Boy, 7, Steals Car in Michigan
A young boy got behind the wheel because he missed his father. Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.It was centuries ago, right around this time, when the city of Aachen, Germany, was struck by an unusual outbreak that, legend says, spread as far away as Madagascar.
According to the scant written accounts there are of the outbreak known as St. Vitus' Dance, back in 1374, groups of people -- sometimes thousands at a time -- started dancing uncontrollably. It continued for days, and in some cases, weeks and months. Some people reportedly danced until they collapsed from exhaustion or even death, while others suffered heart attacks and broken bones.
"One written account described people as united by one common delusion," said James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego.
The dancers also seemed to hallucinate and lose control of their senses, Fowler said.
To this day, no one knows what led so many people into the dancing fits. At the time, many people believed it was a curse.
Fowler and other experts, however, believe the 14th-century dancing outbreak was an early example of social contagion. Just as yawning and laughing seem to be contagious, experts say manic dancing can be as well.
St. Vitus' Dance, which began exactly 637 years ago last Friday, is also a medical condition known as Sydenham chorea, named after the doctor who discovered it. The disease seemed to resemble the manic dancing that took place in Europe in honor of St. Vitus, the patron saint of entertainers.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke describes Sydenham chorea as a central nervous system disorder characterized by jerking movements mostly of the face, arms, legs and hands. It's caused by infection by the same bacteria that cause rheumatic fever.
But as far as the early dancing outbreak is concerned, it's consistent with the belief that people tend to mimic others around them.
"We tend to imitate body language and the emotional state of people that we're with, and we're not aware of it," Fowler said.
John Cacioppo, director of the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, said, "A couple of different processes contribute to something like this. One is peer pressure. If you're sittng in a setting and everyone is acting in a certain way, you do the same thing."
There's also a concept called pluralistic ignorance, which Cacioppo described as, "I would stop, but I don't see anyone else stopping."
In his book "Connected," California's Fowler described St. Vitus' Dance in some detail and also talked about other episodes of mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, including a 1962 outbreak of laughter among schoolgirls in Tanzania.
Fowler also said other things are socially contagious, such as obesity, happiness and loneliness.
"Someone has an intense emotional experience, and because of its intensity, passes it on to other people," Fowler explained.
Past research has suggested that mirror neurons contribute to this behavior.
"These are neurons in the part of the brain that you use to move your own body," Fowler said. "They fire when someone else is doing something."
Mirror neurons are at work often, though they only rarely cause episodes such as St. Vitus' Dance or the African laughing outbreak.
"It's unusual to find it in such a concentrated form, but it's easy to find contagion and mimicry every day," Cacioppo says. "Even babies show it."
Youths hurled rocks and fire bombs at riot police in central Athens on Tuesday as a general strike against new austerity measures brought the country to a standstill.
Lawmakers are embarking on their second day of debate on austerity measures that must be passed in votes on Wednesday and Thursday if Greece is to receive another batch of bailout funds to see it beyond the middle of next month.
If the votes don't pass, Greece could become the first eurozone nation to default on its debts, and that could send out huge shock waves through the global economy.
The new austerity drive is proving hugely unpopular in Greece and another demonstration in central Athens soon descended into violence. For several hours, police fired volleys of tear gas and stun grenades at masked and hooded youths just before the second day of debating was to resume. Police said 18 people were detained, with five of them later arrested, while four policemen were injured and transferred to a military hospital.
The clashes came at the start of a two-day strike called by unions furious that the new euro28 billion ($40 billion) austerity program will slap taxes on minimum wage earners and other struggling Greeks. The measures come on top of other spending cuts and tax hikes that have sent Greek unemployment soaring to over 16 percent.
"The situation that the workers are going through is tragic and we are near poverty levels," said Spyros Linardopoulos, a protester with the PAME union blockading the port of Piraeus. "The government has declared war and to this war we will answer back with war."
A peaceful demonstration of 20,000 people in Athens was soon marred by outbreaks of violence, when two groups clashed. One side took refuge near a coffee shop, and police fired tear gas in an attempt to clear the crowds and get them out.
The situation quickly degenerated, with masked and hooded youths pelting police with chunks of marble ripped off building facades and steps. They set fire to giant parasols at an outdoor cafe, using some to form barricades, and smashed windows of a McDonalds outlet and other snack shops.
Staff at upscale hotels handed out surgical masks to tourists and helped them with rolling luggage past the rioting, over ground strewn with smashed-up marble and cement paving stones.
Youths torched a satellite truck parked near parliament. The fire caused a freezer at a neighboring kiosk to explode, and hooded youths ducked behind the burning truck to help themselves to ice-cream cones.
"The troublemakers are attacking the police fiercely and trying to disrupt a peaceful protest," police spokesman Athanasios Kokalakis said.
The scale of the strike bought large parts of the Greek economy to a halt. Everyone from doctors and ambulance drivers to casino workers and even actors at a state-funded theater were joining the strike or holding work stoppages for several hours.
An ongoing strike by electricity company workers kept up rolling blackouts across Greece. Not far from the violent protest, cafes and ice cream vendors popular with tourists used portable generators to keep the power on.
Hundreds of flights were canceled or rescheduled as air traffic controllers walked off the job for four hours in the morning. Another walkout is scheduled for later. Strikes by public transport workers snarled traffic across the capital and left tourists stranded around Piraeus.
A wildfire has swelled to more than 93 square miles in the mountains above a northern New Mexico town that is home to a government nuclear laboratory.
Firefighters worked through the night and into Tuesday hoping to put out spot fires erupting ahead of the 60,000-acre blaze.
Crews are burning some areas to rob the fire of fuel. They are also clearing out brush at homes on the western side of Los Alamos as a precaution.
Thousands of residents remained evacuated Tuesday and the fire has forced the closure of Los Alamos National Laboratory for another two days.
Lab officials say all nuclear and hazardous materials, including those at the lab's principal waste storage site, are accounted for and protected.
A chemical found in common plastics may undermine a man's masculinity and his ability to attract a female, or at least that's what a new study on mice may suggest.
It is the latest research to question the health safety of the hormone-changing compound bisphenol-A, or BPA.
In the study, researchers found that female mice were not attracted to male mice that were exposed to BPA in the womb. They also noted that males exposed to the chemical in the womb were more likely to behave like females.
Researchers said female mice exposed to BPA were unaffected by the chemical.
It's possible that BPA exposure alters the males' hormone signals, researchers said, and some say the chemical exposure may have the same effect on people by altering developmental sexual traits in boys and girls.
"BPA has been shown to suppress the early production of testosterone. In short, the females can sense [the males'] compromised state and are less attracted to these males," said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor in biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri and co-author of the study.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 1 million pounds of BPA are released into the environment each year, primarily uised as an ingredient to harden plastic. The chemical has been widely scrutinized, causing several consumer products, including baby bottles, water bottles and microwavable dishware made with the compound, to be taken off the shelves.
Last year, the European Union and Canada banned the use of BPA in baby bottles. Many U.S. states are following suit by considering a ban on the chemical, as well.
Chemical in Plastics Threatening Masculinity?
Last week, the American Medical Association voted to adopt a policy which recognized BPA as a chemical that interferes with human hormones. The organization now urges makers of BPA plastics to label and identify the chemical in the product.
"While the exact outcomes may differ in humans, there is reason for concern that sex-specific behavioral alterations are a significant risk following prenatal exposure to BPA," said Dr. Rodney Dietert, professor of immunotoxicology at Cornell University. "Brain, behavior and immune effects are commonly seen with developmental exposure to BPA."
In a previous study, researchers linked BPA to lower sperm counts and smaller testes in male mice. Another study reported that a female mouse had reduced pregnancy rates when she mated with a male exposed to BPA, said Dr. John Spangler, associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
"This study adds to the increasing evidence that BPA is a toxin that we should regulate more stringently," said Spangler.
Researchers said the mice were fed food laced with BPA at levels considered safe for human exposure, but the American Chemistry Council disagreed, saying "typical human exposures are miniscule compared to the dose used in the study."
"Given the incredibly high exposure levels of BPA used in this study—a single dose level approximately 250,000 times higher than typical human intake – there is little to be learned from the authors' work," the American Chemistry Council said in a statement.
