How your behaviour on social media could be limiting the quality of your news feeds

From the 16 June 2020 University of Western Australia News Release

Wondering if you are getting good quality and balance information from your news feeds and social media? You might not be alone. Over half the world’s population gets their news from social media. But how reliable are posts on social media? and how to select the more reputable?

First, be careful when you dislike a post or opt to see less of something on a news feed. Even if it seems to be a reputable source.

“Throughout social media, a series of complex algorithms are in place to keep users engaged and visiting social media sites as long as possible. They want the user to have the feeling of ‘you’re right’ so content is tailored to that person.

“This creates an environment of like-minded users who reinforce that person’s opinions rather than providing balanced information.”

So disliking and opting to see less may well result in your missing information from a reputable source.

“The researchers say another possibility would be to make it more difficult for users to share information when an article fails to cite external references. For example, users might be required to click past a pop-up window.

“Another option is what is called boosting, to enhance user competence in the long-term. This could, for instance, mean teaching people to determine the quality of a news item by looking at a set of variables, such as the sources being cited, that determine its likely quality,” he said.”

Related articles

• How to evaluate complementary health approaches in the news (jflahiffwordpress post)
• Misleading information on health social sites (and tips on how to evaluate health/medical information) ((jflahiffwordpress post))

• Evaluating Internet health information (Penn State)
• Evaluating Medical Research Findings and Clinical Trials (Family Caregiver Alliance)
• A Consumer’s Guide to Taking Charge of Health Information (Harvard Center for Risk Alliance)
• Evaluating Health Information on the Internet (National Cancer Institute)
• Quackwatch: Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions (Stephen Barrett, M.D.)

The relationship between looking/listening and human emotions

From the June 19, 2020 Toyohashi University of Technology News Release

“A research team from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Electronics-Inspired Interdisciplinary Research Institute at Toyohashi University of Technology has indicated that the relationship between attentional states in response to pictures and sounds and the emotions elicited by them may be different in visual perception and auditory perception.

This result was obtained by measuring pupillary reactions related to human emotions. It suggests that visual perception elicits emotions in all attentional states, whereas auditory perception elicits emotions only when attention is paid to sounds, thus showing the differences in the relationships between attentional states and emotions in response to visual and auditory stimuli.”

Better vaccines are in our blood

Better vaccines are in our blood

From the July 13, 2020 article at the Harvard Gazette



Recent studies on mice have shown the red blood cells not only deliver oxygen to our body’s cells. They are also involved in our immune response. Red blood cells deliver antigens (toxins or foreign substances) to special cells in the spleen (antigen-presenting cells) to generate an immune response.

The article goes on to explain why the spleen is an ideal area for this type of immune response. It is one of the few organs where red and white blood cells naturally interact.

This is a good avenue to explore for vaccine development.
Rather than inject only antigens into the blood, the mice studies have shown it is safer and more efficient to inject red blood cells coated with the antigen.

Read the entire news release here.

Study shows humans are optimists for most of life

From the July 13, 2020 Michigan State University news release

“We found that optimism continued to increase throughout young adulthood, seemed to steadily plateau and then decline into older adulthood,” said William Chopik, MSU assistant professor of psychology and lead author. “Even people with fairly bad circumstances, who have had tough things happen in their lives, look to their futures and life ahead and felt optimistic.”

The study included people from ages 16-101. They found that optimism increased from ages 15-60 regardless of good or bad circumstances. Resiliency results from people feeling more in control of their lives as they achieve goals and have successes.