Good Tech, Bad Tech: Emotional Manipulation, Moving Too Fast and Profiting on the Broken Things
Good Tech Bad Tech Originally Posted: March 4, 2020 Ken Daley, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy writes on the ethics of emerging technology in his blog Good Tech, Bad Tech. The task of keeping up with tech news has become rather harrowing as of late. The avalanche of information keeps the constant replacement of stories flowing and our attention overloaded. This has become so clearly the case that it’s easy to forget what happened just a few weeks ago. Facebook’s weak stance on political ads quickly became Google’s acquisition of our medical records before both companies then announced they would narrowly expand the minimum number of profiles required for targeted ads. In fact, I expect companies like Facebook bake our forgetting into their [...]
How Should Parents Discipline?
Fatherly Originally Posted: February 27, 2020 Psychology professor George Holden was quoted in the blog, Fatherly, about corporal punishment. Research finds it doesn’t work, he says. https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/how-should-parents-discipline-finding-alternatives-to-corporal-punishment/ Professor George W. Holden is the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Southern Methodist University, Texas where he focuses on parent-child relationships, parental cognitions, and discipline. The evidence that corporal punishment (such as spanking, smacking, or slapping) can impair child development is compelling and, at this point, overwhelming. More to the point for parents, accumulated research convincingly demonstrates that “positive child discipline” — including communicating openly and setting expectations — is much more effective than hitting a child. Still, as parents well know, not every misbehavior provides a teachable moment. Most parents think that punishment is a critical socialization tool [...]
Why You Should Swipe Right on an Optimist
Elemental Originally Posted: Feb. 13, 2020 “Involvement in a romantic relationship does not necessarily predict higher well-being,” says study leader Nathan Hudson, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University. “Rather, involvement in poor-quality romantic relationships actually predicts worse well-being than remaining single.” Romantic relationships can up the odds of being happier, living longer, and, according to new research, even help prevent or delay the onset of dementia. That is, of course, if the relationship is good. And increasingly, science shows that one of the keys to a healthy relationship is to pick a happy and optimistic partner. The latest research on the topic, published in the Journal of Personality, involved up to eight years of data on more than 4,000 heterosexual couples, revealing “a potential [...]
Listen: SMU Historian Discusses The Trump Impeachment Trial’s Place In American History
KERA Originally Posted: Feb 7, 2020 Donald Trump is only the third president in American history to be impeached. Dallas-based historian Jeffrey A. Engel sat down with Think’s Krys Boyd to discuss how Trump’s impeachment and acquittal might influence American history and the future of the presidency. Some have criticized the impeachment process as being too political — but that is exactly what the founding fathers intended, according to Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and co-author of "Impeachment: An American History.” “There’s really no secret to this in the sense that the founders wanted people to play out politics because they didn’t think politics was a bad thing,” he said. “What they were more worried about, obviously, was partisanship, [...]
Amping up the human factor in hot-button discussions
SMU Magazine Originally Posted: Dec. 6, 2019 Professor Jill DeTemple teaches students how to take topics that drive people apart and reframe the conversation around personal experiences to promote understanding. Through curious questioning and thoughtful listening, students learn they don’t have to agree with their political opposites to understand where they’re coming from. Columnist Sharon Grigsby wrote about the class published for The Dallas Morning News on October 16, 2019. READ MORE EXCERPT: Professor Jill DeTemple, in the religious studies department of SMU’s Dedman College, has developed a discussion tool, dubbed reflective structured dialogue, that she is using in her own classrooms and sharing with professors here and across the nation. The idea is to take topics that drive people apart — gun rights, abortion, [...]
SMU Study Finds Drug to Prevent Spread of HIV Cousin
D Healthcare Daily Originally Posted: December 9, 2019 Research from SMU may have found a way to prevent the spread of HTLV-1, a cousin of HIV that infects 10-15 million people. The virus causes cells to divide uncontrollably, which can lead to leukemia, neurological disease, and an inflammatory disease of the nervous system whose symptoms include affecting one’s ability to walk, coma, and even death. The drug is called Oleandrin and is derived from the Nerium oleander plant. It targets a stage in the reproduction process of the virus that has yet to be attempted by other treatment. There is no known treatment for the virus, which attacks white blood cells and is spread in a similar manner to HIV, through bodily fluid and breastmilk. “Our [...]
Can Being Happy Really Be a Matter of Being Healthy?
Psychology Today Originally Posted: December 7, 2019 When you think about the features of your life that make you happy, you’re likely to count off such factors as how well your relationships are going, whether you have enough money to pay your bills, how you feel about your work, and whether you’re having a good day so far. How often, in this listing of contributors to your happiness, do you include how healthy you’re feeling? From the opposite perspective, if you’ve got a headache, a cold, or a sore toe, you’re probably not feeling all that happy. However, as soon as you’re better, you forget how much your body’s status affected that of your mind’s. What if your happiness was affected more by your overall [...]
SMU study finds possible new way to treat HTLV-1 virus
Dallas Voice Originally Posted: December 6, 2019 A study led by SMU suggests that oleandrin — a drug derived from the Nerium oleander plant — could prevent the HTLV-1 virus from spreading by targeting a stage of the reproduction process that is not currently targeted by existing drugs. That is significant because there is currently no cure or treatment for the virus, which is related to HIV. About 38 million people have HIV worldwide while about 20 million people have the HTLV-1 virus. “Our research findings suggest that oleandrin could possibly limit the transmission and spread of HTLV-1 by targeting a unique stage in the retroviral life cycle,” said Robert Harrod, associate professor and director of Graduate Studies in SMU’s Department of Biological Sciences. Harrod is a [...]
Texas has been ground zero for capital punishment for over 40 years
Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: December 1, 2019 Dec. 1, Rick Halperin, director of the SMU Human Rights Program, co-authored by Roger C. Barnes for a piece about Texas being “ground zero” in the U.S. for carrying out capital punishment. Thus far in 2019, there have been 20 executions carried out in the United States. Eight of them have been in Texas. There are four more executions scheduled in the country by year’s end, and one of them is to be carried out in Texas. Since the death penalty in the U.S. was reinstated in 1976, there have been a total of 1,510 executions. A staggering 566 of them have been in Texas. In other words, Texas has been ground zero for capital punishment for over [...]