David Cheng is a Shanghai-based investor/entrepreneur. He founded AngelVest Group which is one of the largest angel investment groups in China, having provided funding to 16 companies. They provided the initial seed funding to bring Hanson Robotics to Hong Kong from USA. David is the former product developer at Honda R&D in Japan and USA. He has invested in over twenty early and growth stage companies. He's a former investment banker at US/ China bulge bracket and boutique firms. He also led AMD’s microprocessor technology transfer to China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. David holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and BS Electrical Engineering Degree from the University of Rochester.
<p>The article discusses the Kham-Magars, who are a people of ancient Mongolian descent inhabiting the upper tributaries of the Sani Bheri, Bari Gad, and Mari Khola on the southwestern flank of the Dhaulagiri massif in Nepal. They constitute a specific ethno-linguistic community within the four northern sub-tribes of the Magar people - the Bhuda, Gharti, Pun and Rokha. The Kham-Magars follow a transhumant pattern of life, maintaining permanent villages and a few fields for small scale cultivation but traveling extensively most of the year with flocks of sheep and goats. The article discusses the Siberian Shamanistic traditions among the Kham-Magars of Nepal. Shamanism is preeminently a magico-religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia. The article includes details of rituals practiced among Kham-Magars. It includes 7 leaves of plates and a sketched map. (Rajeev Ranjan Singh 2007-01-03)</p>
Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga’s origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize.To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga’s practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia’s vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities—which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation—to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren’t downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. At turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.
OBJECTIVE: Although the efficacy of meditation interventions has been examined among adult samples, meditation treatment effects among youth are relatively unknown. We systematically reviewed empirical studies for the health-related effects of sitting-meditative practices implemented among youth aged 6 to 18 years in school, clinic, and community settings.
METHODS: A systematic review of electronic databases (PubMed, Ovid, Web of Science, Cochrane Reviews Database, Google Scholar) was conducted from 1982 to 2008, obtaining a sample of 16 empirical studies related to sitting-meditation interventions among youth.
RESULTS: Meditation modalities included mindfulness meditation, transcendental meditation, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Study samples primarily consisted of youth with preexisting conditions such as high-normal blood pressure, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and learning disabilities. Studies that examined physiologic outcomes were composed almost entirely of African American/black participants. Median effect sizes were slightly smaller than those obtained from adult samples and ranged from 0.16 to 0.29 for physiologic outcomes and 0.27 to 0.70 for psychosocial/behavioral outcomes.
CONCLUSIONS: Sitting meditation seems to be an effective intervention in the treatment of physiologic, psychosocial, and behavioral conditions among youth. Because of current limitations, carefully constructed research is needed to advance our understanding of sitting meditation and its future use as an effective treatment modality among younger populations.
Zotero Collections:
- Practices of Hindu Contemplation,
- Contemplation by Applied Subject,
- Contemplation by Tradition,
- Scientific Studies of Transcendental Meditation,
- Transcendental Meditation (TM),
- Psychiatry and Contemplation,
- Medical Research on Contemplative Practice,
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction / Cognitive Therapy,
- Psychotherapy and Contemplation,
- K-12 Education and Contemplation,
- Health Care and Contemplation,
- Education and Contemplation,
- Hindu Contemplation
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<p>The article discusses the history of Lalitpur with special reference to Buddhism. It starts the discussion with three names of Lalitpur which stem from the vihars which exist there. (Rajeev Ranjan Singh 2007-03-01)</p>
Background: Hypertension and reduced lung function are important features of aging. Slow loaded breathing training reduces resting blood pressure and the question is whether this can also improve lung function.Methods: Thirty-two people (67 ± 5 years, 16 male) with controlled isolated systolic hypertension undertook an eight weeks randomised controlled training trial with an inspiratory load of 25% maximum inspiratory pressure (MIP) at 6 breaths per minute (slow loaded breathing; SLB) or deep breathing control (CON). Outcome measures were resting blood pressure (BP) and heart rate; MIP; lung capacity; chest and abdominal expansion; arm cranking exercise endurance at 50% heart rate reserve.
Results: Home based measurement of resting systolic BP decreased by 20 mm Hg (15 to 25) (Mean and 95%CI) for SLB and by 5 mm Hg (1 to 7) for CON. Heart rate and diastolic BP also decreased significantly for SLB but not CON. MIP increased by 15.8 cm H2O (11.8 to 19.8) and slow vital capacity by 0.21 L (0.15 to 0.27) for SLB but not for CON. Chest and abdominal expansion increased by 2.3 cm (2.05 to 2.55) and 2.5 cm (2.15 to 2.85), respectively for SLB and by 0.5 cm (0.26 to 0.74) and 1.7 cm (1.32 to 2.08) for CON. Arm exercise time increased by 4.9 min (3.65 to 5.15) for SLB with no significant change for CON.
Conclusion: Slow inspiratory muscle training is not only effective in reducing resting BP, even in older people with well controlled isolated systolic hypertension but also increases inspiratory muscle strength, lung capacity and arm exercise duration.
<p>A Tibetan translation of the English work, <em>Where There is No Doctor</em>. This is a handbook which gives general medical advice for those in developing nations.</p>
Importance: Social-emotional competence in early childhood influences long-term mental health and well-being. Interest in the potential to improve child health and educational outcomes through social and emotional learning (SEL) programs in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings is increasing.Objective: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the social, emotional, and early learning outcomes associated with universal curriculum-based SEL programs delivered to children aged 2 to 6 years in center-based ECEC settings.
Data Sources: Keyword searches of Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), MEDLINE Complete, PsycINFO, and Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global databases were conducted to identify all relevant studies published from January 1, 1995, through December 31, 2017.
Study Selection: Studies included in this review examined universal curriculum-based SEL intervention delivered to children aged 2 to 6 years in a center-based ECEC setting. All assessed individual-level social and/or emotional skill after the SEL intervention and used an experimental or quasi-experimental design (ie, studies that did not or were not able to randomly allocate participants to intervention and control groups) with a control group.
Data Extraction and Synthesis: A total of 13 035 records were screened, of which 362 were identified for full-text review. A systematic literature review was conducted on 79 studies. Multilevel random-effects meta-analyses were conducted on 63 eligible studies from October 2 through 18, 2018.
Main Outcomes and Measures: Social competence, emotional competence, behavioral self-regulation, behavior and emotional challenges, and early learning outcomes.
Results: This review identified 79 unique experimental or quasi-experimental studies evaluating the effect of SEL interventions on preschooler outcomes, including a total of 18 292 unique participants. Sixty-three studies were included in this meta-analysis. Compared with control participants, children in intervention conditions showed significant improvement in social competence (Cohen d [SE], 0.30; [0.06]; 95% CI, 0.18-0.42; P < .001), emotional competence (Cohen d [SE], 0.54 [0.16]; 95% CI, 0.22-0.86; P < .001), behavioral self-regulation (Cohen d [SE], 0.28 [0.09]; 95% CI, 0.11-0.46; P < .001), and early learning skills (Cohen d [SE], 0.18 [0.08]; 95% CI, 0.02-0.33; P = .03) and reduced behavioral and emotional challenges (Cohen d [SE], 0.19 [0.04]; 95% CI, 0.11-0.28; P < .001). Several variables appeared to moderate program outcomes, including intervention leader, type of assessment, informant, child age, and study quality.
Conclusions and Relevance: According to results of this study, social and emotional learning programs appeared to deliver at a relatively low intensity may be an effective way to increase social competence, emotional competence, behavioral self-regulation, and early learning outcomes and reduce behavioral and emotional difficulties in children aged 2 to 6 years. Social and emotional learning programs appear to be particularly successful at increasing emotional knowledge, understanding, and regulation.
Adolescents may especially need social and emotional help. They are learning how to handle new demands in school and social life while dealing with new, intense emotions (both positive and negative), and they are increasingly feeling that they should do so without adult guidance. Social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are one way to help them navigate these difficulties. SEL programs try to help adolescents cope with their difficulties more successfully by improving "skills" and "mindsets," and they try to create respectful school environments that young people want to be a part of by changing the school's "climate." In this article, David Yeager defines those terms and explains the changes that adolescents experience with the onset of puberty. Then he reviews a variety of SEL programs to see what works best with this age group.
Impairments in different cognitive abilities have been found to be correlated with reduced real-world functioning in people with schizophrenia. A number of other features of the illness, such as depression and negative symptoms, contribute to the overall prediction of these outcomes. Impairment in social cognition is of particular interest as a mediating influence between cognition and social outcomes. Social cognition is a set of cognitive processes applied to the recognition, understanding, accurate processing, and effective use of social cues in real-world situations. In schizophrenia research, social cognition comprises the following domains: emotion perception, theory of mind (ToM), and attributional style. While substantial research has indicated that these abilities are clearly related to social outcomes, research has been slowed by problems in the measurement of these abilities. In this article, I will describe these abilities, discuss how they are currently measured, and how research could improve the current measurement of these abilities to make them more clinically useful.
During adolescence and early adulthood, individuals deal with important developmental changes, especially in the context of complex social interactions. Previous studies demonstrated that those changes have a significant impact on the social decision making process, in terms of a progressive increase of intentionality comprehension of others, of the sensitivity to fairness, and of the impermeability to decisional biases. However, neither adolescents nor adults reach the ideal level of maximization and of rationality of the homo economicus proposed by classical economics theory, thus remaining more close to the model of the “bounded rationality” proposed by cognitive psychology. In the present study, we analyzed two aspects of decision making in 110 participants from early adolescence to young adulthood: the sensitivity to fairness and the permeability to decisional biases (Outcome Bias and Hindsight Bias). To address these questions, we adopted a modified version of the Ultimatum Game task, where participants faced fair, unfair, and hyperfair offers from proposers described as generous, selfish, or neutral. We also administered two behavioral tasks testing the influence of the Outcome Bias and of the Hindsight Bias in the evaluation of the decision. Our behavioral results highlighted that the participants are still partially consequentialist, as the decisional process is influenced by a complex balance between the outcome and the psychological description of the proposer. As regards cognitive biases, the Outcome Bias and the Hindsight Bias are present in the whole sample, with no relevant age differences.
David Adams is the Director of Social-Emotional Learning at The Urban Assembly. He previously served as the Social-Emotional Learning Coordinator for District 75 in New York City, where he shaped the District’s approach to social and emotional development for students with severe cognitive and behavioral challenges. He has worked internationally in schools in England, standing up and evaluating programs of positive behavioral supports and social-emotional learning as a research intern at Yale University’s Health, Emotion and Behavior Lab, and published multiple academic papers around the relationship of social-emotional competence, and student academic and behavioral outcomes. David served on the Council of Distinguished Educators of the Aspen Institute’s National Commission of Social, Emotional and Academic Development (NCSEAD), and is married with two children. He is an Engineering Officer in the Army Reserve and holds M.Ed in Educational Psychology from Fordham University.
Written by four leading researchers in the study of prosocial behavior, this book introduces a new perspective on prosocial behavior for the 21st century. Building on the bystander intervention work that has defined this area since the 1960s, The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior examines prosocial behavior from a multilevel perspective that explores the diverse influences that promote actions for the benefit of others and the myriad ways that prosocial actions can be manifested. The authors expand the breadth of the field, incorporating analyses of biological and genetic factors that predispose individuals to be concerned for the well-being of others, as well as planned helping, such as volunteering, and organizational citizenship behavior and cooperative behavior within and between groups. Further, they identify both the common and the unique processes that underlie the broad spectrum of prosocial behavior. In summary this book addresses the following: The evolution of altruistic tendencies and other biological explanations of why humans are predisposed to be prosocial; How the situation and motives that are elicited by these situations affect when and how people help; The causes and maintenance of long-term helping, such as volunteering; How prosocial behavior changes over time and the developmental processes responsible for these changes; The consequences of helping for both the people who provide it and those who receive it; Helping and cooperation within and between groups and the implications of these actions.
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In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which–even at its most abstract–echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.
Cooperation is central to human social behaviour1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. However, choosing to cooperate requires individuals to incur a personal cost to benefit others. Here we explore the cognitive basis of cooperative decision-making in humans using a dual-process framework10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. We ask whether people are predisposed towards selfishness, behaving cooperatively only through active self-control; or whether they are intuitively cooperative, with reflection and prospective reasoning favouring ‘rational’ self-interest. To investigate this issue, we perform ten studies using economic games. We find that across a range of experimental designs, subjects who reach their decisions more quickly are more cooperative. Furthermore, forcing subjects to decide quickly increases contributions, whereas instructing them to reflect and forcing them to decide slowly decreases contributions. Finally, an induction that primes subjects to trust their intuitions increases contributions compared with an induction that promotes greater reflection. To explain these results, we propose that cooperation is intuitive because cooperative heuristics are developed in daily life where cooperation is typically advantageous. We then validate predictions generated by this proposed mechanism. Our results provide convergent evidence that intuition supports cooperation in social dilemmas, and that reflection can undermine these cooperative impulses.
The present study examined the associations between trait mindfulness and depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms (i.e., worry), and alcohol-related problems via decentering and purpose in life. Using structural equation modeling in a large sample of college students (N = 1,277), we found support for decentering and purpose in life as partial mediators of the associations between trait mindfulness and these outcomes. Although our findings should be viewed as preliminary given the cross-sectional study design and study population, our results are consistent with the notion that decentering and purpose in life may be mechanisms explaining the health beneficial effects of mindfulness. Future research studies with extensive assessments of potential mechanisms using experimental and longitudinal designs are needed to bolster confidence that decentering and purpose in life are important mechanisms explaining the health-promoting effects of mindfulness.
BackgroundDepression is a common and distressing mental health problem that is responsible for significant individual disability and cost to society. Medication and psychological therapies are effective for treating depression and maintenance anti-depressants (m-ADM) can prevent relapse. However, individuals with depression often express a wish for psychological help that can help them recover from depression in the long-term. We need to develop psychological therapies that prevent depressive relapse/recurrence. A recently developed treatment, Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT, see http://www.mbct.co.uk) shows potential as a brief group programme for people with recurring depression. In two studies it has been shown to halve the rates of depression recurring compared to usual care.
This trial asks the policy research question, is MBCT superior to m-ADM in terms of: a primary outcome of preventing depressive relapse/recurrence over 24 months; and, secondary outcomes of (a) depression free days, (b) residual depressive symptoms, (c) antidepressant (ADM) usage, (d) psychiatric and medical co-morbidity, (e) quality of life, and (f) cost effectiveness? An explanatory research question asks is an increase in mindfulness skills the key mechanism of change?
Methods/Design
The design is a single blind, parallel RCT examining MBCT vs. m-ADM with an embedded process study. To answer the main policy research question the proposed trial compares MBCT plus ADM-tapering with m-ADM for patients with recurrent depression. Four hundred and twenty patients with recurrent major depressive disorder in full or partial remission will be recruited through primary care. Depressive relapse/recurrence over two years is the primary outcome variable. The explanatory question will be addressed in two mutually informative ways: quantitative measurement of potential mediating variables pre/post-treatment and a qualitative study of service users' views and experiences.
Discussion
If the results of our exploratory trial are extended to this definitive trial, MBCT will be established as an alternative approach to maintenance anti-depressants for people with a history of recurrent depression. The process studies will provide evidence about the effective components which can be used to improve MBCT and inform theory as well as other therapeutic approaches.
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