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15 Insane Things That Correlate With Each Other

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Why do these things correlate? These 15 correlations will blow your mind. (Is this headline sensationalist enough for you to click on it yet?)

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Long-term US study finds no links between violent video games and youth violence - Gaming - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent

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Long-term US study finds no links between violent video games and youth violence - Gaming - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent

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A new long-term study into violent media in the US could help settle the long-standing argument of whether or not violent films and video games are to blame for violence in society.

The research, led by psychologist Christopher Ferguson and published in the Journal of Communication, not only found that there was no link between violent media and behaviour but also questioned the methodology of previous studies suggesting the two were related.

Ferguson and his team point out that many laboratory-based studies into the effect of media violence have measured aggression in test subjects through "less aggressive outcomes ranging from filling in the missing letters of words through delivering nonpainful noise bursts to a consenting opponent."

The study points out that these studies also commonly "provide exposure to brief clips of media, rather than full narrative experiences" and that "the resultant aggressive behaviors are also outside a real-world context in which the aggression appears to be sanctioned by the researchers themselves."

In the first of two historical studies the researchers examined the correlation of violent films and societal violence, analysing the frequency of violent acts in the top-grossing titles between 1920 and 2005.

The study notes that film violence followed "a rough U pattern" during this time period, but that societal violence fluctuated differently, with the latter half of the 20th century even showing an increase in film violence "associated with reduced societal violence".

A second study into video game violence used data from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) to estimate the violent content of popular games from 1996 to 2011. This was then compared with data on youth violence during the same years, with the study finding a correlation between falling youth violence and the popularity of violent games.

During this time period "youth violence dropped precipitously", the researchers write, "despite maintaining very high levels of media violence in society with the introduction of videogames."

In a press statement Ferguson notes that the media narrative surrounding violent video games and youth violence may be due to the "limited amount of resources and attention" that society can devote to "the problem of reducing crime".

He adds, however, that if the wrong problem is identified, it may "distract society from more pressing concerns such as poverty, education and vocational disparities and mental health."

Ferguson writes: "This research may help society focus on issues that really matter and avoid devoting unnecessary resources to the pursuit of moral agendas with little practical value."
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Long-term US study finds no links between video games and violence

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A new long-term study into violent media in the US could help settle the long-standing argument of whether or not violent films and video games are to blame for violence in society.

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‘Not a controversial issue in Canada anymore': Majority support assisted suicide, poll finds | National Post

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‘Not a controversial issue in Canada anymore': Majority support assisted suicide, poll finds | National Post

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Canadians overwhelmingly support physician assisted suicide, and a hard core of about a third, labeled "enthusiasts," support it even in cases that do not involve pain or imminent death, but simply a wish to die.

The results come from a new poll of 1504 Canadians, conducted by Angus Reid Institute in late November, as the Supreme Court of Canada deliberates on whether to strike down Canada's ban on assisted suicide, and Quebec tried to push through its own reform of the Criminal Code.

Change is likely soon, and these strong approval numbers show that physician assisted suicide "is not a controversial issue in Canada anymore," said Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. "Of all the controversial issues you could name, this is the least controversial."

The results fall in line with earlier research that shows a social consensus emerging on physician assisted suicide, but they break down the various scenarios in greater detail.

"A significant faction [of Canadians] could be described as 'enthusiasts' who very much view this as social progress that will do more good than harm," according to the pollster.

These enthusiasts, making up a solid 37% of the population, are very supportive of the right to die across a wide range of scenarios, from a sense of meaninglessness or being a burden to one's family or even being an inmate on a life sentence who wishes to end it all early, all the way up to late stage terminal disease with intense pain.

Some of the scenarios, however, are almost certain to remain illegal even under the most permissive new legal regime for physician assisted dying, as they are for example in Oregon, which has been a North American pioneer in legal reform.

Someone with advanced Alzheimer's, for example, is not a legally competent decision maker, and yet more than two-thirds of Canadians agree a physician should be allowed to assist in the suicide of such a patient. Likewise, lack of access to medical care or a wish to make things easier on one's family by controlling the time of death are likely to remain illegal in Canada, despite roughly half of respondents approving assisted suicide in those cases.

The pollster's take is that these enthusiasts "have been successful in pulling the majority of Canadians on-side," such that another 42% are moderately supportive. Those who moderately disapprove are the smallest segment, at 8%, while 10% strongly disapprove, often on religious or quasi-religious grounds that death is a moral or metaphysical issue about the sanctity of the soul.

Older people tend to be more supportive, but there is no significant variation across income or education levels.

"I think what it shows us is that the conversation about this, the debate about this, and certainly support for physician assisted suicide is much more nuanced than we might have thought," said Shachi Kurl, senior vice president of the Angus Reid Institute.

She said a key driver of opinion is direct exposure to palliative care for a loved one, which one person in three has had in the last five years.

"If you look at how that experience went, if it was a bad experience, if the loved one was not provided with comfort and dignity at end of life, they are twice as likely as Canadians who have had no exposure to palliative care to say, yes, I support physician assisted suicide. Perhaps this is also a conversation about palliative care in this country," Ms. Kurl said. "It is an emerging issue. We're getting older as a country... The Supreme Court has to make the decision they will make, but the other piece to this is the ongoing conversation about palliative care in this country."

Just over half of respondents said that, morally, physician assisted suicide is morally acceptable in some circumstances, compared to 18% who said it is usually wrong except in very special cases, and 9% who said it is always morally wrong. More than one person in five said it is morally acceptable whenever someone freely chooses to do it.

The findings are yet more reason to expect the Supreme Court will overturn the criminal ban on assisted suicide, as Prof. Schafer expects it will. The ban was last upheld by a 5-4 decision in the 1993 case of Sue Rodriguez.

Since then, much has changed. Prof. Schafer noted that the lack of a consensus was a concern for the majority of the court in 1993.

"Every survey of public opinion for the last fifteen years has shown very strong support. So what the latest polls do is confirm that at least one major concern of both the majority and the minority 21 years ago when the Supreme Court heard Rodriguez is now beyond question," he said. "There is a very broad social consensus."

Also, at that time, no jurisdiction had legalized assisted suicide, and although both sides of the court agreed the law violated security of the person, the majority felt the possibility of harm to vulnerable people trumped that.

"But that was purely speculative. We don't have to speculate now," Prof. Schafer said. "Every one of the slippery slope predictions has been empirically refuted, and decisively. That's the decisive change."

He noted that in the arguments in the latest Supreme Court hearing, the sanctity of life was barely mentioned. He said the very concept, once crucial to the criminal law on suicide, has become, legally, a "historical relic."

The poll has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
National Post

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'Not a controversial issue in Canada anymore': Majority support assisted suicide, poll finds

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Canadians overwhelmingly support physician assisted suicide, and a hard core of about a third, labeled "enthusiasts," support it even in cases that do not involve pain or imminent death, but simply a wish to die.

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Jobs, friends, and mountains keep Canadians moving to Calgary in droves

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Jobs, friends, and mountains keep Canadians moving to Calgary in droves

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Born-and-raised Torontonians Harris Switzman and Hilary Barber are planning to pack up their possessions and re-locate to Calgary in February.

The couple is not alone - they're just two of the thousands of Canadians expected to move to Alberta's largest city in the years to come.

A Leger poll for the Herald shows 14 per cent of Canadians say they would be somewhat likely or very likely to consider moving to Calgary in the next five years.

When poll respondents were quizzed on their reasons for being likely to move to Calgary, the most-selected reason by a longshot was work, followed by family and friends, lifestyle and geography.

Switzman and Barber, who both work in environmental science, made the decision to move across the country after Barber landed a job in Calgary.

"It seems there is a lot more opportunity there (in Calgary) than here (in Toronto)," said 30-year-old Switzman.

Calgary's culture and lifestyle - Switzman describes it as a cosmopolitan city that's very diverse - and proximity to the great outdoors also didn't hurt the outdoorsy couple's decision to leave Toronto.

"We're looking forward to living somewhere that has mountains," Switzman said.

The Leger poll reflects what is occurring on the ground in Calgary, which grew by an unprecedented 38,508 people between 2013 and 2014, to more than 1.2 million.

"There's no question that Alberta in general and Calgary specifically is a magnet for labour mobility," said Ian Large, Leger's Alberta vice-president.

"Fourteen per cent (of poll respondents) saying that they're likely to move to Calgary in the next five years, that feels really strong to me. If we had asked how many people were going to move to Winnipeg or Saskatoon, I don't think we would see numbers like that, even though both places are booming as well."

When poll respondents were quizzed on their reasons for being likely to move to Calgary, the overwhelming majority (60 per cent of Canadians and 63 per cent of non-Albertans) listed "jobs/careers/economic opportunities" as a reason.

With 24,200 jobs created in the city in 2013 - more than 10 per cent of all new jobs in Canada- and an unemployment rate that's one of the lowest in the country, it's not surprising many Canadians say they would consider moving to Calgary for work.

Other reasons selected by Canadians for being likely to move to Cowtown were "family and friends" (27 per cent), "lifestyle - arts, culture, urban living" (23 per cent) and "geography, proximity to the mountains" (24 per cent.)

Respondents were allowed to choose multiple answers, so the totals do not add up to 100 per cent.

Large said the poll results reflect a dominant message that the rest of the country is continually hearing about Calgary.

"The message that Alberta generally and Calgary specifically is clearly giving out is that doors are open, there's work here, there's jobs here, there's opportunity here. That's coming through loud and clear," he said.

Mary Moran, vice-president of marketing and communications with Calgary Economic Development, said Calgary is quickly becoming a "career destination."

She said mass migration to the city can be a boon, but it does come with challenges, such as putting pressure on an already tight housing and rental market.

"Bringing people here allows us to continue to grow as an economy and it allows us to continue to grow as a community," Moran said.

"We do need the growth. The mystery question is, what is a sustainable amount of growth as a community, and socially and economically?"

For the 81 per cent of respondents who said they were unlikely to consider moving to Calgary in the next five years, the most common reason given was because the city is "too far from family and friends" (selected by 59 per cent of Canadians), followed by "too expensive" (20 per cent) and "weather" (17 per cent).

While the cross-country move is indeed one that's far from family and friends, it's one Switzman and Barber are eagerly anticipating.

"It seems like Calgary is a happening place," Switzman said.

The Leger poll was conducted online across Canada with a sample of 1,529 Canadians between Nov. 17 and Nov. 19. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
AKlingbeil@calgaryherald.com Twitter.com/AnnaliseAK

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Jobs, friends, and mountains keep Canadians moving to Calgary in droves

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The couple is not alone - they're just two of the thousands of Canadians expected to move to Alberta's largest city in the years to come. A Leger poll for the Herald shows 14 per cent of Canadians say they would be somewhat likely or very likely to consider moving to Calgary in the next five years.

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» 14 Facts That Prove That The Number Of Children Living In Poverty This Christmas Is At A Record High Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

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» 14 Facts That Prove That The Number Of Children Living In Poverty This Christmas Is At A Record High Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

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Did you know that 65 percent of all children in the United States live in a home that receives aid from the federal government? We live at a time when child poverty in America is exploding. Yes, the U.S. economy is experiencing a temporary bubble of false stability for the moment, but even during this period of false stability the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to rapidly expand and the middle class is being systematically destroyed. And sadly, this is having a disproportionate impact on children. This is happening for a couple of reasons. First of all, poorer households tend to have more children than wealthier households. Secondly, most people tend to have children when they are in their young adult years, and right now young adults are being absolutely hammered by this economy. As a result, things just continue to get even worse for children living in this country. Here are 14 facts that show that the number of children in America living in poverty this Christmas is at an all-time record high...

#1 The National Center for Children in Poverty says that 45 percent of all U.S. children belong to low income families.

#2 According to a Census Bureau report that was released just this week, 65 percent of all children in America are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government...

"Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of children," said the Census Bureau, "lived in households that participated in at least one or more of the following government aid programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Medicaid, and the National School Lunch Program."

#3 According to a report recently released by UNICEF, almost one-third of all children in this country "live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income".

#4 When it comes to child poverty, the United States ranks 36th out of the 41 "wealthy nations" that UNICEF looked at.

#5 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American children in America live in areas of "concentrated poverty".

#6 40.9 percent of all children in the United States that are living with only one parent are living in poverty.

#7 These days, a lot of single mothers are really, really struggling to survive. A decade ago, the number of women in America that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in America on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in America on food stamps actually exceeds the total number of women that have jobs.

#8 It is hard to believe, but right now 49 million Americans are dealing with food insecurity.

#9 According to a report that was released last month by the National Center on Family Homelessness, the number of homeless children in the United States has reached a new all-time high of 2.5 million.

#10 There are more than half a million homeless children in the state of California alone.

#11 One recent survey found that about 22 percent of all Americans have had to turn to a church food panty for assistance.

#12 This year, almost one out of every five households in the United States will go through the holiday season on food stamps.

#13 One of the primary reasons why kids are suffering so much is because their parents are simply not making enough money. This is especially true for parents of young children. For example, check out the following numbers from the Atlantic ...

Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care.

These numbers come from an analysis of the Census Current Population Survey by Konrad Mugglestone, an economist with Young Invincibles.

In retail, wholesale, leisure, and hospitality-which together employ more than one quarter of this age group-real wages have fallen more than 10 percent since 2007. To be clear, this doesn't mean that most of this cohort are seeing their pay slashed, year after year. Instead it suggests that wage growth is failing to keep up with inflation, and that, as twentysomethings pass into their thirties, they are earning less than their older peers did before the recession.

#14 Overall, the quality of the jobs in America continues to decline. At this point, most Americans do not bring home enough income to support a middle class lifestyle for their families. Below I have shared an excerpt from an article that I published a while back ...

The following are some statistics about wages in the U.S. from a Social Security Administration report that was recently released ...

-39 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-52 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-63 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-72 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

In addition to all of these numbers, there is also a lot of anecdotal evidence that families with children are really struggling right now.

For example, McDonald's has traditionally been a place where poor and middle class families have taken their children for a cheap meal. But the restaurant chain just released the worst sales numbers that we have seen in more than a decade.

And the really bad news is that this is just the beginning of the economic pain for families with children. The U.S. economy is in a bubble period right now, and the authorities have been trying with all of their might to keep the bubble inflated.

Just imagine a bodybuilder that is pressing with all of his might to do one more rep on the bench press. That is essentially where we are at. In a recent piece, Brian Pretti summarized some of the extraordinary measures that global central banks have taken to keep the economic bubble inflated...

Since early 2009, central banks globally have printed more than $13 trillion. In addition, governments across the planet have increased their borrowings at historic proportions (the US just crossed $18T - another new high!), all in an effort to stimulate economies and avoid deflationary pressures. Total US Federal debt has more than doubled in five years, an increase of $9.5 trillion and counting.

Despite all of these efforts, the best that we have achieved is economic stagnation.

And now it is becoming clear that the overwhelming deflationary forces around the globe are starting to win the battle. The central banks have used up their ammunition and they still have not turned things around. In fact, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard so eloquently put it recently, what we see all around us is "evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained"...

What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56pc of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83pc of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another.

These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries to break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves.

But will it still be contained once the next major financial crash strikes?

As I discussed yesterday, there has never been a time when conditions have been more ideal for a financial crisis since the last one happened in 2008.

So as bad as things are for the children of America right now, they are only going to get worse.

In the years ahead may we all have great compassion for these victims of our incredibly foolish economic mistakes.

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14 Facts That Prove That The Number Of Children Living In Poverty This Christmas Is At A Record High " Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

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Did you know that 65 percent of all children in the United States live in a home that receives aid from the federal government? We live at a time when child poverty in America is exploding. Yes, the U.S.

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INFOGRAPHIC: Pediatric cancer research by the numbers - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

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INFOGRAPHIC: Pediatric cancer research by the numbers - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

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CALGARY- The Calgary woman behind a major fundraiser to help fight cancer says more money is needed to support pediatric cancer research.

Every September Shonalie Stadnyk marks Childhood Cancer Awareness Month with a big fundraising run. Her charity, " Believe in the Gold " , was inspired by her late daughter Jacey Uphill.

"She said 'Mom, can you guys promise me that you'll make childhood cancer awareness known,'" the Calgary mother recalls.

Uphill passed away two years ago from Ewing's Sarcoma, a pediatric cancer that for decades has seen very little improvement to how it's treated. In fact many of the drugs used during Uphill's treatment have now been used for more than 60 years.

According to the Kids Cancer Care Foundation of Alberta, only about 2% to 3% of cancer research funding goes towards developing new treatments for pediatric cancer.

"In the last 20 years, we haven't moved this along fast enough," said Kids Cancer Care CEO, Chrstine McIver. "And that's just simply a matter of not having enough resources, enough pediatric oncologists and that all comes down to funding."

McIver also points out that 50 years ago, 80% of pediatric cancer patients would not survive their disease. Today, only 20% of childhood cancer patients will die. Still, that number has not improved in nearly two decades.

"Kids with brain tumours, kids with neuroblastomas and some sarcomas are still not surviving their disease and that's not good enough," said McIver. "We do not need to lose kids to cancer."

Both Kids Cancer Care and Believe in the Gold are currently working to raise money to support pediatric cancer research.

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INFOGRAPHIC: Pediatric cancer research by the numbers

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CALGARY- The Calgary woman behind a major fundraiser to help fight cancer says more money is needed to support pediatric cancer research. Every September Shonalie Stadnyk marks Childhood Cancer Awareness Month with a big fundraising run. Her charity, " Believe in the Gold " , was inspired by her late daughter Jacey Uphill.

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Learn Which Programming Language to Choose With This Infographic

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Learn Which Programming Language to Choose With This Infographic

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Learn Which Programming Language to Choose With This Infographic

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Choosing a programming language takes a lot of consideration: what do you want to do with the language, what platforms you're working with, and what salary range can you expect in the field, and more. This infographic gives you a ton of information about some of the more popular languages.

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The discovery of a spreadsheet error in an influential study by Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff inevitably raises a troubling question: To what extent can we trust what any researcher claims to be true?

The unfortunate reality is that mistakes much more serious than the one committed by Reinhart and Rogoff are far too common. Superfast computers and fancy statistical models can't save us from human frailty. But that doesn't mean empirical research has nothing to offer.

More from Bloomberg View:
- The Lawsuit That Could Bring Down the NCAA
- Refereeing Reinhart-Rogoff Debate

The Reinhart-Rogoff incident -- in which they accidentally excluded five countries from a calculation of the average relationship between government debt and economic growth -- is in some sense the wrong launching point for a discussion about modern empirical economics. It's the perfect made-for-TV mistake: It involved a simple error in a commonly used spreadsheet program that can be explained with screen shots and laughed about with friends. Moreover, it barely affected their findings, and it isn't representative of the challenges empirical research presents.

Today's empirical analyses are more likely to be based on a mash-up of huge data sets containing millions of observations, which are processed using specialized statistical software. As a result, errors can be a lot more insidious. Often they can be found only through sophisticated forensics.
Old Aphorism
In one important case, one of us (Wolfers) found an error in research on the effects of the death penalty buried deep in lines of code in the statistical program Stata. It turned out to make all the difference, shifting the conclusion from one that the death penalty saves lives to an inference that it may cost lives. In another case, one of us (Stevenson) found that the raw data released by the Census Bureau was flawed, a victim of a complicated program designed to preserve people's anonymity.

Given the complexity, it's understandable that people might fall for the old aphorism that "liars figure and figures lie," that you can say anything with statistics. But this is silly. You can say anything in English, too. Indeed, our nation's opinion pages are filled with slanted nonsense written entirely in English.

So how can non-experts and policy makers separate the useful research from the dross? Allow us to offer six rules.

1. Focus on how robust a finding is, meaning that different ways of looking at the evidence point to the same conclusion. Do the same patterns repeat in many data sets, in different countries, industries or eras? Are the findings fragile, changing as one makes small changes in how phenomena are measured, and do the results depend on whether particularly influential observations are included? Thanks to Moore's Law of increasing computing power, it has never been easier or cheaper to assess, test and retest an interesting finding. If the author hasn't made a convincing case, then don't be convinced.

2. Data mavens often make a big deal of their results being statistically significant, which is a statement that it's unlikely their findings simply reflect chance. Don't confuse this with something actually mattering. With huge data sets, almost everything is statistically significant. On the flip side, tests of statistical significance sometimes tell us that the evidence is weak, rather than that an effect is nonexistent. Remember, results can be useful even if they don't meet significance tests. Sometimes questions are so important that we need to glean whatever meaning we can from available data. The best bad evidence is still more informative than no evidence.

3. Be wary of scholars using high-powered statistical techniques as a bludgeon to silence critics who are not specialists. If the author can't explain what they're doing in terms you can understand, then you shouldn't be convinced. You wouldn't be convinced by an analysis just because it was written in ancient Latin, so why be impressed by an abundance of Greek letters? Sophisticated statistical methods can be helpful, but they can also hide more than they reveal.

4. Don't fall into the trap of thinking about an empirical finding as "right" or "wrong." At best, data provide an imperfect guide. Evidence should always shift your thinking on an issue; the question is how far.

5. Don't mistake correlation for causation. For instance, even after revisions and corrections, Reinhart and Rogoff have demonstrated that economic growth is typically slower when government debt is higher. But does high debt cause slow growth, or is slow growth in gross domestic product the cause of higher debt-to-GDP ratios? Or are there other important determinants, such as populist spending by a government looking to get re- elected, which is more likely when growth is slow and typically drives debt up?

6. Always ask "so what?" Are the factors that drove the observed negative correlation between debt and GDP likely to exist today, in the U.S.? Does it even make sense to speak of "the" relationship between debt and economic growth, when there are surely many such relationships: Governments borrowing simply to fund their re-election are likely harming growth, while those investing in much-needed public works can provide the foundation for growth. The "so what" question is about moving beyond the internal validity of a finding to asking about its external usefulness.

You might be tempted to conclude that extracting meaning from data is a hopelessly difficult task. It's difficult, but it's not hopeless. The only alternative to facts is intuition, which is not only flawed but also, according to psychologists, more flawed than we think it is. Far better to base policy on imperfect analyses than on the fact-free bloviating of the ideologues, charlatans and political hucksters who would take their place.

(Betsey Stevenson is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. Justin Wolfers is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, and a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. Both are Bloomberg View columnists. This is the second in a series of articles related to the Reinhart-Rogoff research. Read part one. The opinions expressed are their own.)

To contact the writers of this article: Justin Wolfers at jwolfers@umich.edu and Betsey Stevenson at betseys@umich.edu.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Mark Whitehouse at mwhitehouse1@bloomberg.net.

BEFORE YOU GO

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reinhart rogoff austerity research errors

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The discovery of a spreadsheet error in an influential study by Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff inevitably raises a troubling question: To what extent can we trust what any researcher claims to be true? The unfortunate reality is that mistakes much more serious than the one committed by Reinhart and Rogoff are far too common.

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Granger Causality test can make epilepsy surgery more effective -- ScienceDaily

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Granger Causality test can make epilepsy surgery more effective -- ScienceDaily

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A new statistical test that looks at the patterns of high-frequency network activity flow from brain signals can help doctors pinpoint the exact location of seizures occurring in the brain and make surgery more effective, according to researchers at Georgia State University and Emory University School of Medicine. The findings are published in the journal Epilepsia.

Emory researchers Dr. Charles Epstein, Dr. Robert Gross and Dr. Jon Willie; Dr. Bhim Adhikari, a post doctoral researcher at Georgia State, and Dr. Mukesh Dhamala, an associate professor of physics and neuroscience at Georgia State, studied two groups of patients suffering from epileptic seizures, two patients who were awaiting surgery and eight who had already undergone surgery to eliminate their seizures.

The statistical test known as Granger causality spectral analysis was installed in a computer program, and the researchers found they were able to pinpoint where seizures were originating in the brain and detect seizures up to 10 seconds earlier than previously possible.

"Because of a serious deficit in our fundamental understanding of seizure sources and propagation pathways in the brain, there's about a 50 percent cure rate," Dhamala said. "Identifying seizure sources is an imperfect process. Currently, there are no universally established criteria to clinically identify the seizure onset zones useful for successful surgery. So we've tried to contribute to identifying where a seizure comes from so that the doctor can target the mostly likely seizure sources. Without identifying the location, the surgery cannot happen. For the two patients who were going to have surgery, our results helped to identify the locations of their seizures and eliminate some suspected locations for the doctors to operate."

A seizure is an abnormal, uncontrollable electrical discharge in the brain that produces changes in awareness, sensations and motor behaviors. More than 50 million people worldwide and 2.5 million people in the United States suffer from epileptic seizures. Thirty percent of these cases don't respond to medication, making surgery in which a doctor removes the part of the brain where the seizures originate the only option, Dhamala said.

To identify precisely where seizures are coming from, a person is hospitalized, his or her skull is opened and electrodes are implanted in the brain so electrical activity can be monitored when a seizure occurs.

For the two patients in the study awaiting surgery, the researchers used Granger causality analysis to evaluate intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings of the patients' brains, locate the seizures and determine which parts of the brain are not the sources of the seizures.

For the eight post-surgery patients, this analysis was not applied for surgical decision-making. The researchers analyzed iEEG recordings taken before surgery to determine if the correct part of the brain was removed. Two of the patients suffered relapses and weren't free of seizures, and the research team concluded the part of the brain that was removed during surgery was inconsistent with their statistical findings about which part was causing the seizures. The researchers identified where the seizures were originating, and doctors were able to prescribe medication to manage the seizures. Both patients improved and remain seizure-free one year later.

The team chose to use Granger causality analysis because it can be applied to any network phenomena that have time series recordings from dynamic processes, such as epileptic seizures. A seizure starts in one part of the brain and spreads to other parts. Granger causality can estimate the direction, strength and frequency of information flow among the recording sites.

In the future, the research team would like to make the computer program faster and able to handle larger data sets, which would allow it to assist doctors in real time and be implemented into medical treatment for epileptic patients. They would also like to develop a graphical interface that can show the time series and pattern of causal flow of seizures side by side.

In addition, they would like to understand how high frequency network activity in the brain relates to underlying structural abnormalities. In this study, they showed that high-frequency activity can be detected early and used to predict seizures.

This study was supported by a grant from the Brains and Behavior program at Georgia State. The study, "Application of High-Frequency Granger Causality to
Analysis of Epileptic Seizures and Surgical Decision Making," is available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1528-1167.

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epilepsy research; birth defects; today's healthcare; epilepsy; brain-computer interfaces; intelligence; neural interfaces; computer modeling; statistics

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Granger Causality test can make epilepsy surgery more effective

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A new statistical test that looks at the patterns of high-frequency network activity flow from brain signals can help doctors pinpoint the exact location of seizures occurring in the brain and make surgery more effective, according to researchers at Georgia State University and Emory University School of Medicine.

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Statistics Canada identifies 'human error' in July jobs report - Politics - CBC News

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Statistics Canada identifies 'human error' in July jobs report - Politics - CBC News

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Statistics Canada has identified the error in its July employment numbers, as federal officials say no new employment insurance claims are being processed as they wait for the corrected data to be released.

Sylvie Michaud, director of the agency's general, education, labour and income statistics branch, said Statistics Canada has been able to determine where the error occurred, but is waiting until Friday to release new data to allow time to adjust packaging of the report.

"We've been able to localize where it was in the process. This was a human error. There was something that should have been caught, that was not caught," she said.

Kathleen Martin, a spokeswoman for Employment and Social Development Canada, confirmed that no one has received EI benefits based on the incorrect data from Statistics Canada, given the two-week waiting period for employment insurance.

The correction will have no effect on the delivery and processing times of EI claims.

This is as bad as it gets. - Philip Cross, former chief economic analyst for Statistics Canada

Philip Cross, former chief economic analyst for Statistics Canada, said he thinks the delay in releasing the new employment data reflects the nature of the error.

"This is as bad as it gets. There is no cost, at this point, in waiting for Friday, because the damage has been done," he said.

Cross said he thinks the error was likely the employment number, considering that Statistics Canada is delaying the release of the corrected data until Friday. Given the potential effect it could have on the economy if the new data were incorrect, the agency can't afford to get it wrong again, he said.

" They don't want to have any impact on the markets. The only number that would impact markets is the employment," he said.

The NDP blamed the Conservatives' cuts to Statistics Canada for the error.

"Conservative cuts are taking a toll on Statistics Canada's ability to provide reliable data," said NDP industry critic Peggy Nash in a statement. "We've already seen many surveys scrapped and data quality diminished with serious impacts on the ability of government to deliver services across the board."

But Cross said that cuts to the agency would likely not have had any effect on the labour force survey, since that division has mostly gone untouched.

"When Stats Can cut back ... they were made in things like agriculture statistics. It's really quite banal, when you look at the cuts they've made, they were made in the less important areas," he said.

"They didn't cut from labour force survey at all, because if you make a mistake with livestock stats or railway statistics, you're not going to be front page news. It's a whole different thing to make a mistake in employment numbers."

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Stats Can July jobs report pulled over 'human error' | CBC News

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Statistics Canada has identified the error in its July employment numbers, as federal officials say no new employment insurance claims are being processed as they wait for the corrected data to be released.

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A map showing unemployment rates across Canada.

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FBI releases hate crime statistics - CBS News

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FBI releases hate crime statistics - CBS News

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The FBI on Monday released statistics relating to hate crimes committed in 2013, showing that nearly half of the victims were targeted on the basis of race.

Law enforcement agencies reported 5,922 hate crimes motivated by a single bias last year involving 7,230 victims (another six hate crimes involving 12 victims were motivated by multiple biases). Of those 7,230 victims, 49.3 percent were targeted because of the perpetrators' racial bias, the FBI reports. Another 20.2 percent were victimized because of sexual orientation biases, while nearly 17 percent were targeted because of religious biases. Another 11.4 percent were victimized due to ethnicity bias.

This year's hate crimes report is the first to include bias categories of gender and gender identity, as required by the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009. The report shows 0.5 percent of victims were targeted because of gender identity while 0.4 percent were targeted because of gender bias.

Of the 5,814 known offenders, 52.4 percent were white while 24.3 percent were black, the report shows. Race was unknown for 14.8 percent of the offenders. Among the 2,527 offenders for whom age was identified, most -- 68 percent -- were 18 or older. The report also shows that nearly a third of hate crimes occurred in or near residences or homes.

The report comes on the same day the Justice Department released its long-awaited revised racial profiling guidelines for federal law enforcement. The new guidelines prohibit officers from profiling on the basis of gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and general identity, in addition to race and ethnicity.

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The FBI on Monday released statistics relating to hate crimes committed in 2013, showing that nearly half of the victims were targeted on the basis of race. Law enforcement agencies reported 5,922 hate crimes motivated by a single bias last year involving 7,230 victims (another six hate crimes involving 12 victims were motivated by multiple biases).