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Human Behavior

This toilet recognizes your butthole and uploads photos to the cloud – Mashable

Stanford scientists want you to boldly go where no one has gone before. Specifically, that would be into a camera-laden toilet that scans and recognizes your analprint.

According to a paper published today in the journal Nature, researchers at the storied university have devised a system for tracking defecation and urination by specific individuals over time, sending that data to the cloud, and analyzing it for the purposes of public health. It's the latest addition to a long line of smart toilets, although this may be the first one to take a picture of your asshole.

The so-called Precision Health Toilet is equipped with four cameras: the stool camera, anus camera, and two uroflow cameras. Combined, they allow the toilet to analyze users' urine and "[classify] stool according to the Bristol stool form scale using deep learning[.]"

Notably, the toilet uses a form of two-factor authentication to ensure it associates the right poop with the right person. By employing both a fingerprint scanner embedded in the flush lever, and the aforementioned "analprint scan," the researchers hoped to prevent mixups involving shared toilets.

"The potential for using the human anus as a biometric identifier is not a new concept," writes study co-author Dr. Seung-min Park in an accompanying blog post. "The famous painter, Salvador Dal (1904-1989), had already figured out that the anus has 35 or 37 creases, which are as unique as fingerprints."

Quite the scan.

Image: screenshot / nature

Importantly, you data does not remain with the toilet, but rather is sent to the cloud for later analysis.

"All collected data (images and videos), in their raw data formats, were annotated with respect to the user and transmitted to a cloud system through wireless communication," explains the study.

When reached for comment over email, Dr. Seung-min Park told Mashable that users' privacy is of the utmost concern.

"We unconditionally ensure the security of all photos and private information of our users are enforced through end-to-end encrypted data transmission," wrote Dr. Park."We have employed a template matching algorithm to determine the region of interest (anus), which once fully developed and validated, will be autonomous without any human interaction."

Technical.

Image: SCREENSHOT / NATURE

What's more, Dr. Park added that the actual photos of users' anuses will be "encrypted by a hash function and stored on a secured device."

Dr. Park writes that the development of the Precision Health Toilet is a first step in a much longer-term effort to more broadly diagnose a host of diseases and disorders in the general population including benign prostatic hyperplasia, irritable bowel syndrome, and urinary tract infections.

SEE ALSO: The weird science behind smart toilets and your pee

"This toilet system is expected to have a major impact on health monitoring research," concludes the study, "as the toilet enables longitudinal monitoring of human health with minimal interference of human behavior."

That is, if everyone can overcome their embarrassment first.

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This toilet recognizes your butthole and uploads photos to the cloud - Mashable

Human Behavior

The critical role of innovation in travel during the COVID-19 crisis – PhocusWire

Innovation is reshaping the COVID-19 crisis as the COVID-19 crisisis reshaping innovation. The usual resistance to innovation efforts is gone. Weneed it. We need it fast.

Typical reactions to an economic crisis are efforts to preservecash, reduce costs and search for new revenue sources. We commonly see layoffs,hiring freezes and cuts in any expenses seen as non-crucial such as travel,conferences and training.

Traditionally, particularly in travel companies, theinnovation department falls into the non-crucial category. Innovation would bedeemed for deep cuts, if not complete elimination. No longer.

In fact, todays reality is the complete opposite. We see that arapid response to the crisis and use of technology may equate to survival formost businesses and will likely be essential for smooth recovery.

What is unique about the current crisis? The key differencebetween the COVID-19 crisis and previous ones is that innovation is expected.

In the current crisis, both consumers and providers are welcoming innovationefforts and responding rapidly and are willing to go through learning curves tomake it happen. For businesses, responding proactively is crucial, and in orderto do so they need a well-positioned and well-utilized innovation departmentthat can be a key player in finding rapidly those extremely needed newsolutions.

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So what does it mean to be a well-positioned innovationdepartment? It means an innovation department that is agile - i.e., able toquickly shuffle its priorities and adapt them to the new crisis - and that hasinternational reach to find easily deployable and cost-effective solutions.

Moreover, it has to have credibility in different startupecosystems to bring in the most efficient solutions fast and have the beststartups focus on travel versus other verticals. Companies must be connected tothe core of the solution providers efforts, i.e., be on the top of their listof priorities, working to have the technology fit specific and urgent needs.

The crisis arrived almost as a shock. We witness companies of allsizes and all sectors taking unusual steps to accommodate sudden shifts indemand, manage internal and external interaction and communication andimprovise new delivery methods.

However, even though in many ways we are moreopen to innovation, the sudden, non-planned and time-sensitive nature of thesituation brings additional obstacles.

The global health crisis triggered an enormous financial crisis that not only slowed down economic activity but is leading to a complete change in human behavior in all sectors, including consumers, suppliers, employees, investors and government.

Rom Hendler and Flavia Hendler - InnoVel

Take, for example, the move to home offices. It was not a plannedmove. It happened overnight, thereby exposing customers and corporations tophishing scams, cyber crime and fraud.

According to cybercrime experts, since the beginning of March 2020, in the United States only,there was an increase of 667% in phishing emails. Hackers are looking forquick profits and organizations are not well-equipped to protect themselves.

The home networks may not have the appropriate level of security. Many of thecomputers used are personal, and the home networks make data and informationvulnerable to hacking. We need expert cyber security that can address thesudden change in which most employees work from home and email is the main formof communication.

Hygiene and safety are other issues that operators are facing.Specifically in the service sector, the consumer is part of the productionprocess, so how can operators assure their safety?

Partly, with automation andability to work remotely with less employees which reduces human touch, hencelowering chances of infection as well as reducing costs. Additionally, thereare solutions that simply provide a clean and safe environment, for hotels,airlines or cruise lines.

One can never let a good crisis go wasted. It may sound like a clich,but we must transform challenges into great opportunities. The threat of COVID-19affects decisions in pricing, supply management, security, communication,safety and marketing practices.

So the worlds two-front fight - fighting thespread of the virus and fighting for our economy - includes not only medicaland health technologies, but also solutions in service, optimization, safety,cyber and many other technologies. The globalized response can be much moreeffective and efficient with the right tools.

Under the current scenario, the travel industry can benefit fromtechnologies that are readily available but normally not easily accessible. Thestartup ecosystem in Israel offers key solutions to managing the crisis. InIsrael, there are about 7,000 startups, of which less than 300 are in travel.The remaining ones do not focus on the travel industry - at least not at thisstage.

The reason is not because their products do not fit the travel industrybut the fact that other industries are more lucrative, easier to work with,have bigger players and are more accessible (many have local representation inIsrael).

However, currently, with the threat of COVID-19 and homeconfinement, their ability to get to their target audience and find newcustomers is extremely limited. Therein lies a great opportunity for the travelindustry. If companies proactively reach out to the most promising andcompetitive startups with an interesting use case, we can have a win-winpartnership.

In such scenarios, the travel organization solves an immediateproblem with an essential solution that

On the other side, the startups get a newclient and access to a whole new vertical.

We are at a historical moment. The global health crisis triggeredan enormous financial crisis that not only slowed down economic activity but isleading to a complete change in human behavior in all sectors, includingconsumers, suppliers, employees, investors and government. As a society, we arelonging for solutions, in dire need of reliable knowledge and robustinstitutions.

We are suddenly open for insights from different areas ofknowledge, which can impact our life outlook and our ability to cope, as wellas provide viable ways to fulfill our most mundane tasks.

That mind shift is happeningon a personal level and a community, national and global level, shaping publicpolicies and impacting business strategies. We cannot let this opportunity forchange go to waste.

It is time to act. This is not 2001 or 2008. It is 2020. There isa plethora of easy-to-implement solutions that can help us overcome the currentcrisis. The timing is on our side for catching up with what technology canoffer our industry.

The ones that do this not only will weather thisunprecedented crisis but will also come out stronger and more equipped to dealwith a completely new travel market.

About the author...

Rom Hendler is founder and CEO and Flavia Hendler is director of communications at InnoVel.

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The critical role of innovation in travel during the COVID-19 crisis - PhocusWire

Human Behavior

California coronavirus peak: What will it be and how bad? – Los Angeles Times

The San Francisco Bay Area suffered one of the nations earliest outbreaks of COVID-19, but cases from Southern California and the Central Valley are outpacing it, threatening a much larger population, according to a Times analysis of county health data.

Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, Stanislaus and Tulare counties are now seeing faster rates of newly detected coronavirus cases than any of the counties in the Bay Area, the Times analysis found.

And with more than 6,000 confirmed cases in L.A. County alone, chances of exposure are increasing rapidly.

If you have enough supplies in your home, this would be the week to skip shopping altogether, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday.

Without everyone taking every possible precaution, our numbers can start skyrocketing, she said. It really is time for those people who maybe havent taken this seriously before ... this would be the week to stay home ... and it may be next week as well.

While California has yet to see the worst of the pandemic, there were signs that some of the more dire predictions might not come to fruition.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has tried to prepare the state for the worst-case scenario, said California had enough ventilators to lend 500 to the Strategic National Stockpile to help New York and other COVID-19 hot spots facing shortages of the desperately needed medical devices.

We want to extend not only thoughts and prayers, but were also extending a hand of support with ventilators, Newsom said during a news briefing Monday in Sacramento.

Newsom said lending the ventilators was possible because hospitals throughout California have procured thousands of them in the last few weeks, increasing their ventilator inventory from 7,587 to 11,036.

Also Monday, the influential Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent population health research center at the University of Washington, predicted a significantly lower death count in California than its earlier models, based on new data from Spain and Italy.

On March 26, the center forecast 6,109 deaths in California during this outbreak, a number seen by many at the time as overly optimistic. On Monday, the institute reduced that projection to 1,783, with a range of uncertainty of 1,400 to 2,400 and the last death occurring on May 20.

The peak in patients is forecast to roll through hospitals on April 15, and the worst day for fatalities two days later, with 70 deaths.

The numbers changed largely because seven locations in Italy and Spain appear to have reached the peak number of daily deaths, the researchers wrote in their update. They no longer had to rely solely on data from Wuhan, China.

The time from implementation of social distancing to the peak of the epidemic in the Italy and Spain location is shorter than what was observed in Wuhan, they wrote. As a result, in several states in the US, todays updates show an earlier predicted date of peak daily deaths, even though at the national level the change is not very pronounced.

New data also changed how the team weighed the effects of different social distancing factors closed schools, stay-at-home orders, shutting down nonessential businesses in its calculations.

The researchers model projects that the last death from the virus in the United States will occur on June 22 and that the nations total death toll will be 81,766, within a range of uncertainty of 49,431 to 136,401.

The states expected to be hit hardest: New York, 15,618 deaths; New Jersey, 9,690; Massachusetts, 8,254; and Florida, 6,770.

Epidemiologists have questioned the reliability of any prediction model, given the number of uncertainties plugged into the algorithms erratic human behavior, spotty testing, possible under-reporting of deaths.

When you multiply uncertainty with uncertainty, you get larger uncertainty, said Dr. Loren Miller, a physician and infectious diseases researcher at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. And thats where models are limited. They can make guesses about what will happen, but they can be way off in either direction. Too optimistic or too pessimistic.

Other models have projected far bleaker statistics. And critics of the University of Washington model have expressed fears that the Trump administration relies on it too heavily because it paints a brighter picture than others.

And all this could be just the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Others could follow in weeks, months or years.

California state officials expect that the peak of this outbreak will not be reached until mid-May and high infection rates could last into summer.

The number of new cases in L.A. County has been rising steadily, with the number of daily new cases increasing from about 300 a week ago to between 422 and 720 in the last several days.

While the rate of growth slows near the peak, the sheer numbers get bigger every day. Doubling 10 cases in a single day is a high rate of growth. Doubling 6,000 cases in five days is a much slower rate of growth with a much bigger impact.

Cases in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties are now taking about four to five days to double, while Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Solano are taking six to seven.

The pace is slowing down even more in San Francisco, where the doubling time is every 10 days, and in the original epicenter of Californias outbreak, Santa Clara County, where the doubling time is now every 11 days. In mid-March, this was happening every four days.

Los Angeles County saw its fastest rate of coronavirus cases in late March, when it was taking just about every two days for coronavirus cases to double, the Times analysis found.

The Inland Empire is seeing a sharp rise in infections, with San Bernardino County reporting 157 new cases Monday, for a total of 530, a 42% jump.

Part of the reason for the faster pace of coronavirus cases in Southern California could stem from the Bay Area acting earlier to implement a stay-at-home order, said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco.

The Bay Area shocked the nation on March 16 when it was the first region in the nation to announce a shelter-in-place policy ordering residents to stay at home as much as possible.

The measures extended to Southern California on March 19, when Gov. Newsom announced a statewide stay-at-home order on the same night Mayor Eric Garcetti issued his own for the city of Los Angeles.

Case counts can be problematic in tracking the course of this coronavirus outbreak, given the limited availability of testing.

But they can still be helpful because they also translate to how many people are being seen in the hospitals to be treated for the COVID-19 disease, so theyre reasonably accurate, and I dont think theres any big differential between Northern and Southern California in terms of ease of obtaining tests, Rutherford said.

Times staff writers Ryan Murphy, Soumya Karlamangla and Phil Willon contributed to this report.

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California coronavirus peak: What will it be and how bad? - Los Angeles Times

Human Behavior

Whats Real and Whats Simulated in Westworld Season 3? – The Ringer

You know its a good episode of Westworld when neither Paris getting nuked nor a dude getting his dick shot off is the main takeaway. The indelible part of The Mother of Exiles was not the Westworld-Chernobyl crossover, but rather a twist worthy of a season finale: DoFoures. After spending the beginning of the season wondering which hosts Dolores had smuggled out of the park, it was revealed that Dolores has been making copies of herselfDolores is Dolores, Charlotte is Dolores, Martin the Scottish Goatee Guy is Dolores, and Musashi is Dolores. The four Doloresmen of the Apocalypse were in full force on Sunday, and, for once, a Westworld episode gave us a lot of questions and a lot of answers. Lets dive into what exactly happened, and where the show goes from here.

Last week, we went over all of the reasons that Dolores was the only likely candidate to be in Charlotte Hales head. Those reasons boiled down to:

We got more throwbacks in this episode when Charlotte shaved William, which was a direct callback to Dolores shaving William in the finale of Season 1.

And even before this episode, there were clues that Dolores was going to replicate herself. Doloress theme music had also been used for Hale and Connells. And when Tessa Thompsons name appears in the Season 3 title sequence, cells are replicating:

So with Doloress plan revealedand with us half patting ourselves on the pack, half slapping ourselves for not catching some of the more obvious signsthe question now becomes what she and her clones do next. The first key is that there might be one more clone on the way. Dolores left Westworld with five brain balls.

Counting the one in her own head, thats six total. Dolores, Charlotte, Connells, and Musashi make four; Bernard and his red-speckled control unit makes five. That means a sixth is still unaccounted for. Could there be another Dolores clone waiting somewhere? Or could she have brought a different host back? Or does she still have the last onewhether its her or someone elseand is waiting for the right person to implant it in?

Whatever Dolores does with the last brain ball, multiple versions of Dolores creates a thorny problem. Throughout Season 2, we saw Dolores re-enacting an exchange she had with Arnold while training Bernard. The conversation (and the second season) hinged on one crucial idea: What is real.

That which is irreplaceable, Bernarnold tells her.

Well, uh, Dolores seems pretty replaceable now. Perhaps all of these clones suggest she is beyond a single entity, and that all of the Dolores copies would have to die for Dolores to be dead. (Shout-out horcruxes.) But that also raises the question that if all of these copies of her are replaceable, are any of them individually real? And if they are real, does that mean Doloress working definition of reality is wrong?

William is all of us when social distancing stretches into May. Hes shooting at his own reflection, hallucinating his dead daughter (whom he killed), and by the end of the episode, is being committed to a private mental hospital by Charlores.

Is this guy a host or a human or what? By the end of Season 2, William was digging into his arm to figure that outto echo what Angela told him when he first got to Westworld, If you cant tell, does it matter? Once you have to stick a knife in your arm to figure out your life, things have gotten out of hand (or, uh, arm). We already know that Williams father-in-law, James Delos, attempted to have his mind put in a host body 149 times. Wouldnt the next logical candidate be William? And wouldnt Host William be struggling with the process about as much as Host Delos did?

Theres a lot of evidence that William is dead and in a host body. Some of that evidence is not subtle. William literally referred to himself as death in Season 2. In the most recent episode, Charlores sees him and says, Its like seeing a ghost.

We might have a clearer idea of what is happening with William than William does. We learned in Season 1 that Williams wife died by suicide by taking pills in their bathtub. William often flashes back to this moment, but his memories of her death are inconsistent: sometimes the water overflowing from the tub is crystal clear, but sometimes it is so bloody that the water runs dark red. The color differences are stark enough that it would be difficult for them to be coming from the same moment, which opens up the possibility that there were two suicides in that bathtub: that of Williams wife, Juliet, who used pills, and later on, that of William, who slit his wrists in the tub. Its hardly a stretch considering that weve seen William debate killing himself twice now (he put a gun to his head before deciding to cut into his wrists in Season 2, and again this week). He has also been personally overseeing a project to put the consciousnesses of dead people into host bodies. The guy was in the on-deck circle.

Williams memory of this incident might be repressed in his mind. In the opening scene this week, William is trying to shoot reflections of himself when he looks up, and sees blood dripping on him. There is a burst of water through the ceiling, and then he rises and wakes up in a tub of clear water. Later, when Charlores sees William shaving in his living room, she says Something wrong with your bathroom? William responds, I dont use that room.

Why would Williams mind succeed in a host body if James Deloss did not? One answer might be the mere fact that they kept telling James Delos he was a host, when the only real way the mind will accept its host is if the person figures that out for themselves; if they complete the maze.

At the end of the episode, after William is committed to a private mental hospital (the Inner Journey Recovery Center), he hallucinates Dolores. In her original Westworld garb, she compels him to ask the question: Am I me? This might go back all the way to the pilot, when Doloress dad went on the fritz.

A question youre not supposed to ask, Peter Abernathy said then. And an answer youre not supposed to know. Would you like to know the question?

We didnt hear that question until this week. Once William asks that questionAm I me?Dolores tells him, Welcome to the end of the game. But just as Dolores reaching the end of the game was a new beginning for her conscious life, William may also be starting a new inner journey. He began the episode physically free but mentally imprisoned. He ends the episode physically imprisoned but mentally free. After two seasons of William being the Man in Black, his first appearance in Season 3 ends with him decked out in white. Perhaps William will be quite different from the person weve gotten to know the past two seasons.

Westworld was created by the married couple Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. Nolan is the brother of Christopher Nolan, and the Nolans love unreliable narrators. But this season of Westworld is taking that concept to the next level: an unreliable timeline.

Some of the events weve been watching may actually be happening in a simulation. In the first episode, Liam Dempseys friend wondered aloud whether the entire world he was in (and the show we are watching) was a simulation. In the second episode with Maeve, we saw that simulations are a serious possibility in the show. In the third episode, Dolores explained to Caleb that Rehoboam, the all-seeing artificial intelligence, has created a mirror world to simulate reality and predict the future. In this episode, Serac, the trillionaire who helped create Rehoboam, explains that mirror world further when he takes Maeve out to dinner. Serac, so distraught by the nuclear destruction of Paris, created the most comprehensive picture of human behavior ever seen. That picture is Rehoboams mirror world, but the mirror world is not a perfect replica. It still has gaps in human emotions and behavior, and some of those gaps may be noticeable. We may be seeing these as they happen when we see the divergence cutscenes.

In Episode 3, Charlores watches the video of herself singing to her son twice. As noted by the Reddit user LeeRobbie, one version of the video is much longer and more emotional than the other. Here is the entire text of what Charlotte says the second time we hear the video, with the parts that were not in the first version in bold.

This is Charlotte Elizabeth Hale. This is a message for Nathan. Nathan Hale, my son, I havent always been there for you. Theres so many things I need to say. This might be the last time that mommy gets to talk to you. I love you so much, buddy. I am so proud of you, and Im sorry. I am so sorry if I ever made you feel like you werent the most important thing. I was trying to build a life for us. I, uh. And now I realize none of it even matters. The night that I left, you wanted me to tuck you in, to sing you a song, our song, but I didnt have time. So I am going to sing it to you now.

While this may have just been an editing choice for dramatic effect, weve watched enough of this show to know that its choices are deliberate. Therefore, this discrepancy likely suggests that there are two different versions of the same thing: one in the real world, in all its complexity, and one in the mirror world, which has an incomplete view of peoples emotions. When scenes this season have begun with Rehoboam announcing a divergence, its likely been an indication that whats come next is occurring in a simulation.

We may also be seeing Bernard in the mirror world. Another Reddit user pointed out that in Bernards his first scene this season, we saw him find a wounded calf with barbed wire around a broken leg.

But when we see the calf again seconds later, the barbed wire is gone.

Its tempting to wave this off as a production error, but again, weve watched enough of this show. The continuity error in the next scene is even stranger: As Bernard is walking back to his home, he walks by some workers arguing over a board game and shoving each other. By the time he makes it to his house, he turns aroundseemingly confusedand the workers are singing together. In a scene from Sundays episode, Bernard is walking to his motel. One shot shows a hazy sky.

Another shot shows a blue sky.

Seracs goal with Rehoboam is to play out the future in a mirror world and then imprint that future onto the real world, therefore knowing what to expect. As he told Maeve in this episode, I deal in futures. The main issue for Serac is that Rehoboam cannot predict what Dolores doesit only has data on human behaviorwhich makes the simulation less accurate and leads to continuity errors. The breaking point that this season may be hurtling toward is the existence of so many Doloreses rendering Rehoboam completely unable to predict what is happening, causing the simulation to break the same way that Maeve crashed one in this seasons second episode. When that happens, we may look back and realize that half of the season we were watching was a lie.

But even if Rehoboam does get to the point where it can create an accurate mirror world, that would create a larger-scale version of the issue Dolores is facing. (Uncoincidentally, Rehoboam looks like a larger-scale version of a hosts control unit.)

If what is real is that which is irreplaceable, does that mean that anything that can be copiedincluding an entire worldis fake? Like Dolores, humanity may have to come up with a new definition for reality.

Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.

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Whats Real and Whats Simulated in Westworld Season 3? - The Ringer

Human Behavior

Will Schneider: My path to Illinois – University of Illinois News

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Growing up in a family of social scientists in Brooklyn, New York, it may have been inevitable that I would spend my life exploring the mysteries of human behavior and misbehavior. My father is a psychology professor, and my older brother followed my mother into the sociology field, but I decided to buck tradition and get a doctorate in social work.

Ive come to know several undergraduates who went through the foster care system in Illinois and are now studying to become social workers themselves. Having students like these adds so much to the classroom experience, Schneider said.

Photo by Allyson Sanborn

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And luckily it was the right choice. After graduating from the University of Michigan, I worked for a few years at Princeton University and Columbia University on research projects related to parenting and child well-being, where I discovered a passion for child maltreatment prevention.

Child maltreatment is a pervasive problem in the United States. It cuts across racial and ethnic lines, and while the prevalence varies between states, nearly 1 in 100 children are affected this is a staggering number of children.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, I was thrilled to be offered a faculty position in the School of Social Work at Illinois. The school has been one of the pioneers in child welfare research, undertaking work that led to guardianship in foster care, and today provides training for the states child protective service workers.

Ive come to know several undergraduates who went through the foster care system in Illinois and are now studying to become social workers themselves. Having students like these, and others who have experienced hardship, adds so much to the classroom experience.

People generally know that child maltreatment is bad, but few are aware of the lifelong effects it has on children including mental health problems, cognitive difficulties and increased risk of criminal justice involvement.

Child abuse often is defined as an act of commission or an intentional act by a parent or guardian that physically harms a child. Conversely, child neglect is an act of omission or a failure to act that endangers a child or causes imminent harm.

Although the rates of abuse have declined drastically over the past 30 years,rates of neglect have remained high. My research has focused on this puzzle: Why has child abuse declined while child neglect has remained largely unchanged?

Historically, child maltreatment interventions have been based on beliefs that abuse and neglect arise from personal deficits or disorders.

Graphic by Michael B. Vincent

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In 1974, the U.S. Congress passed the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment

Act, or CAPTA. The Act was premised on the idea that child maltreatment stems from parental psychopathology from depression, stress, emotional problems and character defects that could be treated by mental health interventions.

One possibility for why child abuse has declined but child neglect has not is because neglect may be more closely tied to poverty than mental health or parenting decisions.

And this is a problem, because nearly all the funding for maltreatment prevention stems from CAPTA, which for largely political reasons doesnt acknowledge poverty as a potential determinant of neglect.

My colleagues and I have been investigating whether there is a causal connection between poverty and child maltreatment by drawing on a series of natural experiments where there is an outside economic shock to families.

The estimated costs of abuse and neglect are significant and may span victims lifetimes.

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Using survey data of low-income families, we examined how the Great Recession measured by local unemployment rates and consumer confidence influenced the risk for child maltreatment. We found that the recession was associated with dramatic increases in high-frequency spanking, as well as greater risks for abuse and neglect.

Analyzing child welfare data from about 75% of the counties in the U.S., we found that over the last decade increases in the minimum wage have been associated with decreases in the likelihood of physical neglect.

We also looked at what it means to grow up in a county with high or low economic mobility and found what we call the power of hope. That is, growing up in an area of high economic mobility is associated with a decrease in the likelihood of neglect.

But it turns out that its not just being disadvantaged that influences the risk for child maltreatment. Feeling disadvantaged or left behind plays an important role as well.

Child neglect is far more prevalent than child abuse, statistics indicate.

Graphic by Michael B. Vincent

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For white, but largely not black parents, feeling like you are doing worse than others was associated with the approval of spanking. This association was restricted to fathers, but being a labor union member entirely buffered this link.

Our findings point to the need to shift resources so that child welfare services are more closely linked with existing social welfare programs to reduce the flow of families who come in contact with child protective services for needs that are really income-based.

Im optimistic about the ability of social work, research and society to take on this problem. Illinois has historically played a large role in shaping our understanding of child maltreatment, and I believe that we can alter the trajectory of generations of children to come.

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Will Schneider: My path to Illinois - University of Illinois News

Human Behavior

Breaking News – HBO Films’ "Bad Education," Starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney Debuts April 25 – The Futon Critic

HBO Films' "BAD EDUCATION," Starring Hugh Jackman And Allison Janney Debuts April 25

Directed By Cory Finley And Written By Mike Makowsky; Geraldine Viswanathan, Alex Wolff, Rafael Casal, Annaleigh Ashford And Ray Romano Also Star

Inspired by the true story that rocked the town of Roslyn, NY in 2004 that garnered attention nationwide, BAD EDUCATION, debuting SATURDAY, APRIL 25 (8:00-9:30 p.m. ET/PT), centers on the stunning impact and aftermath of a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme. The darkly comical film highlights the deficiencies of the public education system in the U.S. while examining the broader forces that foster greed, corruption, and lack of accountability in our institutions.

Starring Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe and Tony Award winner Hugh Jackman ("The Greatest Showman," "Les Misrables"); and Emmy(R), Academy Award, Golden Globe and SAG Award winner Allison Janney ("I, Tonya," "Mom"); the film is directed by Cory Finley ("Thoroughbreds") and written by Mike Makowsky ("I Think We're Alone Now").

The film will also be available on HBO On Demand, HBO NOW, HBO GO and partners' streaming platforms.

Predominantly shot in and around the Long Island town of Roslyn, fifteen years after the scandal came to light, the film, as realized by director Finley and writer Makowsky, is a carefully orchestrated comedic drama as it focuses on the dichotomy of Frank Tassone (Jackman) - both an ardent and passionate educator dedicated to seeing his students succeed, and an expert manipulator willing to steal from the very same people he was so eager to help. The film deftly uses this small-town story to examine the systemic failures that enabled him. Allison Janney plays Pam Gluckin, Dr. Tassone's major domo and right-hand, the business manager for the Roslyn school district who worked her way up through sheer grit and passion.

Intelligently written and tautly directed, the film shows a community wooed by the charismatic superintendent and enamored by the school's success and the resulting economic impact. It is also a celebration of the Roslyn High community - their ability to expose that dark time in the school's history and their continued tenacity to remain one of the top schools in the country today.

BAD EDUCATION was a personal journey for writer Mike Makowsky, who returned to his hometown to research his screenplay. Accurately and respectfully conveying the essence of the overall story, he uses the historical events for a moral exploration of complicated and fascinating human behavior. Growing up in Roslyn, it was years before Makowsky would fully understand the implications of the case or discover that it was student reporters from his high school newspaper The Beacon who actually broke the story. Ironically, the New York Times didn't report the embezzlement scheme, purportedly the largest in American public school history, until one of their writers saw the copy of The Beacon his son had brought home from school. What started as a small, focused article in a high school newspaper ignited a media frenzy that led to further investigations and a reckoning for those involved.

"Mike's script was unique, with a precise comic tone," says Finley. "The facts of the story are over-the-top in a way that lends itself to black comedy, but there's also a real tragedy to it. I'm always drawn to telling stories that walk those sorts of tight-ropes, and that deal in moral gray areas. I wanted to make a movie about a very specific time, place and culture, but in doing so, pose big questions about American culture - how our economic system shapes us, and what we're willing to accept from those in power when it's in our own interest."

"Cory understood exactly what I was going for in the script," says Makowsky. "He succeeded not only in executing, but amplifying, those ideas in surprising and exciting ways that I could never have anticipated."

BAD EDUCATION, an HBO Films presentation, is directed by Cory Finley; written by Mike Makowsky, based on a New York Magazine article by Robert Kolker; produced by Fred Berger and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones for Automatik; Edward Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, and Oren Moverman for Sight Unseen Pictures; Mike Makowsky for Slater Hall; executive produced by Leonid Lebedev and Caroline Jacko.

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Breaking News - HBO Films' "Bad Education," Starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney Debuts April 25 - The Futon Critic

Human Behavior

The opinion of 14 experts on customer experience in the post-Corona era – Customer Think

The Corona crisis is still raging around the world. More than 1 billion people are presently quarantined, and the economy is having its worst moment in the last few decades. The question is, what will the world look like once this crisis is under control? What will change in the world, and what will remain the same?

Many companies all over the globe are re-thinking their marketing strategies which is really hard, because nobody really knows what this current situation is going to do to human behavior. This is the largest real-life experiment we have ever seen. Last week, I formulated my own views on customer experience after Corona in this article, this week I want to share the opinions of others.

I asked a very broad and open question to a group of 14 experts: what will customer experience look like in the post-Corona era? This is what they had to say.

Brian Solis

Brian is an Enterprise Industry analyst, a global keynote speaker and 8-time best-selling author. The title of his most recent book is Lifescale.

What will customer experience look like in a post-Corona world? To answer that question requires first answering another one: what will the customer look like by then? I call these times the #NovelEconomy, because it literally means new.

One thing Im sure of: were not going back to business as usual. We need new perspective to see problems and opportunities in a new light. Whats happening now is a tremendous exposure to weaknesses in digital transformation and innovation initiatives. Beyond infrastructure modernization, organizations need to invest in systems and operations that learn from shifts in behavior, preferences and aspirations.

We need to get back to basics. We need to really put people at the center of our business.

Thankfully, intelligent technologies will allow us to expedite the process. Through what I call data-driven empathy well have the ability to learn from customer shifts and also understand and even predict new trajectories. Doing so will help organizations understand what to prioritize and how best to organize around it. This moment is critical for taking action.

Some will batten down the hatches and wait it out. But they will be behind the curve as markets evolve and expand.

We will start to emerge on the other side of this sooner rather than later. This is the time to prioritize not just customer experience, but also the customers experience. When we explore customer trajectory from their point of view, we can make empathetic investments and changes that are informed, relevant and ready to scale in the #NovelEconomy.

Tom De Ruyck

Tom is Managing Partner at the global digital research company InSites Consulting.

We are in the midst of a health and economic crisis, and its still unclear how this global event will influence consumer expectations in the long run. However, the weak signals from tomorrow that we are already picking up today can help us formulate certain foresights that might give us an idea of what potential futures await us. I observe 5 aspects that consumers are focusing more on in Corona (and maybe also post-Corona) Times:

Companies that are able to help consumers to realize their new needs and dreams in these 5 fields might be the love brands of the future. At InSites Consulting, we just started a Global Corona Consumer Community to verify these hypotheses and to develop some strong insights into what the day after this COVID-19 crisis might look like.

Nienke Bloem

Nienke is a Customer Experience Management expert and an international keynote speaker.

For me, the question of Coronas impact on customer experience has two lenses. First, the outside-in perspective, that of customer perception. Because of current emotional stress, customers will remember more clearly how they were and are treated. Elements like compassion, purpose, consistency and ease will be more important in choosing where to do business at a later date. Customers will prefer to buy local, stick with brands they love and trust, and value the human touch.

The second lens, looking from an inside-out perspective: companies that win the battle in customer experience will be those that deliver on their customer promises. That being said, winners need to define the desired customer experience. The role of the customer experience professional is to stand up as a true leader and guide the organization towards consistent delivery on these promises, in both online and offline channels. A trend that I foresee is a shift in voice of the customer programs. Winners in customer experience will adapt to elementary human standards. Where companies dont just send out surveys any longer, but really listen, are curious about the customer experience and proactive in responding and acting on customer feedback. In the post-Corona era, the difference between business winners and losers will be even more visible. So, if I may offer a piece of advice: step up your customer experience management and take charge of how you want your customers to be treated.

Pieter Janssens

Pieter is founder and CEO of digital agency Intracto.

When we deal with crises like these, you have this unique momentum, this struggle for life, when things can move very quickly. You get to see clearly which companies already considered their digital channels as primary. The crisis has limited consumers in physical mobility, and so for them to be able to fall back on digital channels was a must. As a company, its one thing to have the channels in place, its another to scale them fast enough to keep up with customer demand. And so a lot of companies were forced into rapid digital adoption and maturity. Its kind of like companies enabling remote work: there were those who had already facilitated remote work, and they were able to seamlessly continue their activities, and then there were those who were forced into enabling remote work just to be able to survive. One of the positive points that we can take away from this crisis is that customers really appreciate when a company has absolutely flawless digital channels and processes in place. The same goes for employees.

Rudy Moenaert

Rudy is Professor of Strategic Marketing at the Tias Business School

Will consumer expectations and behaviors change profoundly once the Corona crisis is over? From a behavioral perspective, we are experiencing a temporary crisis as well as a global experiment. I see a number of potential changes:

(1)Online Rules. E-commerce did not need a boost, but Corona has further fostered online shopping as a global and convenient shopping corridor. In this social distancing era, many view it as a life-saving service. Important: not only are more people ordering online, more categories are being explored online as well. Who would have thought of ordering toilet paper online? Goodies you can no longer find in your local supermarket, you will find online. Online not only builds traffic, it gains reputation as a reliable channel.

(2)Build an Entrance. Managers are scrutinizing cash flows diligently they have to, since sales are suffering greatly. Even Messi took a significant pay cut to help FC Barcelona through these tough times. Survival in the modern arena entails more than monitoring cash flows, however. Local industries are rightfully urging local consumers to buy online locally. The online behemoths have indeed turned local shopping into an oxymoron. The good news local consumers definitely want to shop locally. The bad news? They get stuck when answering the first question: Where? The entrance to the virtual shopping malls of Amazon, Coolblue, Zalando, Bol and the like are known to everybody. Local businesses suddenly realize that the old adage of marketing is hitting them right in the face: customers do notbuy what they cannot find.

(3)Generation Zoom. As far as consumption goes, we love routines. The Corona crisis compels us to experiment with new ways of doing things, and is forcing us to adopt new communication technologies. We have now all become Generation Z(oom), video chatting with friends and relatives. Many people now experience what academics and independent professionals have enjoyed during much of their lifetime a home office. This increases discretionary behavior, and will undoubtedly further foster online ordering. Smart local business people will find clever ways of linking the local shop floor with customers nearby. Might this offer an opportunity to build a new layer of customer intimacy, one that the e-commerce behemoths cannot mimic?

(4)M2M Marketing. If you survive Corona, put a badge on yourself! You have now, just like your grandparents, witnessed a war up close and personal. One difference, however: in this war, were desperately waiting for a serious shot a shot of good medicine, that is. The war context has transformed consumption patterns overnight. It is devastating to see how swiftly a hedonistic society takes the emergency exit to the lower levels of the Maslow pyramid. I wonder what those families will be doing with 124 rolls of toilet paper and 72 packages of macaroni. As Steven Van Belleghem rightly argues, machine-to-machine marketing holds great potential for removing friction. I would add that in a robust supply chain, it may help to abolish unneeded panic buying as well. Bring it on!

(5)Engage through Purpose. Never more than during a crisis do companies have the opportunity to polish their mandate for society. Some familiar names are doing very well at this LVMH, Coca-Cola, AB Inbev, Unilever, etc. go out of their way in producing goods, enabling the supply chain, and communicating the essentials. Their sales may take a hit, but they create shared value and will build a lasting reputation.

(6)Experts, not Opinions. My last concern is more of a hope than a prediction. Experts have become fashionable again. At long last, I might add. Maybe the rigor that the academics have shown in analysis, diagnosis and advice throughout this ominous health crisis will re-establish the quest for valid information. Related to (5),the prestigious New York Times as well as the Sloan Management Review have made sections of their websites that are relevant to the crisis available for free.Who needs influencers if you can have scientists and great reporting?

Tom De Bruyne

Tom is the founder of SUE Behavioral Design & Behavioral Design Academy.

The most important thing that will matter from a customer experience point of view is a capacity to think outside-in:great brands will put the human behind the customer first. Great brands will find a genuine connection with the pains and anxieties of people (e.g. their uncertainty, stress, frustrations, struggles), they will help them to achieve their jobs-to-be-done (take care of their family, achieve economic security, be creative and productive, experience joy and excitement, etc.), they will help them to build new positive habits or help them to break with the bad habits of the pre-Corona era (e.g. help them to blend their private life and professional life in a more balanced way).

Rik Vera

Rik is co-founder and partner of Nexxworks and an international keynote speaker.

All of a sudden, the future starts the day after COVID-19 and not beyond 2030.

People and society are going through a massive change in just a few weeks, and life will never return to good old normal. People have been on their own and the digital toolkit made them more connected than ever before. At the same time, we have become acutely aware that we cannot live without the real stuff.

Companies that not only connect to many customers using the digital toolkit, but know how to engage each of them on both an individual and a collective level, will not only survive and strive, but will win big time. People will be strongly connected and will be aware of the real values of life and work and business. They will be more tribal than ever and the tribes will make or break your brand. They will love to serve as your sales and marketing and even infrastructure, or they will ignore you and let you die.

Your customers are in lockdown. The world is at a standstill. This is the moment to really engage. Customers are receptive. However, they will not remember what you say, claim or do, but how you make them feel right now.

How does one engage customers? By showing that you have a H.E.A.R.T.:

Be Honest

Be Ethical

Be Authentic

Be Responsible

Be Transparent

Use the next couple of weeks to think about how to connect to and engage with individuals, and how to really show that you are a company with a HEART. Make sure they can feel it.

Marion Debruyne

Marion is Dean of the Vlerick Business School and Professor in Marketing and Innovation.

Youve probably seen the jokes on your LinkedIn or twitter feed: the videocall bingo joking with all of the mishaps from background noises to people talking on mute. But honestly, they dont reflect my reality. In the last week, we ran 472 Zoom meetings at Vlerick Business School, with 12,000 people logging in altogether. We held a staff meeting, ran an executive program on M&A strategy, and our Masters students participated in an online business game. And frankly, it all worked just fine. It makes me question my usual habits. I used to not think twice about travelling across the globe for a 1-day meeting. And I spent an enormous number of hours of my life in traffic. Bad for the planet, bad for my own efficiency. So why do we keep on doing it? The truth is, consumers very often operate out of habit. Even if an alternative is clearly superior, we stick to old routines and mental models. It takes a shock to the system to reconsider our old habits. So when all this is over, will we crave human connection? Will we want to be together physically? Sure. But I believe we will be more discerning about how we spend our time and money, and raise the bar for real personal and customized experience. Because while Ive been stuck at home, I also messaged my favorite lunch spot for a customized order for pick-up. Ive called a local shop to get advice for my online order, and had a lovely chat with the owner whose daily updates I follow on Instagram. Consumer experience that is human makes the difference. If it is personal, customized, convenient and omni-channel, it will survive.

Marco Derksen

Marco is the founder of Marketingfacts.nl and a lecturer at the AOG School of Management.

I have been helping organizations with their transformation to the digital network society for more than 25 years, but I have never experienced what Ive seen in the past few weeks. In just one week almost 90 percent of primary schools went online, complete e-learning modules on COVID-19 were developed for nurses in no time, and even executives went online to collaborate. It remains to be seen how much of this behavioral change will persist after the crisis, but it will certainly have an effect on how people communicate and cooperate with one another in the future. Obviously, the crisis will have a huge impact on how customers interact with organizations and what they expect from organizations. At an unprecedented pace, both customers and service employees of organizations are now getting used to online customer contact. In addition, it is clear which parts of organizations are too rigid and need to be adjusted in the future. After all, we will increasingly have to deal with what Nassim Taleb calls black swans. Rare events in a hyper-connected world that have a huge impact on society and how organizations should respond to them. What does this complexity and uncertainty require of organizations and what does it ask of leadership? No one has the concrete answer, but one thing is for sure: organizations will have to become much more agile, and tomorrows leaders will have to prepare for the new storms to come. As an organization, you will need to be clear about what you stand for and what direction you are heading in. Its time to show your true colors and develop an organizational compass for everyone involved or youll be out of business in this fast-changing world!

Seth Godin

Seth is the successful author of several seminal management classics and is one of the top keynote speakers in the world today.

A few weeks ago Magali De Reu interviewed Seth Godin on this topic. Click here for the entire interview. In my opinion this is a must-see video. A lot of what Seth said in the interview is relevant for this article. I chose the following excerpt.

When society is hit by a crisis you can do one of three things: react, answer or initiate. To react literally means a negative reaction to external input, such as news or medication, for instance. To answer implies responding to an external signal e.g. a promotion in your inbox. Finally, to initiate means putting things in motion,

which is what all of us should do. Not just when the world is turned upside down but as a rule. At the end of the day, did you only answer your emails and read every single post on Facebook? Or did you create significant added value for your fellow man? The American economist Milton Friedman has been dead for a while now but he was convinced money played a central role.But you know what? Hes as wrong now as he was then: making a difference is much more valuable.

Paul Van Cothem

Paul is founder of TurnLeaf Marketing Consulting. He advises companies, drawing on his experience as a senior marketing leader at Xerox, Apple and Telenet.

At this time, it is important to focus on communication that everyone (customers, employees, etc.) with questions can find support and clear answers in. Boost your business campaigns should be postponed for later. I suggest pushing the pause button on those. Right now the focus should be on human and ethical values, not commercial objectives.

There is hope for positive change after the crisis. Im optimistic as well. Lets hope that society and the corporate world take a step back. There is a chance that we will see a decrease in excessive consumerism and an increase in attention to well-being. This is an evolution in which the marketing world should play a positive role.

Peter Hinssen

Peter is co-founder and partner of Nexxworks. He is a lecturer at the London Business School and MIT. Peter is also a successful global keynote speaker and author of many bestsellers.

In my opinion, the entire COVID-19 phenomenon offers companies a gigantic digital stress test. Just as we had the stress tests of the banking industry after the financial crisis of 2008, were now seeing the equivalent where companies are experiencing what it means to operate and work in a fully digital new-normal world. I had a conversation last week with one of the worlds largest telecom operators, where more than 25,000 people in their shared service department many of them in countries like Egypt and India, which are going into full lockdown have to organize themselves in order for this company to remain fully operational while almost every employee works from home. The same thing on the customer side: every day we are experiencing as customers ourselves which companies and brands we can still work with, in a fully digital world. The digital stress tests are revealing which companies were ready and which ones failed to fully prepare themselves to stay functional and operational when digital is the only option.

Leslie Cottenje

Leslie is the founder and CEO of Hello Customer.

Many companies are now being forced to switch to e-commerce, work remotely and find new ways of servicing their customers. This demands a huge effort from businesses that have to approach their customers in an entirely new way. Also, they have to do post-haste: its a race against the clock to stay relevant during and after this life-changing period. What do customers expect from our company, how can we create added value right now and ensure that we can give them what they need? How can we be of service and help them? And above all: how do you do this in a humane manner and let your customers know they can count on your company?

More than ever they must keep up to date on whats going on with their customers in order to succeed. They must stay in contact with them, maintain a connection. More than ever companies will need to develop a culture of experiments and innovation. More than ever they will have to rely on the creativity of their employees and put communication at the top of their agenda. Empathy will be central. Empathizing with colleagues but also with customers. More than ever, we will have to listen to them. After all, enthusing and motivating employees is directly related to the delivered products and services.

Listening to customers and employees on an ongoing basis will give companies the opportunity to validate experiments and gather input on how to adapt to this new world. Incorporating such a real-time feedback loop will also boost the confidence to organize experiments. Initiatives that are not well received can be dropped immediately and at minimal cost. Popular initiatives can be developed while feeling confident that they are the right investments to be successful in the aftermath of the Corona crisis.

DAN GINGISS

Dan is an expert in customer experience as well as a keynote speaker and a marketing & customer experience consultant.

Theres never been a more important time to be focusing on customer experience. With many companies shut down and consumers stuck in their homes, people are looking for confidence and support. They are not always getting it from the government, and they are not always getting it from the media. This presents a unique opportunity for businesses to demonstrate to their customers that they are calm, confident and coordinated in the face of a pandemic. What companies do now will have a great effect on the perception of their brand after the COVID-19 situation passes. People will remember the companies that went out of their way to provide help and resources, versus the ones that simply pointed us to the same websites.

Its also the perfect time to take a step back and evaluate your entire Customer Journey from start to finish. Identify customer pain points as well as opportunities to take the experience from ordinary to extraordinary. Take care of those website and mobile app fixes that youve been meaning to do but that have not been prioritized. Gear up for a future where customer experience will be even more important than it has been. When this is over, customers will still want to do business with companies that care about them and make an effort to provide remarkable experiences. The situation we all find ourselves in today will only make that future experience more important.

See the article here:
The opinion of 14 experts on customer experience in the post-Corona era - Customer Think

Human Behavior

Social distancing works just ask lobsters, ants and vampire bats – The South African

Dana Hawley, Virginia Tech and Julia Buck, University of North Carolina Wilmington

Animals as diverse as monkeys, lobsters, insects and birds can detect and avoid sick members of their species. Why have so many types of animals evolved such sophisticated behaviours in response to disease? Because social distancing helps them survive.

In evolutionary terms, animals that effectively socially distance during an outbreak improve their chances of staying healthy and going on to produce more offspring, which also will socially distance when confronted with disease.

We study the diverse ways in which animals use behaviours to avoid infection, and why behaviours matter for disease spread. While animals have evolved a variety of behaviours that limit infection, the ubiquity of social distancing in group-living animals tells us that this strategy has been favoured again and again in animals faced with high risk of contagious disease.

What can we learn about social distancing from other animals, and how are their actions like and unlike what humans are doing now?

Social insects are some of the most extreme practitioners of social distancing in nature. Many types of ants live in tight quarters with hundreds or even thousands of close relatives. Much like our day care centers, college dormitories and nursing homes, these colonies can create optimal conditions for spreading contagious diseases.

In response to this risk, ants have evolved the ability to socially distance. When a contagious disease sweeps through their society, both sick and healthy ants rapidly change their behaviour in ways that slow disease transmission. Sick ants self-isolate, and healthy ants reduce their interaction with other ants when disease is present in the colony.

Healthy ants even close rank around the most vulnerable colony members the queens and nurses by keeping them isolated from the foragers that are most likely to introduce germs from outside. Overall, these measures are highly effective at limiting disease spread and keeping colony members alive.

Many other types of animals also choose exactly who to socially distance from, and conversely, when to put themselves at risk. For example, mandrills a type of monkey continue to care for sick family members even as they actively avoid sick individuals to whom they are not related. In an evolutionary sense, caring for a sick family member may allow an animal to pass on its genes through that family members offspring.

Further, some animals maintain essential social interactions in the face of sickness while foregoing less critical ones. For example, vampire bats continue to provide food for their sick groupmates, but avoid grooming them. This minimizes contagion risk while still preserving forms of social support that are most essential to keeping sick family members alive, such as food sharing.

These nuanced forms of social distancing minimise costs of disease while maintaining the benefits of social living. It should come as no surprise that evolution favours them in many types of animals.

Human behavior in the presence of disease also bears the signature of evolution. This indicates that our hominid ancestors faced many of the same pressures from contagious disease that we are facing today.

Like social ants, we are protecting the most vulnerable members of our society from COVID-19 infection by ensuring that older individuals and those with pre-existing conditions stay away from potentially contagious people. Like monkeys and bats, we also practise nuanced social distancing, reducing non-essential social contacts while still providing essential care for sick family members.

There also are important differences. For example, in addition to caring for sick family members, humans sometimes increase their own risk by caring for unrelated individuals, such as friends and neighbours. And health care workers go further, actively seeking out and helping precisely those who many of us carefully avoid.

Altruism isnt the only behavior that distinguishes human response to disease outbreaks. Other animals must rely on subtle cues to detect illness among group members, but we have cutting-edge technologies that make it possible to detect pathogens rapidly and then isolate and treat sick individuals. And humans can communicate health threats globally in an instant, which allows us to proactively institute behaviors that mitigate disease. Thats a huge evolutionary advantage.

Finally, thanks to virtual platforms, humans can maintain social connections without direct physical contact. This means that unlike other animals, we can practise physical rather than social distancing, which lets us preserve some of the important benefits of group living while minimising disease risk.

The evidence from nature is clear: Social distancing is an effective tool for reducing disease spread. It is also a tool that can be implemented more rapidly and more universally than almost any other. Unlike vaccination and medication, behavioural changes dont require development or testing.

However, social distancing can also incur significant and sometimes unsustainable costs. Some highly social animals, like banded mongooses, do not avoid group members even when they are visibly sick; the evolutionary costs of social distancing from their relatives may simply be too high. As we are currently experiencing, social distancing also imposes severe costs of many kinds in human societies, and these costs are often borne disproportionately by the most vulnerable people.

Given that social distancing can be costly, why do so many animals do it? In short, because behaviours that protect us from disease ultimately allow us to enjoy social living a lifestyle that offers myriad benefits, but also carries risks. By implementing social distancing when its necessary, humans and other animals can continue to reap the diverse benefits of social living in the long term, while minimising the costs of potentially deadly diseases when they arise.

Social distancing can be profoundly disruptive to our society, but it can also stop a disease outbreak in its tracks. Just ask ants.

[You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversations newsletter.]

Dana Hawley, Professor of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech and Julia Buck, Assistant Professor of Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Go here to see the original:
Social distancing works just ask lobsters, ants and vampire bats - The South African

Human Behavior

How to embrace the spirit of altruism – The Japan Times

Kagoshima Second in a series

The result of life or work is determined by ones attitude multiplied by effort and ability. Thats the equation presented by Kazuo Inamori, chairman emeritus of Kyocera Corp.

Ones ability is largely congenital. You can boost your effort at your own will, but the output also varies for each individual. The score of both the ability and effort can range from zero to 100. The most important factor is ones way of thinking, or attitude in life. It is your attitude that will be scrutinized as to whether it is right as a human being.

Ones way of thinking can range more widely from good to bad, or a score of 100 to minus 100. If your attitude is bad, the outcome of your life or work will be even worse the greater your ability or effort is, thus leading to a miserable result. Your life will change depending on whether or you have an excellent way of thinking (which Inamori calls philosophy).

In February 2010, Inamori became chairman of Japan Airlines without remuneration to take charge of resuscitating the failed airline. A then-executive of JAL says he remembers feeling as if had been hit on the head when he heard Inamori speak, during a training session, that ones way of thinking is the most important factor in the equation. The executive says he also realized that its one thing to understand a theory and quite another to put it into practice.

Inamori attributes the success of Kyocera to its philosophy. The way of thinking, he says, is nothing complicated but something simple and primitive what is right as a human being. At the same time, he cautions against mistaking what is right for yourself for what is right as human behavior.

The capacity of ones mind is fixed and the question is whether selfish or altruistic way of thinking occupies the major part of it. Inamori thinks that people should put altruism (which he calls the spirit of rita) the opposite of selfishness at the center of their way of thining. In order for the people to eliminate an evil thought that their own gain comes first and foremost, he calls on them to keep in mind and practice Buddhas teaching that one needs to be satisfied with what is given to one.

Inamori graduated from Kagoshima Universitys faculty of engineering in 1955. His statue now stands on a plaza of the campus. An inscription on it reads: No matter how difficult the adversity, no matter how severe the environment, if you never give up, always remain hopeful and positive, and continuously accumulate steady efforts every day, your dreams will surely come true.

Inamori says that one needs to cultivate the garden of ones own heart to restrain selfishness and give full play to an altruistic, beautiful mind. In addition to having a pure and beautiful thought, he says, one has to have an intense desire and to elevate the thought to faith it needs to be so intense that one keeps thinking of it night and day. Inamori calls on people to maintain an ardent desire that penetrate into your subconscious mind.

Ones power will be maximized by basing his or her thoughts on something more beautiful and pure that is, an altruistic mind, Inamori says, adding that when your thought is underpinned by an altruistic mind, realizing the thought helps polish the rita mind.

In just four years after graduating from the university, Inamori established Kyoto Ceramic Co., or what is todays Kyocera. As its credo the company upholds Respect the divine and love people words by Saigo Takamori, a great figure from Inamoris native Kagoshima. The Kyoto Prize, an international award created by Inamori, is based on his view of life that a human being has no higher calling than to strive for the greater good of humanity and the world. In launching the telecom carrier Daini-Denden Corp., currently KDDI Corp., Inamori is said to have gone through the process of another self rigorously confronting himself every night for half a year with a question, Is my motive (in starting the company) virtuous or selfish?

We find ourselves exposed to Inamoris philosophy and the altruistic mind at its core in various occasions in life or in professional career. It is so universal and immutable that you can use it as a mirror to reflect your own growth. It serves as a guidepost that teaches you how you should live and work. At the same time, it also acts as a strict teacher who helps you train and discipline yourself.

Inamoris thought covers a wide area ranging from how society should be to what path humankind should follow, and is widely accepted as a universal thought overcoming differences in language or culture across the globalized world. That is why it has become a subject of academic research in such fields as management philosophy, corporate ethics, organization theory, business history and science of accounting.

In 2008, Kagoshima University started lectures and programs for undergraduate students and people in business to study and learn from Inamori. The project is halfway through, but time is approaching for all the students who enrolled in our university to have an opportunity to study Inamoris thought.

Akira Takekuma is director of the Inamori Academy of Kagoshima University.

Link:
How to embrace the spirit of altruism - The Japan Times

Genetics

The PBS documentary The Gene showcases genetics promise and pitfalls – Science News

The genetic code to alllife on Earth, both simple and complex, comes down to four basic letters: A, C,T and G.

Untangling the role thatthese letters play in lifes blueprint has allowed scientists to understandwhat makes everything from bacteria to people the way they are. But as researchershave learned more, they have also sought ways to tinker with this blueprint,bringing ethical dilemmas into the spotlight. The Gene, a two-part PBS documentary from executive producer Ken Burnsairing April 7 and 14, explores the benefits and risks that come withdeciphering lifes code.

The film begins with oneof those ethical challenges. The opening moments describe how biophysicist HeJiankui used the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 to alter the embryos of twin girls who were born in China in 2018 (SN: 12/17/18). Worldwide, criticscondemned the move, claiming it was irresponsible to change the girls DNA, asexperts dont yet fully understand the consequences.

This moment heraldedthe arrival of a new era, narrator David Costabile says. An era in whichhumans are no longer at the mercy of their genes, but can control and evenchange them.

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The story sets the stagefor a prominent theme throughout the documentary: While genetics holdsincredible potential to improve the lives of people with genetic diseases,there are always those who will push science to its ethical limits. But thedriving force in the film is the inquisitive nature of the scientistsdetermined to uncover what makes us human.

The Gene, based on the book of the same name by Siddhartha Mukherjee (SN:12/18/16), one of the documentarys executive producers, highlights many ofthe most famous discoveries in genetics. The film chronicles Gregor Mendels classicpea experiments describing inheritance and how experts ultimately revealed inthe 1940s that DNA a so-called stupid molecule composed of just four chemicalbases, adenine (A), thymine (T),cytosine (C) and guanine (G) is responsible for storing geneticinformation. Historical footage, inBurns typical style, brings to life stories describing the discovery of DNAshelical structure in the 1950s and the success of the Human Genome Project indecoding the human genetic blueprint in 2003.

The film also touches ona few of the ethical violations that came from these discoveries. The eugenicsmovement in both Nazi Germany and the United States in the early 20th century aswell as the story of the first person to die in a clinical trial for genetherapy, in 1999, cast a morbid shadow on the narrative.

Interwoven into thistimeline are personal stories from people who suffer from genetic diseases.These vignettes help viewers grasp the hope new advances can give patients asexperts continue to wrangle with DNA in efforts to make those cures.

In the documentarysfirst installment, which focuses on the early days of genetics, viewers meet a family whose daughter is grappling with arare genetic mutation that causes her nerve cells to die. The family searchesfor a cure alongside geneticist Wendy Chung of Columbia University. The secondpart follows efforts to master the human genome and focuses on AudreyWinkelsas, a molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health studyingspinal muscular atrophy, a disease she herself has, and a family fighting tosave their son from a severe form of the condition.

For science-interested viewers, the documentary does not disappoint. The Gene covers what seems to be every angle of genetics history from the ancient belief that sperm absorbed mystical vapors to pass traits down to offspring to the discovery of DNAs structure to modern gene editing. But the stories of the scientists and patients invested in overcoming diseases like Huntingtons and cancer make the film all the more captivating.

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The PBS documentary The Gene showcases genetics promise and pitfalls - Science News