perception

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The physical rewards of exercise derive not just from muscular exertion but, to a surprising extent, from a person's mind-set about exercise, a new report suggests। http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com

Alia J. Crum and Ellen J. Langer, psychologists at Harvard University, made this provocative discovery when they studied 84 women who clean rooms at seven Boston-area hotels. It's a physically taxing job. Each woman scours a hotel room for 20 to 30 minutes, cleaning an average of 15 rooms daily.

For at least a month, women who had heard a brief presentation that explained how their work qualifies as good exercise displayed more weight loss, larger blood pressure declines, and other health advantages compared with peers given no such information, Crum and Langer say.

This finding suggests that exercise enhances physical health, at least in part, via the placebo effect—that is, as a consequence of an individual's beliefs and expectations. "If our mind-sets control our psychological and physical reactions and we can control our mind-sets, then we can have direct control over our health," Langer says.

The new study appears in the February Psychological Science.

Crum and Langer recruited the women, officially known as room attendants, at franchise, condominium-type, and luxury hotels. All room attendants in any hotel either did or didn't receive the work-exercise presentation.

Participants ranged in age from 18 to 55, and most were Hispanic.

A total of 44 women attended a presentation, in Spanish and English, in which Crum and Langer showed that many of the activities that the attendants engaged in while cleaning hotel rooms satisfy the surgeon general's recommendations for an active lifestyle.

Handouts and posters in the attendants' lounge areas offered daily reminders of how much exercise participants were getting.

Four weeks after the presentation, women in both groups reported no change in how much they exercised outside of work. Hotel managers confirmed that room attendants' workloads remained constant.

However, the exercise-informed women perceived themselves to be getting markedly more exercise than they had indicated before the presentation. Members of that group lost an average of 2 pounds, lowered their blood pressure by almost 10 percent, and displayed drops in body-fat percentage, body mass index, and waist-to-hip ratio. Given the study's short length, the researchers call the observed changes "small but meaningful."

Participants who weren't offered the presentation didn't show such changes in perception of their activity or in health measures.

"These data are compelling and surprising," remarks psychologist Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull in England। Kirsch has studied placebo effects of substances such as antidepressant drugs and caffeine। http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com

Presentations to room attendants may have increased their optimism or raised expectations about the benefits of their work activities, but it's unclear how such mental adjustments would lead to health changes, Kirsch says.

To test whether women behave differently after the presentation, Crum is planning a longer investigation that will monitor physical activity using accelerometers and daily logs.

label

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Oh what a tangled web we weave, when trying to determine who deceives। Virtually everyone, even those experienced at dealing with deceivers, detect others’ lies no better than would be expected by chance। http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com

Those sobering conclusions come from the first large-scale analysis of individual differences in deception detection। It takes two to tangle in deceptive encounters, note Charles Bond Jr। of http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Bella DePaulo of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The two psychologists say their analysis of the findings to date suggest some people are relatively easy to read, while others shroud their intentions in mystery.

A person’s perceived credibility, as reported by volunteers on questionnaires, rather than honesty, plays a major role in whether that person gets branded as a liar, Bond and DePaulo report in the July Psychological Bulletin. Certain people appear either honest or dishonest from the get-go, whether or not they’re telling the truth, the psychologists assert. Earlier research has found that baby-faced people seem credible whereas people who look nervous or avert their gaze typically get labeled untrustworthy.

The new analysis shows that participants more often believe liars perceived as high in credibility than truth-tellers regarded as low in credibility.

“When all the evidence is statistically analyzed, deception judgments depend more on the liar than the judge,” Bond says.

The new investigation challenges a view, championed by psychologists Maureen O’Sullivan of the University of San Francisco and Paul Ekman of the University of California, San Francisco, that a small number of individuals with considerable experience in unraveling certain kinds of lies do so with great accuracy. O’Sullivan and Ekman have found that a minority of psychotherapists quickly discerns lies about what a person says he or she is feeling, whereas insightful police officers readily discern a suspect’s crime-related deceits.

“There are significant differences among individuals in lie detection accuracy if you pick your subjects appropriately,” O’Sullivan says.

Bond and DePaulo disagree। They devised a new statistical method for estimating the range in the percentage of lies and truths that groups of volunteers would accurately identify if a lie-detection test was infinitely long। The technique corrects for measurement errors that occur on standard lie-detection tests, especially those requiring only a few true-or-false judgments. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com

The researchers applied this statistical tool to data from 142 earlier laboratory studies of lie detection. In these investigations, 19,801 judges assessed the veracity of 2,945 people conveying either true or false information. Many studies involved only college students as either judges or potential liars, but a substantial minority consisted of people with real-world lie-detection experience who were making deception judgments relevant to their professions.

Overall, participants accurately detected lies an average of 54 percent of the time, when an overall average of 50 percent would be expected by chance. This figure aligns with what researchers already knew.

But Bond and DePaulo focused on an individual’s performance, not a group average. They found that the highest detection rate achieved by an individual in these studies, which peaked at about 75 percent, did not exceed the maximum rate that guessing would have yielded, the researchers say. Individual differences in lie-detection accuracy were small, with scores clustering near the overall average of 54 percent correct.

Experienced judges displayed no lie-detection advantage over inexperienced ones. Neither did judges show greater accuracy in evaluating highly motivated liars, such as crime suspects, compared with less-motivated liars, such as college students pretending to have stolen money.

The researchers also found that the tendency to label someone as a liar also depended on whether a judge regarded other people as generally truthful or not.

Bond and DePaulo call for experiments that examine the complexity of real-world lie detection. Outside the laboratory, people infer deception from many lines of information, not just a person’s immediate behavior and speech, they say. In these situations, lies get identified over days, weeks or longer, rather than at the time a lie is told.

O’Sullivan also sees a need for research that addresses such issues. But she maintains that some people, due to their professional experiences, can quickly detect certain types of lies. In a new study submitted for publication, she and her colleagues find that experienced police officers rapidly identify high-stakes lies told by actual crime suspects far more often than they identify low-stakes lies told by students.

little

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Sun all day, but a little hazy; perhaps a battle.

There was quite a battle yesterday on the south side. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.comThe accounts in the morning’s paper fall short of the whole of our success. The enemy, it is said to-day, did not regain the works from which they were driven, but are now cooped up at Bermuda Hundred. Nothing is feared from Butler.

Nothing from Lee, but troops are constantly going to him.

I saw some 10,000 rusty rifles, brought down yesterday from Lee’s battle-field. Many bore marks of balls, deeply indenting or perforating the barrels. The ordnance officer says in his report that he has collected many thousands more than were dropped by our killed and wounded. This does not look like a Federal victory!

skill

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Self-hypnosis (or autosuggestion) — is hypnosis in which a person hypnotizes himself or herself without the assistance of another person to serve as the hypnotist — is a staple of hypnotherapy-related self-help programs। It is most often used to help the self-hypnotist stay on a diet, overcome smoking or some other addiction, or to generally boost the hypnotized person's self-esteem. It is rarely used for the more complex or controversial uses of hypnosis, which require the hypnotist to monitor the hypnotized person's reactions and responses and respond accordingly. Most people who practice self-hypnosis require a focus in order to become fully hypnotized; there are many computer programs on the market that can ostensibly help in this area, though few, if any, have been scientifically proven to aid self-hypnosis. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

Some people use devices known as mind machines to help them go into self-hypnosis more readily. A mind machine consists of glasses with different colored flashing LEDs on the inside, and headphones. The LEDs stimulate the visual channel, while the headphones stimulate the audio channel with similar or slightly different frequencies designed to produce a certain mental state. The use of binaural beats in the audio is common; it is said to produce hypnosis more readily.

Self-hypnosis is a skill that can be improved as time goes by। People use techniques such as imagining walking down 10 steps, feeling deeper relaxed as they imagine slowly walking down each step, one at a time. It is a good idea to initially seek the skills of a practicing hypnotherapist in order to understand what it feels like to be in a hypnotic trance. This greatly helps, as the individual can aim to replicate this state. Alternatively, a person may wish to use hypnosis recordings instead. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

chiara

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Sicily and Naples were separated in 1458 but remained as dependencies of Aragon under Ferrante.[21] The new dynasty enhanced Naples' commerce by establishing relations with the Iberian peninsula. Naples also became a centre of the Renaissance, with artists such as Laurana, da Messina, Sannazzaro and Poliziano arriving in the city.[22] During 1501 Naples became under direct rule from France at the time of Louis XII, as Neapolitan king Frederick was taken as a prisoner to France; this lasted only four years.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de Spain won Naples at the Battle of Garigliano and, as a result, Naples became under direct rule as part of the Spanish Empire throughout the entire Habsburg Spain period.[23] The Spanish sent viceroys to Naples to directly deal with local issues: the most important of which was Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, who was responsible for considerable social, economic and urban progress in the city; he also supported the Inquisition.[24]
Bourbon Royal Palace, inside.
Bourbon Royal Palace, inside.

During this period Naples became Europe's second largest city after only Paris.[25] It was a cultural powerhouse during the Baroque era as home to artists including Caravaggio, Rosa and Bernini, philosophers such as Telesio, Bruno, Campanella and Vico, and writers such as Battista Marino. A revolution led by local fisherman Masaniello saw the creation of a brief independent Neapolitan Republic, though this last only a few months before Spanish rule was regained.[23] Finally, by 1714, the Spanish ceased to rule Naples as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession; it was the Austrian Charles VI who ruled from Vienna, similarly with viceroys.[26] However, the War of the Polish Succession saw the Spanish regain Sicily and Naples as part of a personal union, which in the Treaty of Vienna were recognised as independent under a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons in 1738 under Charles VII.[27]
Ferdinand, Bourbon king.
Ferdinand, Bourbon king.

During the time of Ferdinand IV, the French Revolution made its way to Naples: Horatio Nelson, an ally of the Bourbons, even arrived in the city in 1798 to warn against it. However, Ferdinand was forced to retreat and fled to Palermo, where he was protected by a British fleet.[28] Naples' lower classes the lazzaroni were strongly pious and Royalist, favouring the Bourbons; in the mêlée that followed, they fought the Neapolitan pro-Republican aristocracy, causing a civil war.[28] The Republicans conquered Castel Sant'Elmo and proclaimed a Parthenopaean Republic, secured by the French Army.[28] A counter-revolutionary religious army of lazzaroni under Fabrizio Ruffo was raised; they had great success and the French surrendered the Neapolitan castles and were allowed to sail back to Toulon.[28]

Ferdinand IV was restored as king; however, after only seven years Napoleon conquered the kingdom and instated Bonapartist kings including his brother Joseph Bonaparte.[29] With the help of the Austrian Empire and allies, the Bonapartists were defeated in the Neapolitan War and Bourbon Ferdinand IV once again regained the throne and the kingdom.[29] The Congress of Vienna in 1815 saw the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily combined to form the Two Sicilies,[29] with Naples as the capital city. Naples became the first city on the Italian peninsula to have a railway in 1839,[30] there were many factories throughout the kingdom making it a highly important trade centre.[31]

[edit] Italian unification

After the Expedition of the Thousand led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, culminating in the controversial Siege of Gaeta, Naples became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 as part of the Italian unification, ending Bourbon rule. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been wealthy and 80 million ducats were taken from the banks as a contribution to the new Italian treasury, while other former states in the Italian unification were forced to pay far less.[31] The ecomony of the area formerly known as Two Sicilies collapsed, leading to an unprecedented wave of emigration,[32] with estimates claiming at least 4 million of those who left from 1876–1913 were from Naples or near Naples. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Naples was the most bombed Italian city of World War II.[34] Though Neapolitans did not rebel under Italian fascism, Naples was the first Italian city to rise up against German military occupation; the people rose up and freed their own city completely by October 1, 1943.[35] The symbol of the rebirth of Naples was the rebuilding of Santa Chiara which had been destroyed in a United States Air Force raid.[34] Special funding from the Italian government's Fund for the South from 1950 to 1984 helped the economy to improve somewhat, including the rejuvenation of the Piazza del Plebiscito and other city landmarks.[36] Naples still has some issues, however: high unemployment and landfill management problems, the latter of which has been attributed to the Camorra by the media, a loose confederation of organised crime networks.[37] Recently, the Italian Government under Silvio Berlusconi has held senior meetings in Naples to demonstrate that they intend to tackle these problems once and for all.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

obesity Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

he blame game for obesity (was it your parents or those cupcakes?) continues to escalate. Two recent studies—one in mice and another in humans—provide new evidence that a mind-numbingly complex array of genes influence body weight. By sampling fat tissue, one group of researchers found that the activity of 17,000 genes correlate with body mass index (a measure of body fat based on height and weight), and 14,900 correlate with waist-to-hip ratio. Complicating matters further, these genes seem to operate in large networks, interacting with each other and the environment to influence weight.

So should you blame genes—with labels like Lpl, Lactb, and Ppm1l—or fast food and failure to exercise for your weighty woes? The top researchers say they still don’t know. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

Data from identical twins going back as far as the 1930s suggest that body weight is at least partly inherited, but only in recent years have scientists begun to appreciate the complexity of the genetic factors underlying obesity. Robert Kushner, a specialist in obesity medicine at Northwestern University, says that identifying the interacting genes will help screen those at risk, but far more research is needed before pharmaceutical interventions might emerge.
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And even then, no one thinks that genetic testing or manipulation will ever lead to a catch-all cure. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.comGeorge Bray, who heads the clinical obesity and metabolism department at Louisiana State University, says environment and behavior—like lack of access to exercise facilities and overeating—so strongly affect gene activity that you cannot focus on one while ignoring the other. Both experts agree that addressing energy balance—the number of calories consumed versus the number used in physical activity—is a good starting point for anyone struggling with obesity. Research continues, but holding out for a miracle weight-loss drug is probably not the answer. As Kushner puts it, “a magic bullet is highly unlikely.”

retirements Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Retirements are increasing from a baby boomer generation of teachers and others in the state's public education system, taking with them years of invaluable classroom experience.http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

As many as 12,000 retirements are expected this year alone by the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, while the Pennsylvania State Education Association says 30 percent of the state's teachers -- there were more than 123,000 in the profession as of 2005-06 -- are within five years of their normal retirement age.

Officials of several midstate school districts say colleges are producing enough capa ble graduates and that many are more sophis ticated in technology and other modern edu cation than prior generations.http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

But short ages exist in key subjects such as math, language, physics and chemistry -- skills needed by employers and ones that likely are going to become even more crucial in the future. There also continues to be a lack of minorities going into teaching, an issue that urban districts in particular are finding challenging.

The Harrisburg School District, for example, had a 94.7 percent minority student population last year, but only 23 percent of its teachers represented minorities.

There is much to be said for teacher training and majoring in education in terms of one's ability to be effective in the classroom. But the retirement wave on top of shortages of teachers in certain subject areas and the dearth of minorities reinforce the need to revisit federal and state certification requirements that have been tightened in recent years under the No Child Left Behind Act and Pennsylvania's Teachers for the 21st Century Initiative.

Although perhaps well-intentioned, they have presented huge obstacles for nonteaching professionals looking to make a career change and who have much to offer students. Prior to No Child Left Behind, a school district would take a person with an MBA and a background conducive to teaching math, economics or business, put him or her in the classroom immediately and have the individual work toward completing a list of courses needed for teaching certification.

Now, the certification must come first, meaning the applicant would likely have to bear the financial hardship of quitting his or her job while taking classes.

They do have the option of taking and passing the national teachers exam, something Mark Holman, director of human resources for the Harrisburg School District, has compared to "trying to pass the bar exam before going to law school."

Meanwhile, since the 2003-04 school year, the initiative launched under the Ridge administration require teachers graduating college to have a 3.0 grade point average. But some students for reasons of maturity, homesickness or personal hardship struggle with their studies their freshmen and sophomore years, then turn it around and become A and B students their remaining years. In those cases, the GPA is misleading.

The state should reconsider these GPA requirements and Congress should revisit the certification issue while debating reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. Not only have the federal and state governments usurped local discretion in the hiring process, they are keeping some potentially good teachers out of the classroom.