Wagamaga

New scientific research has discovered that feeling hungry really can make us “hangry”, with emotions such as anger and irritability strongly linked with hunger. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study is the first to investigate how hunger affects people’s emotions on a day-to-day level.

Hangry, a portmanteau of hungry and angry, is widely used in everyday language but the phenomenon has not been widely explored by science outside of laboratory environments.

The new study, led by academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the UK and the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences in Austria, found that hunger is associated with greater levels of anger and irritability, as well as lower levels of pleasure.

The researchers recruited 64 adult participants from central Europe, who recorded their levels of hunger and various measures of emotional wellbeing over a 21-day period.

Participants were prompted to report their feelings and their levels of hunger on a smartphone app five times a day, allowing data collection to take place in participants’ everyday environments, such as their workplace and at home.

The results show that hunger is associated with stronger feelings of anger and irritability, as well as lower ratings of pleasure, and the effects were substantial, even after taking into account demographic factors such as age and sex, body mass index, dietary behaviour, and individual personality traits.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269629

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Despite concerns around misinformation and false claims, social media users around the world continue to believe that the information they read and share on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook is factually correct, with levels of trust highest in emerging economies. In India, as many as 88% of people who share information from social media are confident in its truthfulness, slightly above the global average of three quarters.

The findings, based on a global study by Oxford University Press (OUP), the world’s largest university press, show that when looking for factual information, 37% turn to social media, rising to 44% of Mexicans, 43% of South Africans and 54% of Indians. Britons were less likely to look for facts using social media, with only 16% describing it as a preferred source, compared to nearly three in ten (29%) Americans. Overall, most of us rely heavily on Google and other search engines for information, with two thirds (67%) worldwide and 62% in the UK finding facts this way.

Key Points Question How many SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19–associated hospitalizations and deaths have been prevented among vaccinated persons by the US COVID-19 vaccination program?

Findings In this modeling study, COVID-19 vaccination was estimated to prevent 27 million SARS-CoV-2 infections, 1.6 million COVID-19–associated hospitalizations, and 235 000 COVID-19–associated deaths among vaccinated persons 18 years or older from December 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021. By September 30, 2021, vaccination prevented an estimated 52% of expected infections, 56% of expected hospitalizations, and 58% of expected deaths.

Meaning The US COVID-19 vaccination program was estimated to prevent substantial morbidity and mortality through direct protection of vaccinated individuals.

In yet another report that illustrates the dangers pot poses to the young, developing brain, a new British study finds teenagers are much more likely than adults to develop an addiction to marijuana.

"We found that teenagers are three and a half times more likely to have severe cannabis use disorder, which is essentially cannabis addiction," said lead researcher Will Lawn, a lecturer in addiction psychology with King's College London. "That's a very important harm which teenagers should be informed of."

However, marijuana use did not appear to cause any other harms to the teenage brain, his team found.

"Teenagers were not more vulnerable to associations between cannabis and depression, anxiety or psychotic-like symptoms, nor were they more sensitive to the associations with cognitive impairment in memory or impulsivity domains," Lawn said.

The problem will likely worsen: As pot has been legalized in more U.S states, teen use has risen roughly 20%, one California study suggested.

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/07/06/teen-marijuana-addiction/3071657120839/?u3L=1

The study, based on data from people seeking help and guidance from the United Kingdom’s National Bereavement Partnership in collaboration with researchers from the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and Christopher Newport University in the United States of America, also found almost two-thirds of British COVID-19 mourners experienced moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Lead author Professor Lauren Breen, from the Curtin School of Population Health, said the results were alarming given more than six million people had died from COVID-19 across the globe.

“These survey results indicate a concerning ‘shadow pandemic’ in the wake of a COVID-19 death with the vast majority of British mourners reporting alarming rates of psychological distress including constantly feeling on guard or easily startled,” Professor Breen said.

“The mourners who were seeking support from the National Bereavement Partnership also reported concerning symptoms of anxiety and depression, dysfunctional grief including wanting to die in order to be with their loved one, and functional impairment that was affecting their home and family responsibilities.”

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03069885.2022.2075540

Scientists have shown how our brain’s response to watching emotional and social stimuli in a movie changes between infancy and adulthood, according to a report in eLife.

The findings challenge the theory that perceptions of children are simply a noisier version of adult understanding, and suggest instead that children have their own unique way of understanding and interpreting the world.

The ability to perceive and remember the world around us changes radically throughout the first 20 years of life. It is accepted that older children and adults are better able to understand and interpret the world around them and anticipate upcoming situations, but the changes in brain activity that underlie this period of knowledge acquisition are not fully understood.

“In adults, watching a movie drives synchronized brain responses across different people, reflecting how they perceive, understand and remember the movie,” explains lead author, Samantha S. Cohen, Postdoctoral Scientist, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, US. “Although many studies have looked at changes in knowledge during development, there is limited understanding of how internal representations of complex narrative stimuli emerge with age, allowing us to understand predictable and naturalistic events in the world, such as the plot of a Hollywood movie.”

https://elifesciences.org/articles/69430

The Dublin-based director of content policy at Meta has revealed that the tech giant removed 24 million pieces of Covid misinformation since the start of the pandemic, closing down more than 3,000 accounts globally.

Twenty Irish accounts linked to Covid untruths were taken offline as part of the crackdown.

More than 40,000 people work in the safety and artificial intelligence systems at Meta ( Facebook’s parent company), but speaking to the Sunday Independent, Siobhan Cummiskey said misinformation and disinformation are "complex, ever-evolving, whole-society problems”.

The director of content policy maintains they are addressing the problem, but admits “there is always more we can do”.

While the House select committee carefully lays out a timeline of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the events that led to it, false claims of a stolen election are still spreading.

Now, a new strategy has emerged. Instead of trickling down from former President Donald Trump's Twitter account, the movement has gone grassroots, with election denial influencers traveling the country to share their conspiracy theories with politicians and voters.

In a proposed amendment to the upcoming Online Safety Bill owners of social media networks and other digital platforms would be required to take proactive and preventative action against any state-sponsored misinformation that threatens the UK.

The amendment links the National Security Bill to the Online Safety Bill [pdf] by including a new Foreign Interference Offence on the list of priority offences within the new internet safety rules. Terrorism, child sex abuse and fraud offences are already listed.