(토요모임) [10. Aug. 2019] Saturday meeting topic

[Scarlet]

Howdy !  It's me Scarlett !   

This week we will talk about the ' The technologies and ethics and the Pollution & Health '   Do not be obsessed with all the articles too much. Just pick some articles what you have interests and prepare your opinions related to those articles. :) 

◈ Small Talks

--- World's Funniest Commercials of All Time

--- 7 Tips for How to Read Faster (and Still Understand What You Read)

--- How to Read Faster: 8 Simple Tricks to Triple Your Reading Speed

◈ Health & Ethics :

--- Japan Approves Groundbreaking Experiment Bringing Human-Animal Hybrids to Term
--- Human-animal hybrids are coming and could be used to grow organs for transplant – a philosopher weighs in

◈ Global Health : 

-- Pollution could be harming every part of your body. Here’s how

-- 4 Questions About Air Pollution and Your Health

◈ Social issue :

-- How group psychology is driving global political turmoil
 

With luv 

Scarlett

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< Good Expressions > 

1. peruse files for work 

peruse : [VERB] If you peruse something such as a letter, article, or document, you read it.

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World's Funniest Commercials of All Time

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< Questions >

Q1. What is your favorite TV commercial? What is it about? 

Q2. What is the funniest advertisement you have seen? Describe it.

Q3. Do favorite or annoying celebrities make you want or not want to buy a product?

Q4. Do you think there are too many ads in television? Why/why not?

Q5. What are the harmful and the beneficial effects of advertising?

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7 Tips for How to Read Faster (and Still Understand What You Read)
BY Suzanne Raga July 5, 2017

Whether you skim a blog post, peruse files for work, or browse through a book, you most likely do some type of reading every day. But slogging through dense passages of text can be time-consuming, mentally exhausting, and hard on your eyes. If you want to read faster while maintaining reading comprehension, check out these seven tips.

1. PREVIEW THE TEXT.
Viewing a film’s trailer before watching the movie gives you context and lets you know what to expect. Likewise, previewing a text before reading it prepares you to quickly gain an understanding of what you’re about to read. To preview a text, scan it from the beginning to the end, paying special attention to headings, subheadings, anything in bold or large font, and bullet points. To get a big picture understanding, skim the introductory and concluding paragraphs. Try to identify transition sentences, examine any images or graphs, and figure out how the author structured the text.

2. PLAN YOUR ATTACK.
Strategically approaching a text will make a big difference in how efficiently you can digest the material. First, think about your goals. What do you want to learn by reading the material? Jot down some questions you want to be able to answer by the end. Then, determine the author’s goal in writing the material, based on your preview. The author’s goal, for example, might be to describe the entire history of Ancient Rome, while your goal is simply to answer a question about Roman women’s role in politics. If your goal is more limited in scope than the author’s, plan to only find and read the pertinent sections.

Similarly, vary your plan of attack based on the type of material you’re about to read. If you’re going to read a dense legal or scientific text, you should probably plan to read certain passages more slowly and carefully than you’d read a novel or magazine.

3. BE MINDFUL.
Reading quickly with good comprehension requires focus and concentration. Minimize external noise, distractions, and interruptions, and be mindful when your thoughts wander as you read. If you notice that you’re fantasizing about your next meal rather than focusing on the text, gently bring your mind back to the material. Many readers read a few sentences passively, without focus, then spend time going back and re-reading to make sure they understand them. According to author Tim Ferriss, this habit, called regression, will significantly slow you down and make it harder to get a big picture view of the text. If you carefully and attentively approach a text, you'll quickly realize if you’re not understanding a section, saving you time in the long run.

4. DON’T READ EVERY WORD.
To increase your reading speed, pay attention to your eyes. Most people can scan in 1.5 inch chunks, which, depending on the font size and type of text, usually comprise three to five words each. Rather than reading each word individually, move your eyes in a scanning motion, jumping from a chunk (of three to five words) to the next chunk of words. Take advantage of your peripheral vision to speed up around the beginning and end of each line, focusing on blocks of words rather than the first and last words.
Pointing your finger or a pen at each chunk of words will help you learn to move your eyes quickly over the text. And it will encourage you not to subvocalize as you read. Subvocalization, or silently pronouncing each word in your head as you read, will slow you down and distract you from the author’s main point.

5. DON’T READ EVERY SECTION.
According to Dartmouth College’s Academic Skills Center, it’s an old-fashioned myth that students must read every section of a textbook or article. Unless you’re reading something extremely important, skip the sections that aren’t relevant to your purpose. Reading selectively will make it possible for you to digest the main points of many texts, rather than only having time to fully read a couple.

6. WRITE A SUMMARY.
Your job shouldn’t end when you read the last word on the page. After you finish reading, write a few sentences to summarize what you read, and answer any questions you had before you started reading. Did you learn what you were hoping to learn? By spending a few minutes after reading to think, synthesize the information, and write what you learned, you’ll solidify the material in your mind and have better recall later. If you’re a more visual or verbal learner, draw a mind map summary or tell someone what you learned.

7. PRACTICE TIMED RUNS.
Approaching a text strategically, reading actively, and summarizing effectively takes practice. If you want to improve your reading speed, use a timer to test how many words (or pages) per minute you can read. As you’re able to read faster and faster, check in with yourself to make sure you’re happy with your level of comprehension.

Article source : http://mentalfloss.com/article/83881/how-to-read-faster

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How to Read Faster: 8 Simple Tricks to Triple Your Reading Speed

Linda Paull

You probably don’t remember learning to read as a child. But the way we were taught to read when we were in our infant years has little relevance to how we should read as an adult.
Whereas the slow methodical method may work for youngsters who are grappling with the basics of words and sentence structure, adults who often need to process a lot of information in a short time need a completely different method of reading.
Learning to read faster is one of the best skills to develop as an adult, saving you time as you study, research and sort through your inbox. Read on for some great tips on how to read faster.

1. Learn how to scan
The most important skill you need to develop if you want to read faster is scanning. Many adults find scanning difficult because it feels counter-intuitive. After all, when we were taught to read, we were taught to pay attention to every word in a sentence. However, much of this is unnecessary, because research shows that our adult minds have an amazing ability to fill in information gaps.[1]
For example, look at the following piece of text and focus on only the highlighted words:

‘After this experience she decided that she would never again date men from Mediterranean backgrounds, no matter how great they looked or their accents sounded. It simply wasn’t worth the pain.’
When you focus on only the highlighted words, you can save yourself the effort of processing every word, allowing your brain to fill in the missing information.

2. Only read the first and last sentence of each paragraph
According to Abby Marks Beale, America’s #1 Speed Reading Expert, people who write to convey information generally follow a fairly tried-and-true formula. That is, to start each paragraph with a topic sentence that introduces the paragraph and gives an idea of where that paragraph is headed.
As paragraphs in publications like science and academic journals can contain a lot of information, you’re wasting your time reading all of it if you are already familiar with the topic.
Next time you’re faced with a daunting text, try reading the first and last sentence in each paragraph. Chances are you won’t miss much.

3. Turn off the voice in your head
Another habit we picked up when learning to read in grade school is to sound out words, often from reading aloud. Even as adults, most of us retain this habit to some extent, as over the years, we have become so used to “hearing” the word in our minds.
The problem with this is that it takes up unnecessary time because we can understand a word more quickly than we can say it.
One way to eliminate the voice is to read blocks of words (as mentioned in point 1) as it’s much harder to vocalize sets of words than single words.
Simply eliminating this voice can drastically increase your ability to read faster. However, this techniques does tend to reduce your enjoyment of a well-written text, so you can turn it back on for your favorite crime novelist or poet.

4. Use a pointer
Often when we read, we tend to ‘regress’ or go over and read the same material again. This is usually due to poor concentration and results in losing the flow of what your are reading. This is a waste of time, especially when the information you’re re-reading isn’t really necessary.

But you can cut down on regression by using a pen as a pointer. Train your eyes to follow the pointer and this will help you to avoid skipping back.

5. Use ‘soft eyes’
According to experts at Mind Tools, inefficient readers tend to focus on each word, working across each line.[2] This is inefficient because your eye can actually take in about 1.5 inches at a glance, which includes five words.
You can also engage your peripheral vision to expand your gaze and take in even more words. You can achieve this by relaxing your facial muscles when reading and allowing your eyes to soften.

6. Ask yourself questions about the text before you read
This technique is used by teachers to improve reading comprehension. But it’s also a good way to help you read faster.
If you have some idea about what useful information can be taken from the text, make yourself a set of questions and then read quickly to find the answers. This will definitely save you time spent on looking through useless information.

7. Don’t multitask while reading
One of the worst reading habits is reading while watching TV, listening to the radio or even allowing mental interference to distract you from what you are reading. Think you can multitask? Think again.
If you want to read faster, you MUST cut out the distractions and focus solely on the task.

8. Try speed reading apps
Many speed-reading techniques can be done manually. However, there is always the temptation to fall back into old habits.
If you are serious about learning to read faster, you may want to check out apps like Outread which guides your eyes through a reading list with the help of a highlighting marker.
You can also try software like Spreeder, a free speed reading training course designed to improve reading speed and comprehension. It uses methods like ‘pointing’ but does it electronically, and is a great way to increase your reading speed.
Living in the information age, we are often bombarded with information we simply don’t have time to process; but if you take these suggestions on board and practice them regularly, you’ll learn to read faster and cut down on the amount of time you waste on information overload in no time.

Reference
[1] HuffPost: How I Learned to Read 300 Percent Faster in 20 Minutes
[2] MindTools: Speed Reading

Article source : https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/8-tricks-help-you-read-faster.html

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< Questions >

Q1. Why do you study English? Do you have any secret ways to improve your english skills more efficiently? 

Q2. What is the most stressful part in your workloads?

Q3. Have you ever tried any speed reading application? If yes, is it workable?

Q4. How can we improve our reading speed and comprehension?

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Japan Approves Groundbreaking Experiment Bringing Human-Animal Hybrids to Term

CARLY CASSELLA / 30 JUL 2019

Stem cell biologist Hiromitsu Nakauchi has been waiting for this moment for more than a decade.

After years of planning, the persistent researcher has at last received approval from a government willing to pursue one of the most controversial scientific studies there is: human-animal embryo experiments.

While many countries around the world have restricted, defunded or outright banned these ethically-fraught practices, Japan has now officially lifted the lid on this proverbial Pandora's box. Earlier this year, the country made it legal to not only transplant hybrid embryos into surrogate animals, but also to bring them to term.

As a lead stem cell researcher at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University, Nakauchi has gone from country to country, chasing his dream of one day growing customised human organs in animals like sheep or pigs.

With more than 116,000 patients on the transplant waiting list in the United States alone, Nakauchi hopes his idea can transform lives.

That ultimate goal is still a long way off, but the next step in his research has at last been given the green light by ministry officials in Japan. As the first researcher to receive government approval since the 2014 ban, Nakauchi plans on taking things slowly so that public understanding and trust can catch up.

"We don't expect to create human organs immediately, but this allows us to advance our research based upon the know-how we have gained up to this point," Nakauchi told The Asahi Shimbun.

The experiments will start by injecting human induced pluripotent stem cells into rat and mice embryos, all of which have been genetically manipulated so that they cannot make pancreases.

The goal is for the rodent embryo to use the human cells to build itself a pancreas, and for two years, the team plans on watching these rodents develop and grow, carefully monitoring their organs and brains in the process. Only then will the researchers ask for approval to do the same with pigs.

While human-animal embryos have been created in the past - such as pig-human embryos and sheep-human embryos - they've never been allowed to develop to term before.

One of the biggest fears with this type of research centers on exactly where these human stem cells actually go in an animal, and what type of cells they could develop into, once they are injected.

While Nakauchi and his team are trying to target this treatment to just the pancreas, if they detect more than 30 percent of the rodent brains are human, they will suspend the experiment. These are part of the government's conditions to prevent a "humanised" animal from ever coming into existence.

Nakauchi, however, doesn't think this is going to happen. Last year, he and his colleagues at Stanford successfully made the first human-sheep embryo, and although it was destroyed after just 28 days, the hybrid contained no organs and very few human cells - only about one in 10,000 or less.

"We are trying to ensure that the human cells contribute only to the generation of certain organs," Nakauchi explained the winter edition of Stanford Medicine's Out There.

"With our new, targeted organ generation, we don't need to worry about human cells integrating where we don't want them, so there should be many fewer ethical concerns."

Article source : https://www.sciencealert.com/japan-just-gave-approval-for-scientists-to-work-on-human-animal-embryo-experiments?fbclid=IwAR3MKi_-G7mTaFTAAPJ_Pdt4ZRY0gdMzYSSL0edOQz1k0YaAan3Ke4h7RWk

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Human-animal hybrids are coming and could be used to grow organs for transplant – a philosopher weighs in

August 2, 2019/ by Mackenzie Graham, The Conversation

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Around the world thousands of people are on organ donor waiting lists. While some of those people will receive the organ transplants they need in time, the sad reality is that many will die waiting. But controversial new research may provide a way to address this crisis.

Japan has recently overturned its ban on the creation of human-animal hybrids, or "chimeras", and approved a request by researchers from the University of Tokyo to create a human-mouse hybrid.

Scientists will attempt to grow a human pancreas inside a mouse, using a certain kind of stem cell known as "induced pluripotent stem cells". These are cells that can grow into almost any kind of cell. The stem cells will be injected into a mouse embryo, which has been genetically modified to be incapable of producing a pancreas using its own cells. This hybrid embryo is then implanted in a mouse surrogate and allowed to grow. The goal is to eventually grow a human pancreas in a larger animal—such as a pig—which can be transplanted into a human.

Human-animal hybrids have been created in both the US and UK, but regulations require the embryo to be destroyed usually by 14 days. The new Japanese regulations allow for the embryo to be implanted in a surrogate uterus, and eventually, to be born as a mouse with a "human" pancreas. The mice will then be monitored for up to two years, to see where the human cells travel and how the mice develop.

Ethical issues
The idea of human-animal hybrids can raise a lot of questions and it's easy to feel they are "unnatural" because they violate the boundaries between species. But the boundary between species is often fluid, and we don't seem to have the same reaction to animal hybrids like mules, or the many kinds of plant hybrids humans have produced.

Philosophers believe that negative reactions to human-animal hybrids might be based on our need to have a clear boundary between things that are "human" and things that are not. This distinction grounds many of our social practices involving animals, and so threatening this boundary could create moral confusion.

Some might feel that human-animal hybrids are a threat to human dignity. But it's difficult to specify what this claim really amounts to. A stronger objection is the idea that a human-animal hybrid may acquire human characteristics, and as a result, be entitled to human level moral consideration.

If, for example, the injected human stem cells travel to the mouse's brain, it could develop enhanced cognitive capacities compared to a normal mouse. And on that basis, it may be entitled to a much higher moral status than a mouse would normally be granted—and possibly make it unethical for use in scientific experimentation.

Moral status
Moral status tells us whose interests count, from a moral point of view. Most people would say human beings have full moral status, as do babies, fetuses and the severely disabled, which means we must consider their interests. More controversially, some people also believe that non-human animals—such as chimpanzees or human embryos – possess a degree of moral status approaching that of human beings.

But pinning down what characteristics confer moral status can be tricky. Various criteria have been suggested, including the ability to reason, have self-awareness, the ability to form relationships with others, the capacity for suffering, or simply being a part of the human species. But each of these criteria ends up including some groups who don't have moral status, or excluding some who do.

The idea that non-human animals might have sufficient moral status for it to be morally wrong to kill them for food, or use for medical research, has gained significant traction in the philosophical community. Similarly, veganism has grown massively worldwide. There's been a 600% increase in people identifying as vegan in the US in just the last three years. While in the UK the number of vegans has risen from 150,000 in 2014 to 600,000 in 2018, which suggests people are increasingly willing to take the interests of animals seriously.

From a philosophical perspective using non-human animals for food or medical research is unethical because it significantly harms the animal, while providing only a small or insignificant benefit to us. But even those who believe that non-human animals have moral status would likely support sacrificing the life of a non-human animal to save the life of a human—as would be the case in human-animal organ donation. This is because a human can value its life in complex ways that a non-human animal cannot.

But if human-animal hybrids become more like us than non-human animals, it could then be argued that it's unethical to produce a hybrid simply for the purposes of extracting its organs. That is, harvesting the organs of a non-consenting human-animal hybrid could be morally equivalent to harvesting the organs of a non-consenting human.

Of course, for this argument to work, there would need to be strong reasons for thinking not only that a human-animal hybrid has moral status, but that its life has equal moral value to that of a human. And even if a mouse-human hybrid did have a "human-like" brain, it is exceedingly unlikely that it would be human enough to merit equal moral consideration.

So given that this process has the potential to successfully resolve the perpetual lack of organs for transplant, it's reasonable to think that the use of human-animal hybrids is the right thing to do to help save human lives—even if it does require some level of animal suffering.

Article source : https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-08-human-animal-hybrids-transplant-philosopher.html

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< Questions >

Q1. Have you ever heard about the term 'human animal hybrid'? What is it?

*** Terms human–animal hybrid and animal–human hybrid refer to an entity that incorporates elements from both humans and non-human animals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human–animal_hybrid

Q2. How would you define the identity of human animal hybrid? Animal or human?

Q3. Do you support human animal hybrid? Why or why not?

Q4. Should we allow research using human-animal hybrid embryos?

Q5. Have you ever heard about the animal welfare? What do you think of those technologies in terms of animal welfare system?

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Pollution could be harming every part of your body.

Here’s how
23 May 2019 / Kate Whiting / Senior Writer, Formative Content

Nine out of 10 people worldwide breathe polluted air

It’s not just the environment that pollution is harming, it’s also our bodies.

In addition to the well-known victim - our lungs - air pollutants can harm “most other organs of the body”, according to a review of scientific research published in the medical journal Chest.

Prof. Dean Schraufnagel, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led the project told the Guardian: “I wouldn’t be surprised if almost every organ was affected. If something is missing [from the review published earlier this year] it is probably because there was no research yet.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 90% of the world’s population is breathing in polluted air – a mix of gas and particles such as soot and smoke. Greenhouse gases are causing global warming, but it’s the particles that make up those compounds that are affecting global health.

With seven million deaths a year from toxic air - more than the number of people who die from smoking globally - it’s been described by the WHO’s director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as a silent public health emergency.

What’s happening in your body?
When you breathe polluted air into your lungs, ultra-fine particles – particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometres – can be absorbed into your bloodstream.

These particles are then transported throughout the body to all other vital organs.

Prof. Schraufnagel says the main reason air pollution damages our bodies is because of the inflammation that results from our immune system's response to the particles.

“Immune cells think a [pollution particle] is a bacteria, go after it and try to kill it by releasing enzymes and acids. Those inflammatory proteins spread into the body, affecting the brain, the kidneys, the pancreas and so forth. In evolutionary terms, the body has evolved to defend itself against infections, not pollution.”

The above chart, from the Chest review, lists in detail the diseases connected with exposure to air pollution. Here are the six parts of your body most affected.

Heart
The immune system's response to the particles can cause arteries in your heart to narrow and muscles to weaken, making you more susceptible to heart attacks.
Lungs
The impact of air pollution on the respiratory tract - the nose, throat and lungs- is the most widely studied. It causes everything from breathlessness and asthma, to chronic laryngitis and lung cancer.

Bones
In the US, a study of nine million Medicare recipients found osteoporosis-related bone fractures were more common in regional areas with higher concentrations of ultra-fine pollution particles.

Skin
From wrinkles, to acne and eczema in children, the more exposed we are to traffic pollution, the greater the damage it does to our sensitive skin – the body’s largest organ.

Eyes
Exposure to ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have been connected with conjunctivitis, while dry, irritated and weepy eyes are also common reactions to visible pollution haze, particularly for people who wear contact lenses.

Brain
Studies have shown that air pollution can reduce children’s cognitive abilities, while increasing the risk of dementia and stroke in older adults.

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/pollution-could-be-harming-every-part-of-your-body-here-s-how?fbclid=IwAR2bzK9U8pOjXZJxPuVCb8sFzgLR0b7ZTDoqjeIGc3xcgdvKAxVW8PXGuZc

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< Questions >

Q1. Are you healthy? Are your parents healthy?

Q2. How does pollution affect human health? How does air quality affect health?

Q3. Due to the pollution, which body part has been affected the most?

Q4. Do you think you will live until a ripe old age? Why or why not?

Q5. What are some things that cause stress? How do you deal with stress?

Q6. Are you afraid of needles?

Q7. Do you think that you need to lose weight? What foods do you think are healthy?

Q8. Do you always eat healthy food? Do you eat a lot of vegetables?

Q9. Do you take vitamins or mineral supplements?

Q10. Do you ever read magazines or news articles about health? If yes, what subject(s) do you find the most interesting?

Q11. Do you think that the tobacco companies should be held reasonably responsible for a person's addiction to nicotine?

Q12. Could you compare the advantages and disadvantages of modern medicine and traditional medicine?

Q13. Have you ever been to an acupuncturist? What do you think of acupuncture?

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Air Pollution and Your Health

What you need to know
Air pollution knows no boundaries and is a leading cause of early death worldwide.

By Richard E. Peltier / 2018/05/14, Environment

Not a day seems to go by without a story of an “airpocalypse,” usually somewhere in a developing nation. It’s hard not to empathize with the people in the smoggy images of New Delhi or Ulaanbataar or Kathmandu, often wearing masks, walking to school or work though soupy cloudiness.
Last year, a study found that more than 8 million people per year die early from air pollution exposure. This amounts to more deaths than diarrheal disease, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined.
As a researcher in air pollution and its health effects, I know that even if you don’t live in these places, air pollution likely still affects your quality of life. Here’s what you need to know.

1. What exactly is air pollution?
Air pollution is a general term that usually describes a mixture of different chemicals that circulate in the air.
Invisible gases, like ozone or carbon monoxide, and tiny particles or droplets of liquids mix together in the atmosphere. Each molecule is impossible to see with the naked eye, but when trillions gather together, you can see them as haze.

These chemicals are almost always mixed together in varied amounts. Scientists do not yet understand how these different mixtures affect us. Each person responds differently to air pollution exposure – some people have few effects, while others, such as kids with asthma, might become very ill.
What’s more, air pollution mixtures in a given location change over time. Changes can occur quickly over a few hours or gradually over months.

Air pollution from day to day

This graph of air pollution (pm25) in Ulanbaatar shows how the level of pollutants in the air can fluctuate from day to day.

Short-term increases in air pollution from, for example, heavy traffic in rush hour, can make us sick. Such pollution occurs year-round. But seasonal pollutants, such as ozone, usually occur only in the warmest and sunniest parts of year. What’s more, the amount of ozone in air also goes up and down through the day – generally highest in the afternoons and lowest in the early mornings.

These variations can make it quite difficult for environmental health scientists and epidemiologists to know precisely how air pollution can affect humans.

2. Where does air pollution come from?
You might imagine air pollution as smoke pouring out of a factory chimney or the tailpipe of a car.

While these are important sources of air pollution, there are many others. Air pollution includes chemicals humans put into the atmosphere and chemicals released by natural events. For example, forest fires are a large source of air pollutants that affect many communities. Dust that’s picked up by wind can also contribute to poor air quality.

US PM2.5 emissions, in short tons

Air pollution includes chemicals humans put in to the atmosphere and chemicals released by natural events.

[One short ton is 907 kilograms]

Ronald Reagan famously said that “trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” While this myth has been debunked, he was right in at least some ways. Trees do release certain gases, such as volatile organic carbon, that are ingredients in air pollution chemistry. This, when mixed together with emissions from cars and industry, leads to increases in other types of pollution, such as ozone.

There isn’t much that scientists can, or should, do about tree emissions. Public health researchers like myself focus most on the ingredients from human activities – from burning petroleum to emissions controls on industrial facilities – because these are sources located close to where people live and work.

There are also many chemical reactions that occur in the air itself. These reactions create what are known as secondary pollutants, some of which are quite toxic.

Finally, it’s important to realize that air pollution knows no boundaries. If a pollutant is emitted in one location, it very easily moves across borders – both regional and national – to different places. New Delhi, for example, experiences seasonal pollution, thanks to extensive burning of agricultural fields some 200 miles away.

New Delhi is an extreme example. But, even if you live in a less polluted environment, pollutants emitted elsewhere often travel to where other people live and work, as seen in recent wildfires in California.

3. How do we know that air pollution causes problems?
This is a tricky question, because air pollution is a hidden problem that acts as a trigger for many health problems. Plenty of people suffer from asthma and lung diseases, heart attacks and cancer, and all of these are linked to particulate matter exposure. The best evidence to date suggests that the higher the dose of air pollution, the worse our response will be.

Unfortunately, there are many other things that lead to these diseases, too: poor diet, your inherited genes, or whether you have access to high quality medical care or you smoke cigarettes, for example. This makes figuring out the cause of a specific illness attributed to air pollution exposure much more difficult.

Every health study provides a slightly different result, because each study observes a different group of people and usually different types of air pollution. Scientists usually report their results based on any change in risk of developing a disease from air pollution, or based on whether your odds of developing a certain disease might change.

For example, a study in Taiwan looked at concentrations of particulate matter averaged over two years. The researchers found that, for every 10 micrograms per cubic meter increase in particulate matter, the odds of developing high blood pressure increased by about 3 percent. This could suggest that if an increase of particulate matter concentration in any community might lead to an increase in high blood pressure.

Conversely, scientists usually assume that decreases in air pollution lead to decreases in diseases.

4. Why does this matter to you?
A typical adult takes around 20,000 breaths per day. Whether or not you become sick from air pollution depends on the amount and type of chemicals you inhale, and whether you might be susceptible to these diseases.

A typical adult takes around 20,000 breaths per day.

For someone living in polluted New Delhi, for example, those 20,000 breaths include the equivalent of around 20 grains of table salt worth of particulate matter deposited in their lungs each day. While this may not seem like much, keep in mind that this particulate matter isn’t harmless table salt – it’s a mixture of chemicals that come from burning materials, unburned oils, metals and even biological material. And this doesn’t include any of the pollutants that are gases, like ozone or carbon monoxide or oxides of nitrogen.

The U.S. and Europe have made excellent progress in reducing air pollution concentrations over the past couple of decades, largely by crafting effective air quality regulation.

However, in the U.S. today, where environmental laws are being methodically dismantled, there is a bigger worry that policymakers are simply choosing to ignore science. One new member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s science advisory board is Robert Phalen of the University of California, Irvine, who has suggested that “modern air is too clean for optimum health”.

This goes against thousands of research papers and is certainly not true. While some components of air pollution have little effect on human health, this should not be used to muddy our understanding of air pollution exposure. This is a common tactic to confuse the public with unimportant statistics in order to sow confusion, presumably with an underlying intent to influence policy.

The evidence is clear: Air pollution exposure is lethal and causes death across the world. That should be important to all of us.

Article source : https://international.thenewslens.com/article/95312

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<Questions>

Q1. Do you feel the changes of air quality from the past?

Q2. What is the huge changes of your life style due to the air pollution problem?

Q3. What are the top 5 causes of air pollution?

Q4. Why air pollution is a problem in Korea?

Q5. What are the most polluted cities in the world?

Q6. What are the implications for public health?

Q7. How do we prevent air pollution?

Q8. How can we reduce the harmful effects of air pollution?

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How group psychology is driving global political turmoil

13 Jun 2019/ Nicola Gennaioli- Professor of Finance, Bocconi University/ Guido Tabellini- Professor of Economics, Bocconi University

In the last few decades, the political systems of advanced democracies have witnessed momentous changes. Nationalism and populism have gained support almost everywhere, often at the expense of mainstream parties. New dimensions of conflict have emerged – over immigration, globalisation, and civil rights – in place of the classical divide over redistribution (see Figure 1).

Some of these phenomena are correlated with economic changes. The areas of the US that are more exposed to import competition have lost manufacturing jobs and have become politically more polarised and conservative (Autor et al. 2017), and trade shocks or technology shocks account for employment losses and for the rise of populism and anti-immigration sentiment in Europe (Colantone and Stanig 2018a, 2018b, Anelli et al. 2018). Cultural conservatism and support for populist parties have been shown to be strongly correlated with economic insecurity (Guiso et al. 2017, Gidron and Hall 2017). However, the mechanisms behind these correlations are not clear. Why do losers from free trade become nationalist, dislike immigrants, and turn socially conservative? Why do they vote for policy platforms that seem to run counter to some of their interests, such as tax cuts or unsustainable budget deficits?

In a recent paper (Gennaioli and Tabellini 2018), we argue that to address these questions we need to engage with the psychology of group identity and its effect on voter beliefs. The idea that group identity and group-tainted beliefs play a key role in political change permeates the writings of social scientists and revolutionaries. According to Marx and Engels, individual workers should identify with the proletariat, viewing themselves as part of a historical class struggle rather than as carriers of specific cultural or regional traits. For nationalists like Mazzini or Herder, individuals should view themselves as part of the culture or history of an imaginary national community, downplaying more parochial differences. Lipset and Rokkan (1960) describe the evolution of Western party systems as reflecting shifting identities across salient groups such as income classes, religious versus secular groups, the centre versus the periphery, and so on. Changes in the groups of identification can explain why large economic changes can drastically change voters’ beliefs and cause them to become distorted in specific directions. It also helps explain why society becomes strongly polarised across groups, in an ‘us versus them’ conflict.

Social identities and distorted beliefs
Social psychology confirm‎s the link between identity and beliefs. According to the ‘social identity perspective’, the leading theory of groups, individuals routinely identify with social groups of similar people (Tajfel and Turner 1979, Turner et al. 1987) as a way to structure and simplify the social world. Acquiring a social identity, however, also entails an element of ‘depersonalisation’. When an individual identifies with a social group, he enhances differences between outgroups and in-groups. As a result, he stereotypes outgroups but, crucially, he also stereotypes himself by viewing himself more as a typical member of his group than as a unique personality. This implies that identification with a certain group causes voters to move their beliefs in the direction of stereotypes, increasing polarisation and conflict.

To give a political example, the stereotypical ‘cosmopolitan’ favours no controls on immigration and full European integration. Even though such an extreme position is infrequent, it sharply distinguishes the group of those who favour a more open society from the group of those who favour a less open society, say the nationalist group. When someone (say, a member of the European educated elites) identifies himself with the cosmopolitan group, he comes to view himself in contrast to a nationalist. As a result, he perceives nationalists as being more closed than they actually are, and also moves his own beliefs further in the direction of the stereotypical cosmopolitan position. Of course, the same happens when someone holding more closed views identifies with ‘nationalists’ – he thinks of himself as being in contrast to the cosmopolitans, moving his beliefs toward the stereotypical position of his group. As a consequence of this process, these voters hold certain positions not just because of the material benefits they entail, but also because of how they identify their social self.

The distortion of beliefs along group lines has been amply documented by political scientists (Flynn et al. 2017). Recent work shows that belief distortions are systematically shaped by partisanship. US voters exaggerate social mobility, but more so if they identify themselves as right-wing (Alesina et al. 2018a). Voters in the US and Europe overestimate the number of immigrants, but right-wing voters much more than those on the left (Alesina et al. 2018b). Beliefs over global warming also display large partisan differences (Kahan 2014). In our approach, distortions in factual and value judgements naturally arise due to group psychology.

To see the political consequences of this phenomenon, consider the 20th century divide of Western politics: class or economic conflict. Here, a lower-middle-class voter identifying with the working class exaggerates the benefit he draws from redistributive policies because, in thinking about the world, he focuses on the distinguishing feature of his group in contrast to the opposite group – namely, poverty or low upward mobility. The reverse happens for an upper-middle-class voter identifying with a group of rich capitalists. Beliefs about social mobility and policy eval‎uations become polarised, and redistributive conflict is enhanced relative to a world in which identity does not matter. The same mechanism also explains why polarisation is perceived to be greater than it actually is, in line with the evidence in Westfall et al. (2015).

Changing social identities
But psychology also explains why prevailing social identities may change, so that economic conflict may give room to new cleavages. Indeed, we can all potentially identify with many social groups, defined by our nation, our gender, our social class, our occupation, our cultural traits, and so on. Critically, our political beliefs are shaped by whichever identity is salient at a certain point in time, and this depends on external circumstances.

In our paper we explore the implications of this insight. We show that economic change causes new sources of conflict to become salient, in turn causing identification to change. This creates polarisation along new dimensions, while reducing it along other dimensions. For instance, a trend in globalisation clusters individual interests along exposure to foreign competition or immigration relative to, say, the traditional rich-poor divide. As a result, social identities switch from a poor versus rich conflict to a conflict between globalists and nationalists. Poor or uneducated voters exposed to the costs of immigration or globalisation de-identify with their economic class and identify with the nationalist group. This reduces their demand for redistribution and enhances their demand of external protection. These voters may benefit from greater redistribution, but they do not demand it because they now identify with a group that is more heterogeneous across income classes. Likewise, rich or educated voters benefitting from immigration or globalisation also change their identification to the cosmopolitan group. Their demand for redistribution increases and their demand for openness increases. Overall, social alliances change, individual beliefs about redistribution become less polarised, while beliefs over trade protection or immigration become more polarised. Political conflict over redistribution dampens; conflict over globalisation intensifies.

In other words, through stereotypes and belief distortions, endogenous social identities amplify certain shocks, leading to non-conventional policy responses. A shock induced by trade, or technology, or immigration can have much stronger political consequences if it changes the dimension of social identification. Critically, by inducing people to abandon class identity, these shocks can reduce the demand for redistribution despite increasing income inequality.

Amplification is further enhanced if individual traits and policy preferences are correlated across policy dimensions. Specifically, there is evidence that demand for trade protection and aversion to immigrants are positively correlated across individuals, while these traits are not much correlated with attitudes towards redistribution. This may be an effect of education, or it may be due to an underlying personality or cultural trait that varies across voters. In our theory, this correlation pattern has the following implications. When voters identify with their income class, conflict is predominantly about redistribution. Voters’ beliefs over immigration or trade policy do not polarise politics because income classes – the politically relevant identities – encompass diverse views over globalisation. But now suppose that increased import exposure redefines social identities along a new dimension associated with trade exposure (say, region of residence or occupation). Because views over trade policy are correlated with views over immigration and civil rights, this redefinition of social identities leads to correlated belief distortions over a bundle of policies. This can explain why workers exposed to import competition become anti-immigrant and demand socially conservative policies, and more generally why opinions over different policy issues are now more systematically correlated with partisan identities.

Some evidence
The evidence supports these predictions. In a recent paper, Autor et al. (2013) show that US commuter zones that are more exposed to the rise of imports from China have become politically more polarised and conservative, and were more likely to vote for Donald Trump in the last presidential election. This could reflect a variety of mechanisms, but survey data allow us to explore more specific effects of trade shocks. Exploiting data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study between 2006 and 2016, we find that individuals more exposed to rising imports from China become more willing to accept cuts in domestic public spending, more averse to immigrants, and consider the issue of abortion to be more important. This is consistent with the idea that the trade shock induced relatively poor respondents to abandon class-based identification and switch to nationalism, given that nationalism is positively correlated with social conservatism. Colantone and Stanig (2018) find similar evidence of the effects of imports shocks in Europe.

France is another interesting case study, because there was a clear shift in the dimensions of political conflicts between 2012 and 2017. This is illustrated vividly in Figure 2. The vertical axis measures attitudes towards immigration, globalisation, and European integration (higher values correspond to more open attitudes); the horizontal axis attitudes towards redistribution and the role of government in protecting workers and regulating the economy (higher values correspond to more right-wing attitudes). Each dot corresponds to an individual. The colours indicate how respondents were split between two clusters estimated from the original questions: in 2013 on the left-hand panel, in 2017 on the right-hand panel. The change in the dimension of political conflict is striking. In 2013 respondents were split between left and right, reflecting the traditional dimension of economic conflict over the role of the state in the domestic economy. In 2017, the cleavage concerned attitudes towards globalisation and immigration.

In our paper we show that this change in the relevant dimension of political conflict is reflected in how people voted and, exploiting panel data, in how their policy preferences changed. Voters who, between 2012 and 2017, abandoned a left versus right identification in favour of a nationalist versus globalist identity moderated their views on redistribution, and became more extreme in their views on globalisation and immigration.

Concluding remarks
Trade and technology shocks are not the only source of political frictions in modern democracies. Socially conservative cultural views, which were once majoritarian, have gradually been eroded by slow-moving social changes, such as the diffusion of college education and changing gender roles. These cumulative changes created fault lines within traditional political groups defined on the left versus right dimension. Trade and technology shocks increased the relevance of these fault lines, and triggered changes in political and social identities. Socially conservative poor voters, who traditionally identified with left-wing groups despite their social conservatism, are now attracted by nationalism because it appeals to both their trade preferences and their cultural views, and vice versa for voters with opposite political features. As this happens, traditional income- or class-based conflict wanes and is replaced by new political cleavages over correlated dimensions. Political beliefs reflect these new social identities and amplify the effect of these social and economic changes.

If this view of the world is correct, the disruptive political changes that we observe in many democracies are not transitory phenomena, but represent profound and long-lasting transformations of our political systems. One important question in this respect concerns the role of the media. If exposure to social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, strengthens stereotypical thinking, it may cause the consequences of these new political and social identifications to become extreme. At the same time, identities are not biologically ingrained. Because individuals belong to several different groups at the same time, less-polarising identities are always available. As argued by Sen (2007), political platforms reminding people of these alternative identities may reduce polarisation and favour the establishment of a less conflictual political life.

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/identity-beliefs-and-political-conflict?fbclid=IwAR0go-C4ayjZG1v89qsL3ERczTizYRysh3cp2e8MgSHAvW5GlTMxFsahMes

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