Give-up-itis: when people just give up and die

Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com

During World War Two, when a cargo ship was torpedoed and sank in the North Sea, some of the crew managed to escape the sinking vessel. One survivor reported a curious incident that happened on their life raft:

There were seven of us on the raft, but the third officer died about two hours before we were picked up. He was very despondent, and toward the end he lost heart and gave up and died.

In another case of so-called give-up-itis, an American prisoner of war held in Vietnam and described by his colleagues as a strong and sure “marine’s marine” began to shuffle around the camp, becoming increasingly disconnected from the world around him before finally lying down, curling up and dying. His last words were: “Wake me when it’s over.”

The term give-up-itis was coined by medical officers during the Korean War (1950-1953). They described it as a condition where a person develops extreme apathy, gives up hope, relinquishes the will to live and dies, despite the lack of an obvious physical cause.

The medical officers also noted that the lucidity and sanity of give-up-itis victims were never in question and no observation of psychosis or depression has ever been reported, even up to death. When spoken to, people with the condition respond rationally and appropriately, but then revert to their earlier state, suggesting that, in spite of the extremity of the situation, basic cognitive functions remain intact.

Despite the many recorded cases of this condition, there has been no attempt to study the pattern of this fatal condition. In my latest research, I have attempted to redress this and have identified five stages of give-up-itis.

The five stages of give-up-itis

First, people withdraw socially. Their mood and motivation drop, but they are still able to think.
The second stage is marked by profound apathy, which has been described as “colossal inertia”.

The next stage – the third stage – is aboulia. This is a psychiatric term that means a loss of willpower or an inability to act decisively. At this stage, a person with give-up-itis often stops talking, washing and generally looking after themselves.

The fourth stage is psychic akinesia. The person is now nearing the end. They no longer feel pain, thirst or hunger, and they often lose control of their bowels.

Then, bizarrely, just before death, the person often seems to make a miraculous recovery. But it’s a false recovery. The paradox is that while some goal-directed behaviour has returned, the goal itself appears to have become the relinquishing of life. This is stage five.

Brain circuit

The symptoms of progressive give-up-itis have parallels with impairment in the anterior cingulate circuit, a brain circuit that links specific areas of the frontal cortex (the part of the brain involved in higher order functioning) to regions deep within the brain. Impairment in this circuit, possibly through depletion of its major neurotransmitter, dopamine, produces the types of clinical symptoms seen in give-up-itis.

Give-up-itis commonly occurs in a traumatic situation from which there is, or is perceived to be, no escape and over which a person has little or no influence. While dopamine levels increase in a dangerous situation, they fall below base levels if the stressful situation is inescapable. People with reduced dopamine levels lack motivation, become apathetic and often have an impairment in routine actions. Aboulia and psychic akinesia are also associated with dopamine depletion.

Dopamine explained.

The give-up-itis victim sees him or herself as being defeated, and death may be seen as a way to have some control over the stressful and inescapable situation. In other words, the continuing traumatic stress can be avoided through the strategic use of death. It’s death as a coping mechanism.

Give-up-itis is often seen as an unnecessary death and one which could and should be avoided. The modelling of the process of give-up-itis is a key step towards our understanding of this peculiar yet very real syndrome. Through this understanding, we should be able to prevent further deaths occurring in extreme situations.


John Leach, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, University of Portsmouth
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Why do so many people fall for fake profiles online?

Do you want to be friends with this person? Sasun Bughdaryan

The first step in conducting online propaganda efforts and misinformation campaigns is almost always a fake social media profile. Phony profiles for nonexistent people worm their way into the social networks of real people, where they can spread their falsehoods. But neither social media companies nor technological innovations offer reliable ways to identify and remove social media profiles that don’t represent actual authentic people.

It might sound positive that over six months in late 2017 and early 2018, Facebook detected and suspended some 1.3 billion fake accounts. But an estimated 3 to 4 percent of accounts that remain, or approximately 66 million to 88 million profiles, are also fake but haven’t yet been detected. Likewise, estimates are that 9 to 15 percent of Twitter’s 336 million accounts are fake.

Fake profiles aren’t just on Facebook and Twitter, and they’re not only targeting people in the U.S. In December 2017, German intelligence officials warned that Chinese agents using fake LinkedIn profiles were targeting more than 10,000 German government employees. And in mid-August, the Israeli military reported that Hamas was using fake profiles on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to entrap Israeli soldiers into downloading malicious software.

Although social media companies have begun hiring more people and using artificial intelligence to detect fake profiles, that won’t be enough to review every profile in time to stop their misuse. As my research explores, the problem isn’t actually that people – and algorithms – create fake profiles online. What’s really wrong is that other people fall for them.

My research into why so many users have trouble spotting fake profiles has identified some ways people could get better at identifying phony accounts – and highlights some places technology companies could help.

People fall for fake profiles

To understand social media users’ thought processes, I created fake profiles on Facebook and sent out friend requests to 141 students in a large university. Each of the fake profiles varied in some way – such as having many or few fake friends, or whether there was a profile photo. The idea was to figure out whether one or another type of profile was most successful in getting accepted as a connection by real users – and then surveying the hoodwinked people to find out how it happened.



I found that only 30 percent of the targeted people rejected the request from a fake person. When surveyed two weeks later, 52 percent of users were still considering approving the request. Nearly one in five – 18 percent – had accepted the request right away. Of those who accepted it, 15 percent had responded to inquiries from the fake profile with personal information such as their home address, their student identification number, and their availability for a part-time internship. Another 40 percent of them were considering revealing private data.

But why?

When I interviewed the real people my fake profiles had targeted, the most important thing I found was that users fundamentally believe there is a person behind each profile. People told me they had thought the profile belonged to someone they knew, or possibly someone a friend knew. Not one person ever suspected the profile was a complete fabrication, expressly created to deceive them. Mistakenly thinking each friend request has come from a real person may cause people to accept friend requests simply to be polite and not hurt someone else’s feelings – even if they’re not sure they know the person.

In addition, almost all social media users decide whether to accept a connection based on a few key elements in the requester’s profile – chiefly how many friends the person has and how many mutual connections there are. I found that people who already have many connections are even less discerning, approving almost every request that comes in. So even a brand-new profile nets some victims. And with every new connection, the fake profile appears more realistic, and has more mutual friends with others. This cascade of victims is how fake profiles acquire legitimacy and become widespread.

Who actually wants to be your online friend? niroworld/Shutterstock.com

The spread can be fast because most social media sites are designed to keep users coming back, habitually checking notifications and responding immediately to connection requests. That tendency is even more pronounced on smartphones – which may explain why users accessing social media on smartphones are significantly more likely to accept fake profile requests than desktop or laptop computer users.

Illusions of safety

And users may think they’re safer than they actually are, wrongly assuming that a platform’s privacy settings will protect them from fake profiles. For instance, many users told me they believe that Facebook’s controls for granting differing access to friends versus others also protect them from fakers. Likewise, many LinkedIn users also told me they believe that because they post only professional information, the potential consequences for accepting rogue connections on it are limited.

But that’s a flawed assumption: Hackers can use any information gleaned from any platform. For instance, simply knowing on LinkedIn that someone is working at some business helps them craft emails to the person or others at the company. Furthermore, users who carelessly accept requests assuming their privacy controls protect them imperil other connections who haven’t set their controls as high.

Seeking solutions

Using social media safely means learning how to spot fake profiles and use privacy settings properly. There are numerous online sources for advice – including platforms’ own help pages. But too often it’s left to users to inform themselves, usually after they’ve already become victims of a social media scam – which always begins with accepting a fake request.

Adults should learn – and teach children – how to examine connection requests carefully in order to protect their devices, profiles and posts from prying eyes, and themselves from being maliciously manipulated. That includes reviewing connection requests during distraction-free periods of the day and using a computer rather than a smartphone to check out potential connections. It also involves identifying which of their actual friends tend to accept almost every friend request from anyone, making them weak links in the social network.

These are places social media platform companies can help. They’re already creating mechanisms to track app usage and to pause notifications, helping people avoid being inundated or needing to constantly react. That’s a good start – but they could do more.

For instance, social media sites could show users indicators of how many of their connections are inactive for long periods, helping people purge their friend networks from time to time. They could also show which connections have suddenly acquired large numbers of friends, and which ones accept unusually high percentages of friend requests.

Social media companies need to do more to help users identify and report potentially fake profiles, augmenting their own staff and automated efforts. Social media sites also need to communicate with each other. Many fake profiles are reused across different social networks. But if Facebook blocks a faker, Twitter may not. When one site blocks a profile, it should send key information – such as the profile’s name and email address – to other platforms so they can investigate and potentially block the fraud there too.




Arun Vishwanath, , University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Three things we can all learn from people who don't use smartphones or social media

‘Someone likes me.’ Shutterstock.

Many of us spend hours every day tethered to our devices, pawing at the screen to see if it will deliver a few more likes or emails, monitoring the world and honing our online presence. Social networking platforms such as Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are supposed to make us feel more connected. Yet our reliance on technology to “see” the social world around us can be a heavy burden.

The Pew Research Centre recently reported that about a quarter of US adults say they are “almost constantly” online. Stress, addiction, depression and anxiety seem unsurprising consequences of using social platforms often specifically designed to keep us repeating the same actions over and over again.

Even so, many would find the prospect of living offline worrisome, or simply impossible. That’s why we undertook a small study with 50 people who may seem nothing less than social outcasts in today’s screen saturated environment. None of our participants used social media or had a mobile phone, and most even refused to email.

We wanted to understand why these people had decided to switch off, and how they managed it. But rather than seeking quick fixes for overuse, we explored the principles and values that drove our participants to live the way they do. Much has already been written about how we can switch off – but that won’t achieve much, unless we really feel the benefits.

Here’s what our respondents said they’d learned, from living their social lives offline.

1. Spending time with others

Part of the problem with social networking platforms is that we don’t just use them for communicating – they also promote a particular way of being connected to and supportive of those around us. These interactions are channelled through the platform to create data, which is ultimately fed back to data brokers and marketers.

Our participants shared a deep belief in, and attachment to, a different way of socialising that’s focused on expression, touching, talking and being in the same space, physically. For them, this helped to maintain a feeling of human bonding and connection.

There’s nothing like a hug. Shutterstock.

And while this slower, deeper acknowledgement of others was especially valued by our participants, they also thought it might be valuable to society more broadly. Given the angst-ridden nature of frenetic social networking, we could all benefit from slowing down and taking stock more often.

For many people today, the sense of being “always-on” is generating a desire to achieve greater balance and disengage from the things that are causing them stress. For our participants, who didn’t use smartphones and social media, time with others was associated with a sense of calm and purpose in life.

2. Switching off is not missing out

Our participants questioned what exactly is “social” about social media: what constitutes communication, and what do we get from the way that social stuff is measured on online platforms – whether that’s friendship, support or social contact. Rather than having hundreds of “friends”, they would always choose to see people face to face and nurture relationships that would support them through the tough times.

Taking the opportunity to switch off may, at first, cause some anxiety. But the trick is to realise that switching off is not the same as missing out. When you first switch off, you may spend more time in your own company. But from these moments may come a realisation of how exhausting it is to sustain online connections, and indeed how superficial it is to be locked in endless exchanges of trivial information.

Those who chose to disconnect are neither sad nor excluded. Freed from the screen, they escaped from the overwhelming flows of information and tasks. Their deep sense of connection with the world, and their loved ones, was clear to see.

3. Being, rather than doing

Many of those who switched off enjoyed new-found vitality, because they found time to connect with the world in the here and now. This is crucial to helping us reset and relax, so that we are prepared for more stressful times.

Time spent scrolling through content may feel as though it makes light demands on body and mind. But the visual interference from a bright screen is far from relaxing. You are much less likely to have restful sleep if you share a bed with your smartphone, or surf to sleep.

FOMO keeping you up at night? Shutterstock.

As mindfulness is becoming more popular, its core ideas are often coopted by technology. On Instagram, for example, successful influencers show off their yoga skills and promote spiritual disciplines. Fitness trackers, health data and yoga apps consistently rank among the top apps downloaded by smartphone users.

Our disconnected group told us that we should be more critical of our use of apps and start leaving our phone behind. If mindfulness is a state of being focusing on the present – channelling thoughts, feelings and sensations as they flow through us – then what use is a screen? Constant connection paradoxically results in less free time, and periods when we are able to think without interruption give precious refuge from the demands of daily life.

These disconnected people did not switch off to be “anti-social”. They did so to take charge of when and where they connected with people. They may well be part of a vanguard, leading to new ways of being happier, more rested and, yes, more social.

Ten years from now, we might look back at the emergence of social media as a part of humanity’s growing-up – a time that created social divisions, anxiety and restlessness and which damaged the health and well-being of many. Until then, maybe it’s best to put our smartphones down – or at least switch them off a little more often.




Rowland Atkinson, Chair in Inclusive Societies, University of Sheffield and Mariann Hardey, Directorate Advanced Research Computing (ARC) Durham University, Durham University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Once upon a time ... 'sleeping beauties' and the importance of storytelling in science

Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

I’m a regular biomedical scientist, although in one sense I’m perhaps a bit different, in that I really like the process of writing.

From speaking with colleagues and teaching postgraduate students about the process of scientific writing for more than ten years, I estimate that eight or nine of every ten biomedical researchers would say they don’t like writing.

Now, while I do like writing, that’s not to say I find it easy. When I’m in the thick of getting my thoughts onto the page, terms such as “bloodbath” and “fight to the death” flood my mind.

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I have images of fighting a slippery dragon, trying to break its back. I feel as if I’m fighting my own ideas or whatever I’m trying to write, and there’s only one possible outcome: breaking these ideas down, whatever the cost.

And remember, I like writing, so imagine what it’s like for the majority of scientists who don’t.
To illustrate what can go wrong with the writing process, I’m going to refer to an old fairy tale: Sleeping Beauty.

A fairy tale

This is the story of a princess who was cursed to fall into a deep sleep, along with her family and everyone else living in the castle. They sleep for 100 years, and during this time a thick thorny forest grows up around the castle, shielding it from view.

One day, a prince who has heard about the sleeping beauty arrives on horseback, with a sword. With great difficulty, he cuts his way through the forest to eventually reach the castle. He finds the princess, wakes her up, and they presumably live happily ever after.

So what has this got to do with scientific writing? Well, scientific results and ideas can be viewed as something valuable, and yet they can be wrapped up in forests of words that lack structure and overuse complex language.

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Read more: How not to write about science

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Sometimes this just reflects a lack of training, but there can also be an assumption that scientific ideas deserve to be discovered by those who are clever enough.

This means readers are expected to hack their way through the word forest, if they’re really committed to understanding the results.

The only problem with this approach is that it doesn’t consider the sheer number of papers that scientists need to read. Most researchers and academics can’t keep up with their fields, so if a paper is hard to understand, or unclear, researchers may simply put it down and pick up the next one in the pile.

Expecting too much of the reader can lead to a paper sinking within the literature and effectively falling asleep.

The ‘sleeping beauties’ of science

In fact, a “sleeping beauty” is now a recognised type of academic paper. A sleeping beauty experiences what is also termed “delayed recognition”, sleeping within the literature for up to 100 years until another paper known as the “prince” recognises its value.

The sleeping beauty goes on to be highly cited and influential, sometimes in a different field. Researchers now study sleeping beauties and their princes, as a kind of extreme example of how science works – or doesn’t, depending on your perspective.

It’s generally assumed that sleeping beauties describe ideas that were ahead of their time. But I wonder whether some of these papers might have also been asleep in their forests of words.

After all, we only know about these scientific sleeping beauties through their awakening, in the same way that without the prince’s determination, the story of Sleeping Beauty may never have been told. It is very difficult to know how many other ideas may be lying dormant in the literature, wrapped in their forests of words.

What can we do about this? We need to recognise that to avoid the word forest, the research team needs to hack through their ideas and lay these out as clearly as possible.

This is really difficult, and learning how to do this takes years of practice and effort. As researchers and academics, we need to talk about this process and embrace it.

We expect that professional sportspeople will push themselves to the limit, and be supported to do this. Scientists are essentially intellectual athletes, so we need to talk about the virtue of pushing ourselves to the limit when writing, how to do this, and what kind of support we need.

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Many features of scientific life, such as crowded work environments, and generally measuring quantity over quality, do not favour the truly difficult process of hacking through our ideas so others can understand them.

It’s important to remember that in the story of Sleeping Beauty, many people fell asleep in the castle. Also, scientific papers are not just about their authors, but also about the public funds and the many supporting resources that make them possible.

We can’t afford the risk that our results and ideas fall asleep. Humanity doesn’t have the next 100 years to wait.


Jennifer Byrne, Professor of Molecular Oncology, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Why we love robotic dogs, puppets and dolls

Why are we drawn to tech toys? Ars Electronica, CC BY-NC-ND

There’s a lot of hype around the release of Sony’s latest robotic dog. It’s called “aibo,” and is promoted as using artificial intelligence to respond to people looking at it, talking to it and touching it.

Japanese customers have already bought over 20,000 units, and it is expected to come to the U.S. before the holiday gift-buying season – at a price nearing US$3,000.

Why would anyone pay so much for a robotic dog?

My ongoing research suggests part of the attraction might be explained through humanity’s longstanding connection with various forms of puppets, religious icons, and other figurines, that I collectively call “dolls.”

These dolls, I argue, are embedded deep in our social and religious lives.

Spiritual and social dolls

As part of the process of writing a “spiritual history of dolls,” I’ve returned to that ancient mythology of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions where God formed the first human from the dirt of the earth, and then breathed life into the mud-creature.

Since that time, humans have attempted to do the same – metaphorically, mystically and scientifically – by fashioning raw materials into forms and figures that look like people.

As folklorist Adrienne Mayor explains in a recent study, “Gods and Robots,” such artificial creatures find their ways into the myths of several ancient cultures, in various ways.

Beyond the stories, people have made these figures part of their religious lives in the form of icons of the Virgin Mary and human-shaped votive objects.

In the late 19th century, dolls with a gramophone disc that could recite the Lord’s Prayer were produced on a mass scale. That was considered a playful way of teaching a child to be pious. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, certain spirits are believed to reside in figurines created by humans.

Across time and place, dolls have played a role in human affairs. In South Asia, dolls of various forms become ritually important during the great goddess festival Navaratri. Katsina dolls of the Hopi people allow them to create their own self-identity. And in the famed Javanese and Balinese Wayang – shadow puppet performances – mass audiences learn about a mythical past and its bearing on the present.

Making us human

In the modern Western context, Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes have come to play an important role in children’s development. Barbie has been shown to have a negative impact on girls’ body images, while G.I. Joe has made many boys believe that they are important, powerful and that they can do great things.

Barbie dolls. Tinker Tailor loves Lalka, CC BY-NC

What is at the root of our connection with dolls?

As I have argued in my earlier research, humans share a deep and ancient relationship with ordinary objects. When people create forms, they are participating in the ancient hominid practice of toolmaking. Tools have agricultural, domestic and communication uses, but they also help people think, feel, act and pray.

Dolls are a primary tool that humans have used for the spiritual and social dimensions of their lives.
They come to have a profound influence on humans. They help build religious connections, such as teaching children to pray, serving as a medium for answering prayers, providing protection and prompting healing.

They also model gender roles and teach people how to behave in society.

Tech toys and messages

Aibo and other such technologies, I argue, play a similar role.

Part of aibo’s enchantment is that he appears to see, hear and respond to touch. In other words, the mechanical dog has an embodied intelligence, not unlike humans. One can quickly find videos of people being emotionally captivated by aibo because he has big eyes that “look” back at people, he cocks his head, seeming to hear, and he wags his tail when “petted” the right way.

Another such robot, PARO, a furry, seal-shaped machine that purrs and vibrates as it is stroked, has been shown to have a number of positive effects on elderly people, such as reducing anxiety, increasing social behaviors and counteracting loneliness.

Dolls can have a deep and lasting psychological impact on young people. Psychotherapist Laurel Wider, for example, became concerned about the gendered messages that her son was receiving in social settings about how boys were not supposed to cry or really show many feelings at all.

She then founded a new toy company to create dolls that could help nurture empathy in boys. As Wider says, these dolls are “like a peer, an equal, but also small enough, vulnerable enough, to where a child could also want to take care of him.”

Outsourcing social life?

Not everyone welcomes the influence these dolls have come to have on our lives. Critics of these dolls argue they outsource some of humanity’s most basic social skills. Humans, they argue, need other humans to teach them about gender norms, and provide companionship – not dolls and robots.

MIT’s Sherry Turkle, for example, somewhat famously dissents from the praise given to these mechanical imitations. Turkle has long been working at the human-machine interface. Over the years, she has become more skeptical about the roles we assign these mechanical tools.

When confronted with patients using PARO, she found herself “profoundly depressed” at society’s resort to machines as companions, when humans should be spending more time with other humans.

Teaching us to be humans?

It’s hard to disagree with Turkle’s concerns, but that’s not the point. What I argue is that as humans, we share a deep connection with such dolls. The new wave of dolls and robots are instrumental in motivating further questions about who we are as humans.

Given the technological advances, people are asking whether robots “can have feelings,” “be Jewish” or “make art.”

A question being asked is, can robots have feelings? ellenm1, CC BY-NC

When people attempt to answer these questions, they must first reflect on what it means for humans to have feelings, be Jewish and make art.

Some academics go so far as to argue that humans have always been cyborgs, always a mixture of human biological bodies and technological parts.

As philosophers like Andy Clark have argued, “our tools are not just external props and aids, but they are deep and integral parts of the problem-solving systems we now identify as human intelligence.”
Technologies are not in competition with humans. In fact, technology is the divine breath, the animating, ensouling force of Homo sapiens. And, in my view, dolls are vital technological tools that find their way into devotional lives, workplaces and social spaces.

As we create, we are simultaneously being created.

S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

'Fake food' in South Africa: myths, misinformation and not enough data

Foreign spaza shop owners are being accused of selling “fake” food. Shutterstock

Owners of small shops in South Africa – in most cases foreigners – have been accused of stocking counterfeit food and food that’s past its sell-by date. The issue has been caught up in xenophobic violence, with shop owners targeted by South Africans . There is very little hard data about what’s referred to as “fake food” in both the formal and informal sectors. This means the issue is politically charged and dominated by opinions, not evidence. The Conversation Africa’s Ina Skosana asked Jane Battersby-Lennard and Gareth Haysom to unpack this issue.

What is counterfeit food?
There are many different kinds of counterfeiting. Not all pose a risk to consumers, though some clearly do. Counterfeit doesn’t necessarily mean unsafe, and consumers aren’t necessarily unaware of counterfeiting. They may in fact choose these goods for cost or convenience reasons.

Counterfeit foods that don’t pose a risk include what are called “diverted products”. These goods are only licensed to be sold in one place or in one format but are sold elsewhere. This could include multipack items sold individually, free promotion goods being sold, or supermarket brand items being sold outside a supermarket. They could be over-runs from factories, or goods taken from food producers by employees and sold on.

Counterfeit foods that pose more of a problem include simulations – goods made to replicate branded items. They often use cheaper ingredients and can have health risks. Another risky area is tampered food: products that have been adulterated by adding materials to bulk them out, or foods that have been re-worked to refresh them after expiration dates. A South African chicken company was accused of doing this seven years ago.

There are also troubling, yet seemingly spurious allegations, that food has been contaminated with non-food items like plastic. The Minister of Health, Aaron Motsoaledi, has stated that the department hasn’t received any evidence of this, or notifications of people becoming ill as a result.

How big a problem is counterfeit food in South Africa?
We just don’t know how extensive the different kinds of counterfeiting are. It is clearly present in both formal and informal sectors of the food system. The general consensus is that it’s increasing.
There is an important difference between how extensive counterfeit food’s presence is and how big a problem is it. Who is it a problem for? If we are thinking about problems for health, it is important to note that the largest food borne disease crisis South Africa has had – listeriosis – was traced back to non-counterfeit food from a large company.

How big a problem is the sale of expired food?
In South Africa perishable foods have to have an expiration date after which they can’t be sold or donated. Non-perishables – foods with a stable shelf life – have best before dates. These are for quality, not safety, and foods can legally be sold after these dates. Many people buy these products as they get them at discounted rates.

The danger is when expiration dates are tampered with and consumers are illegally sold expired food, or if best before dates are tampered with and consumers lose the ability to make their own quality judgements.

But different kinds of counterfeiting of different kinds of food have different potential health outcomes. Expired foods can cause serious illness, even death but expiration dates on foods are generally conservative to protect companies from liability. Some foods may well still be safe after their expiration date.

Foods outside of their best before date, especially non-perishables, have far less risk.
From a business point of view, counterfeit foods can pose a threat to the owners of companies that make legitimate products.

What’s missing in the debate?
A lot. The “blame” for counterfeit food currently seems to be squarely at the feet of “foreigners” – both vendors and the alleged “cartels” supplying them. These allegations have serious consequences. Government has initiated “blitzes” on foreign-owned shops, seized goods and shut down businesses. Some communities have turned to looting shops and inciting xenophobic violence.
However, counterfeiting exists for many reasons. These need to be considered in the debates about ‘fake’ foods.

Firstly, counterfeiting is difficult to control because of the globalisation of supply chains combined with weak national and international enforcement of trade regulations.

Secondly, regulations are poorly enforced at the local level, as evidenced by the failure of environmental health in the listeria outbreak. On the one hand technological innovations are making it cheaper to produce counterfeit foods or replica labels. On the other hand, there’s consumer complicity: people want cheap goods.

Thirdly, there’s the issue of market dominance and the barriers to entry for legitimate businesses that produce “off brand” items. To what extent are large, formal retailers being protected against market entry by smaller players? How then do smaller suppliers enter the market?

What needs to be done?
The solution to concerns about food safety from counterfeit foods isn’t to confiscate goods from foreign traders, criminalise shop owners and close their shops. These steps seem to be driven by political, rather than health, motives.

Rather, the first step should be to make sure better data is gathered on the extent of the sale of counterfeit foods – recognising the diversity of kinds of counterfeiting and assessing the relative health risks.

There is also a need to understand why counterfeit goods appear on the market and to address the root causes. These may include a commitment to greater transparency at border control; and redoubling commitment to training environmental health officers in municipalities so that they can actually conduct food testing from both formal and informal retailers and producers.

It’s also important to address barriers to entry for smaller producers who want to enter the market legally but are excluded. And, ultimately, South Africa must address food insecurity and poverty. These are the main drivers of consumer demand for cheap foods.

Etai Even-Zahav, a researcher at the Sustainability Institute at Stellenbosch, contributed to this article
Jane Battersby, Senior Researcher in Urban Food Security and Food Systems, University of Cape Town and Gareth Haysom, Researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

What you see in a 3D scan of yourself could be upsetting

What does a machine see when it looks at you? Jessica Ridgway

Amazon is reportedly looking for people who are willing to have their bodies scanned in 3D in order to track and measure subtle changes in their sizes and shapes. It’s part of the company’s broader push to sell more clothes by more accurately predicting how garments will fit different body shapes.

But Amazon may not be considering the psychological effects 3D body scans can have on consumers. In April 2018, I published a study that found when a person views their body in 3D, it makes them feel sadder and worse about their appearance. Increasingly sophisticated 3D scanning technologies might seem to offer retailers a competitive edge, but a customer who has just been scanned may feel bad about how they look and not be up for buying anything at all.

A 3D scan of a person’s body, with lines marking where tailors’ measurements would be taken for various garments. Jessica Ridgway, CC BY-ND

Getting a 3D view

Previous research I conducted on body shape perception found that people believed that a 3D body scan was an accurate depiction of their real body. That belief inspired me to further explore people’s feelings about seeing their bodies in 3D. Seeing your body in 3D is, at the moment, rare and unusual: Even mirrors and photos show only two-dimensional views. If retail stores are going to let more people see their own bodies in 3D, I reasoned, there may be wider effects on society.

To understand what happens when someone sees him or herself in 3D, I conducted a study of students at Florida State University, where I work. A total of 101 men and women came to my body scanning research laboratory, where they participated in a survey, were body scanned and then took the same survey again.

The survey contained questions to measure body satisfaction, mood and appearance management behaviors. For example, people were asked how they were currently feeling about their overall appearance and body shape and size; the degree to which they were at that moment feeling happy, sad, grouchy and other emotions; and how likely they were to engage in certain activities, like dieting and exercise.

Additionally, both before and after the scan, I gave participants a group of line drawings of bodies and asked them to select the figure that most closely represents their actual self. They then viewed the collection of figures again and were asked to select the figure which most closely represents the ideal way they would like to look.

Changing feelings about their bodies

The difference between their indication of actual and ideal served as a measure of how differently each of them perceived who they actually were from who they wanted to be. People who chose very different real and ideal body shapes are more likely to feel sad and depressed.

I compared participants’ self-perceptions before and after they viewed their 3D body scans. After seeing their body scan, the participants – both men and women – perceived their actual selves to be almost one figure larger than what their perception had been before seeing the scan. For men and women, their ideal stayed about the same, or was in fact slightly smaller than their original choice.

As a result of this changed perception, participants reported feeling less satisfied with their bodies and more negative in general. These bad feelings were strong enough to increase their stated willingness to change their behaviors, including saying they were more likely to diet and exercise. Future studies could determine whether people actually followed through on those feelings.

A caution for retailers

If Amazon and other retailers plan to use body scanning as part of their customers’ experience, they should know how and why people respond negatively – both about themselves and in general – to seeing a 3D scan of their bodies. Those responses, like all emotional changes, are likely to affect their shopping behaviors.

Retailers might be able to use 3D scans to provide better-fitting clothes to their customers, but buyers might choose to go home and diet and exercise first. Days, weeks or months later when they return to shop, ideally in a better mood and feeling better about their bodies, will they go to a place that showed them everything that was wrong? Or will they seek out a more affirming environment? These questions and others like them will be examined in my future research. But for now, it’s hard to say whether 3D body scanning will boost forward-thinking retailers, or if it will create a new group of dissatisfied consumers.





Jessica Ridgway Clayton, Assistant Professor of Retail Entrepreneurship, Florida State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Key internet connections and locations at risk from rising seas

The process of laying internet cables on the sea floor is particularly sensitive at the coastlines. Gail Johnson/Shutterstock.com

Despite whimsical ads about computing “in the cloud,” the internet lives on the ground. Data centers are built on land, and most of the physical elements of the internet – such as the cables that connect households to internet services and the fiber optic strands carrying data from one city to another – are buried in plastic conduit under the dirt. That system has worked quite well for many years, but there may be less than a decade to adapt it to the changing global climate.

Most of the current internet infrastructure in the U.S. was built in the 1990s and 2000s to serve major population centers on the coasts. As new connections were built, companies built them alongside roads and railroads – which often hug coastlines. Recent mapping of the physical internet by computer scientists Paul Barford and Ram Durairajan identified exactly how many key network locations were how close to the shore. Building on that work, I joined them to study the risk to the internet from rising oceans.

The basic approach was simple: Take the map of internet hardware and line it up with a map of projected sea-level rise to see where network infrastructure may be underwater in the coming years.

Large areas around New York City are projected to be under water by 2033. Barford et al.

Understanding the threats

This photo from 2011 shows a fiber optic cable, suspended by buoys, being laid off the coast of Venezuela. AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos

Where it’s not underground, much of the internet is actually underwater already: A physical web of undersea cables carries massive amounts of data between continents in milliseconds. Those cables are protected with tough steel housings and rubber cladding to protect them from the ocean. They connect to the land network, though, which was not designed with water in mind. If the plastic pipes carrying wires underground were to flood, the water could freeze and thaw, damaging or even breaking wires. It could also corrode electronics and interrupt fiber optic signals.

To identify what was now dry but will one day likely get wet, we had to sort through a wide range of potential scenarios, mainly varying estimates of how human-generated greenhouse gas emissions will change over time. We settled on the one created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and recommended for analysis of situations involving expensive long-term investments, like for infrastructure projects.

Based on the assumption that global greenhouse gas emission trends will continue in their current relationship to human population and economic activity, that model expects global average sea levels to rise one foot by 2030, and a further five feet by 2100.

Although this may sound improbably high, a more recent report by NOAA also includes an even higher “extreme” scenario, which takes into account the mounting evidence of more rapid melting in Greenland and Antarctic glaciers.

The effects of rising waters

What we found was not particularly surprising, but it was alarming: The internet is very vulnerable to damage from sea-level rise between now and 2030. Thousands of miles of cables now safely on dry land will be underwater. Dozens of ocean-cable landing stations will be too, along with hundreds of data centers and network-interconnection locations called “points of presence.”


There will be further damage by 2100 – though the vast majority of the danger is between now and 2030. In some metropolitan areas, between one-fifth and a quarter of local internet links are at risk, and nearly one-third of intercity cables.

Our study also found that risks to internet infrastructure are not the same everywhere. New York City and New Jersey are especially vulnerable, in part because they are home to many ocean landing sites and data centers, as well as lots of metro and long-haul cable. In addition, the mid-Atlantic U.S. coast is sinking up to an inch per decade. The Atlantic coast is also relatively close to the Greenland ice cap, which does have regional effects on sea level.

Questions for the future

It’s important to note that these risks do not necessarily mean that U.S. internet service will get worse or be disconnected by 2030. For one thing, the companies that operate these cables and facilities may choose to relocate them to safer ground – but the costs of that may be passed on to customers.

And even if companies don’t move their equipment, the internet has many redundant pathways for data. Even a single email message is broken into small pieces that may follow separate paths to the recipient’s computer. The systems that manage this routing could potentially handle the additional traffic around wet areas – but that may affect service quality.

We’re planning to study the potential effects to the network and its users in future research. For now, though, it’s safe to say that internet service in several U.S. coastal cities will need to adapt to sea-level rise, and someone will need to pay for it.




Carol Barford, Associate Scientist; Director, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Shisha addiction may be stronger than cigarette addiction

Not the healthy choice. HelgaBragina/Shutterstock

Smoking shisha is very popular, particularly among young people. And despite what many people believe, it is highly addictive. In fact, a drug commonly prescribed to help people quit smoking cigarettes doesn’t seem to work for shisha smokers, our latest study shows.

Given that shisha is often smoked with friends and family, its addiction may be more than just physical. This strong social element to the addiction may be the reason the smoking cessation drug, varenicline, which is effective for cigarette smokers, doesn’t have the same effect on daily shisha smokers.

Traditionally smoked by older men in the Middle East and South Asia, shisha has now gained popularity around the globe. Shisha cafes and bars have opened in most cities in Europe and the US in recent years. Flavoured brands, such as fruit shisha, have become particularly popular with young people who are attracted to shisha’s romantic allure – it is seen as fashionable and exotic.

Addictive and harmful

In a shisha (also known as a waterpipe or hookah), tobacco is burned using charcoal. The smoke passes through a water-filled bowl and leaves through a hose. By inhaling at one end of the hose, a vacuum is produced that makes smoke pass through the water to the smoker.

There are two common misconceptions about shisha smoking. The first is that it is less harmful than cigarettes as the smoke is believed to be “cleansed” while passing through water. The second is that it is less addictive than cigarettes.

Both assertions are wrong. Shisha smokers inhale large quantities of harmful particles and are at risk of the same diseases as cigarette smokers, including a variety of cancers. In fact, during a single session of shisha, one can inhale several times more nicotine, carbon monoxide and cancer-causing chemicals than a single cigarette.

Between shisha smoking sessions, smokers show cravings and withdrawal symptoms just like cigarette smokers, even with infrequent use.

Just because the smoke passes through water, doesn’t mean it is cleansed. Lev Savitskiy/Shutterstock.com

Quitting shisha smoking

There has been very little research done on ways to help shisha smokers quit successfully.
Approaches, such as counselling and medication, are usually successful in getting cigarette smokers to quit, but have shown little promise with shisha smokers, so far.

For our study, we recruited 500 shisha smokers in Pakistan. For 12 weeks, half the research participants were treated with the drug varenicline, the other half with a placebo. Both groups were also given advice on changing behaviour to help them address some of the psychological aspects of addiction.

Our results showed that varenicline was not more effective than a placebo. This study does not necessarily show that the drug did not work in shisha smokers, but, despite the willingness of participants to quit, only a minority made a serious attempt at quitting.

The study also demonstrated that shisha smokers that took part in the study were highly dependent and many smoked cigarettes as well, reducing the effect of the drug.

There are many layers to addiction, neurological and psychological, and one of the things we found in this study is that the social aspect of smoking shisha played a significant role in its appeal. Almost 90% of the study participants smoked shisha with their family or friends.

More controls needed

Strong tobacco control policies are needed to break the social norms of shisha smoking alongside conventional medication and counselling.

The way tobacco is sold and bought for shisha consumption means that standard packaging with graphic health warnings either doesn’t exist or doesn’t have an impact.

Inconsistent policies for tobacco price and taxation mean that smoking shisha is still fairly cheap for most people. Shisha smokers may have a better chance of quitting if shisha smoking is less affordable and not served in cafes, bars and restaurants.

An approach, similar to that taken against cigarette smoking, to raise awareness of the risks, particularly with young people, and control its use in public spaces would be a step forward, alongside traditional quitting approaches.

Kamran Siddiqi, Professor Global Public Health, University of York
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.