Monthly Archives: July 2021

Human Behavior

Delta will become dominant strain, but vaccinated individuals should have protection – Shreveport Times

Dr. Jeremy Kamil talks about genome sequencing

LSU Health Shreveport Dr. Jeremy Kamil talks about the importance of genome sequencing during COVID-19.

Scott Ferrell, Shreveport Times

The Alpha variant makes up most COVID-19 cases in the Shreveport area, but the Delta variant will soon become the dominant strain, experts say.

Vaccinated individuals should still have individual protection from serious illness from the Delta variant, said Jeremy Kamil, director of COVID-19 sequencing at LSUHealth Shreveport. But they can still spread it, and its still a threat to unvaccinated individuals.

Cases are already climbing in the area and beyond. Thats likely due to the combination of people resuming pre-pandemic behaviors and the greater transmissibility of the dominant Alpha variant, Kamil said.

More: COVID-19 cases surging again in northwest Louisiana

"The effects of those changes in human behavior, i.e. mixing indoors and not wearing masks and not social distancing at all are going to be amplified by having a more infectious or transmissible variant like Delta," Kamil said. "Every indication is that we are looking at another wave. I expect that its intensity will be somewhat controlled in a patchwork manner according to local vaccine uptake."

Communities with high vaccine hesitancy including Louisiana will see the worst effects of the next wave, both on health and on the economy, Kamil said.

The Delta variant can probably cause mild infections in a "decent chunk" of fully vaccinated people who are relatively healthy, but that would be really rare for the original virus, Kamil said.

"Most of the time, if this virus gets past the vaccine, it's not of a huge risk to the person who's vaccinated," Kamil said. "It is, however, a problem in Louisiana."

Only 32% of people in Caddo Parish are fully vaccinated, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. For the northwest region, which also includes Bossier, Bienville, Bossier, Claiborne, DeSoto, Red River, Sabine and Webster Parishes, only about 30% are fully vaccinated.

For some vaccinated people, they could catch the Delta variant but not transmit it, Kamil said. However, others could spread the variant in spaces like restaurants or movie theaters even if it's not a threat to them.

Some vaccinated people have gotten sick, which is called a vaccine breakthrough, but its rare, said Dr. Martha Whyte, Region 7 medical director at the Louisiana Department of Health. For people with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, the vaccines may be slightly less protective.

More: Genomic sequencing coming to a city near you with the help of Rockefeller Foundation

In general, the original virus could be transmitted via 10-15 minutes of unmasked, indoor contact between people, Kamil said. For the Delta variant, that could be reduced to 3-5 minutes.

"The absolute first thing everybody needs to do is get vaccinated. And people, no matter what your fears are, it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it," said Whyte.

The next thing is to social distance as much as you can. If you're hanging out with friends and you don't know their vaccine status, wear a mask, Whyte said.

She said if you're not vaccinated and youre in public, wear a mask. If you're vaccinated but youre in a group of people, wear a mask.

If someone is on the fence about getting the vaccine, Whyte recommended they get their questions answered. They should ask her, their doctor or their friends who have medical knowledge, Whyte said.

"Get your fears allayed, questions answered. And then make your decision, and remember your decision isn't just for you. It's to protect you, people you love and even people you don't know in your community," Whyte said.

Just because you're younger doesn't mean you can't become severely ill or even die from COVID-19, Whyte said.

"This virus is so strange that ... you can't tell who's going to get really sick and who's not, Whyte said. You've got 102-year-old women who do fine, and you have I had a good friend who lost his 19-year-old son, healthy as a horse, and died on the vent."

The Delta variant is already here, but its not the dominant strain yet. The Shreveport-area population is more dispersed, but we will likely see Delta take over in coming weeks, Kamil said.

"...All of a sudden, we'll just see only or mostly Delta. It'll just be like a shift," Kamil said.

Alpha also took a while to take hold in the area, then it suddenly became the strain for 90% of cases, Kamil said. Large urban areas, such as Houston, already see mostly Delta in their sequencing.

Kamil said the vaccines are still quite effective in preventing individual sickness in relatively healthy people.

He used the following analogy to compare the efficacy of the protections generated by the vaccines to the newer variants of the virus: The CIA and FBI are trying to track down someone, and the suspect puts on a disguise.

More: Here's where LSU Health Shreveport is administering COVID-19 vaccines this week

"Maybe the person grows a beard and puts on sunglasses and a fake wig that's blond. Do you think that's going to fool the CIA and the FBI for very long? I mean it might slow them down, but is it absolutely going to block their ability to see them?" Kamil said.

At the end of the day, most of the community is not fully vaccinated, and Kamil and Whyte agreed the vaccines are the best way to protect yourself and others from the Delta variant.

"We're seeing society open up as if the pandemic's over. There couldn't be a bigger mistake. The pandemic's not over, especially if you haven't gotten the vaccine," Kamil said. "The thing about Delta is, it's very transmissible."

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Delta will become dominant strain, but vaccinated individuals should have protection - Shreveport Times

Human Behavior

94% Of Organizations Have Suffered Insider Data Breaches, Egress Research Reveals – Business Wire

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Egress Insider Data Breach Survey 2021 has revealed that an overwhelming 94% of organizations have experienced insider data breaches in the last year. Human error was the top cause of serious incidents, according to 84% of IT leaders surveyed. However, IT leaders are more concerned about malicious insiders, with 28% indicating that intentionally malicious behavior is their biggest fear. Despite causing the most incidents, human error came bottom of the list, with just over one-fifth (21%) saying that its their biggest concern.

Additionally, almost three-quarters (74%) of organizations have been breached because of employees breaking security rules, and 73% have been the victim of phishing attacks.

The survey, independently conducted by Arlington Research on behalf of Egress, surveyed 500 IT leaders and 3,000 employees in the US and UK across vertical sectors including financial services, healthcare and legal.

Key insights include:

Empowering insiders to do the right thing

The research revealed that an overwhelming 97% of employees would report an insider data breach to their employer which is reassuring for the 55% of IT leaders who rely primarily on employees to report incidents. However, when employees do speak up about breaches, it can cost them: the research found that 89% of incidents lead to repercussions for the employees involved, including informal and formal warnings, and dismissal.

In addition, just 54% of employees said that they feel their organizations security culture trusts and empowers them, indicating that many organizations lack a security-positive culture.

The risks of hybrid working: a difference in opinion

The biggest driver for change in insider risk over the last year has been the adoption of long-term remote working due to the pandemic. Over half (56%) of IT leaders believe that remote work has driven an increase in data breaches caused by human error. Meanwhile, employees disagree, with 61% believing that remote work makes them less, or equally, as likely to cause a data breach.

IT leaders are also concerned for the future, with 54% indicating that they believe that remote/hybrid working will make it more difficult to prevent data breaches caused by human error. Half of IT leaders also believe that it will make it more difficult to prevent phishing attacks, and 49% believe that it will be more difficult to prevent employees from breaking the rules if theyre working remotely in the future.

Egress CEO Tony Pepper comments: Insider risk is every organizations most complex vulnerability and it has far-reaching consequences, from ransomware attacks to loss of client trust. Organizations must act now to mitigate the risk posed by their people.

The research highlights the importance of empowering employees they want to protect their employers data, and its up to organizations to ensure that theyre building a security-positive culture. With the right technology and strategy in place, organizations can transform their people from their biggest security vulnerability into their strongest line of defense.

Methodology

The Insider Breach Report 2021 was independently conducted by Arlington Research on behalf of Egress, surveyed 500 IT leaders and 3,000 employees in the US and UK across vertical sectors including financial services, healthcare and legal.

About Egress

Our mission is to eliminate the most complex cybersecurity challenge every organization faces: insider risk. We understand that people get hacked, make mistakes, and break the rules. To prevent these human-activated breaches, we have built the only Human Layer Security platform that defends against inbound and outbound threats. Using patented contextual machine learning we detect and prevent abnormal human behavior such as misdirected emails, data exfiltration and targeted spear-phishing attacks.

Used by the worlds biggest brands, Egress is private equity backed and has offices in London, New York and Boston.

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94% Of Organizations Have Suffered Insider Data Breaches, Egress Research Reveals - Business Wire

Human Behavior

Mitigating sophisticated attacks the NuData way (part II) – Security Boulevard

This is the continuation of part I. If you havent read it, we suggest you start there for more attack types and fraud mitigation techniques.

Now, where were we? Right, we just talked about spotting human-driven attacks. Lets look at how to spot probing attacks that sneak in, to learn from your security parameters.

Some of the most potentially damaging attacks we see on the NuData network start extremely small. By probing your defenses with a hard-to-detect, low-volume attack, a cybercriminal can ferret out your vulnerabilities without setting off any alarms. Then they use that knowledge to launch a larger attack tailored to your systems specific weaknesses, hoping to overwhelm your defenses completely.

To prevent that from happening, early detection of probing is key. Think of those initial attacks as the first phase of a pest infestation. You might not notice or be bothered by the first ant scout who appears on a solo mission to find food in your kitchen. But you will definitely notice when theres a several-feet-long trail of ants to the leaky pot of jam in your cupboard a day later. Intercepting that first ant takes extra work, but it saves you a lot of trouble in the long run.

We recently mitigated a large multi-stage attack on a retail company in our network, in part by detecting the attackers initial probing. During this phase, which lasted one or two days, the attack was relatively small, just a small bump on a graph (youll see below). The attackers deployed human-like scripts that included realistic mouse movements and pauses between keystrokes to imitate human behavior. On an individual level, the probing attacks looked like legitimate traffic.

This was enough to fool the retailers bot-manager tool, which relied on comparing current data to known threats, such as IP addresses used in past attacks. However, NuData was able to detect the attack by looking at underlying patterns, such as anomalous behavior during the online interaction or an unusual number of login attempts within the same networks and IP addresses. After identifying the pattern, NuData blocked 99.8% of fraudulent login attempts, shutting down the first phase of the attack. (Unfortunately, there was more to come the attack kept evolving, as youll see below.)

Attacks that begin with probing rarely stop there. The most sophisticated attacks we see in our network evolve quickly as they search for ways around their targets defenses. Such attacks can change strategies in as little as a day, so companies need to keep their threat models agile and adapt swiftly.

The attack on the retail company we talked about earlier turned out to be an example of an evolving threat. After two days of probing, which NuData successfully mitigated, the attackers changed their strategy, refining their script to better mimic human behavior for example, by creating a more natural rhythm of keystrokes. They also increased their attack volume, using an eye-popping 18,500 different IP addresses and ensured attack velocity remained low.

Ironically, doubling down on attacks makes NuDatas defenses stronger. The more a bad actor interacts with our clients platform, , the more our solution learns. In this second phase of the assault on the retail company, NuData blocked 100% of attacks an even higher success rate than wed had during the initial probing.

We maintained this same mitigation rate even as the attack evolved into its third and final phase, with attackers doubling the number of IP addresses used in an attempt to evade detection. Despite the reduced velocity and fewer events per IP, NuData still identified patterns that revealed the attack, such as users holding their devices in ways that showed they werent human. All told, NuData blocked two million fraudulent logins in the last 48 hours of the attack ending the cybercriminals attempt once and for all.

Fraudulent traffic (red) vs. legitimate traffic (green) over the course of a six-day evolving attack on a retail company

Sophisticated attacks arent just growing more common theyre also growing more creative. And its impossible to predict how theyll continue to evolve. Cybercriminals are always dreaming up new ways to evade detection, and many standard bot-manager tools arent able to keep up, as we have seen in this article.

Ever-evolving attack strategies demand new, more agile defenses. By adopting multiple layers of security protection that can adapt alongside the threats you face, youll position your company to weather whatever challenges come its way.

More recent threat trends in our bi-annual report, Fraud Risk at a Glance.

The post Mitigating sophisticated attacks the NuData way (part II) appeared first on NuData Security.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from NuData Security authored by Tiffany Mark. Read the original post at: https://nudatasecurity.com/resources/blog/mitigating-sophisticated-attacks-the-nudata-way-part-ii/

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Mitigating sophisticated attacks the NuData way (part II) - Security Boulevard

Human Behavior

In Wisconsin, an Overzealous Hunt Decimated the Local Wolf Population – In These Times

This article was published in collaboration with UpNorthNews and In These Times The Wisconsin Idea, an investigative reporting initiative focused on ruralWisconsin.

Wolf biologists and tribal nations voiced their objections going into Wisconsins court-ordered gray wolf hunt last February, and they were even more dismayed with how the hunt was planned and executedearly reports showed hunters killed almost double the allotted number ofwolves.

But that startling figure only represents officially documented kills. Now that researchers have had time to assess the full extent of the hunts damage, theyve found the outcome was far worse than initially reported: According to areport published by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, legal and illegal killings wiped out as much as athird of the states gray wolfpopulation.

After the Trump administration announced on Oct. 29, 2020 that it would remove gray wolves from the endangered species list, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) started planning awolf hunt for fall 2021. But on Feb. 11, in response to alawsuit from the Wisconsin Institute for Law &Liberty (WILL) and aKansas hunting organization, Jefferson County Judge Bennett Brantmeier ordered the DNR to organize ahunt by the end of themonth.

The hunt began less than two weeks later, on Feb. 22, and the DNR shut it down in just 39hours given the high initial kill totals. Hunters had 24hours after closing to finish reporting their kills, and when the final numbers came in, the death toll stood at 216 wolves, almost double the DNRs quota of119.

There could have been even more wolf deaths; Wisconsins tribal nations declined to exercise their right to kill 81 wolves in theirterritories.

This month, the team of wolf researchers, headed by Adrian Treves with the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at UW-Madison, published areport that estimated that the wolf population had decreased by 27%-33% from an estimated population of 1,034in April 2020 leaving an estimated population range of 695751 wolves as of April 15,2021.

Treves estimates an additional 98 to 105 wolves have been killed since their delisting was announced, but he cautioned the number of unreported killings could be muchhigher.

We only made bulletproof assumptions that were more cautious, based on peer reviewed science, Treves said in aninterview.

He continued, What it means is that our estimates of the population are, really, plausible maximum population status. It could be quitelower.

Its a novelty hunting experience...and for some people its truly a vengeance hunt."

Francisco Santiago-vila, aco-author on the study, said the additional killed wolves were likely the victims of illegal poaching, based on other research co-authored by Treves that found deslisting or downgrading wolves from their protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) leads to an increase inpoaching.

When youre reducing protections for wolves in any way, be it through downgrading or delisting from the ESA youre sending asignal to would-be poachers on the landscape that either there are too many wolves on the landscape or that they are not valued as much anymore, Santiago-vila said. That essentially may incentivize the culling and concealing of wolves that are neverreported.

Santiago-vila said other potential reasons for losing track of the wolvessuch as tracking collar malfunctions or migrationdo not adequately explain the high number of wolves that go missing when their ESA statuschanges.

The policy itself wouldnt affect those two mechanisms, Santiago-vila said. The policy affects humanbehavior.

Even before the report was published, Peter David, abiologist with the Great Lakes Indian Fish &Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC)which regulates hunting, fishing, and gathering on tribal lands in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesotasaid he had already suspected the hunt was going to have an outsized impact on the wolfpopulation.

According to David, the quota set by the DNR was higher than what scientific models recommended for the DNR to reach its stated goal of having no impact on the wolf population. The timing of the wolf hunt was particularly problematic: February is the point when the wolf population is the lowest and the beginning of the wolf breeding season; hunts are typically held in late fall or earlywinter.

[The February hunt] is really unlike any other wolf harvest anywhere, that it was completely concentrated within that window, David said. All the factors make me think that the impact of this harvest was verysubstantial.

Holding the hunt during the breeding season affects wolves ability to breed and return the population to pre-hunt levels. Charlie Rasmussen, also with GLIFWC, said GLIFWC biologists who examined some of the donated carcasses from the hunt found that one was an impregnated female with nine developing wolffetuses.

It was adifficult examination for GLIFWC biologists to do, Rasmussensaid.

It's important to recognize that wolves are very good at regulating their own numbers.

Treves study recommended against holding awolf hunt this November, which David and Rasmussen said is also the opinion of GLIFWC and the tribes they represent. There is precedent for this kind of policy shift: DNR announced this month that it will cancel the sharp-tailed grouse hunt for the third year in arow to protect that population. If this falls wolf hunt is cancelled, Treves study estimated it would take the wolf population one to two years to rebound to its April 2020level.

More broadly, all of the researchers interviewed for this story agreed that there is no need to manage the wolf population atall.

Its important to recognize that wolves are very good at regulating their own numbers, David said. Because of their territorial behavior and other aspects, their numbers never get very high. And if you look at neighboring Minnesota or the upper peninsula of Michigan, both of those wolf populations have essentially plateaued without any hunting to drive their numbersdown.

Pro-hunt advocates argue the hunt is away to mitigate the risk of wolves preying on livestock, other wild game, such as deer, or their risk to humans and pets. David said those arguments dont stand up to scientificscrutiny.

While livestock predation is alegitimate concern, David said, awolf hunt is not an effective way to address the issue. Instead, he said its more effective to continue using the system in which farmers contact federal officials who investigate the attacks and can take anumber of steps to address the situation, such as killing or relocating thewolf.

That kind of aresponse is very timely and its very targeted to the location and to the wolves that might be involved, Davidsaid.

By contrast, David pointed out that nine of the ten of the wolves killed during the last hunt were more than eight miles from any confirmed sites where wolves had killedlivestock.

Theres very little reason to think that any appreciable number of those wolves were actually involved in depredations, Davidsaid.

As for the arguments about human safety, David pointed out that its incredibly rare for awolf to attack ahuman, and in those cases, addressing that individual wolf is more effective than astatewide hunt.

In response to hunters concerns about wolves killing deer, Treves argued that there are benefits to wolves preying on deer. For example, one study found that counties with wolves have lower rates of vehicles colliding with deer on theroad.

Furthermore, Treves said, In astate with over amillion deer that are acknowledged to do hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to crops and ornamentals and vehicles, we actually need more apex predators in this state to control the overwhelming deer population thats acknowledged by scientists and public officials to be causing us alot ofproblems.

David also pointed to evidence that wolves help control the spread of chronic wasting disease, which is asubstantial threat to the deer population and people or predators who consume infected deer. Overall, the researchers said, scientific studies have found that the benefits of having ahealthy wolf population outweigh the smallrisks.

David doubts that ecological concerns are the true motivation for pro-hunt advocates, especially given the evidence that wolves benefit the natural environment. Instead, he believes the pro-hunt movement is motivated by novelty andrevenge.

Its anovelty hunting experience, and its an opportunity to harvest something that people havent harvested before, David said. And for some people its truly avengeance hunt on occasion, [people] will lose dogs to wolves, when theyre training their dogs especially, and wolves have pups that they will defend. And this was achance for, Ithink, the community to get revenge on the wolfpopulation.

Meanwhile, David argued, the cultural significance of the wolf to the Ojibwe doesnt get taken very seriously. The tribes have told the DNR they do not support holding awolf hunt thisfall.

David and other biologists are the first to admit theres alot that researchers still dont know about wolves and their ecological role. But David thinks that, given what humans do know, the DNR should seriously consider leaving wolf management to MotherNature.

I think oftentimes we are abit arrogant and at what we think we understand, David said. Wolves are anatural part of this landscape for an incredibly long time, and ecologically, its reasonable to think that they have avaluable role here. And in all likelihood, we have barely scratched the understanding of that, so we need to be alittle bit humble and give nature the benefit of thedoubt.

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In Wisconsin, an Overzealous Hunt Decimated the Local Wolf Population - In These Times

Human Behavior

Maryland Today | Five Terps Awarded 2021 NOAA Hollings Scholarships – Maryland Today

Five rising University of Maryland juniors are recipients of 2021 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ernest F. Hollings Scholarships, which recognize exceptional students in a broad range of STEM fields.

Since 2009, 47 UMD students have been awarded Hollings Scholarships, which provide about 120 students nationwide up to $9,500 in academic assistance for two years of study, plus a 10-week, full-time paid internship at a NOAA facility during the summer.

Reese Barrett, a chemical and biomolecular engineering major, is conducting research in Professor Akua Asa-Awuku's lab on the potential for weather conditions to affect incidence of Legionnaires disease, a type of pneumonia caused byLegionellabacteria.

Barrett is examining the effects of precipitation, humidity, temperature and latitude on average case counts and trying to discern patterns in the data.

"Im hoping to finish my data analysis and compile my work into a paper in the next few months, she said. For my junior year, I'm looking to combine my chemical engineering major with my minor in some form, but my research topic is still under development."

The sustainability studies minor has also interned for several summers, beginning as a high school student, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Environmental science and policy major Julia Kischkat is focused on combining her love for the environment with her interest in politics and policy. Shes interned this year with the U.S. Department of Energy, and hopes the Hollings Scholarship will provide a further opportunity to roll up her sleeves and immerse herself in research that could help shape a career path.

I want to gain as many hands-on experiences as possible to figure out what I want to do, Kischkat said. I just have an appreciation for our world and nature and everything it gives us. I have realized that a lot lately, especially during quarantine.

Kischkat first became interested in environmental science while completing a research project at her high school in Westchester, New York on how human behavior impacts fish populations in the Amazon. A service trip to the Peruvian Amazon reinforced her passion for protecting the planet.

I came back with a different mindset and wanting a career or path that embodies that, she said.

The interdisciplinary nature of planetary science drew Siobhan Light, an astronomy and geology dual-degree student, to the field.

Planetary science brings in astronomy, physics, geology, atmospheric science and so many different fields together, Light said. And I realized I dont have to trade one of my interests for another; I can find an intermediate path between space and Earth.

She interned with the National Museum of Natural History and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in high school and at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center during college. Each experience, including her on-campus research with the UMD Department of Geology, further solidified her passion for planetary science.

Lights research with NASA involves analyzing data from Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and second-largest natural satellite in the solar system. She measures Titans winds and compares measurements to form a more complete timeline of wind developments on the moon.

Biological sciences and government and politics dual-degree student Yulia Lim became interested in meteorology her freshman year through the weather and climate track in Carillon Communities, a one-year living-learning program where she took a class with Tim Canty, associate professor of oceanic and atmospheric science.

In 2020, Lim joined him and Ralph Kahn, senior research scientist at NASA Goddard, on their ongoing Active Aerosol Plume-Height (AAP) project. Lims work focuses on the 2020 wildfires in Siberia and California. Using a program developed by the AAP team at NASA, she downloads satellite imagery and reviews it for signs of wildfires. Once she identifies a wildfire by the smoke plume, she examines and analyzes the plume. Lim also branched out on her own to use satellite imagery to examine how certain types of clouds affect the warming of the planet.

A successful career for me is that whatever I choose, I can make an impact in helping our climate, Lim explained. Whether it be helping conserve the oceans or protecting marine eco-life, I have always been very interested in marine conservation.

Eric Robinson, a computer science and geographical sciences dual-degree student, plans to apply his coding skills in Earth studies to preserve wildlife and the natural environment.

Word of his Hollings Scholarship came just a couple of weeks after he learned that he was also selected for the 2021 William M. Lapenta NOAA Student Internship Programsetting him up to intern with NOAA for back-to-back summers in 2021 and 2022.

This summer, Robinson is creating a visualization package for the marine component of a new climate model, the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration. The marine component of the model is less developed than the atmospheric side, so Robinson is writing original code to simulate and predict the temperature, currents and salinity of the ocean.

The goal is that once the model is able to pop out a daily weather forecast based on the packages Ive written, in three minutes, they can create a bunch of different visualizations, Robinson said. Those visualizations help NOAA inform the public so they can see things more clearly instead of just a bunch of numbers in the forecast.

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Maryland Today | Five Terps Awarded 2021 NOAA Hollings Scholarships - Maryland Today

Human Behavior

Will Utahs Paris Hilton-backed therapy reform bill make a difference? – Deseret News

On an afternoon episode of his namesake show in late 2019, Dr. Phil recommended that two parents send their child to Turn-About Ranch. The program, located in Escalante, Utah, touts the ability to help troubled teens find their way.

Less than two years later, on Feb. 24, 2021, Hannah Archuleta, the teen who was sent to Utah from her home in Colorado at the behest of Dr. Phil, again appeared onscreen, this time alongside womens rights attorney Gloria Allred. She was there to announce a lawsuit against Turn-About. Archuleta alleged that a male staffer twice touched her inappropriately during her two-month stay at the ranch in 2019, and she wanted accountability.

The press conference coincided with the Utah Legislatures debate over SB127, a regulatory bill aimed at curbing abuse at the 100 or so troubled teen programs scattered across Utah.

Among other things, the legislation bans sedation without prior authorization and requires facilities to implement suicide prevention programs and report the use of a restraint or seclusion within one business day after the day on which the use of the restraint or seclusion occurs to the Utah Department of Human Services Office of Licensing. It also increases the number of yearly inspections both announced and unannounced from one to four, while increasing funding to the Office of Licensing to hire additional staff.

In short, its goal is to make abuses harder to perpetrate and hide in an industry thats been heavily criticized for its lagging government oversight. Its also an entrenched industry, worth more than $300 million in Utah alone, according to a 2016 research brief from the University of Utahs Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

The legislations most prominent supporter was heiress-turned-activist Paris Hilton, who in the mid- to late-1990s attended Provo Canyon School, a Utah troubled teen program.

Hilton says she was abused during her 11-month stay at the school. Bolstered by her own and similar testimony, the bill passed with near unanimity in the Utah House and Senate and was signed into law in March.

It was Utahs first attempt at enhanced regulation of the industry in 15 years, and increasingly influential activist groups applauded the effort. But as the state moves to implement the new regulations, is the industry in Utah and beyond capable of change? Or are abuses bound to recur?

The industrys roots in Utah go back to 1968, when a Brigham Young University professor named Larry Dean Olsen led a group of failing college students on a 30-day wilderness expedition that started near Green River and wound up heading south through Robbers Roost, then west into Capitol Reef and over Boulder Mountain. Hed convinced the school that a month in the wilderness could help the students get back on track.

He was so impressed by how the experience taught them to better approach challenges that he started a survival course at BYU. That course eventually became Boulder Outdoor Survival School, and Olsen eventually founded the Anasazi Foundation one of the most well-regarded teen wilderness therapy programs.

The natural beauty of the landscape (the thinking goes), combined with the bare-bones way of life results in a change in ones whole way of walking in the world, to borrow from early Anasazi Foundation literature. Since then, the industry has ballooned in Utah, with over 100 residential youth treatment programs taking root. Among them are established names like Second Nature wilderness therapy which also operates in Georgia as well as the Provo Canyon School. Thousands from across the country have attended.

Wilderness teen therapy programs and other residential youth treatment options exist in varying capacities, often with varying methods aimed at the same result: changing teens into who their parents want them to be.

Its only natural that Utah might hold the answer to such questions. The state has played a central part in the industrys development, given its wide-open spaces and laissez faire business regulations. In wilderness therapy programs across the state, teens hike, set up camp and hike some more. The idea of natural consequences is central: If you dont properly secure your tarp, for example, a storm might blow through and leave you soaked in the dark.

Wilderness participants are often sent against their will, taken from their homes with parental permission by transporters. They also have no idea how long theyll be staying, and often have limited, highly monitored contact with the outside world. This can lead to an atmosphere of exploitation, as exemplified by entrepreneur Steve Cartisano.

In 1988, the BYU dropout started a program called Challenger that blended the low-cost structure of wilderness therapy with military-style discipline and turned what had been relatively low-profit ventures into a bona fide industry. The idea, he liked to say, was to break kids down and build them back up.

His program flourished until 1990, when a Florida teenager named Kristin Chase died at Challenger. Cartisano was charged with negligent homicide and child abuse, but he was acquitted on all charges. Still, state regulators determined that the charges against him were so serious that he shouldnt be allowed to work with youth in Utah. His solution? He began operating programs under fake names in the Caribbean and Samoa.

He was never convicted of a crime and died in 2019. The Deseret News contacted Cartisanos former attorney, who stated, As for criminal cases, Im unaware of any convictions he had but I have no knowledge regarding what, if any, lawsuits he was involved with outside of the State of Utah.

Chase isnt the only teen to die, nor is Cartisano the only director accused of negligence. Stories of deaths by negligence in these programs are numerous, though the industry insists that they still amount to only a very small percentage of attendees.

They have a good reason to be really upset, says Scott Bandoroff, a psychologist with a private practice in Oregon who also does wilderness family intensives and is a longtime proponent of wilderness therapy, of parents whove lost kids in youth programs. But I think trying to shut down an industry is not the answer. The industry as a whole, I think, is pretty well policed these days internally.

Indeed, the wilderness therapy industry has tried to distance itself from images of hardcore discipline. But the troubled teen industry generally suffers from an abundance of cross-pollination.

Cartisanos programs, for example, combined boot camp with wilderness therapy, while others combine boarding school with boot camp, or residential treatment with ranching tasks. According to a Government Accountability Office report from 2007, boot camps are also sometimes called behavioral modification facilities. The industry became a catchall of program methodology and a murky pool of whats legitimately effective and whats harmful.

Its enormously difficult for families to get good information, says Joanna Bettmann Schaefer, a professor of social work and instructor of psychiatry at the University of Utah who has studied wilderness therapy programs. The majority of these programs are for-profit businesses, so theyre marketing themselves. Because they want students to come.

Turn-About has faced several lawsuits and allegations over its 30-year history. The most notorious involved a 2016 incident when a 17-year-old bludgeoned a staffer to death with a metal rod. The Deseret News reached out to Turn-About Ranch for comment, but representatives from the program did not want to speak on the record.

Another high-visibility incident occurred at a Cedar City program in June 2018, when a 17-year-old girl punched a staffer in an escape attempt and, as punishment, had her hands zip-tied and was forced to lie down in a horse trough a practice the program reportedly used regularly as a form of therapeutic discipline.

There seems to be a major problem in Utah at some residential facilities, attorney Gloria Allred said during the press conference. This bill will address some of the abuses suffered by children at these troubled teen facilities.

Some claim SB127 goes too far. I think that its motivated by good intentions, Ken Huey, executive director of Havenwood Academy in Cedar City, where the trough incident took place, said during an appearance on a local radio talk show, the Rod Arquette Show. But ... it really takes away the ability to take care of some of the tougher kids.

Legislators dont see it that way. When you have made-up therapy, and Ill call it that, for kids that really need help, its just ripe for abuse, said Sen. Mike McKell, the bills Republican sponsor. This significant industry has grown outside of a regulatory framework, and SB127 provides that framework.

House Minority Leader Brian King was more open to the potential benefits of teen residential programs, but he also recognized the need for the bill. Youve got state laws and regulations that protect individuals from inevitable human behavior, he said. I think every state ought to be looking hard at this.

But while states are moving legislation across desks and into effect, the federal government has yet to take action, despite attempts to create federal oversight of the industry. Former California Rep. George Miller introduced federal legislation in 2008 aimed at regulating the programs nationally. The proposed legislation was in response to a 2007 Government Accountability Office report that found thousands of allegations of abuse, some of which involved death, at residential treatment programs across the country and in American-owned and American-operated facilities abroad between the years 1990 and 2007.

The bill twice passed the House but was never taken up in the Senate. Its been reintroduced several times, most recently by California Rep. Adam Schiff in 2017, without much interest. But soon, the climate could be ripe for it or something like it to finally become law. When asked why it hasnt happened yet, McKell didnt mince words.

It will, he says. But so far, it hasnt.

Cynthia Clark Harvey knows almost too much about those failed efforts. When Congressman Miller began to push the issue, he invited her to testify before Congress. It was an easy decision, she says. She wanted the world to know about her first-born daughter, Erica.

In 2000, around Ericas 14th birthday, she started spiraling, experimenting with drugs and suffering from depression. The family tried everything antidepressants, psychiatrists, drug tests and nothing worked. The Harveys began searching for some sort of drug treatment program that would also be (at least somewhat) fun. But most places including the Anasazi Foundation refused to enroll a teen on prescription medication.

She was eventually accepted at Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions in Nevada. In 2002 they flew from Phoenix to Reno and dropped Erica off for a 21-day stay at a cost of over $11,000. The next day, they flew home and found a message awaiting them: Thered been an accident. Erica was dead. The autopsy reported that the cause of death was heatstroke and dehydration.

The Harveys eventually sued the program. We wanted to hurt them, Ill be honest about that, Harvey says. But the other part of it was always to find out what happened.

That desire to know more drove her activism and Congressional testimony. She wanted to help create a federal database that could track how many kids attend these programs, how many are injured and how many die. That, she figured, just seemed like common sense. But when the bill was never taken up by the Senate, she learned a lot about Americas legislative process. Theres this saying, she says. The Senate is where bills go to die.

The wilderness therapy industry has tried for several decades to fill research gaps to bolster its case of effectiveness and reduce the need for legislative intervention, but does science support wilderness therapy?

Critics say no or at minimum, we dont know. There needs to be more research, for example, to parse out which aspects of wilderness therapy, if any, are most effective. There should be randomized control trials, Bettman Schaefer says. There should be studies that really unpack what are the active ingredients of this kind of treatment. As in, what parts of the programs are most helpful? Nature? Time away from home? Chores? Isolation? Is the wilderness part really necessary?

In a 2017 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, researchers examined 50 treatments for adolescent disruptive behavior, which they defined as a wide range of significant adolescent problems (e.g., aggression, property destruction, running away from home, truancy, stealing) resulting in referrals to mental health specialists/clinics or juvenile justice authorities.

Their study found that two types of treatment Multisystemic Therapy and Treatment Foster Care Oregon were well-established, meaning they met the highest standards of proven efficacy or effectiveness. Four more treatments were labeled as probably efficacious, while everything else fell under possibly efficacious, experimental or questionable. In short, understanding treatments for troubled youth behavior is an ongoing process. As for mental illness, the best treatments vary depending on the illness such as treating bipolar disorder with medication, for example, versus treating substance abuse with cognitive-behavioral therapy or family therapy.

Many troubled teen programs claim they can treat both types of problems, as well as many of their subcategories. Turn-About, for example, boasts experience in treating everything from bipolar disorder, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to anger, bad grades and promiscuity. But these issues cannot be solved with a one-size-fits-all approach. It takes specialized professionals to assess the best treatment options. But history shows that since these businesses are in need of clients, theyll treat them regardless.

Some do make an effort to approach each students needs individually. The biggest change over the past 20 years in wilderness therapy has been an increased expertise in treating a wider range of issues that go beyond anger issues or substance abuse, Steve DeBois, the clinical director of Second Nature, a wilderness program based in Duchesne, Utah, says.

These include specialty groups to address anxiety, depression, learning differences, autism spectrum disorders, technology addiction and trauma. And they include a variety of therapeutic approaches, he says.

DeBois boasts the credentials to understand best practices; he has a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Tulsa. Many programs elevate someone of similar standing to head clinical operations, while sending licensed therapists to meet with kids at varying intervals. But most staffers are not trained mental health professionals theyre locals, or theyre recent college graduates who like working in the outdoors and want to help kids.

Your job is just to keep them safe, and to encourage and promote a good environment emotionally, physically, for them to safely go through all the things that theyre going through, says Laura Brigham, a former guide at the Anasazi Foundation who studied mechanical engineering.

But even if a program embraces the most up-to-date best clinical practices and hires the most qualified staff in the business, the markets saturation and fierce enrollment competition means that parents likely wouldnt be able to differentiate between a clinically focused program and one that embraces manual labor as punishment.

Meanwhile, Archuletas lawsuit against Turn-About Ranch continues, with Turn-About working to get the case dismissed. Whether the lawsuit goes forward or not, Archuleta is one among many continuing to blow the whistle on the troubled teen industry. For the moment, lawmakers appear ready to listen to the growing chorus of voices calling for change. But will enacting new laws be enough?

Phil Elberg one of the few lawyers to successfully sue troubled teen programs believes incremental changes like SB127 are a step in the right direction. However, What scares me about whats happening, he says, is that as we regulate it, we are institutionalizing something without challenging the basic premises on which the whole thing is based.

Additional reporting by Fendi Wang

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Will Utahs Paris Hilton-backed therapy reform bill make a difference? - Deseret News

Human Behavior

A Texas-Sized Reading List 2021 – UT News – UT News – UT News – UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Reading Round-Up Returns to Campus This Fall

The Reading Round-Up is a popular summer book club that introduces new Longhorns to the college environment at The University of Texas at Austin. Over the summer, incoming freshmen choose from a large selection of books curated by faculty members. Then students and professors meet in small groups on campus the day before fall classes start. This beloved back-to-school tradition helps kick off the new academic year, connects students with one another and offers a more personal introduction to the outstanding faculty across departments.

Last year, the 2020 Round-Up gathered over video chat. This fall the reading groups will have a chance to meet up in person. This gathering will be a milestone moment in a return to normal for UT Austin. So far, 764 students have registered, and incoming students can still sign up. Its not too late. There are still lots of great books with seats open.

I love the Reading Round-Up and the chance to talk with new students about a book we all read over the summer, but Im especially excited to reopen campus and welcome our newest Longhorns to meet with me in person, says Brent Iverson, dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies, which hosts the event. Its always a worthwhile experience and a great way to kick off the fall semester, but because we are emerging from our COVID hibernations, this feels much bigger than normal, really special.

The event isnt open to the public, but the reading list of over 60 books is a great resource for anyone looking for the next worthwhile read. Whether you are interested in fiction, biographies or nonfiction, this list has something for everyone.

A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young

Join the legions of poets, scientists, politicians, and others who have learned to think at the invitation of James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas. This brief but powerful book guides you through the process of innovation and learning in a way that makes creativity accessible to anyone willing to work for it. While the author's background is in advertising, his ideas apply in every facet of life and are increasingly relevant in the world's knowledge-based economy. Young's tiny text represents an ideal start to university education with its tactics for viewing life through a new lens and its encouragement to look inside for a more creative version of ourselves.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Want to learn how to make positive changes in your life? Start your time at UT having learned simple ways to build positive habits and break up with those that arent helpful. Check out this book for simple yet powerful advice with practical tips you can implement right away.

Grit: The Power of Perseverance and Passion by Angela Duckworth

University of Texas first year students come from many backgrounds, but what we all have in common is a desire to succeed. This book reminds us that a fair bit of our success is in our willingness to give things our all.

In my years teaching college students, Ive learned just how important this concept is both inside the classroom and in life. The stories shared in this book will resonate with you, and they are an ideal way for you to think about your own success from the first day you become a Longhorn for life! If you would like, take the Grit Scale as you read this book.

Make it Stick, The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown

This is a well-written little book on learning. It reportsreal researchnot guesses, conjectures, and opinionsas most books of this sort have done in the past. The book is available as a paperback, audiobook, or ebook.

Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas by Jon Steel

Steel shares his experience and wisdom in crafting winning ad agency presentations. Steel, an irreverent Brit who has worked in the U.S. for many years, draws insights from a diverse range of persuasive experts including Johnnie Cochran vs. prosecutor Marsha Clark in the O.J. Simpson trial, Bill Clinton, and a London hooker. The applications of Steels insights extend to any situation where an audience or individual is the focus of a persuasive pitch. This is a lively, fun, and most revealing read.

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

A timely and compelling message for students who are entering their college experiencewith a narrow definition of who they are, and who they want to be.Rangeis a fascinating case for the importance of coloring outside the lines, whetheryou're focusing on athlete development (like I do) or pursuing excellence in virtually any other field.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

This book tells the tales of patients afflicted with different neurological disorders. The stories are deeply human and highlight in bizarre and at times very comical ways the importance of the brain for our ability to interpret the world around us.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Is Google making us stupid? When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a celebrated Atlantic essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internets bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

With The Shallows, a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, Carr expands his argument into a compelling exploration of the nets intellectual and cultural consequences.

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley

This book argues that we need to change the way we think about innovation. What if we saw innovation as an incremental, bottom-up process that happens to society as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan? This book tells the lively stories of scores of innovations, how they started and why they succeeded or, in some cases, failed.

Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber

Our Iceberg is Meltinguses a fable-like story about penguins to explain the complexities of creating organizational change in the face of uncertainty. Written in a style everyone can understand, the book acts as a crash course in change management based on the author's award-winning research. In our dynamic and turbulent world this interesting book, with its many levels, is a must read.

Rising Strong: The Reckoning, The Rumble, The Revolution by Bren Brown

Struggle, Brown writes, can be our greatest call to courage, and rising strong our clearest path to deeper meaning, wisdom, and hope. The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. The booktells us what it takes to get back up, and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A "black swan" is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

This book changed how I view and approach the world. Fundamentally, humans think about the world and future events linearly. This is an adaption to survival on the savannah of Africa not at all suited for the complex universe and human affairs. The author is provocative and polarizing - this book will echo in your head for a long time to come.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Bren Brown

Nobodys perfect. So why are we so hard on ourselves when we dont achieve perfection? As a new student at a large, competitive university, the lessons found inside this insightful guide, which Forbes named one of five books that will actually change your outlook on life, may be exactly what you need. University researcher in human behavior and best-selling author Bren Brown shows us how to cultivate the courage and compassion to embrace your imperfections, overcome self-consciousness and fear, and live authentically.

The Strange Order of Things by Antonio Damasio

Antonio Damasio, a professor of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, sets out to investigate why and how we emote, feel, use feelings to construct our selves and how brains interact with the body to support such functions." This book gives us a new way of comprehending the world and our place in it.

What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain

Want to know the secrets of college success, of achievingrealcollege success in these next four years? You can find the answer in this book, which is based on years of research. The best college teachers engage and challenge students and provoke impassioned responses. As a co-creator of your education, college success involves you seeking challenges and inspiration and digging into your passions. This book shows you how together, the best college teachers and the best college students lead to gaining the highest expertise and readiness to tackle your career, but also your life.

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff

This best-selling memoir depicts a family's experience with addiction and covers a substantial portion of the author's son Nic's life and the struggles to live with, help, and understand the person with a substance use disorder. This book was #1 on New York Times best seller list,Entertainment Weeklynamed it the #1 Best Nonfiction Book the year it was published, Amazon named it "Best Book" in 2008, and it won the Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers Award" for nonfiction as well.

Beautiful Boy is used as a text in the Young People and Drugs UGS Signature Course. It elegantly weaves the narrative and experience withthe best of the evidence-based science about addiction and recovery.The authors have visited our class in the past, so we can share insights beyond the written word. This book is an excellent vehicle to understanding addiction, recovery, and more about yourself in the midst.

Educated by Tara Westover

In this compelling memoir, author Tara Westover reflects thoughtfully on her experiences as a child in asurvivalist Mormon family. With no formal education until age 17, Tara defeats all odds by gaining admission to Brigham Young University and eventually earning her doctorate from Cambridge University. This book is compelling and thought-provoking, leaving readers to ponder the question: What does it really mean to be educated?

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

Factfulness presents data about the health, economic condition, and safety of the world today and how all those and other features have improved significantly. Most people are misinformed about the world situation, and most people believe that the world is in much worse shape than actual data about the world reveals. If you do not have time to finish the whole book, no worries, just watch some of Rosling's TED talks.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

If you've ever had a teacher that touched your life in a very positive way, this book is for you. Short, very readable, and yet, quite profound in its reflection, Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie describes rediscovery of that mentor and a rekindled relationship that goes beyond the classroom and brings us to lessons on how to live.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann

Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives. This is the memoir of Judith Heumann, an iconin the disability rights community, known for her leadership in the San Francisco 504 sit-ins. These sit-ins led to the signing and implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Judiths memoir is both a history lesson on disability rights activism in the United States and an intimate storytelling of her life from childhood to present. It is her story, but also the story of the history, movement, and future of disability justice.

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Edited by Alice Wong

In time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together a collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers.

From original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma, to blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, testimonies to Congress, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didnt commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanshipand transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

Just Mercy is an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyers coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller

Know My Nameis aNew York Timesbestseller and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. In it, Miller challenges her depiction in the media as the anonymous "Emily Doe," who survived a Stanford undergraduate student's sexual assault in 2015. In her memoir, Miller reclaims the public narrative about her and asserts her full humanity while critiquing the criminal justice system and the treatment of sexual assault victims in the United States.

The Little Bach Book by David Gordon

The Little Bach Book is not a comprehensive biography of J. S. Bach but a collection of curious facts and observations about his life and the times in which he lived. It is light and fun reading for those who love the music of J. S. Bach but dont know much about him.

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

This book looks into the future: How should we approach keeping earth livable for humans and the other organisms we share the planet with?Wizards rely on technology to help us, and prophets urge us to reduce the resources that we use.Few believe only one solution is the answer, but while complex answers are often correct, they do not always make for compelling arguments.We find people often arguing from one of these perspectives, maybe not recognizing the history behind them or the implications that they entail.So let's delve into these two seemingly opposed approaches to our future, understand their background, see how they have impacted us thus far, and try to discern what we should do moving forward.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states.

This bookis an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his lifea self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the Southwhich Steinbeck witnessed firsthanditis a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade.

Eligible for Execution: The Story of the Daryl Atkins Case by Thomas G. Walker

On August 16, 1996, 18-year-old Daryl Atkins was involved, along with a co-defendant, in the murder of Eric Nesbitt, a young naval mechanic stationed in Virginia. Found guilty and then sentenced to death in 1998, Atkinss case was taken up in 2002 by the Supreme Court of the United States. The issue before the justices: given Daryl Atkinss reported intellectual disability, would his execution constitute cruel and unusual punishment? Their 63 vote said yes.

Despite the SCOTUS ruling, Daryl Atkinss situation was far from being resolved. The determination that Atkins actually had an intellectual disability, under Virginia law, occurred a few years latera process in which I (Jim Patton) was involved. Eligible for Execution gives readers a front row seat into the twists of the judicial process while addressing how disability, race, and other issues play into societys evolving view of the death penalty. Personal reflections, as an insider to a part of Atkins judicial process, will be shared.

Enlightenment Now:The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress by Steven Pinker

This book makes the argument that on every possible front, from health to education to equality, and even the environment, things have never been better, a lot better.A lot of historical data is offered up in supportfor example, world-wide life expectancyis 71, a number probably far higher than you might think, given the pessimistic nature of the media and humankinds need to focus on the negative.Pinker argues that instead of being so negative, we should spend our time celebrating reason, the science it has produced, and the progress that has been realized because of it.

Of course Pinker wrote this book unaware of the current pandemic, but I would imagine he would argue this moment in time is just a blip on a time-scale in which the world will continue to thrive and improve, with science once again carrying the day.Do you agree?

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to die...under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild Westwhere oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the Phantom Terror, roamedmany of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organizations first major homicide investigations.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals.

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad

One of the most frequently asked questions after a talk or training focused on racism is, "What can I do about it?" Robin DiAngelo often pushes back with another question, "How is it that you've managed to not know?"

In an information overloaded world, the question of what to do to undo racism still looms large because it's not just about external information, but about knowledge of self.

Layla F. Saad's work began as an Instagram challenge, and after thousands of challenge participants and downloads of her Me and White Supremacy Workbook, her most recent book carries that work forward by teaching readers to understand their privilege and participation in white supremacy using a step-by-step self-reflection process. This reflection is a necessary prerequisite to figuring out "what to do" about racism. After all, "You cannot dismantle what you cannot see. You cannot challenge what you do not understand." -Layla F. Saad

The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston

The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus. A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus.

Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

During the height of the Great Depression, nine working-class college students on the University of Washington varsity crew team set off to do the impossible: defeat the German rowing team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It's one of those stories that I intentionally slowed my reading pace to savor every minute of it! (And, if you aren't knowledgeable about rowing, that's OK. But, I was surprised to find a new interest in the sport after reading this.) It is a compelling account of how these all-American underdogs beat the odds and found hope in the most desperate of times.

Christmas: A Candid History by Bruce David Forbes

Whether you love Christmas, hate Christmas, or have very mixed feelings about it, Christmas is an extremely strange holiday with a fascinating history. From reading this book and discussing it with Religious Studies professor Brent Landau, you'll learn: how Santa can squeeze down a chimney; why the Puritans banned Christmas; whether Jesus was really born in Bethlehem; and much more!

Icebound by Andrea Pitzer

Icebound is a narrative non-fiction account of Dutch explorer William Barents third expedition in the sixteenth century off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla.This is a great piece of reportage and writing for students interested in history, literary non-fiction, journalistic narrative, expedition tales and good, old-fashioned survival stories.

Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

A penetrating, acutely insightful, memoir and historical analysis of the importance of Juneteenth from the eminent Harvard University Professor and Pulitzer Prize Winner and Texas native Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed. This is a must read for those interested in Texas History and how that history intersects and, at times collides, with Black, LatinX, and Native American and indigenous histories. A must read for our students at UT especially.

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP by Sarah Schulman

ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. Twenty years in the making, this book is a comprehensive political history of ACT UP and American AIDS activism. Discussion will focus on excerpts from this extensive book.

Letters to My White Male Friends by Dax-Devlon Ross

Note: The book is available for pre-order until its release date of June 15. The author will join us during our discussion session.

This book speaks directly to the millions of middle-aged white men who are suddenly awakening to race and racism. White men are finally realizing that simply not being racist isn't enough to end racism. These men want deeper insight not only into how racism has harmed Black people, but, for the first time, into how it has harmed them. They are beginning to see that racism warps us all. This book promises to help men who have said they are committed to change and to develop the capacity to see, feel and sustain that commitment so they can help secure racial justice for us all.

Ross helps readers understand what it meant to be America's first generation raised after the civil rights era. He explains how we were all educated with colorblind narratives and symbols that typically, albeit implicitly, privileged whiteness and denigrated Blackness. He provides the context and color of his own experiences in white schools so that white men can revisit moments in their lives where racism was in the room even when they didn't see it enter. Ross shows how learning to see the harm that racism did to him, and forgiving himself, gave him the empathy to see the harm it does to white people as well. Ultimately, Ross offers white men direction so that they can take just action in their workplace, community, family, and, most importantly, in themselves, especially in the future when race is no longer in the spotlight.

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

As the worst days of the pandemic seem to be behind us, eviction moratoria will be lifted and hundreds of thousands of Americans will be houseless. In the meantime, many working Americans find themselves priced out of the housing market and unable to replicate the life of their childhood. In Austin, we have seen this issue play out in the debate about public camping and the current policy to ban it. The combination of low wages and high housing costs has created a class of Americans we might call nomads.

Transient older Americans have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads. Finding that social security comes up short and often underwater on mortgages, these nomads make up a new, low-cost labor pool for employers.

In a secondhand vehicle she christens Van Halen, Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying her subjects from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economyone that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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A Texas-Sized Reading List 2021 - UT News - UT News - UT News - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Anatomy

‘Grey’s Anatomy’: Amelia Rejected Link’s Marriage Proposal to Protect Him, Fan Theory Suggests – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Greys Anatomy, as one of the longest-running and most successful medical dramas of all time, is a show that has tackled many tough issues over the years.

From divorce and abortion to amnesia and child loss, fans have seen many troubling storylines over the years. However, the recent plotline involving Amelia and her addiction might be one of the toughest and most heart-wrenching yet. Amelia Shepherd is a character who has appeared in several shows in the Greys Anatomy universe, including Private Practice, and her struggles have been well-documented. It is her longstanding battle with addiction, in fact, that has given birth to an interesting fan theory, which could explain why Amelia rejected Links recent marriage proposal.

Amelia Shepherd is a character who first appeared in the series Private Practice, and although her sunny personality endeared her to fans, she has not had an easy journey. Over the course of her time on Private Practice, Amelia struggled with multiple addictions. First, she dealt with a crippling alcoholism problem, eventually switching over to pills, and finally, becoming hooked on heroin.

By the time Amelia Shepherd made the move to Greys Anatomy, becoming a part of the regular cast, she had left most of her problems with addiction behind her. Still, the pain that her drug use caused her has never quite left her, and she has been able to turn to her experience with addiction in order to help and guide other characters in Greys Anatomy over the course of the past season.

While Amelia hasnt reverted to hard drug use, recent episodes have shown that she has been struggling with the temptation to relapse especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans on Reddit have been speculating that Amelias urges could be why she made the shocking decision to reject Links recent marriage proposal.

i think at any other point in time, amelia wouldve been ready to marry link. but due to the pandemic, shes experiencing the urge to relapse and she isnt coping well. therefore, she doesnt want to drag Link (and another child) into the mess, one poster noted, going on to detail how she even said to link im wired for self destruction, meaning that she knows shes a ticking time bomb and is seriously close to relapsing. she isnt being selfish by not wanting to marry link, shes trying to protect him and scout. this makes me even more worried for her. Another fan wrote that Amelia has been very self aware of her addiction and her urges to fall back on that. I think so too that her saying no and not wanting any more kids is just her way of protecting her family because she knows she cant make Link really understand what shes going through.

While Amelias ongoing addiction issues could be one reason why she rejected Link, some fans also think that it could be a way of setting up a romance between Link and Jo. In the same Reddit thread, one fan wrote I think the writers just decided they want him to be with Jo now that shes single. Still, not everyone is on board with that theory one fan even noted that it just doesnt make sense why theyd make amelia & link have scout just for link to end up with jo.

Ultimately, its anyones guess what twists and turns Amelias storyline could take. Stay tuned to Showbiz Cheat Sheet for all the latest entertainment news!

RELATED:Greys Anatomy: Ellen Pompeo Hints at the Shows Ending Im Not Trying to Stay on the Show Forever

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'Grey's Anatomy': Amelia Rejected Link's Marriage Proposal to Protect Him, Fan Theory Suggests - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Anatomy

Anatomy of San Francisco Now: Fewer People, Jobs, Tourists, & Businesses, But More Spending by the Hangers-on (But that Was Inflation) – WOLF…

The recovery as it were, after everything went to heck but didnt.ByWolf RichterforWOLF STREET.

San Francisco is one of the most touristy cities in the US both for leisure and for business and it is also a tech and social-media center, a startup Petri dish, and the epicenter of working from home. During the Pandemic, the city has lost large chunk of jobs and a significant number of its residents. So here is an anatomy of the San Francisco economy where it currently stands, based on a report by the City of San Franciscos Office of Economic Analysis and based on some data from other sources that I added to the mix.

Despite the loss of jobs and population, the remaining residents in the city are doing what theyre supposed to do as good consumers: Theyre spending money. By May, credit card spending had fully recovered and was up 5% from the pre-Covid baseline in January 2020, according to credit card spending data, seasonally adjusted (Chart via the Office of Economic Analysis, citing data from the nonprofit Opportunity Insights and Affinity):

So locals spent 5% more with their credit cards than they did before the pandemic and this was just inflation since CPI jumped 5% year-over-year in May. And theyre spending less in brick-and-mortar retail stores, many of which remain shuttered, and more online, and theyre also spending at restaurants and other leisure activities.

There is now a thriving restaurant scene. Indoor dining is back, and now there are about 1,500 parklets where restaurants have created outside-dining areas on curbside parking spots, wide sidewalks, back patios, and public areas. Some restaurant streets are closed to traffic at night, and there have never been so many people visible on the street, milling around and sitting around in these parklets, as now. The whole ambiance has changed.

Restaurants with parklets now have more tables than they did before they built the parklets, and they can accommodate more business than before. And all kinds of new restaurants have sprung up.

But brick and mortar retail stores are in deep trouble. The sight of shuttered stores and for lease signs are everywhere. Nail salons and other services-based businesses are sprouting, but brick-and-mortar retail was already in trouble before the Pandemic, and so many stores were vacant and forming a blight that the city imposed a vacancy tax to incentivize landlords to find tenants.

As of June 2, 43% of San Franciscos small businesses remain closed, compared to the already beaten down baseline of January 2020 (green line), based on payment and payroll data from Opportunity Insights, cited by the Citys report.

Working from home is huge in the San Francisco metro, and office attendance is still minuscule. According to data from Kastle, which provides electronic access systems for office buildings, office attendance as measured by people entering offices in the five-county San Francisco metro (red line) was at 18% of the level in January 2020, meaning office attendance was still down 82%, but creeping up. For comparison, in Austin, TX (blue line), attendance is at about half the level compared to January 2020.

The number of residents in San Francisco who are working took a massive dive in April 2020 and has only partially recovered. In May, the number of working people was still down by 9.5%, or by 54,500 people, from February 2020, according to data from the California Employment Development Department (EDD). And as well see in a moment, some of those people have left San Francisco:

In early May, the California Department of Finance released its annual population estimate. By the end of 2020, the state of California had lost 182,000 people compared to a year earlier, the first population loss since the data had been tracked. San Francisco lost 14,800 people or 1.7% of its population (red column), now down to 875,000 (red line), the lowest since 2015:

Traffic across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco in May was down only 15% from the 2019 average. Traffic congestion on the freeways is back, and average speeds have slowed to pre-Covid averages of 31 mph, down from 60 mph in March and early April 2020. Lots of people are driving who had been taking mass-transit. And plenty of tourists from other parts of California or the US are driving into San Francisco. The weekend congestion is back. We live on a busy street, and its busy as heck, especially on weekends:

The Cable Cars are still shut down. Buses and streetcar lines operate at reduced levels. Ridership on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, the train system that links the East Bay to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, was still down 84% in May from May 2019. When people do go to work, theyre driving:

Despite the prevalence of working from home for office workers, and the near ghost-town atmosphere of the Financial District though its much less so now than last August when I documented the ghost town Financial District with photos many businesses are open and require workers to be there, from restaurants and repair shops to construction sites.

In addition, locals have discovered the beauty of outdoor areas, the parks and shore line while tourists were largely gone. I have never seen so many people swim in the Bay while pools were closed. Locals were doing lots of stuff and getting out. But many of them were just not going to work, but were working at home or were not working at all. Now the swim teams have returned to heated pools. But people are still not going to the office (chart via the Office of Economic Analysis, based on data from Google Mobility and Opportunity Insights):

Tourism, a huge industry in San Francisco, is still way down. The crucial tourism from Asia is still dead, and business tourism is also still dead. But domestic tourism is thriving, and these people drive from other places in California and from other states into San Francisco, as demonstrated by the traffic jams on weekends. But far fewer people are flying in.

According to data from the San Francisco International Airport, the number of people getting on a plane in April such as business and leisure tourists going home, and locals heading out was still at 31% from the 2019 average. Part of this is the collapse in traffic between San Francisco and Asia (chart via the Office of Economic Analysis):

The average daily room rate has risen to $160 per night. But thats only about half the average rate in 2019 of around $319 a night.

And hotel occupancy, which in 2019 averaged around 79%, was still only 35% in May. This is figured of total room inventory (TRI), which counts all hotel rooms whether or not the hotel had re-opened (chart via the Office of Economic Analysis):

So there are fewer people living in San Francisco and fewer people have jobs, and apartment vacancy rates are high, and there is a huge amount of churn, with tenants trying to get better deals and nicer apartments. This has been going on for over a year.

In June, the median asking rent for one-bedroom apartments was $2,790, according to Zumper, down 25% from July 2019, after having been down as much as 30%.

But these are asking rents. Theyre a way for landlords to find out what the market will bear. If the unit sits vacant long enough, theyll drop the asking rent or offer other inducements, such as two months free. Asking rents are not actual rents or effective rents. Theyre advertised rents; theyre the rents at which a landlord is trying to make a deal; theyre a form of price discovery, and in uncertain times like these, they can be all over the place.

So this is the economy of San Francisco. Fewer residents, fewer tourists, fewer jobs, fewer businesses, a still dead Financial District, lower rents, lower hotel room rates, near-empty BART trains, and lots of closed stores, but busy restaurants and lots of spending by the people that hung on.

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Anatomy

10 Greys Anatomy actors you forgot were on Law & Order – Monsters and Critics

Ellen Pompeo, Kate Walsh and Chandra Wilson Pic credit: NBC

Over its seventeen seasons, Greys Anatomy has seen a score of actors pass through its walls. Some of them were unknowns when they joined the show while others were TV veterans.

Given their long histories, it should be no surprise that some Greys folks popped up in the other long-running TV franchise, Law & Order. Given that the shows been running since 1990 with several spinoffs, the odds of a few Greys actors dropping in on L&O is obvious.

It can be fun seeing some future Greys stars popping up in an L&O episode. There are also times when a former Greys star guested on L&O after leaving Seattle-Grace.

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Whats more notable is that some of Greys actors didnt just do one appearance but multiple ones as different characters. At least one Greys star can claim a trifecta of L&O appearances and a few others are close behind.

Here are 10 Greys Anatomy stars fans may have forgotten were on Law & Order.

Isaiah Washington can be a controversial name for Greys fans. While his role as Burke was a key early role for the series, Washington got in trouble for some backstage comments made about his castmates that led to his exit.

Washington already had a good TV career with a brief stop in the second season L&O episode Out of Control. The detectives have to investigate a brutal attack on a young woman with Washington among the suspects.

After leaving Greys, Washington guest-starred in the L.A. spinoff. As with many L&O cases, what looked like a simple murder ended up more complex as the victim had been working on a controversial voting measure.

Washington was a worker of the victim, which lead to him being arrested. His reverend father (Charles S. Dutton) defended him in court, but it wasnt long before the cops figured there was a bigger case.

The actor was good, making viewers wonder if he was guilty or not, which added to the complexity that made Burke so divisive.

This season, Greys fans had to say goodbye to Jesse Williams as Jackson Avery left the hospital to become an advocate.

As it happens, Williams very first acting credit came with Law & Order. It was a brief role in the opening scene of America Inc.

Williams was among the friends watching a basketball game on TV when a bullet ripped through the set without warning.

It was from the shooting of a military contractor next door that sent the cops on a complex case. It got more complicated when McCoy faced the military and the state department on a possible terrorist attack.

It was just a few moments, but it did get Williams foot in the door on TV for a fun future famous face cameo.

The latest season of Greys had a brief return of Sarah Drews loveable and bright character April. She sure wasnt innocent in the SVU episode Responsible.

When a teenager died after too much drinking, the team found a pack of party-loving classmates. Drew played Becca, the more innocent of the bunch.

She was as shocked as the audience coming home and finding her boyfriend in bed with her own mother who was the one supplying the teens with alcohol.

As the case continued, it turned out Becca was an even bigger lush than any of her classmates which lead to tragedy.

Its a striking image of a more innocent-looking Drew who turned out to have a lot of darkness in her to fit this difficult case.

Greys fans have come to know Greg Germann as the arrogant Tom Koracick. But SVU fans got to love to hate him first in a few episodes as Derek Strauss.

He first arrived in Undercover Blue as a special prosecutor who focused on police-related cases. He tried Brian Cassidy for assault, pushing him as a true scumbag with the team barely able to prove Cassidys innocence.

Then in Amaros One-Eighty, Strauss tried to indict Amaro for a hate crime after he shot a suspect. Straus topped himself in Post-Mortem Blues by trying to indict Benson for murdering a suspect.

Season 18s Genes revealed Strauss had switched sides to become a defense attorney. Its thus possible that Germann returns to plague the SVU team once more.

Law & Order loves to cast actors from New Yorks vibrant Broadway community. That afforded Sara Ramirez a chance to appear on SVU.

At the time, the actress was a few years off from her Tony-winning performance in Spamalot. She had a brief role at the start of the SVU episode Chameleon as a worker at a party the cops busted up.

She claimed one cop felt her up, which got SVU involved. They figured the girl was just making it up to avoid jail time. But she got involved in areal case when another womans body was found on the scene.

It was a brief role that got Ramirez attention before landing the more familiar part of Callie on Greys, which made her a huge fan favorite.

Teddy Altman has been a great character on Greys from wrestling with feelings between Owen and David to personal drama. Kim Raver is a TV veteran of several series, so its logical a L&O appearance would be among them.

In Homesick, when an infant died, the police suspected his British nanny abused him. Raver played the boys mother, naturally grief-stricken, and wanted someone to pay for it.

As the case continued, it became clear the mother was more interested in her career than her child and the defense even suggested she was to blame.

Raver is gorgeous in the role but also had a cold side that leaves the audience guessing with the cops. Even if shes not the perp, its clear by the end she played a part in this tragedy.

Coming in as the first unpopular Addison, Kate Walsh won over fans to the point of earning her own spinoff, Private Practice.

Walsh had been bouncing around TV for a while and landed a spot in the L&O episode Navy Blues. As the title implies, it involved a murder of a Navy officer with Walsh as a possible witness.

It turns out she was having an affair with the victim and the cops suspected she killed him when he tried to cut it off.

With icy-blonde hair, Walsh was terrific as her pilot claimed it was self-defense, and shed been set up by the Navy. Even when she was found guilty, she continued her defense.

Its interesting seeing L&O tackle a case belonging to NCIS and Walsh as the villainess.

As the loveable and stunningly unlucky George OMalley, T.R. Knight won over fans who hoped the guy could catch a break.

His bad luck continued in his appearances in the Law & Order world. In the Criminal Intent episode F.P.S., Knight was one of the two bosses of a computer company suspected of killing their female partner.

Knight played mostly the sad-sack, but the cops realized he was far smarter than he seemed and might have been part of the murder.

After leaving Greys, Knight appeared on SVU. Rollins believed shed tracked down a rapist from an old case, and the DNA matched Knights family man. He protested his innocence and Amaro slowly believed him.

In a huge twist, the gang realized the actual perp was the twin brother the man never knew he had. Knight was terrific in both roles as the nice guy and a monster to truly put George behind him.

As the tough-as-nails but warm-hearted Bailey, Chandra Wilson has been with Greys since the start and not likely to leave soon.

Before that, Wilson can boast a trifecta of different L&O roles. In the second season L&O episode Cradle to Grave, she had a big role as a woman accused of being involved in the death of a child she was babysitting. Wilson was subdued in the role to leave the viewers guessing if she was guilty.

Wilson then made a cameo in the SVU episode Waste when the cops were investigating a woman in a coma who was pregnant. Her smart-mouthed nurse would remind fans of Bailey.

The later SVU episode 911 had Wilson showing up as an FBI tech who aided Benson in tracking down a kidnapped girl calling for help.

All three roles showed a different side of Wilson than Greys fans know.

As Meredith Grey, Ellen Pompeo has been the heart and soul of Greys since it began. Thats a far cry from her two L&O appearances.

In the Season 6 episode Savior, Pompeo was the victim of an attack on her family, which her father barely survived. The detectives suspected the man himself was behind this to salvage some lost money. Pompeo refused to believe it, which led to a dramatic courtroom showdown.

Pompeo then appeared in the Season 10 episode Fools For Love. A crime spree led the cops to catch a man who attacked and killed the sister of his girlfriend, played by Pompeo.

At first, she was heartbroken and rocked. But as the investigation continued, the cops began to suspect she might have been deeply involved in the scam.

Pompeos two roles are miles away from the warm-hearted Meredith either as a shell-shocked woman or a secret schemer.

Greys Anatomy seasons 1-17 on Hulu and Netflix. Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Peacock. Law & Order: Los Angeles on AppleTV.

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10 Greys Anatomy actors you forgot were on Law & Order - Monsters and Critics