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Arts & Culture

New Webseries Features MCN Star Jeremy Behrens

Jeremy_BehrensMCN’s Market Analysis Team Lead, Jeremy Behrens, appears in a new webseries, CRAVE. The show was produced in collaboration with the production company Honey Toad, whose own webseries, WRECKED, garnered acclaim from TubeFilter and other reviewers, and received thirteen nominations and four wins from the Indie Series Awards.

The pilot was shot in May, with Ms. Aneesh Sheth directing and Liz Ellis running the set. Nathaniel Buechler and Ben Goldsmith, also of Honey Toad, directed photography. The show stars Sheth with Jeremy Behrens, Angela DiMarco (Chop Socky Boom, Grimm, The Device) Sarbani Hazra (Blissville, Jane Don’t Date,) Amalya Benhaim and DeRon Brigdon (Orange Is The New Black, Grimm). A Kickstarter campaign has been launched to fund the rest of the season.

Man's Best Friend – Some Insight into Why

Not everyone loves dogs of course, but most dog owners claim a strong bond with their pet. A new study from Japan sheds some light into the biochemistry of this relationship: Dogs who trained a long gaze on their owners had elevated levels of oxytocin, a hormone produced in the brain that is associated with nurturing and attachment. After receiving those long gazes, the owners’ levels of oxytocin increased, too.  This is similar to how bonding occurs between parent and newborns.

Researchers also tested oxytocin levels in wolves-to-owner gazes among a sample of wolves who had been raised by humans. Compared with dogs, the wolves scarcely gazed at their owners, and the owners’ oxytocin levels barely budged.

Dr. Takefumi Kikusui, professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at Azabu University, suggested that “there is a possibility that dogs cleverly and unknowingly utilized a natural system meant for bonding a parent with his or her child.” Certainly one doesn’t have to search long to find examples which speak to this bond:

“My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet.” – Edith Wharton

“Children and dogs are as necessary to the welfare of the country as Wall Street and the railroads.” – Harry S Truman

“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.” – Kafka

 

 

Music Soothes the Savage Beast

It was William Congreve who wrote in 1697 “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” but what is the mechanism for this? A new study from Greece offers some insight.

The study focused on aortic stiffness and pulse wave reflections, two important indicators of cardiovascular risk. The subjects’ baseline measurements were taken at the start of each session. Then participants listened to either a half hour of classical music (such as Bach’s Orchestral Suites) or a half hour of rock (tracks from Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Green Day) or  experienced a half hour of silence.

Measurements were taken at the end of these half hour periods, and then again after 30 more minutes. The numbers were lower for all participants who had listened to music, whether it be classical or rock. Though the study involved just a small number of participants over a limited period of time it does suggest that listening to music positively impacts heart health.

It was also Congreve who wrote “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,” in his 1697 The Mourning Bride. He also coined the phrase “You must not kiss and tell” in his 1695 Love for Love. For the moment, however, we’ll refrain from a more clinical review of these notions.

A Remarkable Man Confronts His Coming Death

By Brian Grant

I awoke to this op-ed piece in today’s New York Times by Oliver Sachs. Tears formed. Sachs is a man who has contributed to medicine, literature, and entertainment through his writing and clinical care. And he is dying as his article describes. He is 81 and continues to contribute to the world. And when he departs, his legacy will continue with his passing. I will let his article speak for itself. Readers might enjoy clicking on the comments and seeing how other readers value and cherish his many gifts.

Count Down to Sunday!

FullSizeRenderMCN’s Seattle-based corporate office staff share a quick morning break and show their excitement over the Seahawks’ second straight Super Bowl appearance this coming Sunday.

Though our 26 offices nationwide may be fully integrated in terms of training, security policies and procedures, and of course one operational database, we also recognize that many of our team members live in the northeast including in New England. Abby PatsSo thank you Abby and JeffJeff patriot for sharing your spirit with us and our many New England-based clients. We welcome your visits in mid-May when the Red Sox are in town!

Not to be outdone by the corporate office, members of MCN’s client services staff and NW operations management, as well as team members in Tri-Cities (Richland, Eastern Washington) and family members Hunter (pictured with family friend Russell Wilson) and Baby Beau show their colors!seattle

baby Beauhunter with russell wilsonseahawkseastern wa

The Age of Mindfulness

A quick Google of “mindfulness” pulled up about 121,000,000 results (0.28 seconds), from Harvard Business Review to the Seattle Seahawks.

Mindfulness is not meditation per se, (though it may incorporate meditation techniques and has some origins in Buddhist teachings) but rather includes many ways of being involving slowing down, awareness, and stress reduction. It includes a set of tools, techniques and exercises to facilitate paying more attention to one’s surroundings and being here in the moment.

It can be as simple and rewarding as driving to work in a mindful way, letting the traffic around you just be, experiencing the moment rather than being upset at that careless pedestrian or person not using their turn signal. It may require giving yourself the time to not be hurried — by leaving a few minutes early for example. It is relevant to business in that a number of businesses are providing the opportunity for staff to be exposed to it in the context of wellness.

Which brings us back to the Seahawks, an excellent approach to coaching and life to ponder as the Super Bowl draws near. “Lotus pose on two,” published by ESPN during last year’s pre-season reviews the process of change and mindfulness approach brought by coach Pete Carroll. The article ends with this quote, one that those of us in Seattle are particularly enjoying about now: “Man, that’s just what I was thinking,” the coach said. “Let’s not just win one Super Bowl. Let’s win multiple.”

Smooth Operator

by Laura McFarland, Communications Director

According to a 2008 survey, operating room staff play music during about two thirds of surgeries, as reported in this year’s British Medical Journal’s Christmas issue, which reviews the history of music in the operating room.

Aside from a more general effect on health, numerous data specifically support music for patients having surgery under local or general anaesthesia. BMJ notes that in a randomised trial of 372 patients having elective surgery, relaxing melodies (60-80 bpm, mimicking the resting heart rate) proved to be superior to midazolam as a pre-anaesthetic anxiolytic. Combined data suggest that this calming effect is maintained before, during (when awake), and after surgery, with music faring better than noise blocking devices alone. For patients requiring further respiratory support postoperatively, music’s ability to reduce anxiety, heart rate, and respiratory rate extends even to ventilated patients in intensive care.

My son, delivered by C-section, was born to the sounds of Loverboy, “Working for the Weekend.” Personally I would have preferred something a little more classical, which is apparently the preferred genre. Its popularity may be in part due to the lack of lyrics, which alas rules out holiday carols. The Journal offers a number of suggestions and some understandable don’ts (REM’s “Everybody Hurts,” for instance) if readers find themselves needing to make a selection.

MCN wishes a joyful holiday season to all of our readers. We will be closed on Thursday, December 25th and Thursday, January 1st. To meet the needs of our clients, MCN is open during regular business hours throughout the rest of the season. Our 26 offices nationwide, including operational centers in Tampa, FL, Long Island, NY, Chicago, IL, and Seattle, WA, are seamlessly connected through one fully integrated database. Whatever the weather, MCN staff are available to answer client questions, receive referrals, and review and deliver reports from 8 am – 8 pm EST.

And the MCN Charitable Giving Winners Are…!

Congratulations to James McLaughlin and Laurel Seim!

MCN has picked James and Laurel as our contest winners who have in turn picked their non-profits of choice:

Anser Charter School, a public charter school located in Garden City, ID, chartered by the Boise School District. Anser Charter School offers an inspiring and challenging educational environment for elementary and junior high children with a strong focus on a connection to and service to the community. (James McLaughlin)

Care to Share. Based in Beaverton, OR, Care To Share’s mission is to coordinate assistance to families and individuals seeking emergency food and other basic needs, with the goal of helping people through crisis situations and to connect them with other services, if continued support is needed. (Laurel Seim)

Each will receive a $200 donation from MCN in honor of our subscribers.

To give back some more, MCN has picked a third winner whose non-profit of choice will be announced at the start of 2015.

These donations are a small part of MCN’s annual giving campaigns. MCN as an organization and through our staff nationwide participate in annual drives to support United Way and ArtsFund. MCN also matches staff donations to non-profits to allow for a wide range of community involvement across the country. Additionally, staff are encouraged to participate in their communities through volunteer time as well as giving campaigns. We appreciate this opportunity our subscribers have given us to provide direct support to these valuable organizations.

Bogus Theories on Bugs, Yawns and Belly Fat

Ever heard of BAHFest? It stands for Festival of Bad Ad-Hoc Hypotheses, a satirical conference on evolutionary biology held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in October. The event’s popularity led an additional  BAHFest held in San Francisco, also held this past October.  The concept was originally proposed in a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip proposing that human infants have been evolutionarily optimized for long-distance dispersal by catapult.

At each festival, six presenters, each armed with reams of research, vied to win over a panel of judges with a different bogus scientific theory. The winner got a statue of Darwin looking dubious—shoulders shrugging, hands turned upward.

Selection readers and judges graded theories on four criteria:

  1. Force of Science – how much “scientific” information was brought to bear (graphs, real citations, “research” etc.).
  2. Artistry – how unexpected and clever the idea and presentation were, and how well the presentation was delivered.
  3. Parsimony – the simplest theory that explained the most data is best.
  4. Strength of Defense – how well views were defended to the judges.

Presentations this year included “Influenza Knows When You’re Doing Yoga” from Barbara Vreede, a postdoctoral researcher in evolutionary biology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, as well as one exploring why we yawn, from Emma Kowal of Harvard University. (The answer? To catch bugs. Flying insects are high in protein. They gather in dense swarms most frequently at dawn and dusk, not-so-coincidentally the times of day when we are most likely to yawn.)

The winner of the BAHFest trophy was Michael Anderson, a Boston lawyer specializing in First Amendment cases, for his theory on ubiquity of belly fat in middle-age men.

In ancient times, men’s “spare tires” served as a flotation device for them to rescue their families in times of flooding. Primitive art supports the theory, he said. The earliest depictions of humans were mainly stick figures. But when people began to settle down near rivers and other bodies of water, human images began to take on abdominal bulges, Mr. Anderson claimed.

In addition to the fun of the event, coming up with obviously wrong scientific hypotheses helps us think about how evidence can be used/misused in reaching conclusions.

Happiness Is Love. Full Stop.

In 1938 Harvard University began following 268 male undergraduate students (including future President John Kennedy) and kicked off the longest-running longitudinal study of human development in history, The Grant Study.  The study’s goal was to determine as best as possible what factors contribute most strongly to human flourishing.

George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than three decades, published the study’s most recent findings in the his book Triumphs of Experience. Earlier work on the study include Adaptation to Life, 1977, and Aging Well, 2002. Triumphs of Experience has been widely reviewed, and with good reason.The book and the study are fascinating and informative.

Vaillant raises a number of factors such as the powerful correlation between the warmth of relationships and health and happiness in your later years as well as how significant men’s relationships with their mothers are in determining their well-being in life.  For example, Vaillant notes that Men who had “warm” childhood relationships with their mothers took home $87,000 more per year than men whose mothers were uncaring.  Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old. Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers — but not their fathers — were associated with effectiveness at work.

Vaillant also notes that what separates those who viewed themselves as truly happy from those who did not was not in the events that made up their lives — it was in how they responded to those events. The key difference between the happy person and the unhappy one was that one viewed themselves as a victim to their circumstances, while the other sought ways to use their circumstances to their advantage. The degree to which happiness was attained was in the adaptations the participants employed to deal with and shape their reality.

In Vallant’s own words, the #1 most important finding from the Grant Study is this: “The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points to a straightforward five-word conclusion: Happiness is love.  Full stop.”