualty was a wrestling star who one year took a few birdshot pellets in his leg, thanks to a ricochet. The western world seems to be divided into two groups: Those who are comfortable with firearms and those who are not. The first group accepts firearms as a necessity, a tool. Like a table saw, these tool have to be used responsibly. I first fired a pistol when I was 8. My father, once a professional soldier, stacked up some newspaper bales, and I emptied a dozen rounds of .32-caliber slugs into them under his watchful eye. A few weeks later I watched one of my teachers go ballistic because another students had stuck accidentally three .22-caliber shells in a crack in his desk. She obviously was among the second group. Time was when most young men faced compulsory military service in the United States. Consequently they received firearms experience in basic training. Some years later when I was an editor at a daily newspaper in a western Colorado town, we learned that then-president Gerald Ford would drop by for a campaign visit. An advanced team of Secret Service agents showed up to check out the landscape. No one bothered to tell them that deer hunting season was in full swing. Every second pickup had a high-powered rifle and scope hanging in the rear window. Washington was in panic. Just as now, the hunters were not those who should be at the top of the worry list. President Barack Obama made an effort Monday to tighten U.S. gun ownership. That story is HERE! However, none of the initiatives seems designed to prevent criminals or terrorists from becoming armed. |
Ministerio de Seguridad Pública photo
The security ministry is proud
that it has destroyed more firearms than any other Central American
country. Here the minister, Gustavo Mata Vega, and a staffer chop up
one. Obama certainly is aware that the U.S. Second Amendment is not about hunting. The article is there in the Bill of Rights to protect the people from a repressive government. In Costa Rica, despite restrictive laws and efforts to tighten them, the illegal gun culture flourishes. Television viewers were treated Monday to surveillance camera footage from a bus in La Carpio. Two young crooks held up a bus driver and took his money Saturday. When they finished, one thug stood outside the bus and appeared to have exchanged words with the driver. Then the crook aimed and fired four pistol shots into the man at the wheel. The driver died going to a nearby hospital. There also have been a record number of assassinations by firearms in the country over the last year. First-class firearms are easily available for a price on the black market here. Younger criminals who lack money make their own rude weapons with pipes and spare pieces of metal. What Obama and Costa Rican officials have to consider is what are the factors that changed society from one where 16-year-old high school students harm nothing but rabbits and a few squirrels. Now there are teens who are cold-blooded killers. |
You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not
be
reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 2 |
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Brown University/Christopher Anderson
Tiny Rhampholeon spinosus chameleon
needs about 20 milliseconds to snag a cricket with its speedy tongue. |
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The smaller the chameleon, the
faster the tongue, researchers find |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The smaller the chameleon, the more powerful the tongue, say researchers. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from Brown University say that a small chameleon that would fit on a thumb can project its tongue from 0 to 97 kilometers per hour in a mere one hundredth of a second. "Smaller species have higher performance than larger species," said Christopher Anderson, a postdoctoral research associate at Brown. D Not only do small chameleons outgun their larger relatives, Anderson’s research found that “the motion has the highest acceleration and power output produced per kilogram of muscle mass by any reptile, bird, or mammal and is the second most powerful among any kind of vertebrate.” Only the salamander can best it. Chameleons don’t achieve such stunning tongue power from |
muscle
power alone. By preloading the tongue’s energy into elastic tissues in
the tongue, the muscle power is greatly augmented, researchers say. For his research, Anderson used 20 species of differently sized chameleons and video taped them shooting their tongues at a cricket. This allowed him to measure the tongue’s speed and acceleration. What he found was that the smaller the chameleon, the higher the “peak acceleration, relative power, and distance of tongue extension relative to body size.” While all chameleons have the same catapult-like tongue launching mechanism, the smaller ones have a bigger apparatus relative to their body size. Anderson said there is an evolutionary explanation for this. Smaller creatures need to take in more energy per body weight to survive. Therefore, the small chameleons need to be very good at catching prey. Super powerful tongues appear to give them the edge they need. |
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Colorado
S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
A.M. Costa Rica's
Fifth news page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 2 | |||||||
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Obama gives executive orders designed to curb gun violence By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. President Barack Obama has unveiled a series of executive orders he says will curb gun violence but will not step on the rights of Americans to lawfully bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Some of the measures, announced by the White House Monday, include expanded background checks, more effective enforcement of gun laws, increased mental health treatment and reporting to the national background check system and more research into gun safety technology. After meeting earlier with top legal and law enforcement officials at the White House, Obama said he plans to take his case to the American people to explain the series of initiatives he will implement to tighten federal gun control regulations. The president is scheduled to further outline his initiatives during remarks in the White House East Room today. Obama presented the recommendations during a White House meeting with top officials including U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey. “The good news is that these are not only recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch,” said Obama after the meeting. “But they are also ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support and believe in.” One key element of the plan includes requiring any business selling firearms, including at gun shows, to get a license and conduct background checks. “We intend to make this system more efficient and make it more comprehensive,” said Attorney General Lynch on Monday. “The goal is keeping bad actors away from firearms and also to make it easier for authorities to make sure that the gun laws are properly followed and enforced.” Part of the effort includes increasing by 50 percent the number of FBI personnel who staff the national background check system, said Ms. Lynch. Recent polls show an increase in the number of Americans who support background checks on those seeking to purchase a firearm. Among other actions, the White House is pushing for stricter background checks. A new survey by Webster's research center found that 85 percent of gun owners believe there should be background checks for every individual seeking to buy a gun. Each year, tens of thousands of people are killed by guns in the United States, including in mass shootings and suicides, committed at far greater rates than in other countries around the world, said the president. The Republican-led Congress opposes more restrictions on gun ownership, and any actions planned by the president likely will face legal challenges. House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized the president’s plan Monday, saying the underlying cause of gun violence is mental illness, and that the gun control measures advocated by the White House will not stop such attacks. Ryan pointed out that Congress has rejected gun control measures supported by the White House. “The president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch and potentially overturning its will,” said the Republican congressman. “The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights, all of them.” But Obama insisted the gun control initiatives he plans are within his power to implement. The recommendations are “entirely consistent with the Second Amendment and people’s lawful right to bear arms,” Obama said. “We have been very careful recognizing that although we have a strong tradition of gun ownership in this country, that even those who possess firearms for hunting, for self-protection and for other legitimate reasons want to make sure that the wrong people don’t have them for the wrong reasons.” Bill Clinton on campaign trail in support of candidate wife By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made his first solo campaign appearance Monday for his wife, Hillary, the former U.S. secretary of State who is the leading 2016 Democratic presidential contender. The country's 42nd president, whose two terms in office enveloped most of the 1990s, told several hundred voters at a political rally in the northeastern state of New Hampshire that Hillary Clinton offers the best chance of restoring broadly shared prosperity in the United States. "I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done now," he said. He made no direct comment about the leading Republican presidential contender, billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, who has attacked both Clintons in recent days. The flamboyant Trump says that Bill Clinton has a terrible record with women, alluding to the former president's marital infidelities and his impeachment for lying about an affair with a White House intern during his tenure in office. The thrice-married Trump said, "The worst thing Hillary could do is have her husband campaign for her. Just watch." But the former president remains a popular figure in the U.S. and his wife's campaign says they plan to call on him frequently to speak on her behalf. U.S. immigration to deport 121 Central American illegals By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. officials say immigration authorities have taken 121 people into custody since Friday, in the first raids targeting the deportation of families who have entered the United States illegally since May 2014. Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson said the detainees were taken into custody in the states of Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. He described them as members of Central American families who crossed into U.S. territory from Mexico. Authorities said the detainees already had been ordered removed by an immigration court, after they had exhausted legal means to avoid being sent to their homelands. Johnson said most were placed in family detention centers in Texas to await deportation. The White House did not comment on specifics of the apprehensions, which have divided U.S. political leaders and stoked controversy with the American public. But spokesman Josh Earnest said immigration enforcement priorities are focused on deporting felons as opposed to families, while targeting recent border-crossers. The latest detentions impact only a small fraction of some 100,000 Central Americans, most of them mothers or unaccompanied children, who began crossing the U.S. border in waves nearly 20 months ago. Analysts have linked the surge to sharp rises in gang-related violence in Central America, as well as to efforts by people seeking to reunite with family members already in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the deportations, which were first publicized in late December. An ACLU statement accuses federal officials of targeting families, and using the detentions as a "scare tactic to deter other families fleeing violence in Central America from coming to the United States." Chinese stock market faces another bad day of declines By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It’s been a turbulent start to 2016 for global financial markets, with big drops in the value of shares Monday. The sell-off began in China where concerns are growing over the quickening pace of the slowdown. Stock markets in the cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen were suspended Monday after falling more than 7 percent on the opening day of 2016 trading. The sell-off triggered the so-called circuit-breaker mechanism for the first time, a system designed by the Chinese government to prevent volatility by halting trades. A 64-year-old trader believes the government intervention was unnecessary. He says he is in favor of the circuit breaker mechanism but the government implementing it on the first day is like testing the market. It’s the millions of individual Chinese investors, many of them pensioners, who drive volatility, says analyst John Driffill of Birkbeck College University of London. “The Chinese stock market is populated by a large number of small investors who are very prone to panics and booms and crashes," he said. "They are exchanging information and rumors. These are stock market players with a very short-term perspective. They’re gambling with small amounts of life savings.” The market drops were driven by a survey showing that activity in Chinese factories contracted for the 10th straight month in December, and at a sharper pace than in November. "It's just renewed the same fears that dogged a lot of last year's trading, namely that the slowdown in China's economy could be set to speed up,” said Jasper Lawler, who is with the investment group CMC Capital Markets. Those fears were echoed in European and U.S. markets, which also saw falls of several percent. Figures due out later this year are expected to show that China posted its weakest economic growth for 25 years in 2015, slipping to around 7 percent. Analysts say concerns over worsening tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are also weighing on stock markets and driving up the price of oil. U.S. Supreme Court agenda has many controversial cases By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
As the U.S. heads into a presidential election year amid sharpening political divisions, the Supreme Court is set to decide a number of ideologically charged cases in 2016 on topics such as abortion, contraceptives, immigration and union membership. The sharply divided court is likely to produce a series of 5-4 decisions that will remind voters the next president’s appointees could tip the balance either right or left. The justices will hear their first abortion case in nearly a decade deciding whether Texas can enforce two regulations that would force about 75 percent of the state’s abortion clinics to shut down. One measure requires clinics to use only doctors with admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. A second requires abortion facilities to match the standards of an outpatient surgical center. Both sides have been gathering vivid personal accounts from women to supplement the legal arguments, believing the effort could appeal particularly to swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy. The case will be argued March 2. The Court will also decide its fourth case on U.S. President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. This one is a challenge brought by Christian colleges and religious non-profits who contend the law’s requirement that their health plans provide birth control violates their religious beliefs. The justices combined seven similar cases from groups that include the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Roman Catholic nuns that runs nursing homes. On Jan. 11, the court will hear oral arguments on whether public employees can be required to join a union or pay it a fee for collective-bargaining services. The California case challenges pro-union laws in more than 20 states that require all public employees pay a fair share fee to their union, even if they are opposed to the union and refuse to join. If the lawsuit is upheld, public-employee unions say they could be dealt crippling blows in about half the overwhelmingly Democratic states that allow such agency clauses. Facebook founder plans to create robot assistant By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says his new year’s resolution is to build a computerized robot to help him run his home. “My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work,” he wrote in a post on his Facebook page. “You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man.” Zuckerberg said he will start by exploring the technology that is already available. “Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home, music, lights, temperature and so on,” he wrote. I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell.” He added that the artificial intelligence would also be used to help take care of his newborn baby, Max. “I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her,” he wrote. Some other leading technologists such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have expressed fear of AI platforms, saying AI could end up turning on humans. Zuckerberg responded to those fears. “I think we can build AI so it works for us and helps us,” he wrote. “Some people fear-monger about how AI is a huge danger, but that seems far-fetched to me and much less likely than disasters due to widespread disease, violence, etc.” Four new chemical elements have yet to be given names By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Four elements have been added to the periodic table, according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The elements, which have yet to be officially named, are being called Element 113, Element 115, Element 117 and Element 118. The new elements also provide a certain symmetry to the periodic table, filling out the seventh row of the chart. "The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row,” said Jan Reedijk, president of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of the International Union. The elements, which were discovered by teams in the U.S., Japan and Russia, were observed by colliding smaller, lighter nuclei and tracking the decay of the resulting radioactive elements. “To scientists, this is of greater value than an Olympic gold medal,” Ryoji Noyori, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, told The Guardian newspaper. Brain-scanning studies map music's impact on the brain By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Music can evoke all sorts of emotions in listeners' hearts, and in composers' minds. Brain-scanning studies of artists being creative as they are improvising music, rapping or drawing caricatures showed deactivation in a part of the brain involved in planning and monitoring behavior. Researchers say this is a sign of the flow state that frees up creative impulses. A new study of jazz pianists shows a greater deactivation in that region when they are working on melodies to convey a happy emotion, rather than expressing a sad or negative emotion. Improvising somber music activates the brain's reward regions, which reinforce behaviors that lead to pleasurable outcomes. That could mean "that people are getting into more of a groove," according to Malinda McPherson, who led the study. "This indicates there may be different mechanisms for why it's pleasurable to create happy versus sad music." "The bottom line is that emotion matters," says senior author Charles Limb. The study of the neural intricacies of creativity was published in Scientific Reports. |
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 2 | |||||||||
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Video game addicts have different brains By the University of Utah news staff
Brain scans from nearly 200 adolescent boys provide evidence that the brains of compulsive video game players are wired differently. Chronic video game play is associated with hyperconnectivity between several pairs of brain networks. Some of the changes are predicted to help game players respond to new information. Other changes are associated with distractibility and poor impulse control. The research, a collaboration between the University of Utah School of Medicine, and Chung-Ang University in South Korea, was published online in Addiction Biology Dec. 22. “Most of the differences we see could be considered beneficial. However the good changes could be inseparable from problems that come with them,” says senior author Jeffrey Anderson, associate professor of neuroradiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Those with Internet gaming disorder are obsessed with video games, often to the extent that they give up eating and sleeping to play. This study reports that in adolescent boys with the disorder, certain brain networks that process vision or hearing are more likely to have enhanced coordination to the so-called salience network. The job of the salience network is to focus attention on important events, poising that person to take action. In a video game, the enhanced coordination could help a gamer to react more quickly to the rush of an oncoming fighter. And in life, to a ball darting in front of a car, or an unfamiliar voice in a crowded room. “Hyperconnectivity between these brain networks could lead to a more robust ability to direct attention toward targets, and to recognize novel information in the environment,” says Anderson. “The changes could essentially help someone to think more efficiently.” One of the next steps will be to directly determine whether the boys with these brain differences do better on performance tests. More troublesome is an increased coordination between two brain regions, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction, a change also seen in patients with neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, Down’s syndrome, and autism, and in people with poor impulse control. “Having these networks be too connected may increase distractibility,” says Anderson. At this point it’s not known whether persistent video gaming causes rewiring of the brain or whether people who are wired differently are drawn to video games. According to Doug Hyun Han, professor at Chung-Ang University School of Medicine, this research is the largest, most comprehensive investigation to date of brain differences in compulsive video game players. Study participants were from South Korea, where video game playing is a popular social activity, much more than in the United States. The Korean government supports his research with the goal of finding ways to identify and treat addicts. Researchers performed magnetic resonance imaging on 106 boys between the ages of 10 to 19 who were seeking treatment for Internet gaming disorder. The brain scans were compared to those from 80 boys without the disorder, and analyzed for regions that were activated simultaneously while participants were at rest, a measure of functional connectivity. The team analyzed activity in 25 pairs of brain regions, 300 combinations in all. Specifically, boys with Internet gaming disorder had statistically significant, functional connections between six pairs of brain regions. |
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From Page 7: U.S. stock market reacts to Chinese slowdown By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. stock prices fell sharply Monday with major stock indexes closing down by around 1.6 percent in the first full trading day of 2016. The selloff was sparked by a series of disappointing reports on Chinese manufacturing, and the impact of increased geopolitical tensions on oil prices. But while some analysts say the Chinese slowdown is likely to have only a limited impact on developed economies, others say what happens over the next few days will be critical. On Wall Street it was a disappointing start for a brand new new year: a global sell-off sparked by a 7 percent decline in Chinese stocks, one large enough to trigger a so-called circuit breaker that suspended trading in Shanghai and Shenzhen. New York Stock Exchange head Peter Costa says the reaction in European and American markets was to be expected. “When you have that kind of move in the second largest economy in the world, it definitely has ripple effects across U.S. markets and European markets as well," he said. The reason for the sell off: new data showing Chinese factory activity declining for the tenth straight month with China likely to post its weakest economic growth in 25 years. But that was also to be expected. After all, China’s economy is in the midst of change, says PNC international economist Bill Adams. “Some of the volatility today is because China is trying to transition away from export-oriented growth towards domestically driven growth," he said. The pace of China’s transition from an export to a more balanced, service-driven economy has fueled worries about a hard landing for China. But Standard and Poor’s chief economist Beth Ann Bovino says for the U.S. the impact is likely to be limited “Much of our economy and much of our growth comes domestically. About 85 percent or so is domestically driven. 15 or so, 10 to 15, comes from what happens abroad. So even though we’ll feel the hit, say, if there is a hard landing in China, I don’t think it’s enough to really push us into recession," she said. The big worry on Wall Street is what happens next. “I think that if you see a continued global sell off and seeing markets retreat tomorrow and Wednesday, that could be a significant situation," said Peter Costa. Another concern that could drive volatility: increased friction between Saudi Arabia and Iran that some say could drive oil prices higher, even as demand around the world continues to decline. |