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Ces aveugles qui voient avec leurs oreilles (The blind who see with their ears)
Le Monde: La vidéo paraît presque banale. De jeunes hommes parcourent des chemins de campagne à vélo. Un autre descend la rue en skateboard. Un garçonnet lance un ballon dans un panier de basket. Douces images du sport. Sauf que des images, ces jeunes n’en voient jamais : ils sont aveugles. L’association qui produit ce clip s’appelle World Access to the Blind. Comme son nom l’indique, elle souhaite ouvrir le monde aux aveugles. Avec un outil privilégié : l’écholocation. Eclairer la scène en faisant claquer ses doigts ou sa langue… Depuis les années 1940, les scientifiques ont décrit comment certains humains perçoivent l’écho des sons qu’ils produisent.
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Ebola lapses show lab safety protocols should factor in human error
Los Angeles Times: Christmas Eve brought the unwelcome news that a lab worker at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have been exposed to the Ebola virus. It was the latest in a series of similar lapses. Citing such problems, the Obama administration in October suspended some government-funded research projects involving genetic modification of viruses that have the potential to set off a worldwide epidemic. The lapses reported so far have not involved serious injuries or fatalities. But is the lack of serious harm evidence that current safety measures are effective, or are the lapses early warning signs of systemic problems?
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The Liberation of Growing Old
The New York Times: LONDON — WHY do we have such punitive attitudes toward old people? Granted, the ancients did hideous things to elders who were unable to work but still needed food and care, but in more recent times, that had changed: In 18th-century New England, it was common for people to make themselves seem older by adding years to their real age, rather than subtracting them. Once upon a time, “senile” just meant old, without being pejorative. Even “geriatric” was originally a value-free term, rather than part of the lexicon of contempt toward old people. Yet today, the language used to describe the changing age composition of the population is little short of apocalyptic.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Pretraumatic Stress Reactions in Soldiers Deployed to Afghanistan Dorthe Berntsen and David C. Rubin Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) arises from anxiety connected to past events, but anxiety and apprehension about future events are seen in many types of anxiety disorders. This brings up the question of whether people can display pretraumatic stress reactions. The authors of this study created a pretraumatic stress reaction checklist (PreCL) and had Danish soldiers complete it before, during, and after a 6-month deployment to Afghanistan.
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Why Guilt-Prone People Aren’t ‘Team Players’
New York Magazine: A lot of us know someone who is a bit more guilt-prone than they should be, liable to nose-dive into a shame spiral over seemingly minor incidents. A new study hints at some of the effects this trait could have in the workplace or the classroom: Guilt-prone people may be less likely to want to team up on projects out of fear they will disappoint their colleagues.
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Making Language Immersion Fun for the Kids
The New York Times: It was summer in Tuscany. The rolling hills were adorned with their famous haystacks. The cypress trees were majestically verdant against the golden backdrop. We were in the picturesque Renaissance town Pienza, its spire shooting up into a cloudless sky. I watched as my children boarded a scuolabus with 15 Italian kids they’d never met before. The bus pulled away, heading to a local terra-cotta museum. I looked at the faces of my children — crying, hysterical, their tiny hands banging on the windows. And I was filled with joy. I should explain. What brought me to this pocket of Italy for a month, and inspired me to take a leave of absence from work and my husband?
