Craig Payton/ Class 3: Accountability @ Straight-A-Guide

by Craig Payton

97. Describe your thoughts on whether accountability logs would help, hinder, or provide indifferent to your opportunities for success upon release.

I definitely agree that keeping steady track of your progress in all areas is tremendously valuable.? I can say that I have never before tracked my efforts in such a way.? It serves to keep on focused on goals and values.? As you work on achieving goals you connect daily to the values from which the goals have sprung and realize that by maintaining this level of integrity you have already realized a degree of success as a person.? As this process helps me to better accomplish goals and see new goals and aspiration it cannot help but make me a better and more productive person who takes on challenges and stays focus on achieving those goals he sets before him.? Although I agree with the goal setting and personal accountability, I cannot personally see the benefit of submitting a daily blog about what progress I have made.? I have opted for a periodic update of my progress.? I blogged my first update after 60 days into the new year (2012).

98. In what ways will probation officers respond to efforts you?ve made at documenting your values, goals, and commitment to preparing for a law-abiding life upon release?

I have no idea how the particular officer in my case may or may not respond to my activities and documentations of same.? I would hope that any person would be able to discern that I am making a concerted effort towards self-improvement while incarcerated and that I am focused on succeeding upon my release from prison.? Holding up my values and living by them should demonstrate that I am not all the type of person who would seek to break the law again.? With a shorter sentence, it is certainly difficult to make the case that what I did was a youthful folly which I have grown out of, but I will carry on with the Straight A Guide process to do the best I can to document efforts above and beyond the average prisoner to show my sincerity in my goal to rejoin the mainstream of society. ?

99. Elaborate on ways that full transparency with regard to your prison adjustment through accountability logs can influence potential employers or support networks.

The idea of accountability logs is to track what you are accomplishing.? I understand that accountability logs have already proven effective to provide incentive and impetus towards achieving my goals and also enabling me to each for new goals and aspirations.? As for how this may affect those within my support network or prospective employers I am a bit dubious.? What is most important is to demonstrate that you are making progress and achieving the best you can while incarcerated.? I am a bit skeptical honestly of the values of showing someone my fitness goals and logs or some of the other daily goals I am tracking.? These are not something I publish on the Straight A Guide therefore they are not as tangible.? This is why I have been doing 100 day challenge reports to update anyone interested in what I am up to.? Therefore, I see the accountability logs as much more personally important than they may be to a prospective employer or others in my actual or potential support network.? More important is my ability to communicate my thoughts, my process and my accomplishments over the time I have remaining in incarceration.

100. Describe the role accountability logs played in their success:

Accountability logs are useful across all sectors of the pursuit of excellence in any field.? The definition of accountability logs can be applied broadly to define any record keeping that allows you to see where you have been and where you are going, whether you are making progress or not and also can lead to course corrections which would not have been possible without the insight provided by keeping track of the data in question.? There is no doubt that good record keeping is essential to survive in our modern world.? Just keeping basic tax records in an orderly fashion will make once life much less stressful early each year.? Beyond that, keeping excellent records of different aspects of one?s life will reveal more information about progress or lack thereof and by its very nature calls for and creates discipline.? How can you live within your means when you aren?t exactly clear on what you earn or what you spend, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.? It is difficult to plan for your future if you do not have a firm grasp upon the nature of your present conditions.

101. How do universities evaluate which students to admit?

Universities evaluate potential students based upon their records.? Their course work, their GPA and also test records such as SAT.

102. What information do creditors consider when deliberating on whether to extend loans?

Creditors take into consideration many factors.? Besides the obvious factor of current employment and household income, lenders take not of overall financial status, outstanding debt, total credit available and other factors.? These together form ones credit score and upon the basis of this score and the amount of loan sought they will determine how able the individual has shown he will be to pay back the loan.? This is obviously a good example of being held accountable according to past performance and present and future potential to have the same or better results.

103. What governs investment decisions that people make?

Individuals make investment decisions primarily upon the judgment that they will be able to realize anticipated or better than anticipated ROI (return on investment).? They make these decisions based upon the terms of the investment and their knowledge of the investment and the likelihood of the investment to perform as represented. ?The performance expectations are based upon real data gathered about the opportunity, the marketplace, past performance and projected forecasts of performance.

104. How do your responses to the above questions support or refute the value of accountability logs?

The above answers do support the value of accountability logs very well.? There are many documents generated in our society that could be labeled as accountability logs, even the record of your checking account is an accountability log of sorts.? I am convinced of a certain degree of value to maintain an accountability log.? This is why I have been maintaining my own

logs since Jan 1, 2012 (April 7the 2012 as of this writing).? It has been helpful to keep track of the pursuit of my goals.? It has led to course correction, likely much sooner than would otherwise have been the case.? However, given the relatively short amount of time I will spend in prison compared to Mr. Santos, I have some difficulty in visualizing how a daily posting of my log will advance my opportunities.? I have elected to a quarterly update (or perhaps more frequently) to sum up my progress instead of the daily log M. Santos posts.? I do keep daily logs but I prefer to save my internet minutes (5 cents per minute) for the Straight A Guide, intermittent blogs and non-fiction book report/reviews.

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Experimental drug helps diabetes patients lose weight

ScienceDaily (June 25, 2012) ? An experimental drug helped significantly more overweight patients with diabetes shed pounds, compared with placebo, a new study finds. The results were presented June 23 at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

"This new medication is promising because of the amount of weight loss it produces, the resultant improvement in important risk factors for diabetes, and, particularly in the lower dose studied, in its tolerability," said study lead author Donna H. Ryan, M.D., professor emeritus at Pennington Biomedical Research Center (LSU System) in Baton Rouge, LA.

Diabetes treatment involves weight management and medications to control blood-sugar levels and risk factors. If left untreated, diabetes can increase the danger of developing heart and blood-vessel diseases. Since one of the main risk factors for all of these diseases is obesity, weight loss is important to both prevention and treatment.

Focusing on type 2 diabetes, investigators found that patients who took the experimental weight-loss drug phentermine/topiramate, combined with diet and exercise modifications, were more likely to lose moderate amounts of weight than those who received a sugar-pill placebo and the diet and exercise intervention.

The percentage of study participants losing more than 10 percent of their initial weight while decreasing their blood pressure and hemoglobin A1c, was:

? 14 percent on low-dose phentermine/topiramate

? 31 percent on high-dose phentermine/topiramate

? 4 percent on placebo

Phentermine/topiramate is a combined medication that works by decreasing appetite. The main side effects associated with the drug were constipation and tingling sensations in the fingers. Patients who took phentermine/topiramate were also more likely to develop low blood sugar than those who received placebo.

This study was an analysis of diabetic patients who enrolled in weight-loss studies testing medications given with lifestyle intervention. Investigators randomly assigned 357 patients with type 2 diabetes to receive either low-dose phentermine/topiramate (7.5 milligrams), high-dose phentermine/topiramate (15 milligrams), or placebo. Neither investigators nor patients knew who was receiving the drug versus placebo in the double-blinded study. Participants' average age was 53 years, 66 percent were female, most were white, and their average weight was 222 pounds. Follow-up was one year.

VIVUS, the company that developed phentermine/topiramate, funded the study.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Endocrine Society, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Scientists to reveal Stephen Hawking's 'brain hack'

Ted S. Warren / AP

To produce the words for text or speech, British physicist Stephen Hawking currently uses an infrared sensor mounted on his eyeglasses, visible here on the left side of his face during an appearance this month in Seattle. The sensor picks up twitches from his cheek, which are translated into the desired letters or words. Hawking and neuroscientist Philip Low are experimenting with a headband-mounted system that can translate brain waves directly into text and speech, but Hawking has said that system isn't yet up to speed.

By Alan Boyle

After months of tweaking, researchers are finally ready to show off a high-tech headband that can translate Stephen Hawking's brain waves into speech?? providing what could eventually become an easier avenue for the paralyzed British physicist and many others to share their deep thoughts.

The system, developed by San Diego-based NeuroVigil and known as iBrain, uses a head-mounted receiver the size of a matchbox to pick up different types of brain waves. iBrain employs a computer algorithm called SPEARS to analyze the brain emanations and encode them for a text-based speech reader. Philip Low, NeuroVigil's founder, chairman and CEO, is to present the latest results from his work with Hawking on July 7 at a Cambridge conference on consciousness.

---

"I haven't discussed doing a demonstration with Stephen, but we could do that, of course," Low told me today. During the conference, Low will be showing video clips of Hawking using the iBrain to communicate.

For decades, Hawking has been coping with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative nerve disease that has left the theoretical physicist confined to a wheelchair and unable to move even his fingers. To write or speak, he currently uses an infrared sensor system mounted on his eyeglasses: His cheek twitches are read by the sensor to control a wheelchair-mounted computer system that slowly encodes the patterns of those twitches. It can take a half-hour for Hawking to twitch out a couple of sentences in response to a question.

In an abstract prepared for next month's presentation, Low and Hawking describe how they worked out their technique for the iBrain system. Hawking (who is described as a "high-functioning 70-year-old ALS patient" in the abstract) was told to try moving one of his hands or feet ? for example, flexing his foot or scrunching his hand into a ball. The limbs didn't move, of course, but just thinking about trying to move them generated readable brain-wave patterns.

"The subject's brain activity demonstrated distinct broad-spectrum pulses extending to the gamma and ultra-high gamma ranges," the researchers wrote. "Such pulses were present in the absence of actual movement, and absent when the subject was not attempting motion."

The abstract said Hawking's brain also buzzed with alpha brain waves when he closed his eyes, as expected.?Alpha waves are associated with wakeful relaxation, and are probably familiar to anyone who's undergone biofeedback training. Gamma waves, in contrast, are associated with increased attention?? and in the past have been linked to?activities ranging from running to learning.

Lots of possibilities
The fact that Hawking's brain signals could be read reliably is a good sign, not only for one of the world's best-known scientists but for hundreds of thousands of others around the world.?Low and Hawking say their work "opens the possibility to link intended movements to a library of words and convert them into speech, thus providing ALS sufferers with communication tools more dependent on the brain than on the body."

Low told me that the brainwave-reading device could be used to control prosthetic devices "to give ALS sufferers mobility"?? sort of like a real-life version of the Stephen Hawking robotic exoskeleton proposed in an Onion parody 15 years ago.

The iBrain device could have other applications, such as diagnosing sleep apnea, studying autism and monitoring other brain conditions. It's already been used in a clinical trial to monitor the effects of experimental drugs on brain activity. The U.S. military is also looking into how the device can help treat traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, which are big issues for combat veterans. Direct brain-to-speech communication, however, represents the highest-profile application, particularly when Stephen Hawking is involved.

"We'd like to find a way to bypass his body, pretty much hack his brain," The Telegraph quoted Low as saying.

The key question for Hawking is whether iBrain represents an improvement over the system he currently has. Back in April, the professor told The New York Times?that the project hadn't quite reached that point. "At the moment I think my cheek switch is faster ... but should the position change I will try Philip Low's system," he wrote in an email sent by an assistant.

In that quote, Low said Hawking was talking about brain-computer interfaces in general, rather than specifically about iBrain. "What we are seeing is in fact an immediate response, so the question is going to be to productize this, so that he can communicate reliably should he lose control of his cheek muscles," he said.

TEDMED via YouTube

Neuroscientist Philip Low (at right) demonstrates how the iBrain device can send brain-wave readings to a cellphone with an subject who's wearing the headband (at left) during a TEDMED 2009 presentation. Click on the image to watch the YouTube clip.

Personal quest
Low said the iBrain project was already moving on to Version 2.0, and the iBrain 3 device is due to be built next year. "That will be about the size of a U.S. quarter," he told me. "People will be able to check their brain activity much like you or I can check our blood pressure."

The 32-year-old, Vienna-born researcher's company has come a long way since its founding, which Low says he initially financed by putting $240,000 on his credit card. Someday, he hopes brain-monitoring systems will be used to pick up the signs of neurological problems early enough to do something about them. For Low, this is not just business. It's personal.

"I would have loved to see this 20 years ago, when my father suffered from a side effect of a commonly used sleep drug," he told me. "He threatened someone with a weapon ... a gun, actually. And it destroyed our family."

His father was eventually pardoned, but it took a long time to put everything back together. That experience led Low to look into the neurological basis of sleep, including experiments with bird brains. That was what led him to come up with the SPEARS algorithm in the first place.

"It's very ironic that an algorithm I initially developed to analyze the brain patterns of birds has found its way to dealing with Stephen Hawking's brain patterns, the U.S. military and autistic children," he told me.?

More about Stephen Hawking:

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Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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Myanmar's Suu Kyi in France for last leg of tour

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Autism Research Hindered by Scarcity of Brain Samples

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A freezer failure that destroyed brain samples from people with autism exposed what is emerging as a major obstacle to progress: the shortage of high-quality autopsied brains.

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RT on DVD & Blu-ray: Wrath of the Titans, 21 Jump Street, and The Artist

Plus, some acclaimed foreign films, the other Snow White movie, and Eddie Murphy bombs again.

This week on home video, we've got a number of new releases to talk about, and all of them are, for better or worse, kind of interesting in their own ways. First, we've got this year's Best Picture Oscar winner, a surprising reboot of an '80s TV show, and the sequel to a poorly-reviewed adventure. Then, we've got a funny take on Snow White, Eddie Murphy's latest misfire, a couple of acclaimed foreign films, and a couple of worthy new Criterion releases. See below for the full list!

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