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Binging Source: Joseph Mazur Many organisms perform best at certain hours of the day. Almost all animals, insects, and plants rely on some internal rhythm that we could call an internal clock that connects to the external events of sunlight and moonlight. Bees know the time of day purely from the sun’s position even though their movements change from day to day. Birds use innate migration routes to navigate, and so do many insects. There are trees whose leaves close at night, open at sunrise, and completely unfold by noon. The physiology of many organisms follows the time of day without external cues. And we know that all organisms adjust to seasonal variations of daylight from hidden cues. We are a bundle of clocks built from a feedback loop system that operates by a specific gene expression with a relatively short half-life. In essence and generality, the loop simply behaves like this: The quantity of A molecules increases, reaching a threshold that creates B molecules … [Read more...] about The Connection Between CLOCK Genes and Binge Drinking

Lately, I have been thinking a fair bit about decision-making. COVID-19 has confronted us with a range of significant choices: about whether, and to what degree, to embrace lockdowns, about closing and reopening elementary schools, about who should get the vaccine first, and so on. As we have engaged with these choices, there have been people on both sides making good-faith cases for their point of view. There are some who passionately think we should reopen elementary schools, and there are some who passionately wish to keep them remote-only. There are some who feel lockdowns should remain in place until vaccines are widely distributed; there are others who feel a phased reopening is both feasible and necessary for countering the economic consequences of the pandemic. There are some who think vaccine priority should be guided exclusively by who is likeliest to die from the virus and there are some who favor an equity-based approach that accounts for the historic disadvantage that … [Read more...] about Social Media Is Clouding Our Judgment About Health

Sharks get a bad rap in most media. On the very rare occasions when a shark attacks a human, even when there are warnings that sharks are in the area, the sharks are at fault and anti-shark campaigns show up all over the place. Yes, sharks do attack humans and it's often a very sad and tragic event. However, numerous myths surround just who sharks truly are. And, there are many different species of these incredible fishes, 509 as of now, so speaking about "the shark" is very misleading. Only around 30 of these 509 species are known to have bitten humans without provocation and only 11 species have been identified as causing fatalities. I always want to learn more about sharks, so I was pleased to receive a new book by marine biologist and shark expert Dr. Blake Chapman titled Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fear . Source: With permission of the publisher I reached out to Dr. Chapman to see if she could take the time to answer a few questions and … [Read more...] about Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings, and Human Fear

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented cities, countries, and the world, with a series of difficult trade-offs: Should they prevent more infection or reduce unemployment? Limit contagion to lessen mortality or cease social isolation ? Re-open schools, and if so, under what conditions, and at what cost to the worsening of a second wave of the pandemic? These are difficult decisions. They arguably involve incommensurable goods: life, health, social connection, knowledge/ education , and the economy. Moreover, the trade-offs between these goods are likely to differ in different regions. Calculus of Lives in COVID-19 Decisions A JAMA article just published by the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard proposes an approach to navigating these decisions that takes well-being into account while prioritizing life itself. It can feel harsh, unreasonable, or even immoral to value economic consequences or personal happiness against the number of lives lost. Our approach avoids … [Read more...] about Well-Being and the Calculus of Lives Under COVID-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has altered daily life in countless ways, with potentially dire implications for well-being. From struggles with finding childcare or learning to work from home, to the toll taken on one’s health by social isolation , or on one’s finances by unemployment, the effects have been profound, and their combinations across individuals and institutions seemingly endless. At the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, we have been trying to study and understand, empirically and quantitatively, how various domains of flourishing have changed during the pandemic. The results of this research are available in a newly published study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine . The Pandemic and Well-Being in the Nation This study used our flourishing measure across six domains of human life: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material … [Read more...] about National Well-Being Before and During the Pandemic