Topics in the News?
What I would like you to do is to start applying what we are learning in class to real world matters. Some might ask, "What good is learning psychology if we can't apply it to real world matters?" So that is what we are going to do with this topical blog assignment.
What I would like you to do is to either go to NPR (http://www.npr.org/ ), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ ) or any news site listed at the bottom of this page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ listed in their news sources) and read, watch, or listen to something that is interesting to you and relates to what we have been learning in the class.
Please respond the blog by BRIEFLY telling us in essay format:
What your topic is and what the piece you chose was. Why you picked it (what made it interesting for you) and what did you expect to see. What did you find most interesting about the piece
Next discuss IN DETAIL how it relates to the class using terms, terminology, and concepts that we have learned so far in class. Include definitions.
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
New Orleans was extremely different than larger cities in the midwest. To my surprise, it was a town full of cultural, color, and favor.
(It did not look like the hurricane hit town I thought it would be)
There were many new and different things to fuel the senses: food, music, artitecture and entertain.
Amoung the many street performers, there was one that position himself to look as if he was
crossing the moving across the street in his pose. He held a wide stance and used a fake dog, was very interesting how he could capture movement within
one stance. The cops were even a sort of performer. They posed for pictures on Bourbon Street and had tatoos, piecings, and mohawks.
There is also a lot diversity within the population. New Orleans is a blend of cultures: Creole, African, and American.
I choose this article after hearing about the recent report by the Justice Department. The large African American population have complained about discrimation especially after Hurricane Katrina. The report affirmed this,that police pratices were not fair. That there were a pattern of excessive force and other abuses towards all miniorities.
Both the article and local people stated that policing New Orleans is not easy, that there is a huge problem of drugs within the city
This I believe causes police to use different (bad) tactics to try and handle the problem. This is faulty perception though. That
African Americans or minorities are more guilty or should be held responsbile and thus treated differently than majorities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/justice-department-report-new-orleans-police_n_837866.html
Recently, it has been loud about Egypt, Japan, and Lybia, unfortuantely from not a good side. Thus, this week I decided to talk about something less important and not dramatic.
Ricky Martin, pop star got a Glaad gay media award. Why do I want to talk about? Because it is important and interesting to see how people ' perception and opinions on different sexual orientataion has been changed. Back in few years, it would be louder about it, but now it seems like society got used to that kind of information. More and more popular stars admit and show to world about their sexual orientation. Ricky Martin, known by every teenager decided to announce in 2010 that he is gay and as he said: he is proud of it". Of course, he disspointed many of his fans, but he could not pretend to be someone else; "things were too heavy to keep them inside".
It is interesting from psychological point of view to see how people change theur perception and views on certain things. It is nice to see that more and more people in today's world are more tolerate and do do not judge someone just becasue he is dirrent. Of course, it will be always something again minorites, but observing our society, we can definately say that peopple become to be more tolerate and not surprise anymore.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12798689
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8594121.stm
I have a friend who is a baby boomer and when I first met her the thought of there being people who are gay was out of this world. She now, after four years has come to accept that being straight is not the only form of relationships. I like that you picked this because it is a huge part of our society, politics and all.
I chose to further my knowledge on the Japan earthquake that has recently happened since it is relevant and very interesting/devastating. The pictures all together no one is expected to see, because it is scary how this earthquake has ruined so many peoples lives and the death toll is outrageous. In Japan, rescue workers used chain saws and hand picks Monday to dig out bodies in Japan's devastated coastal towns, as Asia's richest nation faced a mounting humanitarian, nuclear and economic crisis in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami that likely killed thousands. Millions of people spent a third night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures along the devastated northeastern coast. Meanwhile, a third reactor at a nuclear power plant lost its cooling capacity, raising fears of a meltdown, while the stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.
A Japanese police official said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered Monday cross the coastline of Miyagi prefecture. The official declined to be named, citing department policy. The discovery raised the official death toll to about 2,800 but the Miyagi police chief has said that more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone, which has a population of 2.3 million. According to officials, more than 2,800 people have been confirmed dead - including the 1,000 bodies found Monday - and more than 1,400 were missing. Another 1,900 were injured.
There are several new articles about the devastating disaster everyday, sometimes more than one and many people around the world are helping aid the Japanese as much as possible including our troops who are coming from all over to help. Just watching the aftermath, makes you hurt for them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/14/japan-earthquake-tsunami-deaths_n_835239.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfp2dOAIYho&feature=relmfu
Our perceptual system allows us to see whats in our center focus point as well as what is in our peripheral vision. This devastating earthquake catches everyones eyes, and its almost too much for our eyes to take in all at once, because we want to perceive everything that we are seeing on the news, but since there is so much that has happened and is still happening over in Japan it is almost difficult to grasp, but our visual system does a great deal of work to encode what it is that we are hearing and seeing. We perceive devastating news and almost intriguing, therefore we retain information we see and hear better. It's crazy how fast the water swept through Japan, carrying off cars and businesses like they were toys, and in a matter of seconds.
Libya has been in the news in recent weeks, as the UN imposed a no fly zone over Libya and authorized whatever force was needed to protect civilians from harm. This lead to a joint international operation that included cruise missile strikes from the United States as well as Great Briton, as well as flyovers from French jets. President Obama has said that he wants Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi out of power, but stressed that the Libyan people must be responsible for removing him from power. This brings up an interesting point with all of the United States’ military might why would we not simply take out Gadhafi. This is where psychology fits in; if the United States were to remove him from power it would ultimately do more harm than good. Simply removing him would strengthen his supporters and get more people to join to his cause. IT would lead to the Libyan people seeing him as a martyr which would only intensify the conflict. It would not cause everyone in Libya to join his cause, but it would still cause his numbers to grow which in the long run will be bad for the people of Libya, hopefully this conflict can be resolved peacefully and democratically.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/21/obama.gadhafi/index.html?iref=allsearch
The article I chose is about a woman who’s the first person ever to have an implanted hearing aid that has no external components. Most people who receive cochlear implants or hearing aids have pieces that are seen outside the ear, especially with regular hearing aids. This new hearing aid is implanted in the middle ear and includes a signal processor, rechargeable battery, and microphone. They’re connected to an electromagnetic vibrator inside the mastoid bone behind the ear. This bone is connected to the hearing bones inside the ear. This implant is for people who can’t have regular hearing aids because of blocked ear canals. The implant can be worn at night and also in water.
The woman in the article most likely suffers from conductive hearing loss, which is caused by problems with the bones of the middle ear. The bones lose their ability to conduct vibrations from the tympanic membrane to the oval window. This can occur due to a condition called otitis media, which is inflammation of the middle ear that can be caused by infection, usually in children. It’s likely that this is what happened to the woman in the article because it states that she lost her hearing when she was 6 years old. Although the oval window can still vibrate under this condition, the ossicles don’t have as much amplifying power and therefore the sound doesn’t have a loud enough decibel to be heard. The implant this woman received was directly connected to her middle ear and bypassed the issues that otitis media caused.
Terms: cochlea, middle ear, conductive hearing loss, tympanic membrane, oval window, otits media, ossicles, decibel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-12402168
For this assignment, I chose to read an article about testing newborn hearing. The article discusses how infants are tested at birth for deafness or any other hearing deficiencies. According to the article, One-third of children who were treated for deafness with cochlear implants had actually passed the newborn screening. A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. The cochlear implant is often referred to as a bionic ear. It is important that children are tested for hearing before they leave the hospital because if they do have a hearing impairment, the sooner they get treatment the better. The article states that the reason some children may be passing the test even if they have hearing problems could be due to the fact that hearing issues may get worse over time and at the time of testing may not be bad enough to be noticed. It is recommended by the authors of the article that if parents think their child's hearing may be insufficient even after passing the initial hearing test, that they ask their pediatrician to retest their child.
I chose this article because it relates to what we are currently discussing in class. We just finished reading the chapter over the structure of the ear and how we hear things, and how that information is in-turn processed. I expected the article to contain more specific information about the ear and cochlear implants. I liked how the article explained why children may be passing the hearing test even if they have a hearing problem.
While reading this article, the information we learned about the structure of the ear was useful. Cochlear implants are surgically inserted into the cochlea. The Cochlea is located in the inner ear and is a spiral structure of the inner ear containing the organ of corti. The organ of corti is very important in hearing. it is a structure on the basilar membrane composed of hair cells and dendrites of auditory nerve fibers.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/22/134766739/newborn-screening-tests-miss-some-babies-hearing-problems
The article I found that related to this class was an article in the LA Times called, Newborn hearing screening won’t catch all cases of childhood hearing loss. In the article research found that newborn hearing screening wasn’t effective in diagnosing hearing loss in newborns. The research that was published in the, Archives of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery found that many of the kids were diagnosed as hearing impaired after passing the newborn screening. The apparent reasoning is that some children have a delayed onset hearing loss and this type of hearing loss is not detected after birth. Of the kids who failed the newborn screening test initially the average age for cochlear implants was 1.7 years while the average for kids who passed the newborn screening was 2.6 years.
I found this article interesting because I was shocked to learn that our current screening system for newborns is unable to diagnose all types of childhood hearing loss, for example late onset hearing loss children can pass the newborn screening test but 1-2 years later are having a difficult time hearing. The most interesting thing about this article was that I had thought pre-article that all cases of hearing loss were diagnosed at birth and this caught my attention that there develop later on and can go undiagnosed for a while in children.
I thought this article relates to class because the book discussed hearing loss and cochlear implants. I found it interesting to learn how cochlear implants work too. Cochlear implants are flexible coils with electrode contacts along the length. The electrode is then connected to a radio which lies under the scalp and receives transmissions from a microphone that is placed behind the ear on the on the skull. The signals which come into the microphone are activated by miniature electrodes along the implant which then activates the associated cranial nerve fibers. The book also pointed out that of all individuals that receive cochlear implants children do best because their brains are plastic and able to develop to get all the information they can receive from their implants.
This article talked about sensorineural hearing loss which is the most common and serious type. This hearing loss occurs in the cochlea and can be a result of auditory nerve damage. The majority of the time sensorinerual hearing loss occurs because the hair cells inside the ear are injured most commonly by loud noise. Another way hair cells can die is from ototoxic drugs, these can be cancer drugs and antibiotics. Conductive hearing loss is different from sensorinerual in that conductive occurs when the bones of the middle ear lose their ability to conduct vibrations from the tympanic membrane. This type of hearing loss occurs most often with otitis media which is known as an ear infection. A more serious type of conductive hearing loss is when the middle ear bones begin to grown abnormally which is known as otosclerosis.
Hearing impairment affects approximately 25 million people in the United States, however only about 5 million of these people use hearing aids. An article in the Huffington Post questions why so few of the people who could receive benefits from hearing aids use them. The reason brought up in the article is that some may be ashamed to call attention to their impairment. A new invention could change this. Europe has just approved SoundBite, a hearing aid, that transmits sound through your teeth. SoundBite is primarily to be used for people who are deaf in one ear and attaches to your upper molars. The device can barely be seen once in place. SoundBite does require a small microphone in your ear that the mouth piece communicates with but again it's barely visible. The device works by the microphone picking up the sound from your surroundings and wirelessly transmitting it to the mouth piece which provides the ability to hear spatially. According to the article a standard hearing aid uses air conduction. Which "employs the middle and outer ear to increase sound volume". SoundBite uses bone conduction. Bone conduction "directs sound vibrations from the bones in the skull to the inner ear".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/22/dental-hearing-aid-approv_n_839007.html
In chapter 9 we learned that in a person who hears normally the outer and middle ear are very important in the hearing process. The outer ear collects the sounds and funnel them through the ear canal to the ear drum. The ear drum is the border between the outer and middle ear. The middle ear is made up of 3 small bones and another membrane called the oval window which is the border between the middle and inner ear. The outer ear collects the sounds and the middle ear amplifies sound vibrations and transmit the information to the inner ear. The article stated that a standard hearing aid uses the middle and outer ear when working. The new technology bypasses that and transmits the sound vibrations directly to the inner ear which is where sound pressure is translated into neural signals for our brains to understand.
Terms: air conduction, bone conduction, outer ear, middle ear, inner ear, sound vibrations, oval window, neural signals
For my topic i decided to look into hearing loss. I came across an article discussing increases in teen hearing loss. I assumed right away that it had something to do with listening to high volumes through a tv or especially through an mp3 player. The article discussed that there has been a slight increase in hearing loss( about 15% to 19.5%) from about 1988 to 2006. Researchers believe this is from having head phones in your ears and from teens listening to music at a loud volume for an extended period of time. I found this to be interesting because I am also one of those people that blast music whether i am studying, working, out, or just walking to my classes. They also believe that this will put you at risk for hearing loss later on in life. What I found to be really interesting was their talk with a 17 year old boy who listened to his ipod for 30 mins at a time 4 days a week while he was working out. When he was done working out one day he realized that he couldnt really hear out of his left ear. He regained hearing but no longer has the same hearing levels. He cannot always here his friends conversations at lunch and just laughs when everyone else does. This puts into perspective how serious this issue can be.
Researchers believe that the loud music causes damage to our hair cells (cells that support the stereocilia that transduce mechanical movement in the cochlea and vestibular labyrinth into neural activity sent to the brain stem; some hair cells(dendrites of the auditory ner fibers) also receive inputs from the brain.) and turn them into scare tissue. The hair cells are found in the inner ear which is where the sound pressure is changed into neural signals that inform the listener about the world. With a decrease of hair cells you wouldnt have as much neural firing to the brain.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/17/teen-hearing-loss-1in5-us_n_685674.html
inner ear, hair cells, auditory nerve fibers
Surfer Dude Health Hazards -- Just When You Thought It Was Safe To...
My topic is auditory exostosis and the piece is on “Surfer Dude Health Hazards -- Just When You Thought It Was Safe To....” I found it interesting because not a lot of people from the Midwest know too much about the long term effects of being at the beach on a daily basis. It is a geographical difference that we would never think of. I was expecting to learn about pressure and the effects on the air/water but it was nothing like that, the information provided was a foreign subject to me. I found it interesting that auditory exostosis is caused by the effect of cold water and wind.
Surfer's Ear, also known as auditory exostosis, is bone growth in the ear canal caused by the cooling effect of cold water and wind. Cold-water surfers are more prone to this than warm-water surfers. Consistent use of earplugs helps prevent these bony growths from forming. Nevertheless, if you have pain, popping or crackling in your ear, impaired hearing or water trapped in the inner ear, see a medical professional.
Tympanic membrane eruption is another problem that occurs when a surfer is struck by a strong wave or hits the water with sufficient force after a fall. This condition causes ear pain, conductive hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo and bloody discharge from the ear. Most ruptures heal spontaneously, but infection is common, and can be treated by a short course of topical antibiotic.
Auditory exostosis covers effects on the hearing system. Chapter nine is about the basic physics, physiology, and psychophysics of audition. The outer and middle ear sound waves are collected by the pinna and funneled through the auditory canal to the tympanic membrane. The tympanic membrane moves back and forth in response to air pressure changes caused by sound waves. This back-and-forth motion is transferred to the middle ear, called the malleus, incus, and stapes. The stapes pushes and pulls on the oval window, a small membrane in the wall of the cochlea, which houses the inner ear structures. It is in the inner ear that the actual neural transduction process takes place; at the end of this process, neural signals emerge through the cochlear nerve and are carried to the brain. The outer and middle ear is affected by auditory exostosis.
Terms: auditory canal, pinna, tympanic membrane malleus, incus, stapes, cochlea, oval window, cochlear nerve
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-d-braunstein-md/surfer-dude-health-hazard_b_587155.html
I came across an article in one of the websites that talked about hearing aids. This is a subject I have never had any interest in researching. Early on the articel caught me attention when it stated the fact that nearly 4% of the worlds population suffers from some type of hearing inparierment. Hearing is yet another one of those things we take for granted. After reading this chapter I realize how valuable our complex our hearing is. It shocked me that only 5% of people who need a hearing aid actually use one. This made me think to myself, if i needed a hearing aid, would I actually use it?
The hearing aid I read about actually goes in your mouth. Weird right?! The website describes the process by which this device works. The website talks about "small mics" that communicate with the hearing aid. The small mics that are being talked about are hair cells that we read about in the previous chapter. The hair cells are what detect movment and hearing works by vibration.
The article goes on to talk about how this hearing aid is different from all of the previous hearing aids. This actually desribed the procees of how most normal hearing aids work. Hearing aids work by air conduction in the middle ear and outer ear. It goes on to talk about bone conduction which we read about three bones in chapter nine.
This article relates to hearing in the environment in many ways. The most obvious being, people who buy hearing aids want to hear in whatever environment they are in. The truch is it doesnt matter how well you hear, our brains will never catch anything. It was really neat to be able to read an article and understand the different parts of the ear that were being talked about.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/22/dental-hearing-aid-approv_n_839007.html
The amount of sound a human ear can handle is relatively small when we think of our vast experience with the auditory world. But in reality our optimum experience is when a sound is displacing air at rates of 30-90 decibels. Sound pressure is the displacement of air due to the vibration that is sound, is measured in decibels (db), and manifests itself as the intensity or volume of a sound. Naturally this intensity diminishes as distance from the origin of the sound increases. Any sound more intense than 110 decibels is considered dangerous and harmful to human hearing at most humanly detectable frequencies. Military and police now have sound weapons that can emit a directed sound "blast" that measures 120 to 140 decibels at 1 to 2 meters and 99 decibels at meters. These sound machines were used on criminal gangmembers in santa anna california, and are being employed on unruly crowds in vancouver canada.
The device works because of a piezoelectric material. This material is contantly electrically polarized. When electricity is applied to the material it changes shape. The LRAD as the weapon is called houses many transducers made from this piezoelectric material. Electricity is applied to the transducers in many short bursts causing them to change shape rapidly and produce an identical pitch from each transducer. Positive interference refers to the ability of soundwaves to combine into one amplified intensity wave if the soundwaves are in identical phases of frequency. That is if the crests of the waves line up identically then they amplify the intensity of both original waves. The LRAD depends on positive interference to create such intense sounds.
The ear damage dealt by the LRAD would likely occur to the cochlear hair cells. These cells respond to vibrations in the cochlear fluid and are responsible for defining what pitches we are hearing. The cochlear fluid vibrates in such a way that identical sound waves will stimulate hair cells in the same area of the cochlea. So a hair is almost assigned a particular frequency and pressure against the hair by the fluid will signal that that particular frequency is present. But under very high amplitudes the tectorial membrane can rub and damage the hair cells in the cochlea. These hair cells get bent in such a way that they no longer can detect their assigned frequency and they lose their function. Cochlear damage is usually irreversible.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/11/10/bc-long-range-accoustic-device-vancouver-police.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lrad.htm