Expert sounds coral reef alarm bell

Park Street: Coral reefs all over the world, including in India, are staring at extinction because of global warming and other threats, a scientist recently said in Calcutta.

The natural marvels that dates back 250 million years have survived multiple mass extinctions but human activities are proving a greater threat, Ch. Satyanarayana, a coral taxonomist and conservationist with the Zoological Survey of India, said.

He spoke on the threat to coral reefs at a session hosted by the Indian Museum on Wednesday.

A coral reef is a marine ridge or reef of coral and other substances, the top of which is usually just above or just below the surface of the sea. The diverse underwater ecosystem is held together by calcium carbonate structures secreted by corals.

Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems. Teeming with life - fish, jellyfish, crabs, shrimps, lobsters, turtles, sea snakes, snails, and molluscs, to name a few - the reefs provide food and shelter to a quarter of all ocean species.

This is despite the fact that reefs cover just a fraction of the earth's surface and less than two per cent of the ocean bottom.

Coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea because of their diversity. The reefs account for more than 25 per cent of the world's total fishery yield.

"Corals have the distinction of building the largest structure on earth made by living organisms - the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is larger than the Great Wall of China," Satyanarayana said.

The major reef regions in India are the Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshwadeep islands and the Gulf of Mannar, Palk Bay and Gulf of Kutch.

India has the 10th largest reef area in the world, spanning 5,790sq km.

But global warming, pollution, mining, large-scale fishing and uncontrolled tourism are taking a toll on the reefs.

Coral bleaching is one of the worst dangers to the marine ecosystem, the scientist said. Overheated seawater leads to corals expelling the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing them to turn pale, hence the term bleaching. Bleaching makes the corals more susceptible to death.

"When a coral dies, the shelter that sustains fish and hundreds of other organisms is gone. So, the entire ecosystem is in danger," Satyanarayana said.

By 2000, close to 27 per cent of the world's reefs had died from bleaching, Satyanarayana said. "The number could be 60 per cent by 2030. By 2100, most of the coral reefs would be gone if we don't act now."

In India, recent studies have shown that the Kutch reefs are in bad shape while Andaman reefs are reasonably healthy, the scientist said.

Nokia's 8110 slider phone from The Matrix makes a comeback

Get your "the-90s-called-and-they-want-their-phone-back" jokes ready.

Following the successful reissue of the Nokia 3310 mobile phone classic last year, attendees at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona were given another blast from Nokia's past: a refreshed Nokia 8110, the Finnish brand's classic banana phone.

And yes, you can play Snake on it.

The unmistakeable, sleek design of this 1996 slider phone has been preserved on the outside for anyone who still wants to answer their phone like Keanu Reeves in the cult action film The Matrix.
But the Finnish manufacturers have also updated their classic phone on the inside with an LTE radio module and popular apps like Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter.

The 8110 is set for release in May and will come in black or yellow for €90 (RM432).

Nokia's retro streak continues with the new Nokia 8 flagship, whose nickname “Sirocco” refers to the eponymous luxury version of the design phone Nokia 8800 from 2005. — dpa

After Kaala leak, Rajinikanth’s 2.0 teaser lands online

Looks like Rajinikanth is having a tough time with pranksters online. Before the first trailer of his highly anticipated Kaala could be unveiled, mischief makers leaked some footage from the teaser online. Now, Shankar-directed 2.0 too seems to have met a similar fate. A rough cut of the film, starring Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar, has found its way online and predictably gone viral.

An obviously irate Soundarya Rajinikanth, the actor’s daughter, tweeted about the leak. She wrote: “Leaking content online before the official release should not be TOLERATED or ENCOURAGED ! This is a heartless act ignoring hard work, efforts and sentiments of the makers for few seconds of excitement !!! #BeAshamed #StopPiracy #StopMisusingDigitalMedium.”

soundarya rajnikanth

✔@soundaryaarajni

Leaking content online before the official release should not be TOLERATED or ENCOURAGED ! This is a heartless act ignoring hard work, efforts and sentiments of the makers for few seconds of excitement !!! #BeAshamed #StopPiracy #StopMisusingDigitalMedium

11:28 AM - Mar 4, 2018

•  330330 Replies
 
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The hazy, nearly one-and-a-half minute video shows items, possibly cell phones, flying off the hands and tables of people. Some time through the video, a man wakes up in his bed, as a digital image of a face of a person, possibly Akshay Kumar, appears out of nowhere in front of him.

Made at an estimated budget of Rs 400 crore, Shankar’s ambitious directorial is a sequel to the successful 2010 film, Enthiran (Robot in Hindi). The film reportedly features Rajinikanth in a double role — as Dr Vaseegaran and a robot (though we still don’t know what it is called). In Enthiran, the robot was called Chitti. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan played the love interest in the first part while Amy Jackson will appear opposite Rajinikanth in this film. As per media reports, she plays a humanoid. What’s interesting is that Bollywood action man Akshay Kumar is making his Tamil debut with the film. He plays the antagonist, Dr Richard.

2.0 has been postponed thrice now from its initial schedule of December last year. Later, it was set to release in January 2018, but the makers further pushed it to April 2018. Now, the latest is that it not releasing in April too. Independence Day or Diwali weekend seems to be the likely time for its release.

The culprit seems to be the exhaustive VFX work that is going into the making of the film. Firstpost, quoting a source, said, “The VFX work is taking longer than expected because it has been distributed to many studios across the globe. The film has around 11,000 VFX shots and each shot is being worked upon with a lot of care. Shankar sir doesn’t want to compromise on the output, therefore, he doesn’t mind if the film doesn’t get completed on time for April release. The team is eyeing Independence Day weekend release. August 15 falls on a Wednesday, so the team wants to cash in on that (long) weekend. The final date is still being worked out.”

The Hidden Faces of Eating Disorders

What is the face of an eating disorder? Often, we envision a young thin white woman. However, research indicates that people at higher weights—fat people—are at increased risk for eating disorders. And their symptoms typically go unnoticed.

A recent study (Lipson & Sonneville, 2017(link is external)) examined 9713 students from 12 different colleges and found that body weight was the most consistent predictor of eating disorder symptoms. Students with a BMI in the “overweight” or “obese” range were at the highest risk and students with a BMI in the “underweight” range were surprisingly at the lowest risk. A history of elevated body weight is common in patients seeking eating disorder treatment. A 2015 study by Lebow et al(link is external). examined patients seeking treatment for restrictive eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, and found that over 36 percent of patients had a history of BMI above the 85th percentile. And disturbingly, symptoms in these patients are often not diagnosed until later and more severe stages of the illness. A 2013 article by Sim et al(link is external). that I wrote about in an earlier post found that eating disorder symptoms in adolescents with a weight history in the “overweight” or “obese” range not only were under-diagnosed, but symptoms were actually encouraged by medical professionals who congratulated these patients for losing weight.

Why are people at higher weights at increased risk of eating disorder symptoms? For one, we live in a culture that villainizes fat. Inhabiting a fat body is seen as a moral failing, evidence of being a sub-par human being. Fat people face the scorn of society and are open targets for discrimination and bigotry. It’s no wonder that so many will try anything possible to lose weight, even if that means engaging in eating disorder behaviors that compromise their health. This is not to say that eating disorder symptoms are the first line of action for people trying to lose weight. More commonly, weight loss efforts start with dieting or “healthy eating,” which gives way to disordered eating.

Eating disorder prevention and intervention efforts are often targeted at people in the “underweight” range while people categorized as “overweight” or “obese” are targeted for weight loss interventions. Fat people are told to diet, even though dieting is one of the strongest predictors for both development of eating disorders and weight gain. Isn't it time we stopped prescribing behaviors to people at higher weights that are diagnosed as eating disorder symptoms in people at lower weights? Food restriction, purging food (either through laxative use, self-induced vomiting, or exercising to compensate for calories consumed), viewing foods as “good” or “bad,” and defining our self-worth based on the numbers on the scale are unhealthy at any weight. We need to recognize these symptoms as what they are—signs of an eating disorder—even when the person who is engaging in them lives in a fat body. 

Do Fathers Treat Their Sons and Daughters Differently?

Child-rearing practices vary widely across different cultures, and views about gender differences change over time, but there do seem to be some clear consistencies in the way boys and girls are treated, especially during the first few years of life. According to Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory of gender development(link is external), parents often have clear gender stereotypes about "appropriate" behavior for different genders and rely on punishment and rewards to ensure that their children abide by these expectations. Boys are often discouraged from playing with dolls or acting "effeminately," while girls are often prevented from doing any physically risky activities. 

Some studies suggest that mothers talk more with their daughters and actively prevent them from any activity that might lead to their being injured. On the other hand, both mothers and fathers appear more prone to engage in "rough and tumble" play (RTP) with boys rather than girls. There also appear to be gender differences in how parents respond to emotional outbursts. In a 2005 research study,(link is external) fathers were found to be more receptive to daughters when they showed submissive emotions or prosocial behavior, while they were more likely to respond to boys when they acted out or showed temper tantrums.    

It is often difficult to do this kind of research, considering that most studies looking at how parents interact with their young children have focused on mothers rather than fathers. Also, parents tend to be reluctant to admit that they treat their sons and daughters differently, especially in an era of greater gender equality. For this reason, depending on self-report alone tends to provide a distorted view of the way parents actually raise their children and instill gender roles and values. 

A new study(link is external) published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience provides one of the first in-depth analyses of how fathers interact with their children and what this might mean in terms of brain physiology. A team of researchers led by James K. Rilling of Emory University's Center for Translational Social Neuroscience recruited 69 men (average age: 33) who were parents of children aged one to two years; 34 of the fathers had a daughter and 35 had a son, with no significant demographic differences between the two groups.

The study began with naturalistic photographs being taken of each of the children showing a variety of facial expressions corresponding to different emotions. The fathers were then given a mobile recording device, the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), that intermittently records snippets of conversations and other ambient sounds while the participants wearing them go about their lives. Essentially, the EAR is meant to produce an audio log of the wearer's day.  

For the purpose of the research, the fathers were asked to wear the EAR on a weekend day and a weekday. The EAR devices were set to record in 50-second bursts every nine minutes, from 8 a.m. Sunday morning to 8 a.m. Tuesday morning and, when not being worn, were kept charged in the child's bedroom. On average, each participant produced 158 audio files that could be used for the purpose of the study.   

Each 50-second audio file was independently rated by two research assistants, whose ratings were correlated to determine adequate validity. Coders were instructed to record all words spoken by the fathers in the files and a special coding system was developed to rate each file. Along with recording whether the father was talking to a child, friend, or spouse, each recorded expression was rated on whether it corresponded to one of the following categories:

• Father affective expression (laughing, singing, complaining)
• Toddler affective expression (laughing/giggling, fussing/crying)
• Father-toddler activities (reading, nonphysical play, physical play)
• Paternal caregiving behaviors (engaged attending to the child, showing empathy or affection, expressing praise and encouragement)

For fathers with more than one child (the average number of children per family was two), only those expressions directed at the target child were rated.  

Along with wearing the EAR on the designated days, the fathers also completed a self-report questionnaire on parenting. In a third laboratory session, the fathers provided blood and saliva samples and underwent structural and functional MRIs of their brains. During the f MRI sessions, each father was shown a series of photographs of their children with different facial expressions, interspersed with photographs of unknown adults and children.

Results of the auditory file analyses showed significant difference in language and behavior patterns between fathers depending on whether they were interacting with sons or daughters. As expected, fathers were more likely to engage in rough and tumble play with sons rather than daughters. This included tickling, poking, and tumbling behavior that was often aggressive in nature. When interacting with daughters, however, fathers were more likely to engage in singing or whistling, and were also more emotionally and socially responsive.

There were also significant differences in the kind of language fathers used with sons and daughters. Fathers were more likely to use achievement-related words with their sons—"top,” “win,” “proud”—while using more emotion-laden and analytical words with their daughters. This included words relating to sadness or words relating to the body. Based on behavioral results alone, fathers appear to be reinforcing gender expectations by encouraging girls to be more empathetic while encouraging boys to be more competitive.

In looking at the MRI findings, there appeared to be significant differences in brain response between fathers of daughters and fathers of sons. Fathers of daughters showed much higher activation in visual processing areas of the brain than fathers of sons when shown happy facial pictures of their children. They also showed greater activation in the orbitofrontal cortex linked to emotional regulation. Fathers of sons also showed significant brain activation when presented with neutral facial expressions which are often associated with rough and tumble play, though the exact reason for this is still unclear. On the other hand, fathers showed identical responding when presented with pictures of either their sons or daughters with sad facial expressions.  

Overall, these results highlight many of the differences seen in how fathers interact with their male and female children, and what it might mean for gender role development in children. It also demonstrates the value of EAR technology in exploring how parents play with their children, something that is often difficult to do without making parents and children feel self-conscious. Using the EAR also avoids problems with self-report data, which many parents might be unwilling to answer honestly.  

Still, while these results are consistent with previous studies looking at paternal behavior and gender roles, they also raise interesting questions about cause and effect: Do fathers treat sons and daughters differently because of their own gender expectations? Or are fathers simply responding to social and behavioral cues linked to biological differences between boys and girls? As James Rilling and his colleagues point out, males are exposed to higher levels of fetal testosterone, which has been shown to be linked to a preference for rough and tumble play. It also influences playmate selection so that both boys and girls high in fetal testosterone are more likely to prefer a more aggressive play style, something that may influence how fathers interact with them. More research is definitely needed to explore these questions further.

While most early childhood research has focused on how mothers interact with their children, this study yields some intriguing findings. Not only is there clear evidence of neural systems in the brains of fathers that respond in different ways depending on the gender of their children, but research using the EAR demonstrates differences in how fathers interact with their children and what it could mean to their later social and intellectual development. More studies such as this one may provide important clues about gender differences and the general well-being of children as they grow older.

When We Outsource Talking to Toys

Walk down the children's toy aisle in any store these days and you will be greeted with a cacophony of noise. Instead of the excited voices of children that you might expect, however, much of the chatter emanates from the toys themselves.

With one press of a little toddler finger, plastic toys shout out encouragement, offer new vocabulary words, and sing songs. While every parent and caregiver tires of the grating sound of their child's favorite electronic toy—played over and over again—many of us are drawn in by the promise that these toys will help our children learn. The promises are implied by the product categories themselves like "electronic learning systems" and "reading and writing toys." The product names underscore the supposed value with titles like "I'm ready to read!" books and an "A-B-C Counting" plastic purse.

It's not that there is a intrinsic problem with electronic toys. The problem is that these marketing messages ignore a mountain of research showing that language acquisition is an intensely social process. One of the strongest predictors(link is external) for reading ability in school is the amount of one-to-one conversation a child has in the first three years of life. There is no research showing that children learn language from electronic toys. Electronic playthings are simply not sophisticated enough to have the back and forth social interactions that build phonemic awareness and, ultimately, words. A baby needs feedback and reinforcement delivered with smiles, giggles, touch, and words. The language centers in a baby's brain thrive on real-person interaction.

The real problem with electronic toys is not only that they don't teach babies as they promise. They can get in the way of what we do know works: parent-child communication. A recent study(link is external) published in Pediatrics took a close look at how different types of toys influence these parent-child interactions. The researchers compared traditional wooden toys like blocks and age-appropriate puzzles, board books, and electronic toys marketed for language acquisition. The results were striking. It turns out that parents interact significantly less, talk less, and are less responsive when electronic toys are present. There are at least three likely reasons. First, parents would need to interrupt the electronic toy to get a word in edge-wise. Second, many parents are wary of getting in the way of the toy's "teaching power." And finally, electronic toys are a welcome break for many parents who use them as a way to entertain and engage their children.

This doesn't mean that there is never a time or place for handing over an electronic toy while you make dinner. The study is simply a powerful reminder that if we are buying children electronic toys in order to boost their language we would be better off getting out the pots and pans on the kitchen floor and chatting with our kids while we pour the pasta in.

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