TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: In a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers analyzed comedians from Australia, Britain and the United States and found they scored significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs. The traits included a tendency towards impulsive or anti-social behavior, and a tendency to avoid intimacy. “The creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis - both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” said Gordon Claridge of the University of Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who led the study. Although the traits in question are known as “psychotic”, Claridge said, they can also represent healthy equivalents of features such as moodiness, social introversion and the tendency to lateral thinking. “Although schizophrenic psychosis itself can be detrimental to humor, in its lesser form it can increase people’s ability to associate odd or unusual things or to think ‘outside the box’,” he said. “Equally, manic thinking - which is common in people with bipolar disorder - may help people combine ideas to form new, original and humorous connections.”  The researchers recruited 523 comedians - 404 men and 119 women - and asked them to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. The traits scored were “unusual experiences”, such as belief in telepathy and paranormal events, “cognitive disorganization” such as difficulty in focusing thoughts, “introvertive anhedonia” - reduced ability to feel social and physical pleasure, and “impulsive non-conformity”, or tendency towards impulsive, antisocial behavior. The same questionnaire was also completed by 364 actors - who are also used to performing in front of an audience - as a control group, and the comedians’ and actors’ results were compared to each other as well as a general group of 831 people who had non-creative jobs. The researchers found that comedians scored significantly higher on all four types of psychotic personality traits compared to the general group. Most striking were their high scores for impulsive non-conformity and introverted personality traits, the researchers said. The actors scored higher than the general group on three types - but did not display high levels of introverted personality traits.

SOLUTION: Comedians have psychotic personality traits, study finds.

PROBLEM: The in-vitro burger, cultured from cattle stem cells, the first example of what its creator says could provide an answer to global food shortages and help combat climate change, will be fried in a pan and tasted by two volunteers. The burger is the result of years of research by Dutch scientist Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht, who is working to show how meat grown in petri dishes might one day be a true alternative to meat from livestock. The meat in the burger has been made by knitting together around 20,000 strands of protein that has been cultured from cattle stem cells in Post’s lab. The tissue is grown by placing the cells in a ring, like a donut, around a hub of nutrient gel, Post explained. To prepare the burger, scientists combined the cultured beef with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron have been added to bring out its natural colors. “Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven’t altered them in any way,” Post said in a statement on Friday. “For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing.”  Success, in Post’s view, would mean not just a tasty burger, but also the prospect of finding a sustainable, ethical and environmentally friendly alternative to meat production. According to a 2006 report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), industrialized agriculture contributes on a “massive scale” to climate change, air pollution, land degradation, energy use, deforestation and biodiversity decline. The report, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, said the meat industry contributes about 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions and this proportion is expected to grow as consumers in fast-developing countries such as China and India eat more meat. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), annual meat production is projected to rise to 376 million metric tons by 2030 from 218 million metric tons in 1997-1999, and demand from a growing world population is expected to rise beyond that. Post cites FAO figures suggesting demand for meat is expected to increase by more than two-thirds by 2050. Animal welfare campaigners applauded the arrival of cultured meat and predicted a great future for it. “In vitro technology will spell the end of lorries full of cows and chickens, abattoirs and factory farming,” the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign group said in a statement. “It will reduce carbon emissions, conserve water and make the food supply safer.”  A study published in 2011 comparing the relative environmental impacts of various types of meat, including lamb, pork, beef and cultured meat, said the lab-grown product has by far the least impact on the environment. Hanna Tuomisto, who conducted the study at Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, found that growing meats in-vitro would use 35 percent to 60 percent less energy, emit 80 percent to 95 percent less greenhouse gas and use around 98 percent less land than conventionally produced animal meat. While Monday’s fry-up will be a world first and only an initial proof-of concept, the Dutch scientist reckons commercial production of cultured beef could begin within the next 20 years. “What we are going to attempt is important because I hope it will show cultured beef has the answers to major problems that the world faces,” he added.

SOLUTION: Scientists to cook world's first in-vitro beef burger.

PROBLEM: More than 130 women have died from domestic violence this year alone in France, according to activists who track the deaths. European Union studies show France has a higher rate of domestic violence than most of its European peers. And frustrated activists have drawn national attention to a problem President Emmanuel Macron has called “France’s shame.” Under cover of night, activists have glued posters with the names of the dead and calls to action to French city walls. “Complaints ignored, women killed,” read the black block letters on one such sign. They have also posted anti-violence slogans, tagged with Macron’s name. By the hundreds, women have walked silently through city streets after each new death. Two years after Macron made a campaign pledge to tackle the problem, his centrist French government has begun to act. A Justice Ministry report released earlier this month acknowledged authorities’ systematic failure to intervene to prevent domestic violence slayings. On Monday, the government will announce measures that are expected to include seizing firearms from people suspected of domestic violence, prioritizing police training and formally recognizing “psychological violence” as a form of domestic violence. Women are not the only victims of domestic violence, but French officials say they make up the vast majority. Lawyers and victims’ advocates say women are too often disbelieved or turned away by French law enforcement. But they’re encouraged by the new national conversation, which they say marks a departure from decades of denial. “In France, we always have the impression that we are perfect,” activist Caroline de Haas told The Associated Press. A 2014 EU survey of 42,000 women across all 28 member states found that 26% of French women respondents said they been abused by a partner since age 15, either physically or sexually. That’s below the global average of 30%, according to UN Women. But it’s 4 percentage points above the EU average and the sixth highest among EU countries. Half that number reported experiencing such abuse in Spain, which implemented a series of legal and educational measures in 2004 that slashed its domestic violence rates. Conversations about domestic violence have also ratcheted up in neighboring Germany, where activists are demanding that the term “femicide” be used to describe such killings. In France, victims and advocates say government action is overdue — and that more training is needed for police who are often ill-prepared to protect women in danger. Police inaction made national headlines in France after Macron visited a hotline call center in September and listened in on a call with a 57-year-old woman whose husband had threatened to kill her. He heard a police officer on the other end tell the woman he couldn’t help her. The hotline operator told Macron that such responses weren’t unusual. Police officers across Europe often dismiss domestic violence as a private matter and fail to intervene at crucial moments, an EU study found this year. But France is particularly bad, said EU researcher Albin Dearing, who led a study this year that examined domestic violence in seven European countries, including France. “When it comes to violence against women, it showed actually that police do very little to protect women who turn to them for protection,” he said. It can take between three weeks and two months for authorities to act on a complaint, leaving the victim “in a very fragile situation,” according to Frederique Martz, who runs anti-domestic violence organization Women Safe. The Justice Ministry report this month found that 41% of “conjugal homicide” victims studied had previously reported incidents of domestic violence, and 80% of complaints sent to prosecutors went uninvestigated. “Our system doesn’t work to protect women,” Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told French TV channel LCI after another French woman was allegedly killed by her husband in Alsace last week. But Maj. Fabienne Boulard of the national police said many officers respond appropriately to reports of domestic violence. Those who don’t — the ones who react “clumsily” or ask the wrong questions — usually don’t mean harm, she added; they just don’t recognize domestic violence or know how to intervene. This is particularly true when women receive threats but not yet physical blows, victims say. Officers “absorb this violence into the category of violence between a couple that is going through a difficult period,” said one woman whose ex-husband repeatedly threatened her and their children. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The woman divorced him after years of what she describes as psychological abuse that left her “terrified to cross him.” His threats only grew worse from there, she said. She filed multiple complaints, but she said police officers suggested she didn’t seem like a victim or wasn’t able to prove that she was in danger. Earlier this month, Boulard led the first supplementary training on domestic violence for police in the Paris suburb of Les Mureaux. She emphasized to the eight officers there that among victims, “shame is an extremely strong feeling.” Participants traded stories of issues they had encountered: the surge in complaints on Sundays, the woman who retracts her complaint, the partner who insists everything is fine. “We can’t do anything,” one female police officer complained. Boulard told The AP that the three-hour session aimed to help officers understand the pressures that victims face and “why the victim is not what they imagined, why sometimes they don’t correspond with the criteria they expect to see.” Trainings like Boulard’s take place in some parts of France, but regional authorities can decide whether to hold them. Activists hope they’ll become routine. “A year or two ago, no one used the word ‘femicide’ apart from feminist organizations,” Haas said. “There is very much a change in public consciousness.”

SOLUTION:
French women demand action amid high domestic violence rate.