Monthly Archives: July 2021

Human Behavior

More warming a threat to the Hajj and human habitation in the Middle East – Yale Climate Connections

Its not the heat, its the humidity. That simple phrase sums up a major danger pilgrims face (in addition to COVID-19) during the coming week during the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca (Makkah), the holiest city for Muslims. This year, the Hajj falls during the period July 17-22, which is typically among the hottest weeks of the year; levels of heat stress are predicted to approach the danger level on several of the days.

Mecca is located approximately 45 miles inland from the Saudi city of Jeddah, which lies on the coast of the Red Sea. Humid air from the Red Sea often penetrates inland to Mecca when winds blow out of the west, raising the heat stress to dangerous levels for the two million-plus pilgrims who typically attend the five-day Hajj. (This years Hajj is limited to just 60,000 participants because of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

While the heat index which measures heat stress due to high temperatures combined with high humidity is often used to quantify dangerous heat, a more precise measure of heat stress is the wet-bulb temperature (TW), which can be measured by putting a wet cloth placed around the bulb of a thermometer and then blowing air across the cloth. The wet-bulb temperature increases with increasing temperature and humidity and is a measure of mugginess. The U.S. National Weather Service defines the Danger threshold for TW at 24.6 degrees Celsius (76.3F), and Extreme Danger at 29.1 degrees Celsius (84.4F), assuming a 45% relative humidity. The latest forecasts from the GFS model predict that TW will mostly remain below the Danger threshold during this years Hajj, but TW could exceed the Danger threshold on Sunday and Wednesday afternoon if moist winds blow off of the ocean. The high temperatures each day during the Hajj are predicted to be 36-39 degrees Celsius (97-102F).

Observations from the Mecca weather station indicate a significant rise in average TW during the past 30 years nearly 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F). This increase is well above the global average, and can be largely attributed to human-caused global warming. High heat stress events are common when the Hajj occurs during summer; over the 30year period 1984-2013, the danger threshold (TW of 24.6 degrees Celsius) was exceeded in 58% of years. However, the Extreme Danger threshold of 29.1 degrees Celsius was not reached.

While the floor of the Great Mosque, its covered areas, and the surrounding tents that pilgrims stay in are all air conditioned, the ritual of Hajj involves spending about 20-30 hours outdoors over a period of five days. The main outdoor activities, which occur in and surrounding Mecca, are:

1) Tawaf, or praying outside the Great Mosque of Mecca (Alharam) for a few hours on two different occasions;2) Wakuf, or standing on the side of Mount Arafat for one day between sunrise and sunset, recognized as the most important activity of the Hajj; and3) Ramy AlJamrat, or walking in Mina (outskirts of Mecca) for several hours per day (called Stoning of the Devil), repeated in a sequence of three days.

Muslims who are in good health and can afford it are obligated to participate in the Hajj at least once in their lifetimes, and their desire to participate becomes more urgent as their age advances. As a result, a disproportionate fraction of Hajj participants are elderly and at higher risk of heat-related illness.

The Hajj occurs every year on the same days of the Muslim calendar, which follows the lunar cycle. Since the lunar year is shorter than the solar year by about 11 days, the Hajj shifts about 11 days earlier every year, and cycles back to the same date in the solar calendar after about 33 years. The danger of extreme heat during Hajj will wane this decade as the dates transition from July to June and then May. But during the years 2045-2053, and again in 2079-2086, Hajj will fall during August-October. These are the months when wet bulb temperatures peak in Mecca, as a result of the combination of extreme heat and prevailing westerly winds that bring humid air from the Red Sea.

A 2019 paper by MIT scientist Suchul Kang and colleagues, Future Heat Stress During Muslim Pilgrimage (Hajj) Projected to Exceed Extreme Danger Levels, painted a very concerning picture for future Hajj events in a warming climate. The researchers showed that under a moderate global warming scenario, the maximum wet bulb temperature could be expected to exceed the Extreme Danger threshold of 29.1 degrees Celsius 15% of the time during Hajj in the years 2045-2053, and exceed the Danger threshold 91% of the time (Figure 3).

Along similar lines, a 2021 paper led by Fahad Saeed (Climate Analytics) and colleagues, From Paris to Makkah: heat stress risks for Muslim pilgrims at 1.5 C and 2 C, warns that the odds of exceeding the danger threshold at Mecca increase substantially for global warming of 1.5C and 2C levels that are likely to be exceeded this century in the moderate scenario discussed above and that the Extreme Danger threshold may be surpassed during summer months.

The two deadliest stampedes during Hajj both occurred during days with extreme heat and humidity, when the maximum wet bulb temperature exceeded the 24.6 degrees Celsius Danger threshold. On July 2, 1990, 1,426 pilgrims died in a stampede when the maximum temperature (Tmax) reached 41.7 degrees Celsius (107F) and wetbulb temperature (TWmax) hit 25.1 degrees Celsius (77.8 F). Similarly, on September 24, 2015, more than 2,000 pilgrims died in a stampede when Tmax and TWmax reached 48.3 degrees Celsius (118.9F) and 27.3 degrees Celsius (81.1F), respectively. The exact cause of these stampedes is unknown, but extreme heat is known to increase aggressive human behavior.

Since human skin temperature averages close to 35 degrees Celsius (95F), wet-bulb temperatures above that value prevent all people from dispelling internal heat, leading to fatal consequences within six hours, even for healthy people in well-ventilated conditions. A wet-bulb temperature a few degrees lower is fatal for most people, but not all.

A 2020 paper in the open-access journal Science Advances by Raymond et al., Potentially Fatal Combinations of Humidity and Heat Are Emerging across the Globe, identified 14 examples of 35C wet-bulb readings that have already occurred since 1987 at five stations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These conditions generally lasted less than six hours (see Bob Hensons May 2020 post for details).

Those researchers found that the frequency of TW values reaching 27C, 29C, 31C, and 33C across the world all showed doubling trends between 1979 and 2017. They predicted that dangerous wet-bulb readings will continue to spread across vulnerable parts of the world, affecting millions more people, as human-caused climate change continues.

Higher wet-bulb temperatures will be particularly dangerous in the Indus River valley along the India/Pakistan border, where thousands of laborers work outdoors in pre-monsoon heat that can reach dangerous levels during May, June, and July. Jacobabad, Pakistan (population 191,000), has already recorded six days when the wet-bulb temperature exceeded the limits of human survivability: 35 degrees Celsius. A 2015 heat wave killed 3,477 people in India/Pakistan, ranking as the fourth deadliest heat wave in world history, according to the international disaster database, EM-DAT. Four of the 10 deadliest heat waves on record in the EM-DAT database have affected India and/or Pakistan.

A 2015 paper by Pal and Eltahir, Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability, warned that human habitability will be severely impacted in the nations of Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait in coming decades. They suggested those nations would benefit by supporting strong efforts to rein in climate change and forsake a business as usual approach. A business as usual approach would likely lead to summertime high temperatures by 2100 reaching 60 degrees Celsius (140F) in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and 55 degrees Celsius (131F) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Wet-bulb temperatures would likely exceed 36 degrees Celsius (97F) beyond the limit of human survival at some locations in Iran, the UAE, and Qatar. The authors wrote: A plausible analogy of future climate for many locations in Southwest Asia is the current climate of the desert of Northern Afar on the African side of the Red Sea, a region with no permanent human settlements owing to its extreme climate.

The data point to a logical conclusion: It would be strongly in the interest of the nations of Southwest Asia, and of other regions, to support aggressive efforts to reign in climate change to protect the Hajj and the future of human habitability in their countries.

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More warming a threat to the Hajj and human habitation in the Middle East - Yale Climate Connections

Human Behavior

Dogs understand humans in ways that wolves never will Earth.com – Earth.com

It seems that 14,000 years of domestication has taught dogs to understand aspects of human behavior that their wolf ancestors never latched onto.

Researchers at Duke University ran a recent study that compared the behavior of dog puppies and wolf puppies. The wolves were raised with round-the-clock human interaction that included being hand-fed and sleeping in the caretakers beds. By contrast, the dog puppies remained with their mothers and littermates and were exposed to less interaction with humans.

The puppies were then given tasks that showcased their skills at interpreting what humans are thinking. In one test, a food treat was hidden in one of two bowls and a researcher pointed or stared at the correct bowl in order to give the puppy a clue.

The results were remarkable! The dog puppies were twice as likely to find the treat and this applied to puppies as young as eight weeks old. The dog puppies simply understood that the humans were trying to help them solve the problem and took their cues from the researchers behavior. None of the wolf puppies did better than a random guess.

In another test, the puppies were given food in a closed container that was challenging to open. While the wolf puppies took the container away to try and solve the problem on their own, the dog puppies looked to the people for help, as if to say: Im stuck, can you fix this?

Study first author Hannah Salomons explained that the dog and wolf puppies do not differ in other tests of cognitive skill, such as memory or muscle impulse control. But in terms of people-reading skills, the dog puppies clearly had social cognitive skills that the wolf puppies lacked.

The research provides evidence that the ability of dogs to understand human gestures is a product of domestication, said Professor Brian Hare.

The experts also found that dog puppies are 30 times more likely to approach a stranger compared to wolf puppies.

Theres lots of different ways to be smart, said Salomons. Animals evolve cognition in a way that will help them succeed in whatever environment theyre living in.

With the dog puppies we worked with, if you walk into their enclosure they gather around and want to climb on you and lick your face, whereas most of the wolf puppies run to the corner and hide.

For thousands of years, dogs have lived in association with humans and those that could interpret human behavior would have had a better chance of survival. The genes for their social cognitive skills have been passed down through the generations, such that todays dogs are masters at understanding the behavioral cues given by their masters.

The study is published in the journal Current Biology.

By Alison Bosman, Earth.com Staff Writer

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Dogs understand humans in ways that wolves never will Earth.com - Earth.com

Human Behavior

‘As I See It’ with Columnist Jon Huer: Want to save nature? Save society first – The Recorder

Let me start with a question: Can you support a healthy, sustainable environment in a capitalist system devoted to all-out consumption? With some qualifications, most would say, Yes, we can. Most of our answers would be in the affirmative because we could not find an alternative way of life, like giving up consumer capitalism, once we said, No.

During our walk at Greenfield Community Collegetoday, we saw a rabbit that was in no hurry to scamper away, obviously unafraid of the two-legged creatures nearby. This small encounter with the rabbit reminded me of the articles I read recently in the Recorder on the large subject of nature or nature-related habits of mind in connection with environmentalism. Further thinking about the subject brought me to the idea that whether we love and support nature or remain indifferent to it, the consequences are the same. The fate of the rabbit, and that of other creatures in nature, is wholly unrelated to whether we personally love nature or are indifferent to it.

Here is the subsequent gist of my sociology of nature: All things about nature are governed by the rules of society and its policies of how the society wishes to govern nature. Its the city, the county, and the state, and ultimately the nation and the whole humanity that determine whether the rabbit, and other such creatures, survive well, not whether or not we love the rabbit. Indeed, it is the nitty-gritty aspects of governing politics the budget, the manpower, the rulesand our human habits that determine the fate of nature and all the creatures living in it. Environmentalism is about our survival, not natures. If we do well with society, nature does well too, but not necessarily the other way around. One of the writers on environmentalism quoted a U.N. report that emphasizes human behavior in environmental protection: We must redefine our way of life and consumption.

We tend to think that nature, in reality a sub-category of society, is something separate from our social existence. We claim to love nature even when we have a very negligent society that systematically destroys all that is in nature by overdevelopment, pollution, exploitation and neglect. In order to save nature, or its environmental impact, we must first save our society, for society is everything that nature is. Not a single animal, like the rabbit we saw today, not a single petal in the wild flowers, not a single blade of grass, can simply belong to nature without what our society does to control it and manage it. It is wonderful to observe that many people profess to love nature and the environment, as my wife genuinely does. But if one loves nature, one must love the society first and pay attention to whats going on with the society and what people are doing in society to destroy ones beloved nature or to preserve it.

While indifferent to nature, I am keenly aware how humanity is slowly destroying nature by rapidly destroying society. In general, a society that is decent, just and wholesome as a human society also tends to be decent, just and wholesome toward nature, for nature depends so critically on the society that functions as its steward. Just observe Scandinavia or Japan, whose decent social systems also maintain a very friendly and thriving natural environment.

The articles in the Recorder seemed to argue that if we loved and understood nature well, we would have a peaceful and harmonious human world as well. I would say the opposite: If we loved and understood the society in which we live and the human beings we are part of, I would say, we can also have a peaceful and harmonious natural world. Wherever we witness nature threatened and destroyed, we witness a human society thats doing the damage. All things, good and evil, begin from the society and end in nature, not the other way around.

All forms of loving nature are expressed through doing something about it in society. If you loved humanity in society, it would solve all environmental problems. Everything on this earth, including the welfare of the wild rabbits and flowers, begins and ends with humanity in society. You cannot enjoy a vegetarian sandwich and a glass of organic wine by the beautifully-manicured river while, across the river, poor people live in squalor and are shot by police. On the other hand, how could a city, where all citizens live peacefully and in harmony with one another, not have a beautiful, clean river?

If you love nature, then make sure that all humanity on this earth live in a decent way. How could we love nature without first loving our most immediate nature, namely, our neighborhood and its inhabitants, the neighbors?

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and a retired professor, is the author of The Wages of Sin: Americas Dilemma of Profit Against Humanity, a book about Americas political economy. He lives in Greenfield.

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'As I See It' with Columnist Jon Huer: Want to save nature? Save society first - The Recorder

Human Behavior

More than two hours of daily screen time linked to cognitive, behavioral problems in children born extremely preterm – National Institutes of Health

Media Advisory

Thursday, July 15, 2021

NIH-funded study finds deficits in overall IQ, problem solving skills and impulse control.

Among 6- and 7-year-olds who were born extremely preterm before the 28th week of pregnancy those who had more than two hours of screen time a day were more likely to have deficits in overall IQ, executive functioning (problem solving skills), impulse control and attention, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Similarly, those who had a television or computer in their bedrooms were more likely to have problems with impulse control and paying attention. The findings suggest that high amounts of screen time may exacerbate the cognitive deficits and behavioral problems common to children born extremely preterm.

The study was conducted by Betty R. Vohr, M.D., and colleagues. It appears in JAMA Pediatrics. Funding was provided by NIHs Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Previous studies have linked high amounts of screen time among children born full-term to language and developmental, behavioral and other problems. In the current study, researchers analyzed data from a study of children born at 28 weeks or earlier. Of 414 children, 238 had more than two hours of screen time per day and 266 had a television or computer in their bedrooms. Compared to children with less screen time per day, those with high amounts of screen time scored an average deficit of nearly 8 points on global executive function percentile scores, roughly 0.8 points lower on impulse control (inhibition) and more than 3 points higher on inattention. Children with a television or computer in their bedrooms also scored lower on measures of inhibition, hyperactivity and impulsivity.

The authors concluded that the findings support the need for physicians to discuss the potential effects of screen time with families of children born extremely preterm.

Andrew Bremer, M.D., Ph.D., Acting Chief, NICHD Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch, is available for comment.

Vohr, BE, et al. Association of high screen-time use with school-age cognitive, executive function, and behavior outcomes in extremely preterm children. JAMA Pediatrics.2021. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.2041

About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): NICHD leads research and training to understand human development, improve reproductive health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. For more information, visit https://www.nichd.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

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More than two hours of daily screen time linked to cognitive, behavioral problems in children born extremely preterm - National Institutes of Health

Human Behavior

Think Your Dog Would Share Its Food With You? We Have Bad News – ScienceAlert

If you've ever actually met a dog, new research into canine behavior will come as no shock. Scientists have found that "man's best friend" won't necessarily help said man out with a delicious snack, even if that man has given a snack first.

This is actually a little surprising for animal researchers, though, since dogs have previously been found to share food with other dogs and help humans in other ways. The finding suggests that our dog buddies just simply may not have helpful feelings towards humans when it comes to food.

Dogs are well known to be prosocial that is, they are helpful towards others, and in particular, return favors. This makes sense since they are social animals. Such animal social groups thrive best when their members help each other.

In contexts in which dogs live with humans, this has been seen, too. We've all heard the cliche of the dog rescuing humans from a burning building, but it's been demonstrated experimentally, too: Dogs will help a trapped human, particularly when that human expresses distress.

But how far will that help extend? To find out, a team of researchers led by veterinary scientist Jim McGetrick of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, designed an experiment to determine if dogs would help a human obtain food.

They trained 37 pet dogs to use a food dispenser that opens with the press of a button across two different experiments. Once the dogs knew how to open the dispenser, the button was placed in a separate enclosure, visible through a wire mesh fence.

For the first experiment, a dog was paired with two unfamiliar humans on two different days. On the first day, a human would sit in the button enclosure that now contained a functional and non-functional button. This human would press the functional button at regular intervals to distribute food to the dog.

On the second day, a different human would sit in front of a button that did not work the functioning button would still be visible and press it at regular intervals. No food was distributed.

Next, the positions were reversed. The food dispenser was placed in the enclosure with the human, and the dispenser's button was with the dog.

The second experiment largely replicated the first, except there was only one button in the enclosure, and the unhelpful human simply never pressed it. The other difference allowed the dog to reciprocate the humans' respective behaviors on the same day instead of on different days.

The researchers found that whether or not the human had previously helped the dog obtain food had no bearing on whether or not the dog pressed the button.

The helpful or unhelpful behavior of the human also had no bearing on how the dog interacted with that human outside of the experimental setting during a free play session.

Now, it's possible that there are other reasons for this. The dogs may not have understood the role of the humans pressing the button in snack delivery or lack thereof. Given that humans are usually providing food to dogs, rather than taking it, they also may not have understood the role reversal.

However, in similar studies in which dogs' readiness to help other dogs is tested using food, the dogs showed clear reciprocity, so it's unlikely that a lack of understanding on the part of the dogs accounts entirely for their disinterest in feeding humans, the researchers said.

"In conclusion, dogs in the current studies failed to reciprocate help received from humans and a preference for either human type (helpful or unhelpful) was not evident based on a free interaction session," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"Given that dogs have already been shown to reciprocate help received from conspecifics in experimental studies, the absence of reciprocity here may be explained by methodological inadequacies, though it is also possible that dogs are not predisposed to engage in such cooperative interactions with humans naturally."

Future research could focus on helping humans in other ways rather than food, or by training the dogs to better understand the experiment, they concluded.

The research has been published in PLOS One.

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Think Your Dog Would Share Its Food With You? We Have Bad News - ScienceAlert

Human Behavior

Jim Cramer: Don’t Ignore the Impact of Irrational Behavior This Earnings Season – RealMoney

When you try to make a judgment about the direction of the stock market or of individual stocks you are, per se, thinking about what human behavior will occur. You are assuming that people will act rationally and that they will not do things against their interests.

When you invest in an insurance company you do not presume that a huge percentage of the insured will attempt to crash their cars or burn their houses down. When you buy the stock of a retailer you might be doing so because a child credit given by the government should end up in the hands of a Target (TGT) or a Levi's (LEVI) , simply because it was meant to be so.

It's the same with the vaccine. I have a physician I have seen for many years. Every year at my birthday I go see him for my physical and advice on my diet, my blood pressure, my skin, all of the usual body parts that need to be checked. It's no different from a car except it's more expensive and time-consuming.

This year, I went to see him earlier, worried about Covid and seeing what's best for me to do. He said that I wanted to get the vaccine any way I could, even if it meant constantly clicking on websites to find a place to get it done. Our staff helped me and I was able to go to a tent in Staten Island, grateful even as I had no idea where I was beyond being at the correct site.

I told him and he said not to forget to go the next month and that I would not be immunized until 12 days after the second one and I should still wear a mask because of the possibility that too many people at work were to get it and the vaccine might not work well enough to stop it.

All rational behavior, or at least I thought. At no point was it a political issue, it was a medical issue. I at one point I figured everyone would want the vaccine because who wanted Covid? My daughter got it and missed three weeks of work and felt terrible for a very long time. So have many of my friends. I know elderly people who passed away quickly. It was unimaginable to have a chance to get a vaccine years before I thought we could and I was thinking it had to be like polio where we all had to go to our high schools to get our shots or our sugar cubes.

I can't believe how wrong I have been about this behavior. We are only about 50% vaccinated because of some bizarre belief that it doesn't work or that it infringes on our rights as citizens. I know that we think of this as something that involves just non-Democratic voters, but Sunday we learned that a bunch of Philadelphia Phillies came down with it because the team isn't 75% vaccinated. How could the ownership not insist on 100%? What king of irrational behavior is that?

And that kind of behavior is what's bedeviling stock-picking. Now, when I even conflate the two -- rational behavior with investing -- I am trashed on Twitter as someone who cares more about money than about health or civil rights. Again, a total misread of the situation. I presume that people won't want to get sick or die of Covid. Sure there are people who take up smoking, another irrational behavior but they are fewer and fewer. But this? Don't these people have doctors? Are the employers waiting for the FDA to bless it beyond emergency status?

We are in the money-making business. We have to figure out whether people will go to work, something we had presumed once the vaccine became commonplace. Do they go to work at Tyson Foods (TSN) ? Do they go to work at General Motors (GM) ? McDonald's (MCD) ? Do they fear their colleagues and rather stay home and collect unemployment? In truth we do not know the answers because we are not able to fathom what's rational to those who don't take the vaccine. How do you divine what people will do who do not have family physicians and are under no pressure from their employers?

So, make all sorts of mistakes when it comes to judging results. Those mistakes will be in play beginning this week, in earnings season. I think we will be surprised how much absenteeism will impact the numbers and how free choice has trumped sickness in a pattern never seen before.

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Jim Cramer: Don't Ignore the Impact of Irrational Behavior This Earnings Season - RealMoney

Human Behavior

To live the Gospel, stand for (and with) the vulnerable. – America Magazine

Less talk and more action! Todays readings remind us not only to preach the Gospel but to live it. The readings encourage us to prioritize care of vulnerable groups and to avoid corruption, which damages relationships with one another and with God.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only. (Jas 1:22)

Liturgical day

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Readings

Dt 4:1-8; Ps 15; Jas 1:17-27; Mk 7:1-23

Prayer

What can you do to care for the most vulnerable in society?

How can you encourage others to be more mindful of their actions?

How do you live out the Gospel in your daily life?

The Letter of James addresses a Christian community, offering guidance on how to live out their faith. James states that generous acts done by people are a way that God works in the world: All good giving and every perfect gift is from above. When we help others, we facilitate divine care and love in the world.

James speaks of what Christian faith and practice require, emphasizing care for orphans and widows. In the Bible, orphans and widows are often mentioned in tandem as groups afforded intentional human and divine care because of their financial, emotional and legal challenges. Orphans and widows are associated with vulnerable, disenfranchised and oppressed peoples. Isaiah, for instance, criticizes his community for its disregard of people in need, stating that they should learn to do good; make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphans plea, defend the widow (Is 1:17). The Letter of James challenges us to reflect and act. Who are the orphans and widows of today? What groups in our society are vulnerable and most in need? Scripture is clear in calling on us to fight for and alongside them.

The Gospel of Mark also speaks to how people live and engage in the world. Jesus interacts with Jewish leaders who are critical of his followers for not following prescribed laws and customs. Jesus is critical of the leaders and their intentions and shifts the discussion to preach on broader human behavior, not just formal religious observance. Jesus condemns acts that corrupt people and inflict harm, such as theft, murder, malice, greed and arrogance. These types of actions, and sin more generally, not only defile the individual and the human-divine relationship but also damage the community.

As the world is filled with much suffering, we are called to action. We should ask ourselves the Vincentian question, What must be done? How do we put faith in Christ into practice? Scripture requires support of people who are most in need, offering resources and advocating for changes that will help all people to thrive. Likewise, Jesus emphasis on morality reminds us to be mindful and intentional about our actions, doing good and avoiding evil.

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To live the Gospel, stand for (and with) the vulnerable. - America Magazine

Human Behavior

The science and psychology of traffic – WHYY

Even with fewer drivers on the road, Philadelphia saw an 80% increase in fatal accidents in 2020 an alarming statistic that officials hope remains an abnormality. As commutertrafficreturns to pre-pandemic levels, so do concerns about construction, congestion and sharing the road. Were joined byKELLEY YEMEN, Director of the Office of Complete Streets to discuss the citys plans to improve conditions for commuters and goals for zero traffic-related deaths. We also talk with EMANUEL ROBINSON, a research scientist who studies how human behavior influences transportation, especially when it comes to distracted and reckless driving. Well look at the joy, frustration and anonymity of commuting.

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The science and psychology of traffic - WHYY

Human Behavior

What Does Hope in Christ’s Kingdom Have to Do with Climate Change? – ChristianityToday.com

(With excerpts from Au Sable Institutes 2021 workbook Liturgies of Restoration a five-week study on how our habits can shape us into people who serve, protect, and restore Gods earth. The workbook is available for small groups and church use here. Individuals can also sign up for a fall online workbook study hosted by Au Sable Institute here.)

Since 1970, over 15 percent, or more than 347,000 square miles, of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has been cleared, an area more than twice the size of California. Since 1979, 1.2 million square miles of sea ice has melted, more than four times the area of Texas. In the past half-century, monitored populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have declined an average of 68% globally.

We receive these facts with a range of emotions, including sadness, anger, frustration, determination, and despair. As Christians, we may also wonder, What hope does this gospel offer for the groaning earth and its future?

In their book Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis, Jonathan Moo (who serves together with us on the board of the Christian conservation organization, A Rocha USA) and Robert White describe a range of possible responses to our planets predicament, from ignorance is bliss and denial to problem-solving and despair. The path forward involves not ignoring or discounting our various emotions but recognizing and facing them together. For some of our faith traditionsparticularly much of white evangelicalismthis means (re)learning how to lament, repent, and bear prophetic witness in the face of denial or despair.

The Bible warns us, Moo and White write, of the ways human behavior can harm the earth. But, the Bible also sets out clearly . . . the sure and certain hope that we have in Christ for restoration and a setting of all things right in the new creation. We see promise of this throughout the Bible, especially in the writings of Isaiah, Paul (Romans 8), and the apostle John (Revelation).

Hoping for Christs kingdom can seem foolish and even dangerous, considering our present reality. Humans have really screwed many things up. Doesnt trusting that God will make everything right absolve us of responsibility to fix the problem ourselves? Does it give us permission to sit back and do nothing, waiting for God to intervene? How do we keep biblical hope from turning into Christian complacency?

There is a real temptation, given many of our cultural lenses, to believe that we humans are at the center. We are, after all, living in the era of the Anthropocenea geological age where humans are exerting a dominant influence over the climate and environment.

Putting humans at the center of the story results in two possible outcomes. The first is despair: We are the main characters, and weve made such a mess. Theres no way we can get ourselves out of this. We are doomed. The second is false optimism: We are the main characters. We are clever and resourceful. Just as we found technological solutions to our earlier problems, with ingenuity well figure out how to reverse climate change and fix all our other ecological crises.

We can feel the allure of both these responses. In reality, however, humans are not at the center of Creation, our Creator is. And the God of the Bible calls us to something different: humility and hope. Hope in the New Testament, Stephen Bouma-Prediger writes in his book Earthkeeping and Character, is centered on God, not us . . . The good future for which we hope rests on the person and work of Jesus Christ, not on our good works.

While there is reason to have some optimism around promising technological and policy innovations, our ultimate hope is in God. This wide and wonderful world that we are part of, and that we are called to care for, is not ultimately our world, its Gods. It is the very work of Gods hands and so we trust that its future also rests in God.

Human ingenuity notwithstanding, we cannot save the world any more than we can save ourselves. In any case, that is not what we are called to do. Our calling is to be faithful; to seek first the kingdom and its righteousness, and to trust in God for the rest. When we do so, our efforts to care for creation become acts of worship and signs of witness to the gospel and the kingdom of God.

Liuan Huska is a freelance writer and the author of Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness. She lives in the Chicago area, on ancestral Potawatomi land, with her husband and three little boys. She serves on the board of A Rocha USA.

Rev. Ben Lowe is the author of multiple books and has over a decade of experience engaging faith communities around social and environmental concerns. He is currently completing a doctorate in global environmental change at the University of Florida and serves as the chairperson of A Rocha USA and the co-chair of Christians for Social Action.

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What Does Hope in Christ's Kingdom Have to Do with Climate Change? - ChristianityToday.com

Human Behavior

Announcing the winners of the Women in AI Awards at Transform 2021 – VentureBeat

All the sessions from Transform 2021 are available on-demand now. Watch now.

One of the goals of Transform 2021 is to bring a broad variety of expertise, views, and experiences to the stage virtual this year to illustrate all the different ways AI is changing the world. As part of VentureBeats commitment to supporting diversity and inclusion in AI, that also means being mindful of who is being represented on the panels and talks.

The Women in AI Awards ends a week that kicked off with the Women in AI Breakfast, with several number of talks on inclusion and bias in between. Margaret Mitchell, a leading AI researcher on responsible AI, spoke, as well as executives from Pinterest, Redfin, Intel, and Salesforce.

VentureBeat leadership made the final selections out of the over 100 women who were nominated during the open nomination period. Selecting the winners was difficult because it was clear that each of these nominees are trailblazers who made outstanding contributions in the AI field.

This award honors women who have started companies showing great promise in AI and considers factors such as business traction, the technology solution offered by the company, and impact in the AI space.

Briana Brownell, founder and CEO of Pure Strategy was the winner of the AI Entrepreneur Award for 2021. Brownell and her team at Pure Strategy designed Annie (ANIE), an Automated Neural Intelligence Engine to help humans understand unstructured data. Annie has been used by doctors, specialists and physicians assistants to communicate with patients and with each other across cultural knowledge and overcoming biases, phobias and anxieties.

This award honors those who have made a significant impact in an area of research in AI, helping accelerate progress either within their organization, as part of academic research, or impacting AI approaches in technology in general.

Dr. Nuria Oliver, chief scientific advisor of Vodafone Institute, received the AI Research Award for 2021. Oliver is the named inventor of 40 filed patents, including a computational modeling of human behavior via machine learning techniques and on the development of intelligent interactive systems. Shes been named an ACM Distinguished Scientist and Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the IEEE and of Euroway. She also pioneered the not-for-profit business and academic research to use anonymized mobile data to track and prevent the spread of Ebola and Malaria in Africa, which has since been deployed across Africa and Europe in a matter of days in 2020 to track and prevent the spread of COVID-19. Whats more, she has proposed that all of the data scientists involved in her humanitarian efforts work on those projects pro-bono.

This award honors those who demonstrate exemplary leadership and progress in the growing topic of responsible AI. This year, there was a tie.

Haniyeh Mahmoudian, the global AI ethicist at DataRobot and Noelle Silver, founder of the AI Leadership Institute, both received the Responsibility & Ethics Award for 2021.

Mahmoudian was an early adopter of bringing statistical bias measures into developmental processes. She wrote Statistical Parity along with natural language explanations for users, a feat that has resulted in a priceless improvement in model bias that scales exponentially, as the platform is used across hundreds of companies and v verticals such as banking, insurance, tech, CPG and manufacturing. A contributing member of the Trusted AI teams culture of inclusiveness, Mahmoudian operates under the core belief that diversity of thought will result in thoughtful and improved outcomes. Mahmoudians research in the risk level for COVID contagion outside of racial bias was used at the Federal level to inform resource allocation and also by Moderna during vaccine trials.

A consistent champion for public understanding of AI and tech fluency, Silver has launched and established several initiatives supporting women and underrepresented communities within AI including the AI Leadership Institute, WomenIn.AI. and more. Shes a Red Hat Managed OpenShift Specialist in AI/ML, a WAC Global Digital Ambassador, a Microsoft MVP in Artificla Intelligence and numerous other awards as well as a 2019 winner of the VentureBeat Women in AI mentorship award

This award honors leaders who helped mentor other women in the field of AI, provided guidance and support, and encouraged more women to enter the field of AI.

Katia Walsh, Levi Strauss chief strategy and AI officer, was the recipient of the AI Mentorship Award for 2021. Walsh has been an early influencer for women in AI since her work at Vodafone, actively searching for female candidates on the team and mentoring younger female colleagues, and serving as strategy advisor to Fellowship.AI, a free data science training program. At Levi Strauss, Walsh created a digital upskilling program that is the first of its kind in the industry, with two thirds of its bootcamp participants are women.

This award honors those in the beginning stages of their AI career who have demonstrated exemplary leadership traits.

The Rising Star Award for 2021 was awarded to Arezou Soltani Panah, a research fellow at Deakin University in Australia.

Panahs work at Swinburne Social Innovation Research Institute focuses on solving complex social problems such as loneliness, family violence and social stigma. While her work demands substantial cross-disciplinary research and collaborating with subject matter experts like social scientists and governmental policy advisors, she has created a range of novel structured machine learning solutions that span across those disciplines to create responsible AI research. Panahs focus on social inequality and disempowerment has used the power of natural language processing to measure language and algorithmic bias. One such project quantified the extent of gender bias in featuring female athletes in the Victoria, Australian news and how womens achievements are attributed to their non-individual efforts such as their team, coach or partner compared to their male counterparts. Another project looked at gender biases in reporting news on obesity and the consequences to weight stigmatization in public health policies.

One thing was very clear from reading over the nominations that came in: There are many leaders doing meaning work in AI. It was very inspiring to see the caliber of executives and scientists leading the way in AI and making a difference in our world. The list of nominations are full of leaders who will continue to make their mark over the next few years and there will be more opportunities to hear about their work.

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Announcing the winners of the Women in AI Awards at Transform 2021 - VentureBeat