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My stem talk is about how stem works and how technology helps kids learn.

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I will explain how the periodic table is related to STEM. My resource is The Elements By Theodore Gray.

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My STEM talk is about the curriculum at STEM.

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My Stem topic is the power of broadcasting and how it changes the world positively.

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My topic for the stem topic is comparing our schooling to our partents schooling. Our schooling is more advanced but if you really think about it, is it that different ? Really it's not, it's just more advanced and interactive. Our schooling here at stem and are parents schooling have really comman features, the biggest difference is technology.

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My topic for the stem topic is

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My STEM topic is on how useful and important it can be to learn about the STEM field of education. I will also explain the meaning to the acronym STEM.

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Credit: alphaspirit | Shutterstock

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.

Though the United States has historically been a leader in these fields, fewer students have been focusing on these topics recently. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 16 percent of high school students are interested in a STEM career and have proven a proficiency in mathematics. Currently, nearly 28 percent of high school freshmen declare an interest in a STEM-related field, a department website says, but 57 percent of these students will lose interest by the time they graduate from high school.

As a result, the Obama administration announced the 2009 "Educate to Innovate" campaign to motivate and inspire students to excel in STEM subjects. This campaign also addresses the inadequate number of teachers skilled to educate in these subjects. The goal is to get American students from the middle of the pack in science and math to the top of the pack in the international arena.

Thirteen agencies are partners in the Committee on Stem Education (CoSTEM), including mission science agencies and the U.S. Department of Education. CoSTEM is working to create a joint national strategy to invest federal funds in K-12 STEM education, increasing public and youth STEM engagement, improving the STEM experience for undergraduates, reaching demographics underrepresented in STEM fields, and designing better graduate education for the STEM workforce. The Department of Education now offers a number of STEM-based programs, including research programs with a STEM emphasis, STEM grant selection programs and general programs that support STEM education.

The Obama administration's 2014 budget invests $3.1 billion in federal programs on STEM education, with an increase of 6.7 percent over 2012. The investments will be made to recruit and support STEM teachers, as well as support STEM-focused high schools with STEM Innovation Networks. The budget also invests into advanced research projects for education, to better understand next-generation learning technologies.

All of this effort is to meet a need. According to a report by the website STEMconnector.org, by 2018, projections estimate the need for 8.65 million workers in STEM-related jobs. The manufacturing sector faces an alarmingly large shortage of employees with the necessary skills - nearly 600,000. The field of cloud computing alone will have created 1.7 million jobs between 2011 and 2015, according to the report. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2018, the bulk of STEM careers will be:

Computing - 71 percent

Traditional Engineering - 16 percent

Physical sciences - 7 percent

Life sciences - 4 percent

Mathematics - 2 percent

STEM jobs do not all require higher education or even a college degree. Less than half of entry-level STEM jobs require a bachelor's degree or higher. However, a four-year degree is incredibly helpful with salary - the average advertised starting salary for entry-level STEM jobs with a bachelor's requirement was 26 percent higher than jobs in the non-STEM fields, according to the STEMconnect report. For every job posting for a bachelor's degree recipient in a non-STEM field, there were 2.5 entry-level job postings for a bachelor's degree recipient in a STEM field.

This is not a problem unique to the United States. In the United Kingdom, the Royal Academy of Engineering reports that the Brits will have to graduate 100,000 STEM majors every year until 2020 just to meet demand. According to the report, Germany has a shortage of 210,000 workers in the mathematics, computer science, natural science and technology disciplines.

What separates STEM from the traditional science and math education is the blended learning environment and showing students how the scientific method can be applied to everyday life. It teaches students computational thinking and focuses on the real world applications of problem solving. As mentioned before, STEM education begins while students are very young:

Elementary school - STEM education focuses on the introductory level STEM courses, as well as awareness of the STEM fields and occupations. This initial step provides standards-based structured inquiry-based and real world problem-based learning, connecting all four of the STEM subjects. The goal is to pique students' interest into them wanting to pursue the courses, not because they have to. There is also an emphasis placed on bridging in-school and out-of-school STEM learning opportunities.

Middle school - At this stage, the courses become more rigorous and challenging. Student awareness of STEM fields and occupations is still pursued, as well as the academic requirements of such fields. Student exploration of STEM related careers begins at this level, particularly for underrepresented populations.

High school - The program of study focuses on the application of the subjects in a challenging and rigorous manner. Courses and pathways are now available in STEM fields and occupations, as well as preparation for post-secondary education and employment. More emphasis is placed on bridging in-school and out-of-school STEM opportunities.

Much of the STEM curriculum is aimed toward attracting underrepresented populations. Female students, for example, are significantly less likely to pursue a college major or career. Though this is nothing new, the gap is increasing at a significant rate. Male students are also more likely to pursue engineering and technology fields, while female students prefer science fields, like biology, chemistry, and marine biology. Overall, male students are three times more likely to be interested in pursuing a STEM career, the STEMconnect report said.

Ethnically, Asian students have historically displayed the highest level of interest in the STEM fields. Prior to 2001, students of an African-American background also showed high levels of interest in STEM fields, second only to the Asian demographic. However, since then, African-American interest in STEM has dropped dramatically to lower than any other ethnicity. Other ethnicities with high STEM interest include American Indian students.

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STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.

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My topic is Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is a mixture of Virtual Reality and the real world. It is usually in the form of a headset with a transparent screen in from of your eyes, to make it appear for holograms to be in your world or in front of your eyes.

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My stem talk will be about A easier way to transport computers

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Sorry sent to early but for my stem talk I will be doing how artificial intelligence can change education.

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For my stem talk I will be

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My stem talk is about how. Ideo games can really help people in school

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My STEM talk topic is about how scientists can figure a way to grow food and plants in space. http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/spacelife/topics/plants/index.html#.VdjEJFNwTIU

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My STEM talk topic is about how stem cells in the body could help any disease http://topics.time.com/stem-cells/.

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My stem talk is going to be about the ocean, how it is in danger and how to help it.

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Learn more about life in the sea and the challenges facing our oceans.

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My Stem talk topic, that I won't be submitting, is focusing on why we have freedoms in school but we aren't allowed to use them.

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My Stem talk is about ho the medical field relates to STEM

For example a computer system analyst you need to be goal focused and process based

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My topic fore my stem talk is how technology evovled today's edu

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My stem talks is about hwo global warming effects the world and how it relates to stem.

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My stem talk is about how video games relates with education.

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http://sheu.org.uk/sites/sheu.org.uk/files/imagepicker/1/eh203mg.pdf

This is my website for my topic.

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My stem talk is about violence video games and how they are affecting people in the real world. More and more crimes are being committed.

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My stem talk is how a connection with a plant and human connection help with learning of bio engeering.

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I am going to doing my STEM Talk on genetically modified food and how this is good and can help.

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I am going to do women engineers because women are the same as men but there are fewer women in the field of engineering.

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In my stem talk I will be talking about my life in stem and how great this school.

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For my STEMTalk, I will be talking about how Technology and Enginerung have advanced, my main example will be a robotic hotel that was built and is running in Japan.

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For my STEMTalk, I'll be talking about how much technology, engineering, and

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As if hitting a base ball isn't hard enough my STEM talk is about the magnus force of how baseball ball hit by a bat. I'm going to explain Why Mike Trout, Miguel Cabera, Babe Ruth, and Ty Cobb all hit the baseball.

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For my topic I am doing how other schools have to do worksheets and STEM gets to do more advanced things.

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Virtual reality for education is the FUTURE. For education 😫

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For my stemtalk topic I'm going to do a 360 cam movie. I want to do this because think it whould be cool to look any where you want in the movie in a circle

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Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it a real or imagined one.

Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones.

Some advanced, haptic systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback, in medical and gaming applications.

Users can interact with a virtual environment or a virtual artifact (VA) either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove, the Polhemus boom arm, and/or omnidirectional treadmill.

The simulated environment can be similar to the real world, for example, simulations for pilot or combat training, or it can differ significantly from reality, as in VR games.

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perception; spirituality; virtual reality; video games; computer modeling

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Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it a real or imagined one. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones.

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My stem topic is virtual reality and enhancing it with neuro-science

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My stem topic is virtual reality affects historical event

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My STEM topic is how the medical field relates to STEM.

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For my STEM talk Topic I will be explaining how video games can help students boost up their creativity.

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The topic of my STEM Talk is about how video games can be used for education. I believe that video games are able to teach us about life and other things.

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My topic will be about how Artificial intelligence is used and how it helps with problems and how they are used in every day life.

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My topic will

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My stem topic is how to help the environment. We can help the environment in many ways. First you can start picking up trash then you go bigger and do things that can help the worl

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My stem topic is about how virtual reality can solve worldwide problems. Here is a website that helped me http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/03/05/virtual_reality_technology_could_address_anxiety_ptsd_and_phobias_will_we.html

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My STEMtalk topic is about social media. Including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Snapchat

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The topic I plan on exploring for my STEMTALK is Space Debris Tracking. I think STEM's future will be depended from this because Space Debris will either fall on Earth or float away from Earth and orbit somewhere else. We need to prevent debris from falling on Earth to protect humanity. Worst case scenario, falling debris or space devises could cause a World War III. Back to the subject, we need to find where that debris is and to capture or destroy it before it falls on Earth. There might be other problems we will be dealing with, (constructive or destructive) but the universe is very big.

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Although outer space is often imagined to be a desolate, empty place, the region around Earth swarms with millions pieces of man-made debris that create potential hazards for their functioning neighbors. Where did all of this junk come from? Will it ever go away? What kind of problems might it create for people stationed on Earth? Let's take a look.

This computer illustration depicts the density of space junk around Earth in low-Earth orbit.

Credit: ESA

The source of space junk

With the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, mankind began its journey to reach the stars. But although the first probe in space returned to Earth after only three short months, it kicked off a series of launches that not only inspired people around the world but also filled the region with large chunks of inert metal.

Inactive satellites, the upper stages of launch vehicles, discarded bits left over from separation, and even frozen clouds of water and tiny flecks of paint all remain in orbit high above Earth's atmosphere. When one piece collides with another, even more debris is released. Over 21,000 pieces of space trash larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) and half a million bits of junk between 1 cm and 10 cm are estimated to circle the planet. And the number is only predicted to go up.

There are also millions of pieces of debris smaller than a third of an inch (1 cm). In Low Earth-orbit, objects travel at 4 miles (7 kilometers) per second. At that speed, a tiny fleck of paint packs the same punch of a 550 pound object traveling at 60 miles per hour. Not only can such an impact damage critical components such as pressurized items, solar cells, or tethers, they can also create new pieces of potentially threatening debris.

For fifty years, the primary source of all of the junk came from objects that exploded by accident. However, in 2007, the intentional destruction of the Chinese weather satellite Fengyun-1C as part of an anti-satellite missile test created a significant field of space debris. Two years later, a defunct Russian military satellite struck an operational American Iridium satellite over northern Siberia, blowing even more trash into space. [ Worst Space Debris Events of All Time]

An ounce of prevention

Despite the small size of most of the objects in space, the U.S. and Russian military are able to keep track of a great deal of the mess. Objects as small as 4 inches (about 10 cm) can be seen by radars or optical telescopes on Earth. When preparing a launch, mission controllers screen the predicted post-launch orbit for potential collisions to avoid as much damage as possible. Similarly, crafts such as the space shuttle and the International Space Station can change their orbits if a larger object approaches.

But everything sent into space still faces potential collisions with smaller, untrackable objects that can pit or damage them. Satellites and space craft are heavily shielded to protect vital components. At NASA's Hypervelocity Impact Technology Facility in Texas, new protective materials can be tested by shooting objects from a Light-Gas gun to simulate space junk collisions.

This tank from the space shuttle Columbia, which was destroyed during re-entry to Earth in 2003, was found in 2011 in east Texas.

Credit: Nacogdoches Police Department

Watch for falling objects

Earth's orbit is segregated into three distinct regions. Low Earth-orbit (LEO), covers the area 125-1,250 miles (200-2000 km). Pieces of space junk in this region are impacted by the atmosphere, which degrades their orbit, dragging them back to Earth sooner. This is a prime realm for piloted spacecraft due to its easy access. Navigation and communication satellites tend to prefer a semi-synchronous orbit 6,000 to 12,000 miles (10,000 to 20,000 km) above the surface. Satellite telecommunication and weather satellites orbit in geosynchronous Earth orbit, over 22,000 miles (36,000 km) high, and can remain aloft for millions of years. The lower the orbit, the less time the object is likely to remain in space before returning to Earth.

Bits and pieces of trash constantly fall from the sky, but nearly everything larger than 4 inches (10 cm) survives in some form, likely in smaller fragments. In the last five decades, an average of one piece of debris fell to the Earth each day. Most of the trash raining down burns up in the atmosphere before it ever reaches the surface. Those that survive often fall into water; remember, the ocean makes up approximately 70 percent of the Earth's surface. According to NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, no serious injury or significant property damage from falling debris has been confirmed.

Video: An SM-3 missile launched from the USS Lake Erie hits a wayward satellite Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008.

Adopt an atmosphere

In recent years, various space organizations have worked to reduce the amount of trash added to Earth's orbit by implementing better designs. Russia, China, Japan, France, and the European Space Agency have also issued guidelines on how to cut back on the potential impactors in orbit.

Cleaning the debris that already exists is a completely different challenge. Specific trips to larger objects could remove them from orbit, but at a high financial cost. Other proposals include the use of a laser to provide a path-shifting push that wouldn't damage the object. [ Photos: Space Debris Images & Cleanup Concepts]

More debris facts:

NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility spent 5.7 years in a low Earth orbit to help analyze the risk from debris. Over 20,000 impacts have been documented.

Critical surfaces on the Space Shuttle were examined for debris after every flight.

Even a salt-sized grain hitting the space shuttle creates orbital debris.

The most heavily shielded spacecraft ever flown, International Space Station changes its flight path if it is expected to come within a few miles of a large piece of debris. Such course corrections happen about once a year.

The US Vanguard 1 satellite, launched in 1958, is the oldest artificial satellite still circling the Earth, despite its low orbit.

More than 100 trillion artificial objects smaller than one-hundred-thousandth of an inch (1 micron) could circle the globe.

NASA was the first space agency to issue guidelines for orbital debris mitigation in 1995.

- Nola Taylor Redd

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Space Junk: Tracking & Removing Orbital Debris

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Although outer space is often imagined to be a desolate, empty place, the region around Earth swarms with millions pieces of man-made debris that create potential hazards for their functioning neighbors. Where did all of this junk come from? Will it ever go away? What kind of problems might it create for people stationed on Earth?

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My STEM talk topic is about, is technology lacking our intelligence?

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My STEM t

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My topic is about how some technologies or machines are polluting the environment. My topic will be about how we can stop damaging the nviroment with bad technologies and start using more efficient ones.

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My STEM talk idea is about using more solar powered things. They would be like cars, lights, and more house hold items. This could be how we can change the world for the better. Please look at my link below.

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According to scientific findings, the earth intercepts lots of solar power, 173 trillion terawatts to be specific. That's literally ten thousand more power than the entire world population utilizes. This validates the fact that the sun is the most plentiful source of energy on the entire globe and that it could one day be the most reliant source of energy.

Traditionally, the world's electrical needs have been fulfilled by fossil fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal. However, these energy sources have two main negative impacts:

They play a bigger role in global warming and acid rain pollution, which negatively impacts many animals, plants, and humans in the environment.

Few countries have full access to fossil fuel-based energy resources, which can lead to global political and economic instability.

The best alternative is solar energy, which is a renewable resource, meaning it will not become unavailable. It provides an unlimited, steady supply through time. Solar energy is also a green source of energy because it does not emit pollutants during the energy production process.

So, What is Solar Energy?

Solar energy is the energy that is produced by the sun in the form of heat and light. It is one of the most renewable and readily available source of energy on planet Earth. The fact that it is available in plenty and free and does not belong to anybody makes it one of the most important of the non-conventional sources of energy. Solar energy has been used by people since ancient times by using simple magnifying glasses to concentrate the light of the sun into beams so hot they would cause wood to catch fire.

Mainly, Solar energy can be used to convert it into heat energy or it can be converted into electricity. Solar energy is energy harnessed from the sun. It's harnessed in 2 main ways:

Through production of electricity

This technique utilizes Solar Photovoltaic (PV) devices or solar cells that convert the sun's energy into electricity. Photovoltaic devices produce electricity right from the sunlight through an electronic process that naturally occurs in particular material types known as semiconductors.

Electrons contained in these materials are let loose by solar rays are stimulated to travel via an electronic circuit, sending power to the grid or directly powering electrical devices. This form of energy can be used to power solar watches, calculators or traffic signals. They are often used in locations that are not connected to electricity grid.

A solar thermal collector harnesses heat by absorbing the sun rays. This technique harnesses the sun's energy to heat up water (solar hot water panels) for home use such as water heaters, hot tubs, and swimming pools. The concentrated solar power plants utilize the more complex collectors to produce electricity by heating a liquid to turn a turbine connected to a generator. Simple collectors are normally utilized in commercial and residential buildings for space heating.

The solar energy converted into electricity can be instantly used to power lights or many other devices. Better still, it can be stored in batteries for future use. Solar cells normally generate direct current (DC)-type electricity. However, it can be converted into AC (alternating current) using a device known as an inverter. Solar energy converted into heat energy for the purpose of water heating can be utilized instantly or stored as hot water in tanks to be used later.

Solar energy can be broadly categorized as active or passive solar energy depending on how they are captured and utilized. In active solar energy, special solar heating equipment is used to convert solar energy to heat energy whereas in passive solar energy the mechanical equipment is not present. Active solar include the use of mechanical equipment like photovoltaic cells, solar thermal collectors or pumps and fans to trap the solar energy.

Passive solar technologies convert solar energy to heat energy without use of active mechanical systems. It is mainly the practice of using windows, walls, trees, building placement and other simple techniques to capture or deflect the sun for use. Passive solar heating is a great way to conserve energy and maximizing it's utilization. An example of passive solar heating is what happens to your car on a hot summer day.

How Solar Energy is Converted to Electricity?

The initial step to convert solar energy to electricity is to install Photovoltaic (PV) cells or solar cells. Photovoltaic means light and electricity. These cells arrest the sun's energy and convert it into electricity. These solar cells are made of materials that show photovoltaic effect, meaning when the sun rays strike the Photovoltaic cell, the photons of light spook the electrons inside the cell triggering them to start flowing, ultimately producing electricity.

When looking to buy solar panels, it would be beneficial to know the options available in the marketplace. Here is an outline of the main ones:

Polycrystalline - This utilizes Multicrystalline Silicon

Monocrystalline - This is ideal for small spaces

Thin Film - Typically bigger in size and a lot more efficient during the day

The disparity between the material used to manufacture monocrystalline and polycrystalline lies in the constitution of the silicon substrate utilized to manufacture solar cells and ultimately, solar panels. As the name suggests, polycrystalline implies numerous crystals, while monocrystalline implies a single crystal. The larger the crystal sizes, the more efficient the solar cells, which explains the reason monocrystalline cells are normally 10 - 15% more efficient than the polycrystalline crystals.

How Solar Panels Work?

The solar panel should be mounted on an open area that is not obstructed by trees or any installation. A roof is normally the best bet. It's then wired into the building through the inverter. The inverter is a device that converts AC (alternating current) to DC (direct current). So, in this case, the alternating current is the energy created by the solar panels. This solar energy is converted into AC. The reason for converting the direct current into alternating current is to enable the energy to be used by various home appliances just the way you power your electronics with normal electricity.

Considerations to Keep in Mind Before Installing Solar Panels

Before taking any step to install solar panel in your home, make sure the solar power befits you and your home. Then, ensure that sufficient sunlight is available in your locality. The suitability of solar energy varies considerably with how much sun an area receives. If your area does not receive sufficient sunlight, investing in solar panels will not be the best cause of action.

After determining that your area receives adequate sunlight, make sure installation space is available. We've learned that solar panels are quintessentially set on roofs of buildings. While this is laudable, it's not the only option. If you have an open space to spare in your backyard, it would be an ideal spot for ground mounts. The backyard option is ideal for those whose roofs are heavy shaded or not structurally essential for solar panels. Also, it is paramount to know the local laws regarding solar panel installation to avoid getting into trouble with the local authorities. You can get this information from your local solar energy consultant

Environmental Impact

Although solar energy is considered to be one of the cleanest and renewable sources of energy among the available sources but is has some environmental impacts too. Solar energy uses photovoltaic cells to produce solar power. However, manufacturing the photovoltaic cells to produces that energy requires silicon and produce some waste products. Inappropriate handling of these materials may lead to hazardous exposure to humans and the environment. Installing solar power plants may require large piece of land, which may impact existing ecosystems. Solar energy does not pollute the air when converted to electricity by solar panels. It is found in abundance and does not help in global warming.

Future of Solar Energy

Before we indulge in any discussion about the future of solar energy, we must first put some facts into perspective:
Climate change is a real phenomenon and a big threat to humans and other forms of life on planet earth.
If we are serious about reducing our children's risk of bearing the brunt of the grave effects of climate change, we must take the front seat in minimizing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the turn of 2050. Because 60% of global emissions results from energy use, we have the duty to initiate low carbon emission technologies at a huge scale beginning today.
Solar Energy is the largest energy resource, by far
Whether renewable or not, other sources of energy apart from geothermal, nuclear and tidal, stem from sunlight. Fossil fuels are simply solar power incorporated over decades (using remains of animals and plant life) as batteries. Wave and wind power owe their origin to solar power. Amongst low-carbon emission energy sources, it's just wind, solar and maybe nuclear that can achieve the terawatt (TW)-level deployment required to satisfy the constantly growing energy demand.
There is significant scale up of solar photovoltaic technologies.
Photovoltaic technology is scaling up quicker than any energy technology. The capacity of all installed photovoltaic devices has doubled every 2 years since 2000, going up to 200 gigawatts-peaks (GWp) in the year 2014. This exponential growth shows no sign of abating. If the fast growth of photovoltaic technologies continues at such extraordinary rates, solar energy, without any shadow of doubt, would satisfy the entire world's power demand within the next decade.

That said, the future of solar energy is nothing but bright considering large economies like U.S.A, and China are committing billions of dollars to the development and installation of solar energy technologies. Also, the fact that solar energy is a renewable resource makes it appealing to most governments that are scaling down on dependence on fossils fuels.

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What is Solar Energy and How Solar Energy is Converted into Electricity - Conserve Energy Future

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According to scientific findings, the earth intercepts lots of solar power, 173 trillion terawatts to be specific. That's literally ten thousand more power than the entire world population utilizes. This validates the fact that the sun is the most plentiful source of energy on the entire globe and that it could one day be the most reliant source of energy.

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My topic is about how there are many ways to prevent any more air pollution and one way is decreasing the uses of cigarettes. In my talk I will state ways I believe you can get rid of cigarettes, and how STEM connects, and can help with this project.

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The air pollution emitted by cigarettes is 10 times greater than diesel car exhaust, suggests a controlled experiment, reported in Tobacco Control.

Environmental tobacco smoke produces fine particulate matter, which is the most dangerous element of air pollution for health. Levels indoors can far exceed those outdoors, because new engine models and lead free fuels have cut the levels of particulate matter emissions from car exhausts, say the authors.

The controlled experiment was carried out in a private garage in a small mountain town in northern Italy. The town enjoys very low levels of particulate matter air pollution

A turbo diesel 2 litre engine was started and left idling for 30 minutes in the garage, with the doors closed, after which the doors were left open for four hours. The car was fuelled with low sulphur fuel.

Three filter cigarettes were then lit up sequentially, and left smouldering for a further 30 minutes. The nicotine and tar content of each cigarette was 1 mg and 11.2 mg, respectively.

A portable analyser took readings every two minutes during the experiments.

Combined particulate levels in the first hour after the engine had been started measured 88 ug/m3. Those recorded in the first hour after the cigarettes had been lit measured 830 ug/m3: 10 times greater.

The diesel engine exhaust doubled the particulate matter levels found outdoors at its peak; the environmental tobacco smoke particulate matter reached levels 15 times those measured outdoors.

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Cigarette smoke produces 10 times more air pollution than diesel car exhaust

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The air pollution emitted by cigarettes is 10 times greater than diesel car exhaust, suggests a controlled experiment, reported in Tobacco Control. Environmental tobacco smoke produces fine particulate matter, which is the most dangerous element of air pollution for health.

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My stem talk I going to be about how we can U.S. robotics in the military instead of humans

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I am doing my stemtalk about stopping chemical dependency

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Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late.

The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger-a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson.

Mitchell couldn't get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes. He tried to tough it out, but after months of suffering, he couldn't take it anymore. He finally told his brother, a fellow firefighter, about it.

Pushing to remember a traumatic event soon after it occurs doesn't unburden us-it reinforces the fear and stress.

Miraculously, that worked. No more trauma; Mitchell felt free. This dramatic recovery, along with the experiences of fellow first responders, led Mitchell to do some research into recovery from trauma. He eventually concluded that he had stumbled upon a powerful treatment. In 1983, nearly a decade after the car accident, Mitchell wrote an influential paper in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services that transformed his experience into a seven-step practice, which he called critical incident stress debriefing, or CISD. The central idea: People who survive a painful event should express their feelings soon after so the memory isn't "sealed over" and repressed, which could lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

In recent years, CISD has become exceedingly popular, used by the US Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Israeli army, the United Nations, and the American Red Cross. Each year, more than 30,000 people are trained in the technique. (After the September 11 attacks, 2,000 facilitators descended on New York City.)

Even though PTSD is triggered by a stressful incident, it is really a disease of memory. The problem isn't the trauma-it's that the trauma can't be forgotten. Most memories, and their associated emotions, fade with time. But PTSD memories remain horribly intense, bleeding into the present and ruining the future. So, in theory, the act of sharing those memories is an act of forgetting them.

A typical CISD session lasts about three hours and involves a trained facilitator who encourages people involved to describe the event from their perspective in as much detail as possible. Facilitators are trained to probe deeply and directly, asking questions such as, what was the worst part of the incident for you personally? The underlying assumption is that a way to ease a traumatic memory is to express it.

The problem is, CISD rarely helps-and recent studies show it often makes things worse. In one, burn victims were randomly assigned to receive either CISD or no treatment at all. A year later, those who went through a debriefing were more anxious and depressed and nearly three times as likely to suffer from PTSD. Another trial showed CISD was ineffective at preventing post-traumatic stress in victims of violent crime, and a US Army study of 952 Kosovo peacekeepers found that debriefing did not hasten recovery and led to more alcohol abuse. Psychologists have begun to recommend that the practice be discontinued for disaster survivors. (Mitchell now says that he doesn't think CISD necessarily helps post-traumatic stress at all, but his early papers on the subject seem clear on the link.)

Mitchell was right about one thing, though. Traumatic, persistent memories are indeed a case of recall gone awry. But as a treatment, CISD misapprehends how memory works. It suggests that the way to get rid of a bad memory, or at a minimum denude it of its negative emotional connotations, is to talk it out. That's where Mitchell went wrong. It wasn't his fault, really; this mistaken notion has been around for thousands of years. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The metaphors for this persistence have changed over time-Plato compared our recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard drive is popular today-but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don't remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all.

When CISD fails, it fails because, as scientists have recently learned, the very act of remembering changes the memory itself. New research is showing that every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge. That's why pushing to remember a traumatic event so soon after it occurs doesn't unburden us; it reinforces the fear and stress that are part of the recollection.

This new model of memory isn't just a theory-neuroscientists actually have a molecular explanation of how and why memories change. In fact, their definition of memory has broadened to encompass not only the cliché cinematic scenes from childhood but also the persisting mental loops of illnesses like PTSD and addiction-and even pain disorders like neuropathy. Unlike most brain research, the field of memory has actually developed simpler explanations. Whenever the brain wants to retain something, it relies on just a handful of chemicals. Even more startling, an equally small family of compounds could turn out to be a universal eraser of history, a pill that we could take whenever we wanted to forget anything.

And researchers have found one of these compounds.

In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.

Every memory begins as a changed set of connections among cells in the brain. If you happen to remember this moment-the content of this sentence-it's because a network of neurons has been altered, woven more tightly together within a vast electrical fabric. This linkage is literal: For a memory to exist, these scattered cells must become more sensitive to the activity of the others, so that if one cell fires, the rest of the circuit lights up as well. Scientists refer to this process as long-term potentiation, and it involves an intricate cascade of gene activations and protein synthesis that makes it easier for these neurons to pass along their electrical excitement. Sometimes this requires the addition of new receptors at the dendritic end of a neuron, or an increase in the release of the chemical neurotransmitters that nerve cells use to communicate. Neurons will actually sprout new ion channels along their length, allowing them to generate more voltage. Collectively this creation of long-term potentiation is called the consolidation phase, when the circuit of cells representing a memory is first linked together. Regardless of the molecular details, it's clear that even minor memories require major work. The past has to be wired into your hardware.

That understanding of how memories are created emerged in the 1970s. But what happens after a memory is formed, when we attempt to access it, was much less well understood. In the late 1990s, Karim Nader, a young neuroscientist studying emotional response at New York University, realized that no one knew. "My big advantage was that I wasn't trained in memory," Nader says. "I was very naive about the subject. Even though the field wasn't that interested in the mechanisms of recall, it struck me as a mystery worth pursuing."

He began with the simplest question he could think of. While it was clear that new proteins were needed for the making of memories-proteins are cellular bricks and mortar, the basis of any new biological construction-were additional proteins made when those memories were recalled? Nader hypothesized that they were, and he realized that he could test his notion by temporarily blocking protein synthesis in a brain and looking to see if that altered recall. "This is the kind of question you ask when you don't know how else to approach the subject," Nader says. "But I had to do something, so why not this?"

His boss, the famed neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, couldn't have been more discouraging. "I told Karim he was wasting his time," LeDoux says. "I didn't think the experiment would work." To LeDoux, the reason was obvious: Even if Nader blocked protein synthesis during recall, the original circuitry would still be intact, so the memory should be too. If Nader could induce amnesia, it would be temporary. Once the block was removed, the recall would return as strong as ever. And so LeDoux and Nader made a bet: If Nader failed to permanently erase a set of fear memories in four lab animals, he had to buy LeDoux a bottle of tequila. If it worked, drinks were on LeDoux. "I honestly assumed I'd be spending a bunch of money on alcohol," Nader says. "Everyone else knew a lot more about the neuroscience of memory. And they all told me it would never work."

He taught several dozen rats to associate a loud noise with a mild but painful electric shock. It terrified them-whenever the sound played, the rats froze in fear, anticipating the shock. After reinforcing this memory for several weeks, Nader hit the rats with the noise once again, but this time he then injected their brains with a chemical that inhibited protein synthesis. Then he played the sound again. "I couldn't believe what happened," Nader says. "The fear memory was gone. The rats had forgotten everything." The absence of fear persisted even after the injection wore off.

The secret was the timing: If new proteins couldn't be created during the act of remembering, then the original memory ceased to exist. The erasure was also exceedingly specific. The rats could still learn new associations, and they remained scared of other sounds associated with a shock but that hadn't been played during the protein block. They forgot only what they'd been forced to remember while under the influence of the protein inhibitor.

The disappearance of the fear memory suggested that every time we think about the past we are delicately transforming its cellular representation in the brain, changing its underlying neural circuitry. It was a stunning discovery: Memories are not formed and then pristinely maintained, as neuroscientists thought; they are formed and then rebuilt every time they're accessed. "The brain isn't interested in having a perfect set of memories about the past," LeDoux says. "Instead, memory comes with a natural updating mechanism, which is how we make sure that the information taking up valuable space inside our head is still useful. That might make our memories less accurate, but it probably also makes them more relevant to the future."

After collecting his tequila, Nader hit the library in an attempt to make sense of his bizarre observations. "I couldn't believe that no one had ever done this experiment before," he says. "I thought, there's no way I'm this lucky." Nader was right. He had unknowingly replicated a 44-year-old experiment performed by a Rutgers psychologist named Donald Lewis, in which rats had been trained to be afraid of a sound-associating it, again, with an electric shock-and then had those memories erased by a separate electroconvulsive shock. Lewis had discovered what came to be called memory reconsolidation, the brain's practice of re-creating memories over and over again.

But by the mid-1970s, neuroscientists had largely stopped investigating reconsolidation. Other researchers failed to replicate several of Lewis' original experiments, so the phenomenon was dismissed as an experimental error. "These guys had discovered it all way before me," Nader says. "But they had been left out of all the textbooks."

Nader was convinced that Lewis' work had been rejected unjustly. But no one wanted to hear it. "Man, it was brutal," Nader says. "I couldn't get published anywhere." He was shunned at conferences and accused in journal articles of "forgetting the lessons of the past." By 2001, just a few years after his experimental triumph, he was on the verge of leaving the field. He thought of Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science who famously observed that overturning paradigms is always a fearsome task. "Why put up with this shit?" Nader says. "I finally understood what Kuhn was talking about. I'd run straight into a very stubborn paradigm."

But Nader was so angry at his scientific opponents that he refused to let them win, and by 2005 other researchers had started to take his side. Multiple papers demonstrated that the act of recall required some kind of protein synthesis-that it was, at the molecular level, nearly identical to the initial creation of a long-term recollection.

To be more specific: I can recall vividly the party for my eighth birthday. I can almost taste the Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake and summon the thrill of tearing wrapping paper off boxes of Legos. This memory is embedded deep in my brain as a circuit of connected cells that I will likely have forever. Yet the science of reconsolidation suggests that the memory is less stable and trustworthy than it appears. Whenever I remember the party, I re-create the memory and alter its map of neural connections. Some details are reinforced-my current hunger makes me focus on the ice cream-while others get erased, like the face of a friend whose name I can no longer conjure. The memory is less like a movie, a permanent emulsion of chemicals on celluloid, and more like a play-subtly different each time it's performed. In my brain, a network of cells is constantly being reconsolidated, rewritten, remade. That two-letter prefix changes everything.

For years scientists have been able to change the emotional tone of a memory by administering certain drugs just before asking people to recall the event in detail. New research suggests that they'll be able to target and erase specific memories altogether. Here's how.

Illustration: Teagan White
Once you start questioning the reality of memory, things fall apart pretty quickly. So many of our assumptions about the human mind-what it is, why it breaks, and how it can be healed-are rooted in a mistaken belief about how experience is stored in the brain. (According to a recent survey, 63 percent of Americans believe that human memory "works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later.") We want the past to persist, because the past gives us permanence. It tells us who we are and where we belong. But what if your most cherished recollections are also the most ephemeral thing in your head?

Consider the study of flashbulb memories, extremely vivid, detailed recollections. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, a team of psychologists led by William Hirst and Elizabeth Phelps surveyed several hundred subjects about their memories of that awful day. The scientists then repeated the surveys, tracking how the stories steadily decayed. At one year out, 37 percent of the details had changed. By 2004 that number was approaching 50 percent. Some changes were innocuous-the stories got tighter and the narratives more coherent-but other adjustments involved a wholesale retrofit. Some people even altered where they were when the towers fell. Over and over, the act of repeating the narrative seemed to corrupt its content. The scientists aren't sure about this mechanism, and they have yet to analyze the data from the entire 10-year survey. But Phelps expects it to reveal that many details will be make-believe. "What's most troubling, of course, is that these people have no idea their memories have changed this much," she says. "The strength of the emotion makes them convinced it's all true, even when it's clearly not."

Reconsolidation provides a mechanistic explanation for these errors. It's why eyewitness testimony shouldn't be trusted (even though it's central to our justice system), why every memoir should be classified as fiction, and why it's so disturbingly easy to implant false recollections. (The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has repeatedly demonstrated that nearly a third of subjects can be tricked into claiming a made-up memory as their own. It takes only a single exposure to a new fiction for it to be reconsolidated as fact.)

And this returns us to critical incident stress debriefing. When we experience a traumatic event, it gets remembered in two separate ways. The first memory is the event itself, that cinematic scene we can replay at will. The second memory, however, consists entirely of the emotion, the negative feelings triggered by what happened. Every memory is actually kept in many different parts of the brain. Memories of negative emotions, for instance, are stored in the amygdala, an almond-shaped area in the center of the brain. (Patients who have suffered damage to the amygdala are incapable of remembering fear.) By contrast, all the relevant details that comprise the scene are kept in various sensory areas-visual elements in the visual cortex, auditory elements in the auditory cortex, and so on. That filing system means that different aspects can be influenced independently by reconsolidation.

The larger lesson is that because our memories are formed by the act of remembering them, controlling the conditions under which they are recalled can actually change their content. The problem with CISD is that the worst time to recall a traumatic event is when people are flush with terror and grief. They'll still have all the bodily symptoms of fear-racing pulse, clammy hands, tremors-so the intense emotional memory is reinforced. It's the opposite of catharsis. But when people wait a few weeks before discussing an event-as Mitchell, the inventor of CISD, did himself-they give their negative feelings a chance to fade. The volume of trauma is dialed down; the body returns to baseline. As a result, the emotion is no longer reconsolidated in such a stressed state. Subjects will still remember the terrible event, but the feelings of pain associated with it will be rewritten in light of what they feel now.

LeDoux insists that these same principles have been used by good therapists for decades. "When therapy heals, when it helps reduce the impact of negative memories, it's really because of reconsolidation," he says. "Therapy allows people to rewrite their own memories while in a safe space, guided by trained professionals. The difference is that we finally understand the neural mechanism."

But competent talk therapy is not the only way to get at those mechanisms. One intriguing approach to treating PTSD that emerged recently involves administering certain drugs and then asking patients to recall their bad memories. In one 2010 clinical trial, subjects suffering from PTSD were given MDMA (street name: ecstasy) while undergoing talk therapy. Because the drug triggers a rush of positive emotion, the patients recalled their trauma without feeling overwhelmed. As a result, the remembered event was associated with the positive feelings triggered by the pill. According to the researchers, 83 percent of their patients showed a dramatic decrease in symptoms within two months. That makes ecstasy one of the most effective PTSD treatments ever devised.

Other scientists have achieved impressive results with less extreme drugs. In 2008, Alain Brunet, a clinical psychologist at McGill University, identified 19 patients who had been suffering for several years from serious stress and anxiety disorders such as PTSD. (Their traumas included sexual assaults, car crashes, and violent muggings.) People in the treatment group were given the drug propranolol, a beta-blocker that has long been used for conditions like high blood pressure and performance anxiety; it inhibits norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter involved in the production of strong emotions. Brunet asked subjects to write a detailed description of their traumatic experiences and then gave them a dose of propranolol. While the subjects were remembering the awful event, the drug suppressed the visceral aspects of their fear response, ensuring that the negative feeling was somewhat contained.

One week later, all the patients returned to the lab and were exposed once again to a description of the traumatic event. Here's where things got interesting: Subjects who got the placebo demonstrated levels of arousal consistent with PTSD (for example, their heart rate spiked suddenly), but those given propranolol showed significantly lower stress responses. Although they could still remember the event in vivid detail, the emotional memory located in the amygdala had been modified. The fear wasn't gone, but it no longer seemed crippling. "The results we get sometimes leave me in awe," Brunet says. "These are people who are unable to lead normal lives, and yet after just a few sessions they become healthy again."

Recoveries are possible, but they aren't necessarily neat. One of Brunet's patients was Lois, a retired member of the Canadian military living in Kingston, Ontario. (She asked that I not use her last name.) When Lois describes the tragic arc of her life, she sounds like a cursed character in the Old Testament. Sexually molested as a child, she married an abusive man, who would later hang himself at home. Years after that, her teenage daughter was hit by a truck and died. "I'd been holding it together my entire life," she says. "But when I heard my child was gone I just started sobbing and couldn't stop. I felt this pain that I thought was going to kill me."

Lois coped by drinking. She would start around noon and keep going until she went to bed. "I lost four years to alcohol," she says. "But if I wasn't drunk then I was crying. I knew I was killing myself, but I didn't know what else to do."

"Psychiatry never cures anything-all we do is treat the worst symptoms. But this new treatment could be the first psychiatric cure ever."

In early 2011, Lois learned about the experimental trials being conducted by Brunet. She immediately wrote him an email, begging for help. "I'd spent a lot of my life in standard talk therapy," she says. "It just didn't do it for me. But this seemed like it might actually work." Last spring Lois began reconsolidation treatment at Brunet's hospital, driving to Montreal once a week. The routine was always the same: A nurse would give her propranolol, wait for the drug to take effect, and then have her read her life story out loud. The first few weeks were excruciating. "I was a mess for days afterward," she says. "I couldn't believe I'd signed up for this." But then, after five weeks of therapy, Lois felt herself slowly improve. She would still cry when describing the death of her daughter-Lois cried during our interview-but now she could stop crying. "That was the difference," she says. "I still remembered everything that happened, and it still hurt so much, but now I felt like I could live with it. The feelings were just less intense. The therapy let me breathe."

Such improvements, small though they may seem, are almost unheard of in psychiatry. "We never cure anything," Brunet says. "All we do is try to treat the worst symptoms. But I think this treatment has the potential to be the first psychiatric cure ever. For many people, the PTSD really is gone."

Propranolol, of course, is an imperfect drug, a vintage tool commandeered for a new purpose. Despite Brunet's optimistic assessment, many of his patients remain traumatized, albeit perhaps less so. While he is currently conducting a larger-scale, randomized PTSD trial with the beta-blocker, future therapies will rely on more targeted compounds. "These norepinephrine inhibitors are just what's available right now," LeDoux says. "They work OK, but their effect is indirect." What reconsolidation therapy really needs is a drug that can target the fear memory itself. "The perfect drug wouldn't just tamp down the traumatic feeling," he says. "It would erase the actual representation of the trauma in the brain."

Here's the amazing part: The perfect drug may have already been found.

The chemistry of the brain is in constant flux, with the typical neural protein lasting anywhere from two weeks to a few months before it breaks down or gets reabsorbed. How then do some of our memories seem to last forever? It's as if they are sturdier than the mind itself. Scientists have narrowed down the list of molecules that seem essential to the creation of long-term memory-sea slugs and mice without these compounds are total amnesiacs-but until recently nobody knew how they worked.

In the 1980s, a Columbia University neurologist named Todd Sacktor became obsessed with this mental mystery. His breakthrough came from an unlikely source. "My dad was a biochemist," Sacktor says. "He was the one who said I should look into this molecule, because it seems to have some neat properties." Sacktor's father had suggested a molecule called protein kinase C, an enzyme turned on by surges of calcium ions in the brain. "This enzyme seemed to have a bunch of properties necessary to be a regulator of long-term potentiation," Sacktor says. "But so did a bunch of other molecules. It took me a few years to figure out if my dad was right."

In fact, it took Sacktor more than a decade. (He spent three years just trying to purify the molecule.) What he discovered is that a form of protein kinase C called PKMzeta hangs around synapses, the junctions where neurons connect, for an unusually long time. And without it, stable recollections start to disappear. While scientists like Nader had erased memories using chemicals that inhibited all protein synthesis, Sacktor was the first to target a single memory protein so specifically. The trick was finding a chemical that inhibited PKMzeta activity. "It turned out to be remarkably easy," Sacktor says. "All we had to do was order this inhibitor compound from the chemical catalog and then give it to the animals. You could watch them forget."

What does PKMzeta do? The molecule's crucial trick is that it increases the density of a particular type of sensor called an AMPA receptor on the outside of a neuron. It's an ion channel, a gateway to the interior of a cell that, when opened, makes it easier for adjacent cells to excite one another. (While neurons are normally shy strangers, struggling to interact, PKMzeta turns them into intimate friends, happy to exchange all sorts of incidental information.) This process requires constant upkeep-every long-term memory is always on the verge of vanishing. As a result, even a brief interruption of PKMzeta activity can dismantle the function of a steadfast circuit.

If the genetic expression of PKMzeta is amped up-by, say, genetically engineering rats to overproduce the stuff-they become mnemonic freaks, able to convert even the most mundane events into long-term memory. (Their performance on a standard test of recall is nearly double that of normal animals.) Furthermore, once neurons begin producing PKMzeta, the protein tends to linger, marking the neural connection as a memory. "The molecules themselves are always changing, but the high level of PKMzeta stays constant," Sacktor says. "That's what makes the endurance of the memory possible."

For example, in a recent experiment, Sacktor and scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science trained rats to associate the taste of saccharin with nausea (thanks to an injection of lithium). After just a few trials, the rats began studiously avoiding the artificial sweetener. All it took was a single injection of a PKMzeta inhibitor called zeta-interacting protein, or ZIP, before the rats forgot all about their aversion. The rats went back to guzzling down the stuff.

By coupling these amnesia cocktails to the memory reconsolidation process, it's possible to get even more specific. Nader, LeDoux, and a neuroscientist named Jacek Debiec taught rats elaborate sequences of association, so that a series of sounds predicted the arrival of a painful shock to the foot. Nader calls this a "chain of memories"-the sounds lead to fear, and the animals freeze up. "We wanted to know if making you remember that painful event would also lead to the disruption of related memories," Nader says. "Or could we alter just that one association?" The answer was clear. By injecting a protein synthesis inhibitor before the rats were exposed to only one of the sounds-and therefore before they underwent memory reconsolidation-the rats could be "trained" to forget the fear associated with that particular tone. "Only the first link was gone," Nader says. The other associations remained perfectly intact. This is a profound result. While scientists have long wondered how to target specific memories in the brain, it turns out to be remarkably easy: All you have to do is ask people to remember them.

This isn't Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style mindwiping. In some ways it's potentially even more effective and more precise. Because of the compartmentalization of memory in the brain-the storage of different aspects of a memory in different areas-the careful application of PKMzeta synthesis inhibitors and other chemicals that interfere with reconsolidation should allow scientists to selectively delete aspects of a memory. Right now, researchers have to inject their obliviating potions directly into the rodent brain. Future treatments, however, will involve targeted inhibitors, like an advanced version of ZIP, that become active only in particular parts of the cortex and only at the precise time a memory is being recalled. The end result will be a menu of pills capable of erasing different kinds of memories-the scent of a former lover or the awful heartbreak of a failed relationship. These thoughts and feelings can be made to vanish, even as the rest of the memory remains perfectly intact. "Reconsolidation research has shown that we can get very specific about which associations we go after," LeDoux says. "And that's a very good thing. Nobody actually wants a totally spotless mind."

The astonishing power of PKMzeta forces us to redefine human memory. While we typically think of memories as those facts and events from the past that stick in the brain, Sacktor's research suggests that memory is actually much bigger and stranger than that. In fact, PTSD isn't the only disease that's driven by a broken set of memories-other nasty afflictions, including chronic pain, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and drug addiction, are also fueled by memories that can't be forgotten.

Sacktor is convinced that the first therapeutic use of PKMzeta inhibitors will involve making people forget not an event but physical pain. For reasons that remain mysterious, some sensory nerves never recover from bodily injury; even after a wound heals, the hurt persists. The body remembers. Because these memories are made of the exact same stuff as every other kind of memory, injecting an inhibitor near the spinal cord-where, presumably, the sensation of pain is being stored-and then somehow inducing or focusing on the pain could instantly erase the long-term suffering, as if the nerves themselves were reset. "It's hard to argue against this form of memory alteration," Sacktor says. "It might be the only way to treat neuropathic pain." PTSD is the emotional version of this problem. Instead of the pain coming from the spinal cord, it comes from the amygdala, where a trauma is encoded and just won't let go. For many reconsolidation researchers, there is little difference among categories of hurt. It doesn't matter if the tragedy is physical or psychic: The treatment is the same.

There is perhaps no societal plague more expensive than drug addiction. In the US, the overall cost of substance abuse exceeds $600 billion a year. Previous attempts to treat drug addiction with drugs have largely failed; methadone is among the best, and it's not that good. But addiction is driven by memory-associating the high with a crack pipe, or the buzz of nicotine with the smell of smoke-which means that reconsolidation therapy offers some hope. Studies of morphine-addled rats have found that a few doses of a PKMzeta inhibitor can eliminate their cravings. Nader, meanwhile, has just begun a trial in which cocaine addicts are given propranolol and then shown a drug-related cue, such as a video of people shooting up. Because the blood-pressure medicine dials down their basic emotional response to the world-it reduces symptoms of stress but also inhibits expressions of pleasure-Nader believes it can slowly diminish the desire for illicit substances. "The craving is a learned association," he says. "We're hoping to weaken that association over time."

Being able to control memory doesn't simply give us admin access to our brains. It gives us the power to shape nearly every aspect of our lives. There's something terrifying about this. Long ago, humans accepted the uncontrollable nature of memory; we can't choose what to remember or forget. But now it appears that we'll soon gain the ability to alter our sense of the past.

The problem with eliminating pain, of course, is that pain is often educational. We learn from our regrets and mistakes; wisdom is not free. If our past becomes a playlist-a collection of tracks we can edit with ease-then how will we resist the temptation to erase the unpleasant ones? Even more troubling, it's easy to imagine a world where people don't get to decide the fate of their own memories. "My worst nightmare is that some evil dictator gets ahold of this," Sacktor says. "There are all sorts of dystopian things one could do with these drugs." While tyrants have often rewritten history books, modern science might one day allow them to rewrite us, wiping away genocides and atrocities with a cocktail of pills.

Those scenarios aside, the fact is we already tweak our memories-we just do it badly. Reconsolidation constantly alters our recollections, as we rehearse nostalgias and suppress pain. We repeat stories until they're stale, rewrite history in favor of the winners, and tamp down our sorrows with whiskey. "Once people realize how memory actually works, a lot of these beliefs that memory shouldn't be changed will seem a little ridiculous," Nader says. "Anything can change memory. This technology isn't new. It's just a better version of an existing biological process."

It's a pretty notion-hey, this memory-alteration stuff is totally natural, man-but some ethicists and clinicians dispute whether this kind of therapy is acceptable. Researchers in the field counter that not treating suffering is cruel, regardless of the type of pain involved. We have a duty, they say, to take psychological pain seriously. We can no longer ignore people like Lois. "If you're in a car accident and you break your leg, everyone agrees we need to give you treatment and painkillers," Nader says. "But if something terrible happens and your mind breaks, people conclude that treatment is a dangerous idea, at least if it's effective. But what's the difference?" Just think of all the poor souls in therapy, trying to talk themselves into a better place. These scientists point out that memory tweaks will one day be used in the same way-except that unlike CISD or Jungian analysis or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, these therapies could put permanent recovery just one pill away.

At the moment, of course, such treatments remain entirely hypothetical, an avant-garde limited to the lab. PKMzeta inhibitors can zap rodent memories, but we can't ask the rats how they feel afterward. Maybe they feel terrible. Maybe they miss their fear. Maybe they miss their morphine. Or maybe all they know is that they miss something. They just can't remember what.

Contributing editor Jonah Lehrer ( jonah.lehrer@gmail.com) is the author of the new book Imagine: How Creativity Works, out in March.

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The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever

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Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late.

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Ivy l. 6th 4th period

For my stem talk I'm doing a day in stem as a sixth grader and talking about what you would be doing and what classes you might go to.

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Link to my resource

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Video games are a unique form of entertainment because they encourage players to become a part of the game's script. Although video games have been available for more than 30 years, today's sophisticated video games require players to pay constant attention to the game.

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I am doing virtual reality and how it help cops. It would be centered around this article about how VR can teach cops when to shoot and when not to shoot.

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"I gotta get the guns," Scott Digiralomo tells me over his shoulder as he leads me down the cinder block hallways of the Morris County Public Safety Training Academy in Morristown, New Jersey. Digiralomo, director of the county's Department of Law and Public Safety, ducks into an empty room and, out of a large black safe, fetches an M4 rifle and a Glock.

At this point you should know that as a writer who works in Manhattan, lives in one of the yuppiest neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and gets panicky just passing by armed officers in the New York City subway, this is not how my days typically begin. And yet, no more than 30 minutes later, there I am, a Glock tucked into the holster on my right hip and a can of pepper spray in the left, cautiously approaching a woman in a white SUV who is blocking her ex-boyfriend's driveway, refusing to let him and his new girlfriend leave.

"Get that crazy bitch out of here now!" yells the new girlfriend, standing in front of the house as I wander up the lawn. Before I can take another step, shots ring out from the SUV. I freeze, and a beat later, clumsily pull the weapon from my hip.

"Uh, put your hands up? And your weapon down? Please?" I say too politely, as if asking a waitress for another basket of bread. But it works. The shooter emerges from the car in a gray hoodie and jeans. She's still screaming, but she drops the gun and falls to her knees, arms raised. In that instant, I'm pretty sure the situation's under control, so I take a second to wonder what I'm supposed to do next.

And then she shoots me.

Behind me, Digiralomo is laughing, not because he's some masochist who's going to watch me bleed to death, but because the entire scenario, as you may have guessed, is a virtual reality simulation, and I-standing in the middle of the darkened room, surrounded by an array of screens, doing what has to be the world's worst impersonation of a cop-look like a total tool.

But while this may have been little more than an exercise in embarrassment for me, Digiralomo assures me that this system, designed by a company called VirTra, is actually critical in helping police officers hone their skills as decision makers before they're let out in the real world. Morris County installed the technology last November, smack dab in the middle of one of the most contentious periods in recent history between police and the public. And while Digiralomo says that wasn't why the academy bought the roughly $300,000 system, it's hard not to see the connection.

Not Can You Shoot But Should You

The fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer cracked open the scab on one of our country's oldest wounds. It fueled new conversations about centuries-old issues and exposed gaping rifts across the entire country, not only on the subject of whether Officer Darren Wilson was justified in shooting Brown, but on whether or not minorities living in the United States are safe in the hands of the police officers that are hired to protect them. No amount of technology will ever solve these deeply rooted societal issues. Systems like VirTra's-so-called cave automatic virtual environment, or CAVE, systems-have been around for a while. But as President Obama and others call for more robust police training, training technology that can simulate a world more like the real one takes on an added urgency.

Today, in states like New Jersey where Digiralomo works, officers are required to re-qualify for the police force twice a year by testing their shooting accuracy on a gun range. While that demonstrates that officers can use their weapons, it doesn't necessarily help them understand whether they should.

"In a lot of cases like Ferguson, it's not about whether or not the officer was accurate when they shot," Digiralomo says. "The question comes down to the decision the officer made, and whether the officer should have used deadly force. A lot of that comes down to decision making."

Systems like VirTra's are designed with just that in mind. "We're finding there's a need for cities and national agencies to train at above minimum standards," says Bob Ferris, CEO and founder of VirTra. "With this new technology, they can better prepare officers for use of force and the life and death situations that often make the headlines."

Virtually Real Life

Ferris was early on the virtual reality bandwagon, launching VirTra in 1993 as an entertainment company that would run simulations at theme parks around the country. But after September 11, Ferris completely overhauled the business to focus on immersive police training, which required a total rethinking of the technology itself.

In the early days, VirTra started off making virtual reality goggles, not unlike the ones Oculus is now famous for, but when the company began working with law enforcement, Ferris realized this technology could do officers more harm than good.

"You want the officer to learn proper muscle memory, so in order to have the training apply at the highest level of effectiveness to real life encounters, you have to remove the head-mounted display, unless they'd use one in real life," Ferris says. It's also critical for officers to practice moving around space and interacting with one another, which would be severely inhibited if everyone were wearing goggles.

Instead, the system I tested out in Morris County, which is now being used at more than 200 training facilities around the world, consists of five large screens that surround a stage and five overhead projectors that cast lifesize videos onto the screens, giving the users the feeling that they're standing in the center of a scene. The Glock on my hip was a real gun, but rather than being loaded with bullets, it's loaded with carbon dioxide, causing the gun to recoil each time I pulled the trigger. At the end of the gun is a laser, which interacts with the cameras overhead to detect whether or not a shot is accurate. The system also comes with a wearable device that gives officers a small electrical shock to simulate they've been shot. "Oh yeah," Digiralomo says. "It hurts."

Exposing Bias

But the most important part of the system is the content. The video of the woman in her ex-boyfriend's driveway was just one of dozens of different scenarios that VirTra creates, ranging from routine traffic stops to school shootings. And like a good choose-your-own-adventure novel, trainers can manipulate what happens next, escalating the tension or diffuse the situation on screen as it's happening based on what the officer in training says and does. In my case, for instance, Digiralomo could have made the shooter calm down, ending the scene right there. But since, of course, I was being a bit of a self-conscious baby about it, he let her shoot me.

Trainers can make a dog bark or a gate close in the distance. They can change the weapon at the last second, so instead of pulling a gun out, the suspect might pull out a bottle or a bat or nothing at all. This, Digiralomo says is essential. "One of the concerns we had was we don't want to run every officer through here so that every single scenario they got, it was justified to use deadly force," he says. "So we'll run a few with deadly force, a few where they use pepper spray, a few where the person just complies and gives up."

Trainers can also create scenarios that challenge officers' unconscious biases. For instance, in one video, a shooter is on the loose in a movie theater. As the officer surveys the scene, a black off-duty cop rushes through a door on the officer's left with a gun in his hand. The trainer can run a scenario in which the officer's badge is visible in his other hand or a scenario in which his badge is on his hip and not immediately apparent to the officer in training. According to Digiralomo, when the off-duty officer has the badge on his hip, the trainee kills him 80 percent of the time.

That's why both Ferris and Digiralomo say having competent trainers operating this system and catching trainees' mistakes is so important. "The instructor needs to go through what they did right and wrong, and it's amazing how quickly officers are able to adapt and go from making decisions they regret to decisions they know are they best they're able to make," Ferris says.

A Better Place to Start

Of course, virtual reality can never be a true proxy for the real thing. For starters, officers know they're not going to get shot and that the person on the other end of their trigger is just a projection. Another issue is that, because it's all shot on video, the camera angle dictates how the officer moves through space, much like a video game does. And while the 300 degree view makes that experience immersive, it's not completely realistic. As Eugene Fluri, a SWAT team commander, noted after running through one traffic stop scenario for me, "The angle of the video shows the officer right in front of the window, and I wouldn't have done that. If he moved his hands, I would have moved, but where am I gonna go?"

You can't call for backup, open doors, or handcuff someone. All that action is trapped on a screen. Still, watching Fluri navigate the movie theater scenario, knees bent, gun drawn, and basically putting me to shame, it's easy to see the advantages to this method of training. As he moves through the space, Fluri interacts with the video, telling scared moviegoers, "Out this way, out this way!" and asking victims, "Where's the person who shot you?" He's rotating left to right and back again, rehearsing for the real thing. And when he stumbles upon the shooter in the parking lot outside, he repeatedly insists that he drop the gun, until finally, the shooter fires, and Fluri fires back, eventually killing him.

Afterward, if the demonstration hadn't just been for my benefit, a trainer would have reviewed Fluri's every move to decide whether he'd made the right call. "At what point do you shoot? How many times do you say put the gun down? Because he just killed a bunch of people and is refusing to go, are you justified?" Digiralomo says. "Those are all the questions we review afterward."

Compare that to the gun range on the lower level of the Academy. It's an expansive concrete void with little numbered corrals, at the end of which are faceless metal targets that have been pummeled with bullets over the years. There's no space to run around, no judgement calls to be made, no nuance. Officers' only job when they're down here is to shoot and shoot and shoot, until they've proven they're a good enough shot to keep their jobs. Given the complex web of historical and societal ills that have contributed to the current lack of faith between police and the public, it'd be unfair to say that this type of training alone is the problem. But it sure doesn't seem like the solution.

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The Virtual Reality Sim That Helps Teach Cops When to Shoot

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"I gotta get the guns," Scott Digiralomo tells me over his shoulder as he leads me down the cinder block hallways of the Morris County Public Safety Training Academy in Morristown, New Jersey. Digiralomo, director of the county's Department of Law and Public Safety, ducks into an empty room and, out of a large black safe, fetches an M4 rifle and a Glock.

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My topic for stem talk is that stem is more than stem.It is art and so much more and people need to know that-Ms Fox

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My Topic is space exploration, I will discuss how if we try we can explore space further.

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(Whoops!!) My topic is going to be how video games influence people's choices in jobs and how it can also introduce jobs to children who haven't decided what they want to be when they grow up.

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My top is for the

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My topic for the STEM talk is improvement on vehicles such as autopilot.

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My topic for today is I want bullying to stop. people around the world gets bullied everyday about their clothes hair and the way they look.

I want cyber bullying to stop too. It's as bad as getting bullied at school or around your neighborhood. I want the bullies to see how it made them felt if they was being bullied. That is my goal for today👧🏽

I think this is a great topic! Focus on solutions and how through STEM we can accomplish this!--Mrs. Fox

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My topic for stem talk is how do video games help kids learn education and help memory

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For the S.T.E.M. talk I am doing what does S.T.E.M. mean

Can you tell me what it means to you? How is it going to change your future? --Mrs. Fox

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My stem topic is that if we build a robot for people that can't wake up every good that the robot get everything ready for the master of the robot and the robot will do what the master say to do.

So you are looking into Artificial intelligence? Good start! Start by looking into what has already been done on this topic!--Mrs. Fox

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My topic is how students can get an education using technology and technology-based games.

Game based learning? Sign me up! I can't wait to hear about what education with game integration looks like!--Mrs. Fox

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My topic is how technology has changed education

Please go back and tell me the direction you plan on going, and list a resource. How do you think it has changed education? --Mrs. Fox

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I am going to describe how everyday technology helps all education!

Sounds great Irica! How does it help education in your experience?--Mrs. Fox

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My topic for STEMtalk is conserving space for other animals and how we are destroying our planet.

This is a great topic Jace! I am so happy you are at STEM. You are already doing amazing things!--Mrs. Fox

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My STEMtalk is about virtual reality and how it can change the way we play games and learn.

This is cutting edge and very popular right now. The president recently mentioned this! Check out that article---Mrs. Fox

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My STEMtalk topic is about building a penal colony in space

Sainty--You are awesome!--mrs. Fox

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My STEMtalk topic is 3D printers and 3D printer prosthetics and how it relates to STEM.

Great topic! This is a hot topic and innovative. Where do you think it is going? --Mrs. Fox

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I am going to talk about how history repeats itself. (German WWII plane in back, B-2 stealth bomber in front.

I can't wait to see how you tie this in with STEM and the future. I can see where you are going with this through our conversations. Great start, and unique topic.--Mrs. Fox

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My STEM talk is about Global Warming

What about global warming? How can we prevent this? Can't wait to see your ideas develop.--Mrs. Fox

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Military VR- Griffin E. (7th grade block 4)

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Military VR- Griffin E. (7th grade block 4)

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Military VR is used to train soldiers in the Military.

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Virtual reality has been adopted by the military - this includes all three services (army, navy and air force) - where it is used for training purposes. This is particularly useful for training soldiers for combat situations or other dangerous settings where they have to learn how to react in an appropriate manner.

A virtual reality simulation enables them to do so but without the risk of death or a serious injury. They can re-enact a particular scenario, for example engagement with an enemy in an environment in which they experience this but without the real world risks. This has proven to be safer and less costly than traditional training methods.

Military uses of virtual reality

These include:

Virtual reality is also used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Soldiers suffering from battlefield trauma and other psychological conditions can learn how to deal with their symptoms in a 'safe' environment. The idea is for them to be exposed to the triggers for their condition which they gradually adjust to. This has the effect of decreasing their symptoms and enabling them to cope to new or unexpected situations.

This is discussed further in the virtual reality treatment for PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) article.

VR equipment and the military

Virtual reality training is conducted using head mounted displays (HMD) with an inbuilt tracking system and data gloves to enable interaction within the virtual environment.

Another use is combat visualisation in which soldiers and other related personnel are given virtual reality glasses to wear which create a 3D depth of illusion. The results of this can be shared amongst large numbers of personnel.

Find out more about individual uses of virtual reality by the different services, e.g. virtual reality navy training in the separate virtual reality and the military section.

This section discusses the various military applications of virtual reality and the ramifications from using this form of technology. The military may not be an obvious candidate for virtual reality but it has been adopted by all branches - army, navy and air force.

What the military stress is that virtual reality is designed to be used as an additional aid and will not replace real life training.

This section discusses all aspects of how virtual reality is used by military, from training through to combat situations. It is arranged as follows:

Each of these subjects is discussed as a separate article.

What is apparent is that virtual environments are ideal set ups for military training in that they enable the participants, i.e. soldiers, to experience a particular situation within a controlled area. For example, a battlefield scenario in which they can interact with events but without any personal danger to themselves.

The main advantages of this are time and cost: military training is prohibitively expensive especially airborne training so it is more cost-effective to use flight simulators than actual aircraft. Plus it is possible to introduce an element of danger into these scenarios but without causing actual physical harm to the trainees.

Flight simulators are a popular theme in military VR training but there are others which include: medical training (battlefield), combat training, vehicle training and 'boot camp'.

But another use and one which is not immediately thought of is virtual reality and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD or 'combat stress' has only recently been acknowledged as a medical condition but it causes very real damage to the person concerned and their family. Virtual reality is used to help the sufferer adjust to their symptoms and develop coping strategies whenever they are placed in a new situation.

This is discussed at greater length in our virtual reality treatment for PTSD article.

Generally, virtual reality training involves the use of head mounted displays (HMD) and data gloves to enable military personnel to interact with objects within a virtual environment. Alternately, they may be given virtual reality glasses to wear which display a 3D image.

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Virtual Reality in the Military - Virtual Reality Society

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Virtual reality parachuting simulation Virtual reality has been adopted by the military - this includes all three services (army, navy and air force) - where it is used for training purposes. This is particularly useful for training soldiers for combat situations or other dangerous settings where they have to learn how to react in an ...

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I am doing virtual reality and how it affects the world in a positive way

I love VR! How do you see it changing the world? What is your direction? ---Mrs. Fox

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My STEM talk is about how video games do not cause violence, it helps learn using technology and use more knowledge.

You are starting with a preconceived notion and debunking it! Great approach. Can't wait to hear about the positive impact of games!---Mrs. Fox

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My STEM talk is about technology. Technology has made us feel like we are in a game. But can violent games cause acts of violence? Has science and technology gone too far? This is what I will cover in my STEM talk.

This is a counter approach some of the topics. It is nice to hear all sides of the topic! Can't wait to hear what your research uncovers. What is your solution going to be?---Mrs. Fox

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The effect violent video games have on real-world behavior has long been a hotly debated topic. Some argue there is assuredly a link between playing violent video games and increased levels of aggressive behavior, while others maintain that games themselves don't cause violence, but are rather one prominent risk factor for violent real-world behavior. Now, another study has been published, this one claiming that there is no evidence to support the notion that violent video games lead to increases in real-world violent crimes.

The study, Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data, was conducted by researchers at Villanova University and Rutgers University, and was published recently in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Through four unique data analyses, the researchers looked at how popular video game trends, like annual and monthly video game sales, as well as Google Trends keyword search volume, compared to real-world crime rates.

"Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Grand Theft Auto, is as pointless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks"

What the researchers found surprised them. If it's true what some researchers are saying, that playing violent video games might lead to increases in real-world violence, you would expect this new study to bear that out. But it was not the case. In fact, the research showed that there is no evidence that violent video games are positively correlated to real-world crime rates in the United States.

Need the short version? The research is summed up thusly:

"Annual trends in video game sales for the past 33 years were unrelated to violent crime both concurrently and up to four years later. Unexpectedly, monthly sales of video games were related to concurrent decreases in aggravated assaults and were unrelated to homicides. Searches for violent video game walkthroughs and guides were also related to decreases in aggravated assaults and homicides two months later. Finally, homicides tended to decrease in the months following the release of popular M-rated violent video games."

"Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Grand Theft Auto, is as pointless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks."

It's a fascinating finding, even if it does have some limitations (like most major studies). I recently had the chance to speak with one of its authors, Patrick Markey, an associate professor of psychology at Villanova. You can read the study for yourself here, and see my full conversation with Markey below.
What inspired you to launch into this research in the first place?
Many people in the media and even my fellow researchers have linked violent video games and other forms of media to real acts of horrific violence. For example, in testimony before the U.S. Senate Dr. Craig Anderson argued that '... high exposure to media violence is a major contributing cause of the high rate of violence in modern U.S. society.' More recently, in the pages of Pediatrics Dr. Strasburger claimed that '.. an estimated 10% to 30% of violence in society can be attributed to the impact of media violence.' However, these statements are based on research that has not actually examined serious acts of violence--most previous studies either examined proxy assessments of aggression--giving a person spicy hot sauce, exposing a person to an irritating noise--or self-reports of hostility. We wanted to see whether such findings generalize to homicide and aggravated assault rates.
Your research shows there is no evidence to support a link between violent video games and real-world violent crime in the US--do you think you'd find similar results in other regions?
There is no reason to believe the effects would be any different. However, this is an empirical question and we hope future researchers might consider examining it.

Click on this image to bring up a full-size version

What were some of the most surprising findings of your research?
By far the most surprising finding was that violent video games were negatively related to aggravated assault and homicides. This really surprised me. However, after this discovery we replicated this finding examining violent movies. It turns out, like violent video games, the popularity of violent films is inversely related to violent crime.
It seems to me like a major limitation of this study is that it only accounts for one risk factor for violent behavior--violent video games. What's your response to this?
Obviously correlation does not imply causation so one needs to always be cautious when interpreting ecological data--this same issue applies to whether we are examining links between autism and vaccines or smoking and lung cancer. However, in this study we did not simply look at the relations between violent video games and crime. We also accounted for various trends in the data which might explain this relationship. For example, we eliminated seasonal trends which remove any extraneous results which might have occurred because video game sales tend to be high in the winter and crime tends to be high in the summer. We also removed linear trends which might occur if violent crime is generally going down and video game sales are generally increasing. We also examined various predictors (video game sales, searches for violent video games, release dates of violent video games) both annually and monthly. Even with all these issues considered the same result emerged--violent video games were negatively related to violent crime.

"I think the biggest 'take home' of this study is that violent video games were not related to increases in violent crime--not even a little" -- Professor Markey

Why did you decide to conduct your study using the methods that you did? What other possibilities were considered?
Ecological studies, like this one, are probably the best way to examine events like homicides. Such a--fortunately--rare behavior cannot really be studied in the laboratory.
Some of your results suggest that there is actually a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games; are you saying here that playing violent games might potentially make the world a safer place?
This is where we need to be careful--otherwise, we run the risk of being sensationalistic. I think the biggest 'take home' of this study is that violent video games were not related to increases in violent crime--not even a little. However, if we assume that violent video games are actually related to decreases in violent crime, we can speculate about why this might have occurred. It is possible that violent media might reduce severe acts of violence because it effectively removes violent individuals from other social venues where they might have otherwise committed a violent act. In other words, violent individuals might attend a movie, watch television, or play a video game instead of engaging in other activities--going to a bar, socializing on the streets---that are more likely to result in a violent altercation.

"There is no evidence that, even in the laboratory, violent video games have a different effect on mundane acts of aggression than other forms of violent media" -- Prof. Markey

Was it difficult for you when conducting this study to separate, as you say, scientific results from scientific conjecture? How did you overcome that?
As scientists--and reporters--we need to use caution when generalizing results from laboratories and questionnaires to things like violent crime rates. In a similar manner, restraint is warranted when research collected in university laboratories is used to explain the idiosyncratic behavior of a specific individual--e.g., the Aurora, Colorado shooter, James Holmes. Given that the public, media, and lawmakers tend to be concerned about trends in violent behavior and specific acts of violence, it is understandable why some researchers might be tempted to make sensationalistic claims based only on laboratory and questionnaire research. However, it is important for us, as researchers, to be aware of the tentative nature of such claims and consistently acknowledge these limitations.
Your study is not the first to reach this conclusion, yet video games continue to be singled out as movies, books, and other mediums are often overlooked in the popular discussion on the role violent video games might have on behavior. Why do you think this is?
There is no evidence that, even in the laboratory, violent video games have a different effect on mundane acts of aggression than other forms of violent media--the 'effect sizes' found in studies are similar regardless of the media examined. However, you are correct that violent video games are always the focus. Probably the best explanation for this is what Dr. Chris Ferguson calls a 'Moral Panic.' That is, people who are the leaders of a society often blame things which they do not value for societal ills.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, many lawmakers proposed new measures against violent video games, though none have really panned out. What effect do you think your research could have on future legislative action?
As a researcher my job is to present the science and let others figure out what should be done with it. My hope is simply that others consider these data whenever a person suggests violent video games are 'a major contributing cause of the high rate of violence in modern U.S. society,' or that 'an estimated 10% to 30% of violence in society can be attributed to the impact of media violence.'

"I do hope results from studies like ours will cause researchers to reevaluate their previously held beliefs about violent video games" -- Prof. Markey

As I understand it, your study was conducted prior to the arrival of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, new consoles from Microsoft and Sony that offer better graphics than their predecessors. Do you think that as time goes on and games become far more life-like and fully realized, we could see a different trend than the one you observed?
During each new generation of game consoles there has not been a noticeable change in violence. Additionally, research in laboratories has not found that more 'realistic' graphics have bigger effects of even mundane acts of aggression. So it is unlikely the next generation will alter the trends observed in the study.
What are you looking at for further research on this topic?
No idea--maybe your suggestion about looking at different countries.
You have been studying games and violence for a long time now. Over the course of those years, how has your perception of the video game industry shifted?
I don't really have a strong opinion about the game industry itself. They make a product and my job is basically to figure out if that product might be harmful. However, I do hope results from studies like ours will cause researchers to reevaluate their previously held beliefs about violent video games. After all, we all want pretty much the same thing. We want to uncover the 'truth.' We want science, not sensationalism, to inform policies concerning violent video games. We want to protect others from any threats posed by violent video games, but we do not want violent video games to distract from the more important causes of horrific acts of violence.
Analyses featured in this study included data from GameFAQs, which is owned by CBS Interactive, the parent company of GameSpot. Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @EddieMakuch

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Violent Video Games Don't Lead to Increases In Violent Crimes, Study Finds

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The effect violent video games have on real-world behavior has long been a hotly debated topic. Some argue there is assuredly a link between playing violent video games and increased levels of aggressive behavior, while others maintain that games themselves don't cause violence, but are rather one prominent risk factor for violent real-world behavior.

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My STEM topic is how technology can improve our education.

Resource? How do you think it can or does improve our education? How does it impact your future?---Mrs. Fox

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My STEM topic is how social media and technology are making us more social and interactive. I want to talk about how even though we don't realize it, we are communicating through our posts and through simple pictures or videos. Also, I want to explain how we are gaining social skills by learning from others.

Great job Jenna! A lot of people think the opposite! Social media is a huge communicative tool. I mean look at how we are sharing our ideas here!---Mrs. Fox

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In the years leading up to and following World War II there was a gradual shift toward modernity. Technology had been marching ahead for more than 50 years -- the invention of the automobile, airplane, electricity, the light bulb, telegraph, and telephone, there was even talk of flying to the moon, and America was ready to reap the benefits. It was an era of futuristic fantasies observed through rose-colored glasses.

Colonizing space was a theme of comic books and radio shows like Flash Gordon. In 1938 Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds," HG Wells' sci-fi novel, set off panic as rumors of a Martian invasion swept through some communities, multiplied by the sheer force of word-of-mouth distortions. The theme of the 1939 World's Fair was "The World of Tomorrow" and featured a special exhibit called "Futurama," envisioning earth 20 years ahead. In the span of two decades - from the 1930s to 1950s -- airplanes like the Lockheed Vega that Amelia Earhart flew went from being constructed of little more than wood, glue and bailing wire to sleek steel jets. Television was replacing radio as America's favorite entertainment choice; the acoustic big band swing era gave way to electric rock 'n roll; medical advancements yielded a cure for polio; and psychologist BF Skinner postulated that people could be conditioned into creating social utopia.

The telephone, the first efficient person-to-person mode of communication, had perhaps the most profound cultural impact. After it was invented in the late 19th century, it took more than 50 years for it to spread to half of American households. As it worked itself into the fabric of American life, many parents were afraid that children would stop going outside to play with friends and instead stay inside yakking.

Today these fears seem quaint. While teenagers have been known to monopolize the family phone, it has acted more as a social life amplifier, not as a replacement for face-to-face encounters (while also being a boon to business). Nevertheless, it hasn't prevented many well-meaning people from today to bemoan the impact of the telephone's technological offspring. I speak, of course, of the mobile or smart phone.

According to some, texting is ruining the art of conversation, romance, and social skills, destroying student grammar, killing the English language, teaching kids to be rude, and may even be harming our health. Four years ago a Wall Street Journal article wondered if teen texting would replace talking while two years ago TV pundit Jack Cafferty asked if t echnology was replacing social interactions and if so at what cost? It obliterates family time and undermines relationships. One psychologist asks: Is texting making us stupid? Meanwhile, blog posts abound on coping with " smartphone addiction."

I mention all this because The New York Times magazine recently published a piece on the results of a study on public places that found that instead of driving us apart, technology is actually bringing people together.

Starting in 2008 Keith Hampton, a professor at Rutgers, set up video cameras at several public spaces in New York, including Bryant Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of his aims was to observe how people interact in the age of the mobile phone, and after amassing thousands of hours of footage, which he compared to footage taken in the 1970s, what he and his team of researchers observed turns out to be completely counter-intuitive.

For example, mobile-phone use, which included texting and using apps, was far lower than he expected, and it did not interfere with social interactions.

From the article (emphasis mine):

On the steps of the Met, only 3 percent of adults captured in all the samples were on their phones. It was highest at the northwest corner of Bryant Park, where the figure was 10 percent. More important, according to Hampton, was the fact that mobile-phone users tended to be alone, not in groups. People on the phone were not ignoring lunch partners or interrupting strolls with their lovers; rather, phone use seemed to be a way to pass the time while waiting to meet up with someone, or unwinding during a solo lunch break. Of course, there's still the psychic toll, which we all know, of feeling tethered to your phone - even while relaxing at the park. But that's a personal cost. From what Hampton could tell, the phones weren't nearly as hard on our relationships as many suspect.

Sure, too many of us wander the streets and sidewalks of New York, our heads buried in our screens. A Staten Island teen once fell into an open manhole while she was texting. But is it really that bad?

Hampton told the writer of the story, who he met at Bryant Park at a cafe, that the answer is no. He reminded that his research shows that in the busiest public spaces, only about 3 percent are on mobile phones on any given moment, "yet," he says, "how many times have you seen a story that says, 'People on cellphones in public spaces is rude, it's creating all sorts of problems, people are walking into traffic.' I mean, we really have a strong sense that it's everywhere."

It seems, as with the dire warnings accompanying the telephone, fears of smartphones destroying our ability to socialize are also overblown. So keep on texting and checking email on the fly, but be sure to look both ways before crossing the street.
[Image via Thinkstock]

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Study shows that smartphones make us more social in person, not less.

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In the years leading up to and following World War II there was a gradual shift toward modernity. Technology had been marching ahead for more than 50 years -- the invention of the automobile, airplane, electricity, the light bulb, telegraph, and telephone, there was even talk of flying to the moon, and America was ready to reap the benefits.

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My topic is about how games can be helpful in education.

Great topic! Gaming is huge in the education field now, and we are just breaking into it. Looking forward to your talk!---Mrs. Fox

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My stem talk topic is how VR can be used to provide education to children in developing countries. http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2014/09/5-ways-virtual-reality-will-change-education/

Great job! I can't wait to hear your ideas. This could really help those who need it! ---Mrs. Fox

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My topic is how video games will help people learn in classes and how this generation can learn on tablets instead of books.

Where are the books at the STEM Academy? How do we teach that makes us different? Great approach! I would pick games or books, or maybe focus on our school and tie in both? See me---Mrs. Fox

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My STEM talk topic is that STEM is helping me realize the problem of having access to clean water in third world countries and how to solve it.

STEM has helped me realize a lot of the problems that exist in the world, and has also given me hope for solving them. How can we provide clean water to those who need it? This is one of the grand engineering challenges!---Mrs. Fox

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Michael Pritchard: How to make filthy water drinkable

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Too much of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Engineer Michael Pritchard did something about it -- inventing the portable Lifesaver filter, which can make the most revolting water drinkable in seconds. An amazing demo from TEDGlobal 2009.

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My stem topic is how games can improve ones social skills in first and third world situations.

Interesting. What specific games are you using? I already want to hear your talk just from your brainstorm!--Mrs. Fox

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My STEM talk topic is how virtual reality can help disabled people do things they would not be able to do in the real world.

What can they do with VR? I haven't researched this aspect, and I can't wait for you teach me all about it!---Mrs. Fox

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My stem topic is how technology and social media is helpful to our lives and helpful when spreading the word about problems in America.

Social media and discourse to solve the world's problems? Yes!---Mrs. Fox

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My STEM topic is stem as a life style.

Many people look at stem as a learning style or a career path. While it is those things it is also a way to live your life.

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Green Infrastructure is very helpful to our society these days since in the urban infrastructure is starting to fall apart. Most of these fixes requires funding which is a lot to handle in Georgia since we have a busy airport in Atlanta the capacity and condition of the airport is growing. In savannah if we don't deepen our river we can't take in bigger ships for world trade. Green infrastructure is eco friendly. It allows us to incorporate nature to keep bridges, roads, and etc apart of urban infrastructure.

So STEM teaching you about needs in infrastructure and new approaches! Awesome. Your ideas seem to already by developing and you on your way to a great STEM Talk. ---Mrs. Fox

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I am comparing the school that i am supposed to be going to and STEM to how using technology and how STEM is different than the other school.

I am very interested in hearing what you think! What makes STEM so different? --Mrs. Fox

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My STEM topic is "The Evolution of Technology"

And how it impacts your STEM future? Add a resource and tell me more details. If you are approaching from a general perspective define where you are going! From there project where we are going as a society and world. ---Mrs. Fox

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Should robots be outlawed in the future?

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My topic is procrastination. But for the project I'm going to dig into the physiological aspect of it.

Physiological or psychological? Interesting topic. Are there certain personality types that are inclined to do this? How does this relate to STEM, and the future of STEM?--Mrs. Fox

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My topic is gender gaps in STEM, and how toys such as Legos can influence a child's career choice.

How can we solve this problem? What are we doing? Has the focus on STEM brought this into the light? --Mrs. Fox

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The topic I plan on plan doing for my STEMTalk is curing cancer. This goes into the medical aspect. I plan on explaining how people could help with creating a cure for cancer to help make those people that have cancer live their life the way they would if they didn't have cancer.

Health Advancements are coming a long way due to STEM fields and education. What do you think the future of cancer meds are? Where are we at currently? Where are we going?---Mrs. Fox

http://www.cancertutor.com