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Neuroscience

Our pupil can follow rhythms that arise in the environment – News-Medical.Net

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.May 8 2020

When we find something particularly beautiful or impressive, we literally get big eyes: Our pupils dilate. The pupil controls how much light enters the eye and falls on the retina. When there is a lot of light, the pupil contracts; when there is little light, it opens again. Neuroscientists from the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research and the European Neuroscience Institute Gttingen have now found out in a study of humans and rhesus monkeys that the movement of the pupil is not only reflexively controlled by the amount of incident light, but unconsciously also by our mind. Thus, the pupil can follow rhythms that arise in the environment. In this way, the opening of the pupil is optimally adapted to our environment which enhances perception (Journal of Neuroscience).

Sensory impressions from our environment are often rhythmic, not only when we hear, but also when we see. For example, the blue light of a passing ambulance flashes about 120 times per minute. We also react unconsciously to visual events in our environment, which can be registered by our senses as regular patterns. From these patterns our brain can, for example, deduce when the next flash of blue light will hit the eye and prepare itself for it.

An important factor in vision is the adjustment of the pupil diameter. Smaller pupils provide a sharper image, while larger pupils allow more light to reach the retina, making it more likely that even weak stimuli will be processed at all. Pupil diameter is controlled by the pupillary reflex, which automatically, i.e. without our knowledge or intention, adjusts the pupil muscles to the incidence of light. But not all relevant environmental information is contained in the amount of incident light alone. Computations are therefore required in the brain that go beyond the capabilities of a reflex to take into account all available information. The aim of this study, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), was to find out whether and to what extent pupil dynamics are controlled fully automatically or whether they are also influenced by more complex rhythms in the environment.

For the investigations, pupil movements of two male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and several test subjects of both sexes were measured using a high-speed video camera, while the subjects were shown sequences of images of human faces at a temporal frequency of two hertz. A dark background was shown between the images. The alternation of background and image causes the pupil to dilate and contract in rhythm with the images. During the experiments, the order of the images was manipulated - they were grouped in pairs so that a particular image always followed a particular other image. Thus, there are two rhythms to which the pupil reacts: a fast one (two hertz), which results from the alternation of image and background, and one at half that pace (one hertz), which results from the arrangement of the images as pairs. The sequence of the pairs is not given by the light itself, and therefore requires an additional computation of environmental rhythms in the brain. Since the luminance of the faces in all pictures as well as the dark background in the "pauses" remained unchanged, but the arrangement of the pictures varied, conclusions could be drawn about the influence of this additional computation on pupil dynamics.

In addition to the structured sequence, randomly arranged images with the same frequency (two hertz) were shown. A comparison of the results between structured and unstructured image sequences at the same image frequency shows that in both species studied the pupil follows not only the light-related rhythm of the images, but also the more complex rhythm of the pairs. Pupil movement in a slow (one hertz) rhythm keeps the pupil open longer, as if a pair should not be interrupted by the closing of the pupil. This allows more light to reach the retina.

The additional information contained in the environment thus complements the information already reaching the retina via the incident light."

Caspar Schwiedrzik, head of the junior research group "Perception and Plasticity"

Furthermore, the study was able to show that this contributes to an improvement in perception, even if the test subjects are not aware that there is a rhythm in the environment. "Pupil control is therefore not purely reflexive, but is also influenced by our unconscious thoughts," adds Schwiedrzik.

Source:

Journal reference:

Schwiedrzik, C.M., et al. (2020) Pupil diameter tracks statistical structure in the environment to increase visual sensitivity. Journal of Neuroscience. doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0216-20.2020.

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Our pupil can follow rhythms that arise in the environment - News-Medical.Net

Neuroscience

Stars Host Free Live, Online Classes with Varsity Tutors – Look to the Stars

As part of its response to COVID-19 school closures, Varsity Tutors today announced that it has partnered with celebrity personalities from the worlds of entertainment, sports, and science to launch StarCourse a series of live, online celebrity-led classes. These classes will be available for free to kids and parents as part of Varsity Tutors Virtual School Day.

Students attending the free live classes will have the opportunity to take a class with Emmy Award winner Julianne Hough, two-time champion of Dancing with the Stars and creator of KINRGY; to learn health and wellness practices with gold medal gymnast, Aly Raisman; to study all things space with Leland Melvin, a former NFL star turned NASA astronaut; and to talk neuroscience with Mayim Bialik, a PhD scientist and star of the hit show The Big Bang Theory. Each of these celebrity instructors will host their own live classes throughout the month of May.

These live classes are a phenomenal addition to the Virtual School Day initiative that weve established for families impacted by coronavirus school closures, said Brian Galvin, Chief Academic Officer for Varsity Tutors. During this time, we feel families are looking for ways to keep their children both engaged and learning. Were thrilled to be able to work with the celebrity instructors as they share their knowledge and expertise in the subjects theyre passionate about.

People were born to move, create, and imagine, Hough said. Through my class, I hope to help kids connect with all three pastimes. Ill be teaching two movement classes that blend choreography and fitness, and that allow kids to express themselves creatively while doing it.

Bialik added, Neuroscience is definitely esoteric, but I think there are aspects of it that can be brought down to the level of an interested child easily. My class is a chance to lift the clouds around neuroscience and help kids discover all thats interesting about this area of study.

World champion gymnast Raisman noted, "I spent a lot of time as a gymnast working on my balance and strength, which was a big part of my success in the gym. Now, I have learned to apply the same basic principles to my everyday life and I want to help encourage people of all ages to prioritize their overall health and wellness. "

After injuries ended my football career, I decided to attend graduate school and study engineering thanks to a former professors influence, Melvin said. I want to pay that example forward and inspire students to reach for the stars.

The celebrity-led classes are a part of a bigger Varsity Tutors initiative to provide access to engaging, interactive classes for free. In March, Varsity Tutors launched Virtual School Daya remote learning program that includes live classes and educational resources intended to help parents fill their childrens day with enriched learning. Virtual School Day provides students with over 50 hours per week of instruction. Each class is led by an expert tutor with experience in the course topic, as well as familiarity with virtual instruction. Classes refresh weekly, with age-appropriate options for grades K-12.

Parents interested in registering for the celebrity-led classes or Virtual School Day should visit http://www.virtualschoolday.com to sign up.

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Stars Host Free Live, Online Classes with Varsity Tutors - Look to the Stars

Neuroscience

Gaze and pupil dilation can reveal a decision before it’s made | Penn Today – Penn: Office of University Communications

The direction in which people look and how dilated their pupils get can reveal the decision theyre about to make, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Penn neuroscientist Michael Platt and colleagues. These biomarkers also offer clues into the underlying biological processes at play as choices get made.

Understanding this can help explain why people make the decisions that they do, why one individual might make a different decision than another, even why people who seem to make the same decision might do so for different reasons, in terms of the biology, says Platt, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the Wharton School, School of Arts & Sciences, and Perelman School of Medicine.

The work grew out of conversations between the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, which Platt runs, and one of its partners, Vanguard, about why people more frequently make unwise financial decisions as they age. The discussion soon turned to broader questions about decision making, something Platt, postdoctoral researcher Feng Sheng, and former postdoctoral researcher Arjun Ramakrishnan opted to test with a well-known concept called loss-aversion.

People want to avoid a loss, even if doing so comes at the expense of a gain. Its why people buy insurance, Platt says. We seem to be really afraid of losses, of any possible risk of losing money or anything else.

One theory in the field says that losses are felt more profoundly than the happiness derived from a gain. To build on that notion, the Penn team created a gambling-task experiment that tracked eye movement and pupil dilation during the decision-making process. Ninety-four participants, each wearing an eye-tracking headset, went through two rounds of 100 trials. In each trial, they had to accept or reject a gamble that offered a possible gain or loss of $1 to $10.

For a study like this to succeed, participants must feel that their decisions arent purely hypothetical, so at the outset, the research team gave every person $10. They gambled with that over the 200 trials, Platt says. Whatever they ended up winning, they took home.

With dataset in hand, the research team then turned to a computational model based on a decision-making theory that says that the brain sequentially gathers information over time, then uses that evidence to tip the scales in one direction or another. Platt explains with the example of a yellow traffic light. As you approach a yellow light, do you hit the brakes or the gas?

It depends on where your eyes go, when, and for how long. Evidence for stoppinga person walking nearby, other cars on the roadgo into one bucket, and evidence for continuing, like a clear road ahead or beautiful weather, go into other. When one fills up, its the equivalent of hitting a threshold and you make a decision, he says. We know now that this is what our brain does, accumulating evidence toward one decision or another.

Neuroscientists also know that the more someone looks at a single spot or item, the more of a boost it gets compared to other information that could have been gathered. That affects the choice made. Thats why eye-tracking is really important and useful. Where people look indicates their biases, the information thats important to them, and it becomes highly predictive of the decision theyll make.

In the case of the gambling task, the two buckets comprised acceptance or rejection of each gamble. Platts team surmised that, because people are generally more sensitive to loss, for each gamble they would spend more time looking at the loss option over the gain. For the most part, that turned out to be true.

But the researchers also noticed that some participants rejected outright any gamble with a potential loss, regardless of the amount. In the rare moments that they challenged the default, opting instead to take the gamble, their eyes began to dilate half a second before they made the decision. We could predict when someone was about to accept a gamble just by the increased size of their pupil, Platt says.

Ultimately, understanding how this particular neurological process works could allow for personalized interventions. For example, knowing that where a person looks and for how long influences decision making, its possible that subtle suggestionslarger or bolder font on a page, for instancecould discreetly direct the gaze.

Platt and colleagues are working on a large study to test that theory, and preliminary data so far confirm their hypotheses. Theyre also conducting a study in conjunction with Vanguard to look at whether these biological processes and the biomarkers associated with them change systematically as people get older. Its an extension of the study they just published in PNAS.

All of this work fits into Platts overall research program. Were driven to understand why people make the decisions that they do and how using the tools of neuroscience can help, he says. Now we have two candidate biomarkerswhere people look and the size of their pupilsthat can tell us a lot of about the internal processes, and given the state of this technology, are easy and cheap to measure.

Michael Plattis the James S. Riepe University Professor in theDepartment ofPsychology in theSchool of Arts & Sciences, theDepartment ofNeurosciencein thePerelman School of Medicine, and theMarketingDepartment in theWharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Feng Sheng is a postdoctoral researcher in theDepartment of Marketingin theWharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Arjun Ramakrishnan, formerly a postdoctoral researcher in thePlatt Labs, is currently an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

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Gaze and pupil dilation can reveal a decision before it's made | Penn Today - Penn: Office of University Communications

Human Behavior

MINISTER’S MOMENT by REV. WILL WILSON | Lifestyles – Kilgore News Herald

We have a lot of knowledge. Arguably, we are the most knowledgeable global society to ever live on the face of the earth.

Im constantly amazed at what we can reasonably know: the surface temperature of Jupiter; the average number of cells in any given human body; the age of the Earth, and so on.

Weve all come to know recently that Epidemiologists can even predict with stunning accuracy the life cycle of a virus. What we can know not only applies to the realm of the scientific.

We have the ability to predict, on firm grounds, trends in politics, economics, and human behavior. We have an abundance lot of knowledge, but Im afraid we have a scarcity of wisdom. Knowledge without wisdom can be very dangerous.

One of the greatest kings of Israel was king Solomon. Solomon had his issues, but he also had wisdom.

God appeared to Solomon, as 2 Chronicles 1:7 tells the story, and asked him what shall I give you? Instead of possessions, wealth, (and) honor, Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge (2 Chr. 1:10).

Solomon asked for not just knowledge, but wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge only gives you what to say. However, knowledge and wisdom not only give you what to say, but how to say it and when.

Knowledge only gives you information about what to do, but knowledge and wisdom give you so much more: the when and how to do it. You cant have wisdom without knowledge.

Wisdom requires knowledge. However, too many people have knowledge without wisdom. God calls us to have both.

The wisdom God calls us to seek is not the wisdom of this world because the foolishness of God is wiser than humans (1 Cor 1:25). Were called to seek Gods wisdom.

Gods wisdom has been revealed to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus. St. Paul declares that Jesus Christ became to us wisdom from God (1 Cor 1:30).

Worldly wisdom says win at all costs. Gods wisdom in Christ says that in losing ourselves we truly find ourselves. Worldly wisdom: get all you possibly can.

Gods wisdom revealed in Jesus Christ: we find true honor and fulfillment in sacrificeby giving instead of getting.

Worldly wisdom: get even. The wisdom of Christ: love your enemies. Let us have knowledge, but more importantly, may we have Gods wisdom revealed in Christ.

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MINISTER'S MOMENT by REV. WILL WILSON | Lifestyles - Kilgore News Herald

Human Behavior

DeepMind compares the way children and AI explore – VentureBeat

In a preprint paper, researchers at Alphabets DeepMind and the University of California, Berkeley propose a framework for comparing the ways children and AI learn about the world. The work, which was motivated by research suggesting childrens learning supports behaviors later in life, could help close the gap between AI and humans when it comes to acquiring new abilities. For instance, it might lead to robots that can pick and pack millions of different kinds of products while avoiding various obstacles.

Exploration is a key feature of human behavior, and recent evidence suggests children explore their surroundings more often than adults. This is thought to translate to more learning that enables powerful, abstract task generalization a type of generalization AI agents could tangibly benefit from. For instance, in one study, preschoolers who played with a toy developed a theory about how the toy functioned, such as determining whether its blocks worked based on their color, and they used this theory to make inferences about a new toy or block they hadnt seen before. AI can approximate this kind of domain and task adaptation, but it struggles without a degree of human oversight and intervention.

The DeepMind approach incorporates an experimental setup built atop DeepMind Lab, DeepMinds Quake-based learning environment comprising navigation and puzzle-solving tasks for learning agents. The tasks require physical or spatial navigation skills and are modeled after games children play. In the setup, children are allowed to interact with DeepMind Lab through a custom Arduino-based controller, which exposes the same four actions agents would use: move forward, move back, move left, and turn right.

During experiments approved by UC Berkeleys institutional review board, the researchers attempted to determine two things:

In one test, children were told to complete two mazes one after another each with the same layout. They explored freely in the first maze, but in the second they were told to look for a gummy.

The researchers say that in the no-goal condition the first maze the childrens strategies closely resembled that of a depth-first search (DFS) AI agent, which pursues an unexplored path until it reaches a dead-end and then turns around to explore the last path it saw. The children made choices consistent with DFS 89.61% of the time compared to the goal condition (the second maze), in which they made choices consistent with DFS 96.04% of the time. Moreover, children who explored less than their peers took the longest to reach the goal (95 steps on average), while those who explored more found the gummy in the least amount of time (66 steps).

The team notes that these behaviors are in contrast with the techniques used to train AI agents, which often depend on having the agent stumble upon an interesting area by chance and then encouraging it to revisit that area until it is no longer interesting. Unlike humans, which are prospective explorers, AI agents are retrospective.

In another test, children aged four to six were told to complete two mazes in three phases. In the first phase, they explored the maze in a no-goal condition, a sparse condition with a goal and no immediate rewards, and a dense condition with both a goal and rewards leading up to it. In the second phase, the children were tasked with once again finding the goal item, which was in the same location as during exploration. In the final phase, they were asked to find the goal item but with the optimal route to it blocked.

Initial data suggests that children are less likely to explore an area in the dense rewards condition, according to the researchers. However, the lack of exploration doesnt hurt childrens performance in the final phase. This isnt true of AI agents typically, dense rewards make agents less incentivized to explore and lead to poor generalization.

Our proposed paradigm [allows] us to identify the areas where agents and children already act similarly and those in which they do not, concluded the coauthors. This work only begins to touch on a number of deep questions regarding how children and agents explore In asking [new] questions, we will be able to acquire a deeper understanding of the way that children and agents explore novel environments, and how to close the gap between them.

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DeepMind compares the way children and AI explore - VentureBeat

Human Behavior

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 9) – Singularity Hub

BIOTECH

With CRISPR, a Possible Quick Test for the CoronavirusCarl Zimmer | The New York TimesA team of scientists has developed an experimental prototype for a fairly quick, cheap test to diagnose the coronavirus that gives results as simply as a pregnancy test does. The test is based on a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, and the researchers estimated that the materials for each test would cost about $6.

IBM Now Has 18 Quantum Computers in Its Fleet of Weird MachinesStephen Shankland | CNETEighteen quantum computers might not sound like a lot. But given that each one is an unwieldy device chilled within a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and operated by PhD researchers, its actually a pretty large fleet. In comparison, Googles quantum computers lab near Santa Barbara, California, has only five machines, and Honeywell only has six quantum computers.

An AI Can Simulate an Economy Millions of Times to Create Fairer Tax PolicyWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology ReviewThe tool is still relatively simple (theres no way it could include all the complexities of the real world or human behavior), but it is a promising first step toward evaluating policies in an entirely new way. It would be amazing to make tax policy less political and more data driven, says team member Alex Trott.

Spot the Robot Is Reminding Parkgoers in Singapore to Keep Their Distance From One AnotherJames Vincent | The VergeThe robot is fitted with cameras that will be used to estimate the number of visitors to the park, but Singapores National Parks Board (NParks) says it wont collect personal data or use the video to identify individuals. If the trial is successful, NParks says the robot could be deployed full-time during peak hours in the park.

In the Future, Touchscreens Will Be Obsolete. This Lab Designs Whats NextLuke Dormehl | Digital TrendsConductive paint that turns regular, boring walls intoenormous touch-sensitive panelsat a cost of $1 per square foot? Of course! Asmartwatch that uses laser projectionto extend its touchscreen all the way up your arm? No problem! A device for simulating touch in virtual reality byturning humans into living marionettes? Youve come to the right place!

How Much Energy Does It Take to Blow Up a Planet?Rhett Allain | WiredSo, on orders from Emperor Palpatine, a Xyston-class Star Destroyer fires a super powerful beam from space andblows up the planet Kijimi. Just like that. I know what youre thinking: How much energy would it take to blow up a planet? Of course, its just an academic question. Im sure youre not a Sith lord with bad intentions, so Ill show you how to figure this out.

Image credit:Joel Mbugua /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 9) - Singularity Hub

Human Behavior

We Need Gossip Now More Than Ever – VICE

Don't tell anyone, but my boyfriend's friend chipped her tooth. She can't get it fixed because it's a non-essential dental procedure. I'm not sure how big the chip is, but it is on her front tooth. Isn't that awful (and just a little bit funny)? Keep this to yourself too: in my boyfriend's friend's Zoom physics college class, a student started yelling and cursing at the teacher! He was frustrated that he couldn't see the problems because she was scrolling too fast. Bit of an overreaction, no? He said some really inappropriate things, the teacher should have muted him.

These tidbits are from me and my boyfriend's nightly gossip sesha new ritual we've picked up while social distancing and working from home during the pandemic. As the days have started to blur into a monotonous haze, I demanded one night: "Tell me some goss." My boyfriend's offering wasn't that salacious, but framing it as gossip was exciting, and provided us two minutes of entertainment that wasn't the news or whatever TV shows or books we're filling our time with.

Since then we've kept it up. Each day, I consider what my gossip to share will be, and he does the same. In the evening, one of us (usually the one with the better gossip) will proclaim: "You ready for some goss?!" The other eagerly stops what they are doing, in rapt attention.

Everyone loves gossip. If they say they dont, theyre lying. Theres nothing more thrilling than hearing that someone is ready to spill some tea. When there's dirt to dish, were electrifiedeager to be privy to inside information.

Lets be honest, the poet W.H. Auden wrote, in a 1937 essay In Defense of Gossip. When you open your newspaper, as soon as you have made sure that England hasnt declared war, or been bombed, what do you look at? Why, the gossip columns!

Gossiping gets a bad rap ( "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all") but for those of us lucky enough to be safely bored at home, we need gossip more than ever before. An intentional gossip practice, even over video chat, is not only fun, it can help us feel closer to one another. Researchers who study gossip have found that it helps us bond, increases cooperation, and encourages good behavior and self-reflectionall qualities of a good quarantine habit.

Theres no reason whatever why gossip should make mischief, Auden wrote. As a game played under the right rules, it's an act of friendliness, a release of the feeling, and a creative work of art.

Here are the rules of gossip, agreed upon by gossip researchers. Gossip must be information about another person, not the stock market or the weather. The person cant be there while youre talking about them, they must be an "absent third party." And gossip is usually evaluativemeaning its making a moral judgement about that person and their behavior, that something they did is either good or bad.

Its entertaining, said Frank McAndrew, a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois who has done a number of studies on gossip. We cant look away. It just draws us in.

Though Eleanor Roosevelt said great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people," the truth is that we are often of small mindswe gossip all the time. Gossiping starts around the age of 5, and one study found that about 60 percent of our conversations are made up of gossip.

Gossip is universal in all cultures and has been around for centuries. When a feature of human behavior is so ubiquitous, scientists tend to think its stuck around for a reasonthat in some way its helped us to survive.

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Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, has proposed that gossip is the human version of primates grooming one another; it's a way of sharing social information, but verbally, and in larger groups than one ape picking bugs off another. Gossip may have developed because early humans needed to communicate and cooperate in order to survive. McAndrew said in early human civilizations, a person wouldnt have fared well without being interested in what others were up to. We've evolved to care (and talk about) who was best at hunting, who was the best mate, and who would stab us in the back.

More recent research has shown that gossip can bring even modern humans together. Sharing gossip tells a person that you trust them. That theyre going to be responsible with it, and that now we know something most other people dont. That really ties us together, McAndrew said.

Jennifer Bosson, a social psychologist at the University of South Florida, said gossip also communicates our likes and dislikes to others. She has studied how sharing our feelings about another person leads people to bond. She's found that talking about our negative opinions of others can strengthen new relationships more than positive opinionsthe spicier the gossip, the stickier it is as social glue.

Gossip also encourages us to behave, since we know if we do something outrageous, others will be whispering about it behind our backs. Gossip is one of the main ways we talk and learn about others' reputations.

The desire to maintain your reputation promotes cooperation with others and also deters people from doing nasty and awful things. It can force us to be good citizens and do the right thingsmeaning that gossiping about your friends who are violating social distancing rules could potentially be a way to make sure people stay at home. Studies of California cattle ranchers, Maine lobster fishers, and college rowing teams found they all used gossip to enforce their groups' social norms.

Gossip can also protect you from those with bad reputations. Prosocial gossip is when someone shares negative information about someone else, and it helps you avoid experiencing it yourself, like a whisper network. After hearing from a friend that a man ghosts every new girlfriend on the fourth date, you could choose to not go out with him at all. Gossip about other people can also make you think about yourself and your own actions, and want to be better, or be proud of yourself for acting differently.

I think one of the reasons why gossip is so much a part of who we are is because it is adaptive in so many different ways," McAndrew said.

Gossip can achieve all these things even if its about someone you dont know, like a celebrity. Because we can have extreme familiarity with celebrities lives, even without having ever met them, gossip about them matters just as much as the people we do know. In a recent interview in The Cut, Elaine Lui, journalist of Lainey Gossip.com, explained why even celebrity gossipaccused of being shallowcan reveal intimate parts of yourself to others.

We've evolved to care (and talk about) who was best at hunting, who was the best mate, and who would stab us in the back.

You and I were just gossiping about Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas," Lui said. "To me, our conversation was really about quarantining with someone you werent legitimately in love withabout relationships and human connection, and who you want to be spending your time with. Your analysis of Ben and Ana actually tells me something about you: what youre looking for in a companion, if you even need companionship, and how you want to spend your time. Those are valuable clues for me to understand you as a person better."

Gossipers (especially women) have historically been unfairly punished with cruel contraptions, like an iron cage with spikes from the 1500s, worn on the head, that prevents a person from talking. Or the ducking stool from the 1800s: a 12- to 15- foot beam that strapped a person to one end and plunged them into water.

Given the condition of the bodies of water located in or near towns during this period of history, what the woman was being immersed in was usually not much better than raw sewage, providing a strong incentive for her to keep her mouth tightly closed, McAndrew wrote in Psychology Today.

But no amount of dunking people in sewage has led to a scaling back of gossip before, so we might as well embrace it now, and figure out instead how to be better gossipers, in ways that bring us together and don't hurt others.

McAndrew doesn't think of gossip as inherently good or bad, but as a social skillyoull get in trouble if you dont do it well. One way of being a bad gossip is if you only share negative information about other people, in ways that obviously benefit you. This would be like constantly sharing gossip about why a co-worker is inferior to you, or how an ex's new partner is worse than you. Good gossip should share information that brings value to the person youre sharing it with, not just you.

If youre a blabbermouth repeating everything anyone tells you, then people wont trust you with any information because they know youre incapable of keeping it to yourself. Keeping gossip intimate is a way of preserving it as a delicacy, knowing that its rare and only shared between a few people.

And it should go without saying that taking your gossip online and making it public removes the positive benefits. When researchers discuss the adaptive nature of gossiping, theyre talking about it as a mode of communication that evolved way before the internet and social media.

Keeping gossip intimate is a way of preserving it as a delicacy, knowing that its rare and only shared between a few people.

Our ability to spread rumors online is really not functional in the same way that two members of the same group talk about whether or not another person is trustworthy, Bosson said. Thats serving a different function of gossip than spreading rumors about Meghan Markle. Sharing some information privately with your partner at home as a way of connecting is really different than going and broadcasting something that has a high risk of hurting somebody.

If youre struggling to come up with good gossip while quarantined, don't worry about finding huge scoops to share. McAndrew said that since our social lives have diminished, its likely that the standards for interesting gossip have gotten lowereven mundane things can now qualify as scintillating.

Some of the gossip Ive shared with my boyfriend wouldnt have sparked any interest before, like overhearing that our neighbor found some ants in their apartment or that my sister's boyfriend's dad threw up while they were in the car together.

According to Auden, the greatest subjects for gossip are "love, crime, and money." But when in doubt, remember that good goss is, at its core, about what the people around us are doing.

All art is based on gossipthat is to say, on observing and telling, Auden wrote. Gossip is the art-form of the man and woman in the street, and the proper subject for gossip, as for all art, is the behavior of mankind.

Follow Shayla Love on Twitter.

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We Need Gossip Now More Than Ever - VICE

Human Behavior

VIDEO: Raimondo Confirms Stay at Home Order in RI Will Be Lifted on Saturday – GoLocalProv

Thursday, May 07, 2020

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Raimondo made the announcement Thursday.

While Raimondo is lifting restrictions on the economy, a new study released Thursday says that Rhode Island is not one of 9 states ready to reopen.

Were not going to be able to enforce everyones human behavior in the weeks and months to come. Were going to lift the stay at home order on Saturday Im letting the [current] Executive Order expire and not extending it, said Raimondo. Weve met all of the triggers.

Rhode Island Criteria

There had to be a 14-day downward trend in cases or a 14-day stabilization of hospitalizations what weve been looking at is a three-day moving average now versus a three day moving average 14 days ago, said Raimondo.

Weve hit the mark for hospitalizations, it shows a 15% decreases for new cases, its a 25% drop in the new case tend over the last 14 days. Were meeting both metrics, said Raimondo.

The study released Thursday by Harvard shows that Rhode Island is not currently meeting what they say is the testing threshold to reopen.

Were continuing to add news tests and mobile testing, said Raimondo during the press conference. Dr. Birx reviewed where we are she was very complimentary as to where Rhode Island is in respect to where it iscases, and testing protocol and pledge to support us expand our testing."

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VIDEO: Raimondo Confirms Stay at Home Order in RI Will Be Lifted on Saturday - GoLocalProv

Human Behavior

Life-threatening extreme heat set to trap millions indoors by 2060 – National Post

By Thin Lei Win

ROME, May 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) Extreme heat and humidity are increasing across the globe, threatening millions of lives and economies in places where it could become fatal to work outdoors, scientists said on Friday.

Parts of Australia, India, Bangladesh, the Persian Gulf, China, Mexico and the United States have experienced hundreds of previously rare incidents of extreme heat and humidity since 1979, said the study in the journal Science Advances.

These punishing conditions have lasted only one to two hours but climate change is likely to prolong them to about six hours at a time by 2060 and expand the affected areas, lead author Colin Raymond told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Thats kind of a conservative estimate but thats still earlier than anyone else had projected, said Raymond, who did the research as a PhD student at Columbia University and now works for NASA.

Moist, humid conditions make it harder for people to sweat away excess heat, leading to health risks including heat stroke, which can kill or disable victims who go untreated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Many scientists are examining the potential increase in extreme heat and its impact on economies and health, with mental health problems set to soar as people have trouble sleeping and working.

Limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times is the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and world temperatures have already risen by 1.2C.

A separate paper published this week by the Netherlands Wageningen University warned of near-unlivable heat of above 29 degrees Celsius (84.2F) for a third of humanity by 2070.

In the Columbia University-led study, data from nearly 8,000 weather stations showed readings approaching or exceeding 30C have doubled since 1979, and two in the Persian Gulf and Pakistans Indus River Valley reported values above 35C.

We may be closer to a real tipping point on this than we think, Radley Horton, co-author and climate scientist at Columbias Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement.

The highest readings were in parts of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, home to some 3 million people.

Surviving in these conditions would require adapting buildings to provide shade and cooling and human behavior, which includes minimizing outdoor labor, said Raymond.

This could severely disrupt farming and commerce, with many poor people unable to afford air conditioning, said Horton.

The study focused on wet bulb temperatures, which scientists say reflect the combined effects of temperature and humidity, a more useful indicator of heat stress.

Russian heatwaves in 2010, with temperatures of nearly 40C which killed tens of thousands of people, experienced wet bulb temperatures no greater than 28C, the paper said. (Reporting By Thin Lei Win //news.trust.org)

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Life-threatening extreme heat set to trap millions indoors by 2060 - National Post

Human Behavior

Building Back Better: Why we must think of the next generation – Modern Diplomacy

Amid our self-isolations, quarantines, and lockdowns in the face of COVID-19, the earth is breathing a sigh of relief. We have been fighting for its resources and disrupting its ecosystem, thinking we are making it more livable. While doing so, we killed millions of people and made many of the species extinct that shared the planet with us.

Now with the wars on hold and factories shut, the killing has stopped and skies are so clear as if the industrial revolution never took place. Warships are docking and belligerents on all sides of conflicts are implementing measures to contain the coronavirus.

But like past pandemics, this one, too, will be over. Development of vaccines and our herd immunity is just months away, after which we will revert to being ourselves. With livelihoods at stake, factories will gear into action as soon as there is the slightest respite from the virus.

Earths lungs will forthwith resume inhaling the emissions from these factories chimneys. Just as COVID-19, in its most extreme case, collapses lungs of those with depressed immunity, we will once again set out to test earths ability to fight the invasive nature of our manufacturing methods.

The desire for reigniting economic growth will surpass all other objectives since that is how the global economic model has been built. With the demand for higher production at the lowest possible cost, environmental protection is hardly catered for in the matrix. The compromise on our planets health is the highest cost excessive industrialization pays.

Profits will retake their place above everything else over the sustainability of businesses, over the wellbeing of people. Caring for the environment will return to being somebody elses problem who can, supposedly, reverse all effects of our pillaging, even if responsible countries withdraw from commitments like the Paris Accord on climate change.

That is one fallacy of multipartisan systems where a completely new set of policies and ideals have to take over every four years or so. Politicians in such frameworks are compelled to deliver immediate results, brushing aside longterm effects of their decisions. What happens after their tenure concludes, is supposed to be somebody elses problem.

Apart from the war with our planet, we will also resume wars with each other. The new coronavirus, an invisible but common enemy of mankind, has put these conflicts on pause and given us an opportunity to reflect upon their rationale. The decision to press the play button will remain to be ours.

How long will it take for us to appreciate the viruss inability to distinguish between the right and the wrong side in a war is a question of debate. Some countries, with bloated militaries, will continue to ignore our shared vulnerabilities despite gaining a first-hand experience of getting infected. In all likelihood, their fixation on solving the worlds problems with force will not heal.

To run our industries, we will keep competing for resources. Like village neighbors sparring over a passing stream of water, global conflicts seldom take the course of arbitration. The arrangement of international governance will perpetuate giving the right to the might.

Then there are the blows over ideologies that will continue to be exchanged. We had not learned to accept the viability of multiple political systems before the outbreak, nor are we expected of doing so any time soon.

Ideological battles historically emanated from religious differences. By the early twentieth century, they shifted to the capitalist vs communist tussle during the Cold War. Today the feud persists as a mix of quest for religious and political dominance.

Perceiving the COVID-19 threat as existential, most of the world has put ideological disagreements behind. Nations with all kinds of societal systems are assisting each other as the pandemic engulfs one after another. Once this threat departs, we risk getting back to subverting each other over our differing schools of thought.

Besides the bleak future painted above, there definitely is a silver lining. Social engagement that we took for granted in our daily lives was the first casualty of the contagion. Immediately after surmounting this challenge, there will be a boom in social activity as we will rush to meet our dear ones.

This is a classic example of realizing the value of something once its gone. Isolation has had a significant impact on our mental states. Achieving a level of normalcy would require getting near to people, spending time with those we missed, and, most importantly, going outdoors.

Past pandemics did not radically alter the collective human behavior. This one isnt expected to either. For better or for worse, we will get back to being ourselves. Though by confining us to our homes, Mother Nature has given us a chance to come out of this calamity with a resolve of making a positive change.

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Building Back Better: Why we must think of the next generation - Modern Diplomacy