Dems work on Miss. Medicaid expansion proposal

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Democrats in the Mississippi Legislature say they're working on proposals to keep Medicaid alive and funded in the budget year that starts July 1.

They say they're doing this in case Republican Gov. Phil Bryant calls a special session before the end of June.

However, Bryant said last week he believes he can run Medicaid without legislative authorization ? even with no budget in place.

House Democratic Leader Bobby Moak said there's new urgency because a federal agency on Monday released proposed rules for how it would reduce Medicaid payments to hospitals that treat large numbers of uninsured patients. If the rules are adopted by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, changes could start taking effect in a few months.

Mississippi hospital leaders worry they'll face a financial crunch by losing federal money while still seeing large numbers of patients who don't have private insurance or Medicaid.

"It's just a bad deal for the hospitals," House Democratic Leader Bobby Moak of Bogue Chitto said Tuesday.

Bryant has said repeatedly that he believes Mississippi can't afford to put more people on Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the needy, aged, blind, disabled and low-income families with children.

In a statement Tuesday, Bryant spokesman Mick Bullock said the proposed rules issued Monday by the federal government would be temporary, even if they're adopted. In two years, the federal government could change the way it calculates payments to hospitals.

While all states would lose money under the proposed rules issued Monday, those with higher shares of uninsured residents would lose less. That means Mississippi would lose less than, for example, Colorado, which is expanding Medicaid.

"While Mississippi's projected cuts may be less than previously anticipated, this temporary proposal is further evidence that Obamacare and its effects remain unclear and that it would be reckless to sign onto a massive entitlement expansion under this train wreck of a law," Bullock said Tuesday.

Mississippi has about 3 million residents. Roughly 640,000 are already enrolled in Medicaid, and lawmakers estimate another 300,000 could become eligible if the state expands the program.

Under the federal health care overhaul that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, states have the option of expanding Medicaid to people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which is an annual income of about $15,000 for one person. Under current standards in Mississippi, the upper income level for Medicaid eligibility is about $5,500 for one person. Even under that standard, the state program still does not cover many people who don't have children.

During the three-month regular legislative session that ended in early April, Democrats said they wanted a chance to debate Medicaid expansion in the House. The session ended without an agreement to keep Medicaid alive after the current budget year ends June 30, either with or without expansion. Medicaid is one of several agencies that comes up for review and reauthorization ever few years.

Lawmakers also ended the regular session without passing a separate budget bill for Medicaid. So, both the authorization and the funding are unresolved for now.

Moak and many other lawmakers say the governor can't run Medicaid if the program is not authorized or funded. But Bryant said he thinks he can run it and those who don't agree with him can challenge him in court.

The health overhaul law was designed to reduce the number of uninsured Americans by putting more low-income people on Medicaid and requiring others to be covered by employers' plans or by other options such as health exchanges run by state governments working alone or in cooperation with the federal government.

Federal officials earlier this year rejected a Mississippi health exchange proposal, citing lack of support from Bryant. The exchange had been submitted by Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, a Republican. An exchange is an online marketplace where people can buy health insurance. Under the health care law, each state must have an exchange by 2014.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dems-miss-medicaid-expansion-proposal-145834535.html

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Computer scientist publishes new algorithm cluster to data mine health records

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The time may be fast approaching for researchers to take better advantage of the vast amount of valuable patient information available from U.S. electronic health records. Lian Duan, an NJIT computer scientist with an expertise in data mining, has done just that with the recent publication of "Adverse Drug Effect Detection," IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (March, 2013).

The article spotlights a new and promising way of using a combination of commonly used existing algorithms to root out more information about adverse drug reactions within electronic health records available to the researchers. The new pattern, which when compared against the most commonly used existing sole algorithm, showed an almost 25 percent improvement in outcome. Although the idea could theoretically be applied beyond electronic health records, this paper focuses only on using them to find adverse medical reactions to a drug therapy.

"Large collections of electronic patient records have long provided abundant, but under-explored information on the real-world use of medicines. But when used properly these records can provide longitudinal observational data which is perfect for data mining," Duan said. "Although such records are maintained for patient administration, they could provide a broad range of clinical information for data analysis. A growing interest has been drug safety."

In this paper, the researchers proposed two novel algorithms?a likelihood ratio model and a Bayesian network model?for adverse drug effect discovery. Although the performance of these two algorithms is comparable to the state-of-the-art algorithm, Bayesian confidence propagation neural network, by combining three works, the researchers say one can get better, more diverse results.

Since the actual adverse drug effects on a given dataset cannot be absolutely determined, the researchers made use of a simulated observational medical outcomes partnership dataset. They constructed this "dataset" with the predefined adverse drug effects to evaluate their methods.

Experimental results show the usefulness of the proposed pattern discovery method on the simulated dataset by improving the standard baseline algorithm?chi-square?by 23.83 percent.

Duan, whose innovative research on large-scale data mining has applications in the business world as well as many industries, including marketing, social networking and bioinformatics. Whereas most data mining experts search for correlation pairs, he focuses on correlated sets of arbitrary size. His research focuses on correlation search, community detection, and density-based clustering and outlier detection.

Duan holds two doctorates-- one in computer science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and the other in information systems with an emphasis on data mining from the University of Iowa.

###

New Jersey Institute of Technology: http://www.njit.edu

Thanks to New Jersey Institute of Technology for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128268/Computer_scientist_publishes_new_algorithm_cluster_to_data_mine_health_records

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Meet The 'Inflatable Car' Inventor Suing The U.S. For $675 Million

The U.S government's green car program has been under scrutiny with the recent failure of two of the companies that received the loan, including coverage of a $675 million lawsuit by an inventor claiming he was denied funding for his inflatable electric car company because of politics. What hasn't gotten much scrutiny is the unsuccessful serial inventor behind the lawsuit.

Pretend you?re the U.S. Department of Energy for a moment. Your job is to hand out billions in taxpayer-funded loans to companies who want to produce green cars. An entrepreneur comes to you seeking $40 million to develop an electric car made out of an inflatable polymer foam instead of metal. Would you do it?

This is exactly what Scott Redmond, CEO of now-dissolved California startup XP Vehicles, did in 2008. The Energy Department turned down his request, and now Redmond has filed two lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and U.S. District Court against the government seeking a combined $675 million in damages.

Their lawsuit continues to move through the federal courts, and in late April the Energy Department asked a judge to dismiss the case.

We wrote about Redmond's lawsuit, as did the Washington Post, Autoblog, BusinessWeek, Fox News, and host of conservative-leaning news outlets.

But until now, no one's coverage of the suit has appeared to mention that Redmond is a serial entrepreneur with a 20-year history of building hype and then getting funding for unrealistic tech ventures that never go anywhere.

XP Vehicles appears to be one of them, as does his other venture Limnia Inc., which he said was to manufacture batteries for the cars.

Still, what makes Redmond?s lawsuit interesting is his claim that he was turned down because his company lacked ties to the Obama administration and several Democratic elected officials. He claims that the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program was compromised by political bias at the top, and that the car was turned down because they weren?t connected to the right Democrats like people involved with Tesla and Fisker were.

XP was hardly the only company turned down for an Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan. Scores of startups jumped at the chance to apply for the loans, but only five companies ? Ford, Nissan, Tesla, Fisker and the Vehicle Production Group ? were awarded any money.

Those five received a combined $8 billion between the five of them, with Ford and Nissan getting the lion?s share. The program has received a great deal of scrutiny as of late with the failure of Fisker and now also VPG, since there are doubts as to whether those companies will be able to pay their loans back.

Compared to those companies, however, Redmond?s proposed car was far more questionable, and his claims about its feasibility are in line with other bizarre statements he has made online in the past.

But does his claim that ATVM's loans were awarded based on politics hold any water?

The Inflatable Car

The ATVM program was first established in 2007 with strong bipartisan support in Congress The goal was to help American manufacturers develop the next generation of fuel-efficient automobiles and add thousands of new jobs across the country.

According to their lawsuit, XP Vehicles pitched an SUV concept to the Energy Department in late 2008 that would be driven by easily-swappable batteries running motors in the rear wheels and ultimately cost less than $20,000. They said they and Limnia had been working on the technology behind the car since the early 2000s along with the government-run Sandia National Laboratory. They said in the lawsuit that they offered the Energy Department $100 million in independently-verified collateral as security for the loan.

Here?s the real kicker. They said the four-seat SUV, which looked like an elongated Smart car, would weigh a mere 1,400 pounds but would be as safe as any car on the market. It would supposedly pull this off by being an ?inflatable? car ? the car was made from a flexible polymer foam material.

XP?s argument was that since the technology had already been developed for use in boating equipment, and perhaps most famously, on the Mars rover?s landing system, all they had to do was apply it to the automotive world.

It?s not the first time they had pushed for this technology to be used on a car. Previously, XP had floated concept drawings for a small, sub-$5,000 electric sports car for the southeast Asian markets they called the ?Whisper.?

It would supposedly use the same inflatable foam technology to create a car they claimed was essentially made of airbags, safe enough to drive off a 25-foot cliff without injury. Oh, and they said the Whisper could go a staggering 2,500 miles on a single electric charge.

The inflatable Whisper seemed to be mostly hot air, but XP got somewhat more realistic with their SUV, and that?s what they pitched to the Energy Department. They say it would have the best power-to-weight ratio of any car on earth, and it would be capable of running 125 miles on a single electric charge ? all while carrying passengers around in total safety and comfort in an inflatable body that rides on skinny bicycle-like tires. (For his part, Redmond denies that the car was "inflatable," though his company described it that way in earlier news releases.)

For years, the car made the rounds on various tech and automotive websites, only occasionally with a hint of skepticism. But when we?re talking about a car company that can be realistically developed, built, brought to market and then sold to a wide audience of consumers, doesn?t it sound far-fetched?

It?s all par for the course for Scott Redmond.

Is This Thing For Real?

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Showcase in Las Vegas, Redmond unveiled what was at the time one of his latest ventures known as Peep Wireless, a service that promised free phone calls and mobile Internet.

As is common in the world of tech journalism, early coverage was enthusiastic and hardly questioning (although CNET described the company as less of a startup and more of a "psychotic" Bell Labs.) But then our sister site Gizmodo explored the fact that the Peep Wireless technology was essentially impossible, and then went through a number of Redmond?s other ventures that never panned out in any way. Here?s what they said in their story, "The Greatest Scam in Tech":

The pattern is easy to pick out: This dude shows up whenever there's a bubble or hot trend in the tech business world that has yet to make it to the marketplace. Then he strings together a bunch of technical jargon that hardly informs what he's doing, and presumably gets some kind of funding. After that, he generally forms not one but two companies around said bubble. (Peep Telephony has Peep Wireless; Limnia, a fuel cell company, Fuel Sell; Clever Homes, FabModern). All the companies are listed at the same address in San Francisco.

Ultimately, the companies just disappear, legacies reduced to comically vague blurbs on Redmond's resume?if that. There's no point trying to ascribe motives to what Redmond does, and we don't want to make this about character or intent. Point is, these ventures rarely?if ever?work. And through the harsh lens of hindsight, some look like they weren't ever meant to.

Redmond wasn?t happy about that story, although he and Peep Wireless never returned requests for comment until after it was published. Even when Gizmodod published Redmond?s rebuttals on top of their original story, he still filed a libel lawsuit.

He was not successful. A judge dismissed the suit in August.

Gizmodo?s story even mentions ?an inflatable car? and Limnia, about which Redmond said that government funds were in negotiation. That would be XP Vehicles. And like Redmond?s other ventures, there?s not much evidence to suggest that the car was anything more than a product of his imagination.

Redmond has made some other unusual claims on his various personal blogs and websites, including that he patented an "electric propulsion" system used by the ships in The Matrix, that he had patents on touch-screen phones before Apple did, and that he invented virtual reality and a graphical interface for the Internet.

Even his own website, which promises "strategic innovation" consulting, lists numerous projects but offers very few details as to whether they were ever actually commercialized or completed. His Twitter account is the same thing: mostly links to photos of supposed projects on his Facebook page without real proof of their existence.

His XP Vehicles obviously wasn?t the only car company to get turned down for a government loan. Carbon Motors? BMW diesel police car was rejected, as was Aptera Motors? ultra-aerodynamic three-wheeler, and hybrid vans made by Bright Automotive. But those companies had working prototypes by the time they applied for Energy Department assistence; the buff books even drove some of them.

But besides some patent filings and some extremely unconvincing mockups of the car ? which appear to be such a blatant Smart car knockoff it would make a Chinese automaker blush ? XP does not appear to have had a whole lot. Most of the images of the XP SUV (and the Whisper, for that matter) seem to have been made with simplistic, shimmery computer graphics that would have looked dated on a Nintendo 64 game.

Even XP?s promotional videos, if you want to call them that, look more like something that came out of the Super Replicas garage than a legitimate, professional car company that wants millions in taxpayer money. I have seen no proof that an actual car had been made, was being made, or even could be made.

These days, there?s little to be found of what was once XP Vehicles online. Their website is divided into two sections, one where you can supposedly purchase custom-ordered cars and parts from a company called Exclaim Automotive Services that has licensed XP?s technology, and the other is devoted to how XP supposedly got screwed over by the government.

It's the same story with Limnia. When searching around the Internet, it's nearly impossible to find any examples of things Limnia has actually done besides write press releases, secure patents, and file lawsuits. They do have a video that shows off what they claim is an energy storage and distribution system hooked up to a non-moving Prius, but it's hard to tell exactly what it does, if anything.

When Jalopnik asked XP Vehicles for comment about these issues, we received this response:

Scott Redmond sued Gawker, which runs Jalopnik, and is assisting federal law enforcement with their investigation of Gawker regarding the hired hit on Mr. Redmond By Gawker and is unable to comment at this time.

Gawker Media is not under federal investigation for a "hired hit on Mr. Redmond."

It?s hard to believe that anyone ever considered the XP SUV to be a viable concept based on all of this, and so it seems fitting that the company was turned down for a taxpayer-backed loan.

But why exactly was XP denied the funding? According to their lawsuit, that depends on who you ask and when.

The Lawsuit

In their lawsuit, XP says that the denial of their loans came as a shocking surprise after months of dealing with the Energy Department. During that time, they say government officials assured them things were going fine and that XP met the criteria for a loan.

XP was turned down in August 2009. According to exhibits filed with their lawsuit, in the first rejection letter they received, ATVM director Lachlan Seward told the company that the department could only choose ?applications that are most likely to use the limited loan proceeds in a way that will best achieve the goals of the program.? That was all the explanation they got.

Seeking further clarification, XP says in their lawsuit that they called Energy Department official Chris Foster, who told them told them they were denied because their car was not designed for government fleet sales, was ?too futuristic? for commercial use, that it was a ?hydrogen vehicle? and did not run on E85 ethanol as they said was required for a loan.

If true, these are curious reasons for a denial. After all, XP?s vehicle supposedly ran on electricity, not hydrogen, and how much E85 ethanol does one of Tesla?s cars use?

XP discounts each of the government's claims in their suit. They say Seward wrote them a letter with contradictory reasons about why the car was turned down, saying their proposal seemed not ready for commercialization and production within three years, calling their design ?high risk? and ?far too early in the development process to qualify.?

XP disputes that by saying their technology was already in use in other applications, including cars and the retail market. They also claim they were at least as far along as Tesla and Fisker, although XP seems to have lacked a concept or even a prototype car.

As for battery maker Limnia, the lawsuit claims they were denied because Seward said their components did not appear to be designed for use in an ?advanced technology? vehicle. Limnia was also turned down for a separate DOE loan for failing to pay the $18,750 application fee, which they claim Energy Secretary Steven Chu agreed to waive in a conference call ? a promise they say he later reneged on.

In the Energy Department's response to the lawsuit in which they asked a judge to dismiss, attorneys said Limnia's application remains under review, so they have no grounds for a lawsuit. In addition, they said that as a dissolved corporation under California law, XP Vehicles is not eligible for the relief they seek in the suit.

Getting Political

According to XP?s lawsuit, the real reason the company never received the funding they say they deserved wasn't because little proof exists that Redmond's car was anything more than fantasy.

It was politics ? specifically, that Energy Department money was set aside for those with the right connections to the right Democrats like Tesla and Fisker had. (Citing the ongoing litigation, an Energy Department spokesman declined to comment for this story.)

?...the taxpayer-funded ATVM Loan Program and LGP became cash cows for government cronies,? the lawsuit reads. ?Politics and political pressure infected these programs, shaping, in whole or in part, the judgment of the agency?s ultimate decision makers."

In particular, the XP lawsuit points to Steven Westly, a venture capitalist and onetime Democratic contender for governor of California who sat on the Tesla Motors board during the time the company received its $465 million loan. Westly was also a high-dollar fundraiser, or ?bundler? in political parlance, for President Obama?s reelection campaign.

On the Fisker side of things, the lawsuit says, there was venture capitalist and former ?undisputed king of Silicon Valley? John Doerr. His firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers raised $1.4 billion in private investments for Fisker; former Vice President Al Gore is a partner at that firm, and Doerr himself has donated heavily to Democrats including Obama, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and others, according to a search of Federal Election Commission records.

XP?s lawsuit nails Fisker and Tesla for not hitting their performance targets. Although that?s somewhat less true of Tesla now, what with them having posted their first quarterly profit and generally receiving rave reviews.

It is the case with recently-failed Fisker, which, as the lawsuit (and the Congressman who took Henrik Fisker behind the woodshed in April) notes, received a commitment of $359 million from the government to develop the car that came to be known as the Atlantic even though no prototype had been shown to the public and the Karma had not completely gotten off the ground.

(The lawsuit also alleges that XP and Limnia technology was hijacked by the Energy Department and shared with ?government cronies? General Motors and Ford, although their supposed proof appears more anecdotal than anything else.)

XP Vehicles themselves have become more political as well, having hired Washington-based nonpartisan watchdog group Cause of Action to represent them in the suit. The group, according to Fox News, has been linked to conservative issues in the past.

Do Fisker and Tesla?s connections to powerful Democrats prove beyond a doubt that the ATVM process was compromised politically? It's not unreasonable to assume that wealthy people, venture capitalists or not, would donate to political candidates.

But it certainly looks bad, if on the surface if nothing else. It makes the loan process seem like ?Washington politics as usual? at best, and outright government corruption and cronyism at worst.

This isn?t the first time the ATVM program has been accused of being swayed by politics. The allegation was repeated by members of Congress when they called Fisker to the carpet in hearing last month.

However, given Scott Redmond's track record, it is hard to believe that XP Vehicles and Limnia could have ever actually put a car together had they been granted the loan money. And while Redmond claims the Energy Department was contradictory in their claims about why XP was turned down, the letter from Seward does say their technology was considered too risky.

The ATVM program, for its many faults, could have been in even more trouble had they loaned Redmond the money.

Who knows? Maybe he'll win his $675 million and the world will get an inflatable car after all.

Graphic credit Jason Torchinsky

Source: http://jalopnik.com/meet-the-inflatable-car-inventor-suing-the-u-s-for-504488747

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The controversy over DSM-5 and the cataclysm in mental health

Here?s a joke I love: A man goes to an old-school psychiatrist who, at the first session, administers some Rorschach tests.

?Just tell me the first thing that comes to mind,? the doctor instructs the patient as he shows him the ink blots.

?Sex,? answers the patient.

?I see,? says the doctor. ?And this one??

?Sex.?

?And this one??

?Sex again.?

?Well,? says the doctor, ?I see we will have to work on your obsession with sex.?

?Me??? replies the patient. ?You?re the one with the dirty pictures!?

What I love about this joke is that it gets right to the subjectivity of psychiatric diagnosis, a problem that has plagued the field since its infancy in the late 19th century and probably always will. We can now confidently diagnose cancers, infectious diseases, and other conditions based on data: biopsy results, lab tests, and x-ray images. But it seems unlikely that even the most advanced understanding of how the brain functions will ever fully elucidate how the mind dysfunctions.

Still, people do suffer from mental illness, and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has tried, since 1952, to delineate an orderly system of diagnosis by producing a catalogue called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For decades, every medical student purchased one in a series of revisions of the ?DSM.? Mine was DSM-III, which?even if I wanted to lie about my age?places me firmly in the 1980s. The book contains descriptions of dozens of disorders, from schizophrenia to borderline personality to binge eating disorder, each with a menu-style selection of symptoms. Here, for example, is the DSM-IV criteria for major depression:

Though this system of diagnosis may seem primitive, it?s been felt a superior alternative to no system and its proponents argue that it at least gives clinicians and researchers a common vocabulary and insurance companies a basis for coverage of psychiatric illness.

The DSM?s opponents have countered that this system is too subjective, not scientifically valid, and subject to abuse. That abuse can come in the form of mislabeling people as mentally ill (homosexuality appeared in the DSM until 1973) or labeling people in such a way that they are more likely to be prescribed medications. If you have observed that more kids seem now to be autistic, or bipolar?some of that increase is simply from increased diagnosis, guided by the inclusion of these entities in the DSM.

DSM-5 (they?ve changed over from Roman numerals) is about to be released amid enormous controversy. Many critics, including some psychiatric insiders, feel that the DSM-5 is an even less reliable and more potentially harmful tool than its predecessors. In fact, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has just announced that it will no longer fund research based on the DSM.

This announcement is nothing short of a cataclysm in mental health. Imagine that you have a child who?s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and is on medication that seems to be working somewhat but which also causes weight gain and puts him or her at risk for suicide. You now have the most powerful scientific organization dealing with mental health (NIMH) at odds with the most powerful psychiatric organization (APA) about whether that diagnosis is valid.

Though the NIMH?s bold move will likely be positive in the long run, in the short run it will cause great anguish and confusion for patients and their families, as well as complicating and stalling research funding and insurance coverage for mental illness.

While I am not sorry to see the DSM fail, I do not share the view of some, including at the NIMH, that the goal should be to replace it with a system in which mental disorders are ultimately characterized by the neurotransmitters and even the genes that are affected. A hundred years ago, Freud warned of this kind of reductionist view of human behavior and I think his concerns hold true today.

Every day, even as a non-psychiatrist, I see people who suffer from depression, anxiety, obsessions, phobias, addictions, and other psychological torment. Some may benefit from drugs, some from psychotherapy, some from complementary therapies, some from therapies yet to be discovered. It may be that the DSM-5 doesn?t contain the best names for their pain, but I hope, amid the current quarrel in psychiatry, that the fact that their hurting isn?t forgotten.

Suzanne Koven is an internal medicine physician who blogs at In Practice at Boston.com, where this article originally appeared. She is the author of Say Hello To A Better Body: Weight Loss and Fitness For Women Over 50.?

Source: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/05/controversy-dsm5-cataclysm-mental-health.html

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Google TV officially updated to latest versions of Android and Chrome, faster updates promised going forward

It apparently wasn't big enough to garner a mention earlier today, but Google has now followed up its slew of I/O keynote announcements with the news that it's moving Google TV to the latest versions of Android (that'd be 4.2.2) and Chrome. What's more, it also says that it's "refactored" Google TV so that its OEMs can update their devices to future versions of Android faster than they're currently able to -- in a "matter of weeks rather than months," according to Google. Likewise, Chrome for Google TV will now be on the same six week upgrade cycle as its desktop counterpart going forward, and it'll also now come with support for hardware-based content protection.

As for those with existing Google TV devices, though, the company's only saying that they can expect to see updates in the "coming months." We've yet to hear from most Google TV manufacturers themselves yet, but LG has chimed in to say that it will be updating its devices to Jelly Bean sometime in the third quarter of this year. You can get a look at what the update will bring in the video after the break.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Google

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Source: Google TV Developers, LG

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/CYvrLftmdwA/

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Let Me Tell You All About My Narcissism

Do millennials really suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, or do they act self-absorbed because they're young?

Photo by Piksel/iStockphoto/Thinkstock

The most recent Time cover story calls the generation of young adults known as millennials ?lazy, entitled narcissists.? Writer Joel Stein points out, ?The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58 percent more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982.? How do you measure narcissism?

By getting people to talk about themselves. In the 2008 NIH study that Stein cites, researchers did face-to-face interviews with more than 30,000 participants to test them for symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. The paper described the disorder as a ?pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, interpersonal exploitiveness, and lack of empathy.? To be diagnosed as clinically narcissistic, a respondent had to admit to at least one symptom that "caused social or occupational dysfunction." Among its findings, the study diagnosed 9.4 percent of respondents ages 20 to 29 with NPD, compared with 3.2 percent in respondents ages 65 and older.

Attempting to measure narcissism is a thorny issue because each researcher culls data from different data sets, then applies different algorithms to analyze those data sets, then comes to his own conclusions using the result of his methodology. As an article at the Atlantic pointed out last week, many psychologists have disputed the study Stein cited about millennials being singularly narcissistic. And while the NIH study found incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is inversely related to age, its authors admit "NPD may be more prevalent among young adults due to developmental challenges in the transition from adolescence to adulthood."

There?s debate in psychology over whether narcissism should be considered a clinical disorder at all or whether it?s simply a stop on the continuum of natural human emotion. Some psychologists tried unsuccessfully to remove the disorder from the upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, due out this month.

But are young adults today actually more narcissistic than their elders, or is young adulthood a generally selfish stage of human development? Some experts say there?s no real way to find a definite measure for NPD among the hazy definitions, shifting cultural norms, and evolving technology.

Explainer thanks Brent Donnellan of Michigan State University, Jeffrey Arnett of Clark University, Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, and Donna Bender of the NIH.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=e435d478b0e6b08c0db7670971cf8e26

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Watch the First Ever Carrier Drone Jet Launch

You are about to witness an historical event: the first drone jet ever launched from an aircraft carrier. In a few decades, when autonomous drone planes battle each other in the skies, fire missiles at drone troops and battleships, humanity will look back at this day as the true beginning of total drone warfare.

Of course, the Northrop Grumman X-47B launched today from the USS George H.W. Bush at 11:18EST is not the first drone ever. But it marks the most important milestone. This launch heralds complete worldwide mobility to the United States' unmanned aerial vehicle fleet.

Sooner than we think, the Pentagon will be able to easily and conveniently deploy autonomous fighters, and bombers anywhere in the globe thanks to their aircraft carriers. And then, one day, Skynet will gain self-awareness. Fun times ahead!

Source: http://gizmodo.com/first-video-of-the-first-drone-ever-launched-from-a-car-505958985

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