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Human Behavior

Updated: Content moderation is hard, but there’s a new approach and it’s fueled by Spectrum Labs – Benzinga

San Francisco, CA, Jan. 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yes, the internet has become the most transformative invention of the modern age it has forever changed technology, communication, gaming, marketing, banking, dating and more. But along with that change comes a dark side: The internet has also become a cesspool of toxic human behavior, poisoning the experience both for users and for the content moderators charged with safeguarding online platforms.

But, real talk: Faced with harassment or a disgusting experience online, many of us never report it. Instead, up to 30% of users decide to close their account or stop using certain social networks altogether. They just leave. All that focus on growth? Wasted.

Which begs a couple of questions: With all the transformation and dizzying innovations brought by technology, why do we still see daily headlines of online harassment, radicalization, human trafficking, child sex abuse, and more? And can online platforms manage growth while still keeping their communities safe?

Many companies think of "Trust and Safety" as just a compliance play a box to check, rather than seeing the connection to their platform's health and growth.

But Spectrum Labs, a San Francisco-based Contextual AI platform, thinks that's a mistake. Growth is directly tied to user experience.

Platforms like Facebook have faced backlash for outsourcing their content moderation services traumatizing lower-paid contractors with images and videos of shootings, violence and hate and only removing a fraction of toxic content on their platform.

Content moderation tools, while seeing some improvement over the last decade, are still flawed and need to be drastically improved. That's where Spectrum Labs comes in.

Spectrum Labs has developed an astonishingly accurate Contextual AI system that identifies toxic behaviors like hate speech, radicalization, threats, and other ugly behaviors which drive users away from online communities. They've also made it dead-simple, so that even people who don't understand code or datasets can know what's happening on their platforms any time. Spectrum Labs' approach is gaining traction with giant names in social networks, dating, marketplaces and gaming communities.

Legacy content moderation technologies typically use some form of keyword and simple message recognition (classification), which works best for interactions that occur at a single point in time. But most toxic behavior builds gradually; and Spectrum Labs' superpower is spotting those larger patterns of toxic behavior in context. Some customers have already seen a reduction of 75% or more in violent speech, heading them off before they ever reach users, while flagging the trickier, ambiguous cases to human moderators on the Trust and Safety team.

"Our customers put the safety of their community first and are seeing better retention rates and satisfaction. Our technology gives them the visibility and power to easily know what's happening on their platforms, any time, and in real time."

"In 16 years of working in tech, this is the first company I've been with where we are actually saving and improving lives users, players, kids, and moderators. We never forget that online experiences can have offline impact, so we're excited to continue helping companies make the Internet safer and healthier for their users," Davis added.

Spectrum Labs has built a library of large labeled datasets for over 40 unique models of toxic behavior, such as self-harm, child abuse/sexual grooming, terrorism, human trafficking, cyberbullying, radicalization and more, across multiple languages. Spectrum Labs centralizes its library of models across languages and then democratizes access so that each client can tune the service to their own specific platform and policies. No one-size-fits-all because a) it doesn't exist and b) it doesn't work (see: headlines every day of one-size-fits-all keyword recognition failing, with disastrous consequences).

This collaborative approach solves the "cold start" problem of launching new models without training data, and brings together a fractured and siloed data landscape, giving online platforms the ability to automate their moderation needs, at scale, while allowing for human judgment to be the final arbiter of what to allow on their platform.

Additionally, the ethical use of AI, in combination with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, and transparent data sets are just a few of the critical elements needed in order to operationalize automated AI systems that can recognize and respond to toxic human behaviors and content on social platforms at scale without causing harm to employees, contractors and users.

Tiffany Xingyu Wang, Chief Strategy Officer of Spectrum Labs said, "Whether it's the content children are watching, the dating apps adults are on, the gaming done by both children and adults, enjoying the experience safely is the priority." Wang added, "Internet safety is no longer just a nice-to-have. We're getting closer to a world where investments in trust and safety are differentiators that drive topline revenue."

Contact:

Tiffany Wang tiffany@getspectrum.io

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Updated: Content moderation is hard, but there's a new approach and it's fueled by Spectrum Labs - Benzinga

Human Behavior

This Is What You Need To Focus On To Reshape The Future Of Work, Says LinkedIn Report – Forbes

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Last week,LinkedInreleased its annual Global Talent Trends report for 2020, which explores the big trends fueling the future of the workplace. Underlying all four trends is a key theme that will change the way you hire and retain talent:empathy.

The report, which combines survey results from more than 7,000 talent professionals in 35 countries, LinkedIn behavioral data, and 40 interviews with experts, states that putting human experience at the center of HR and hiring is crucial and includes actionable advice for leaders to turn insights into action.

According to the report, the 2020s will be all about putting people first:

Companies will work to understand their talent more deeply than ever before in order to better serve them. Many are well on their way. In late 2019, nearly 200 CEOs signed on to a Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. Instead of putting shareholder value over all, they say, a companys purpose now includes investing in employees. Companies are becoming more empathetic not only to attract candidates but to retain their workforce amid increasing expectations of what employers owe to their people.

Of course, the idea of putting people first isnt new. VaynerX Chairman Gary Vaynerchuk attributes his success to his empathetic approach, even naming his head of people Chief Heart Officer. Simon Sinek believes its the most important instrument in a leaders toolbox. And Oprah Winfrey cites it as fundamental to leadership.

Yet for years, the soft skill of empathy was viewed as too squishy for business or confused with sympathy, which is feelingcompassionfor somebody. Empathy is about putting yourself in someone elses shoes and seeing things from their perspective.

In this case, your talents.

Heres a peek at how empathy factors into the years top four trends:

Companies will work for their employees (instead of just the other way around) and find new ways to cater to them. The report cites a whopping 96% of talent professionals say employee experience is becoming more important, with 77% of companies focusing on employee experience to increase retention.

This means that HR teams are going all-in on employee experience to attract and retain talent, mapping and making manageable an employees whole journey, regularly collecting feedback, and actively collaborating with employees to create an experience that works for all.

Or, as summed up by Mark Levy,former Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb and Allbirds: Employee experience is about doing things with and for your employees, not to them.

The LinkedIn report cites a 242% increase in HR professionals with data analysis skills over the last five years. And no wonder: with the proliferation and ease of accessing people analytics, companies will focus on better understanding and capitalizing on human behavior, a must-have skill in HR.

Indeed, the more a company knows about its people, the more strategic it can be in its workforce planning, predicting attrition, and evaluating employee performance. Providing insights to support better decision-making is the key purpose of people analytics, says David Green, global people analytics expert. By bringing data to the conversation, you can be more confident about your recommendations.

Talent professionals are rediscovering a key talent pool: their own people.

According to LinkedIn data, role changes within organizations (via promotion, transfer, or lateral move) have increased steadily by 10% over the last five years, and workplace learning is helping to build skills internally, so theres less need to import them from elsewhere.

Internal recruiting can be more cost-effective for organizations and one key to retaining talent. The report states a 41% longer employee tenure at companies with high internal hiring compared to those with low internal hiring.

For all the focus on mapping the external talent marketplace, the irony is that theres not enough focus placed on the talent underneath ones own roof, says Chuck Edward, Head of Recruiting at Microsoft.

The workforce is expanding like never before, heralding a new frontier for age diversity. The report states that 89% of talent professionals say a multigenerational workforce makes a company more successful, and inclusive companies stand to benefit by embracing everyones strengths, proving that good work is ageless.

To attract and retain Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, Millennials, and now Gen-Z workers, some companies are getting creative, carving out new career paths, flexible benefits, and ways to share intelligence. The key, cites the report, is for companies to eliminate generational bickering among age-diverse teams and to create conditions that encourage collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Perhaps generational expert and author Jason Dorsey sums it up best: Organizations that take the time to break through stereotypes and myths can create tremendous trust, teamwork, communication, and openness that unlock the potential of every generation.

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This Is What You Need To Focus On To Reshape The Future Of Work, Says LinkedIn Report - Forbes

Human Behavior

Day Zero Ethics for Military AI – War on the Rocks

Editors Note: This article was submitted in response to thecall for ideasissued by the co-chairs of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Eric Schmidt and Robert Work. It addresses the third question (parts b. and d.) which asks authors to consider the ethical dimensions of AI.

Examining the legal, moral, and ethical implications of military artificial intelligence (AI) poses a chicken-and-egg problem: Experts and analysts have a general sense of the risks involved, but the broad and constantly evolving nature of the technology provides insufficient technical details to mitigate them all in advance. Employing AI in the battlespace could create numerous ethical dilemmas that we must begin to guard against today, but in many cases the technology has not advanced sufficiently to present concrete, solvable problems.

To this end, 2019 was a bumper year for general military AI ethics. The Defense Innovation Board released its ethical military AI principles; the National Security Commission on AI weighed in with its interim report; the European Commission developed guidelines for trustworthy AI; and the French Armed Forces produced a white paper grappling with a national ethical approach. General principles like these usefully frame the problem, but it is technically difficult to operationalize reliability or equitability, and assessing specific systems can present ambiguity especially near the end of development.

Given the wide-ranging potential applications and challenges presented by AI, the Department of Defense and its contractors should tackle legal and ethical concerns early and often in the development lifecycle, from the formative stages of an AI concept to its realization and eventual deployment. Only by considering legal and ethical principles long before Acquisition Milestone A will AI capabilities reflect enduring American principles. Ethical considerations should shape future system requirements, and developers should recognize both technical and ethical challenges. Incorporating ethics analysis could reshape development processes and create new costs for developers, but decision-makers and developers alike must recognize that an early and often approach has tangible benefits, including aiding in future compliance reviews like Defense Department Directive 3000.09.

The early and often principle developed by moving legal and ethical discussions from the ivory tower to the battlefield. Our team at the Institute for Defense Analyses is tackling this challenge as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys (DARPA) development of the Urban Reconnaissance through Supervised Autonomy program. This is not a weapons system: It is intended to move ahead of a patrol, using AI and autonomy to discern potential threats and sources of harm to U.S. forces and civilians. A multidisciplinary research group of academics, philosophers, lawyers, military experts, and analysts has incorporated law and ethics to analyze the systems technological dependencies and components from its inception. This analytical process could be applied to other systems and offers one path forward for ethical military AI development.

Shaping System Requirements

Holistically considering the legal, moral, and ethical implications of future AI-enabled and autonomous systems early and often first requires bridging a conceptual gap. Assessments must break down the possible and plausible, examining both a systems ideal performance in operation and its real ability to perform a task. Analyzing ethical strengths and weaknesses requires the assessor to understand a systems purpose, its technical components and their limitations, relevant legal and ethical frameworks, and the systems efficacy at a task compared to that of a human operator.

In reality, assessing ethical compliance from design to deployment resembles a spiral model, requiring repeated testing, prototyping, and reviewing for technological and ethical limitations. The viability of any AI system ultimately will be assessed when it is employed. Choices implemented early in the systems design such as dependence on neural nets for image recognition of human behavior carry legal and ethical implications for the systems reliability in the field, particularly when things go wrong.

Legal and ethical considerations require broadening requirements from the purely technical (e.g., computer vision, image recognition, decision logic, and vehicle autonomy) to include international humanitarian law, the laws of war, and relevant tort rulings. For example, international humanitarian law requires discriminating between combatants and civilians, and dictates that unknown individuals be considered civilians. To comply with the law, an AI-enabled system that is uncertain of an individuals status would need to check with a human operator before acting in a way that might cause disproportional harm to that individual. This alone requires developers at the outset of a systems design to analyze human-machine agency trade-offs, account for decision-to-action latency times, and incorporate into technical designs sufficient time for operators to review machine decisions. Ultimately, the mutual reinforcement of ethical and technical requirements drives developers plans by enshrining the principle that design and development must be informed by an understanding of ethical issues that could arise in the field.

As forward-looking legal and ethical considerations shape requirements across the board, developers will find it necessary to consult experts or even multidisciplinary teams throughout the design and development process. In addition to pointing out legal red lines and flagging areas of ethical concern, these experts could help develop other key features of ethical analysis. Two such key elements are system explainability and transparent documentation.

Emphasizing System Explainability and Ethical Documentation

DARPAs Heilmeier Catechism is a collection of thought exercises to help agency officials dissect proposed programs with straightforward questions. For example, without using jargon, what is your system trying to do? What are the limits of current practice? What are the risks involved?

These questions are at the heart of what could be defined as a systems explainability. In this case, we are not referring to explainability in a forensic sense of understanding the underpinnings of deep-learning systems. Rather, at the outset of system development, developers should also be able to describe how their system will function in the field, including the objectives it aims to achieve and the tasks it will undertake, the technologies it will rely on to do so, and the technical, legal, and ethical risks inherent to using those technologies. As updates to system designs occur and recur, legal and ethical implications should continuously be reexamined and evaluated. In complex systems of systems, developers focus on cracking individual technical components can overshadow considerations of system end-use goals and operational context, thereby leaving these difficult explanatory questions unanswered.

Ethical documentation requirements essentially requiring a paper trail devoted solely to legal, moral, and ethical concerns present a simple method for capturing system explainability. Developers should document their systems without jargon and should include critical dependencies, possible points of failure, and gaps in research to ensure that non-technical audiences understand the legal and ethical risks and benefits of new AI-enabled systems. In keeping with the early and often principle, developers will have to consider concepts of operations how their system will be used in the field earlier in the design process than is currently typical in order to accurately document their systems. A detailed mission walkthrough (with the aid of tools like process maps) could help developers identify agency hand-off points, system decision points, or design choices for user interfaces and other components that incur potential for bias. Developers are already required to produce risk burn-down documentation to identify and mitigate technical issues for new systems. Similar documentation for ethical risks will ensure that developers are transparently contemplating ethical challenges early in the design process.

Law and ethics-specific documentation would also emphasize the importance of consistent terminology within developer teams throughout the development process. Complex AI-enabled and autonomous systems, which often contain multiple components developed by subcontractors, can confuse people trying to assess the ethical impact of a system, particularly when developers use inconsistent names and definitions for the same components. Assessments that incorporate multidisciplinary teams of civil experts and military specialists can both bridge terminology gaps and highlight areas of potential confusion.

Tackling Research Gaps and Bias

Early and often ethical analysis can also identify gaps in relevant research and point out the potential for system bias while systems are still in development. By identifying research gaps where it would help developers make ethical design choices, decision-makers can allocate resources to studies that address immediate needs. For example, there is a known lack of research on the reliability of AI-enabled image recognition for certain types of human behaviors. As ethical analyses uncover research gaps that might apply across future platforms, upfront research costs could benefit future systems with similar technical dependencies.

Describing the operating environments in which an AI-enabled system will operate often depends on anecdotal recollections of combat experiences. This can serve as a useful starting point for training these systems, but it has limitations. AI is only as good as the data it is trained on. Many machine-learning techniques crucially depend on access to extensive and well-curated data sets. In most instances, data sets incorporating the subtleties and nuances of specific operating environments and conditions simply do not exist. Even where they do exist, they often require substantial effort to convert to formats amenable to machine-learning processes. Further, the AI community has learned the hard way that even well-developed data sets may harbor unforeseen biases that can color the machine learning in ways that raise serious ethical concerns.

Regular ethical analyses can help to address bias issues in the design and development of AI-dependent systems. Such analysis can also serve as a backstop against introducing unintentional bias, whether it occurs via system outputs that bias human operators or via operator bias, into the systems decision-making processes. Law and ethics assessors can help think through data sets, algorithmic weighting, system outputs, and human inputs to try to identify bias throughout the design process and to serve as sounding boards for developers and subject matter experts alike.

Conclusion

The future of warfare is headed toward autonomy. America and its allies are not the only actors who have a say in what that future looks like. Near peers are using AI in troubling ways, and the importance of trying to establish the rules of the road and abiding by them is paramount to maintaining the unique soft power advantage that the United States and its allies enjoy through adhering to moral and ethical considerations. Laying out these principles and transparently applying them to relevant U.S. military systems will help in establishing best practices within the defense community, developing a common lexicon with allies and partners, and building trust among concerned publics and the tech community. In the end, this will occur not simply as a byproduct of intellectual clarity on legal and ethical issues but as an outgrowth of early and often ethical engagement during system development.

At first glance, applied legal, moral, and ethical considerations seem onerous, particularly where new requirements for personnel or documentation are likely necessary. They may also require the development, acquisition, and operational communities to reevaluate the applicability of their standard operating procedures. However, early and often ethical analysis, comprising continual testing, prototyping, and reviewing areas of legal or ethical concern, will mitigate the rise of ethical considerations that would detrimentally impact later development and acquisition stages and that could prevent system deployment. Facilitating this analysis through improved transparency in system design and improving the explainability of AI and autonomous decision processes will be key to realizing these benefits, particularly as the Department of Defense moves to practical implementation of Directive 3000.09.

Human warfighters learn lessons of ethics, morality, and law within society before they enlist. These lessons are bolstered and expanded through reinforcement of warrior and service-specific ethos. As the U.S. military increasingly incorporates AI and autonomy into the battlespace and we ask intelligent machines to take on responsibilities akin to those of our service personnel, why should we approach them any differently?

Owen Daniels is a research associate in the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses working on the IDA Legal, Moral, Ethical (LME) AI & Autonomy research effort.

Brian Williams is a research staff member in the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses and task leader of the IDA Legal, Moral, Ethical (LME) AI & Autonomy research effort.

This research was developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The views, opinions, and findings expressed in this paper should not be construed as representing the official position of the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Image: U.S. Air Force (Photo by Todd Maki)

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Day Zero Ethics for Military AI - War on the Rocks

Human Behavior

Blue Light Therapy Helps Recovery from Mild TBI – HospiMedica

Image: University of Arizona research technician tests a blue light device (Photo courtesy of William Killgore)

Researchers at the University of Arizona (Tucson, USA) conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 32 adults (1848 years of age) recovering from a recent mTBI. The researchers compared of cumulative six weeks of daily 30-minute pulses of blue light (469 nm) each morning to an amber (578 nm) placebo light on neurocognitive and neuroimaging outcomes, including gray matter volume (GMV), resting-state functional connectivity, directed connectivity using Granger causality, and white matter integrity using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).

According to the researchers, blue light suppresses brain production of melatonin. Exposure to blue light in the morning shifts the brain's biological clock so that is produced earlier, aligning it with the natural circadian rhythm. The results showed that relative to placebo, morning blue light led to phase-advanced sleep timing, reduced daytime sleepiness, higher executive functioning, increased GMV of the posterior thalamus, greater thalamo-cortical functional connectivity, and increased axonal integrity. The study was published in the February 2020 issue of Neurobiology of Disease.

The circadian rhythm is one of the most powerful influences on human behavior. Daily exposure to blue wavelength light each morning helps to re-entrain the circadian rhythm so that people get better, more regular sleep. This is likely true for everybody, but we recently demonstrated it in people recovering from mTBI, said lead author Professor William Killgore, MD. That improvement in sleep was translated into improvements in cognitive function, reduced daytime sleepiness, and actual brain repair.

Melatonin, discovered in 1958, is a hormone released by the pineal gland that regulates the sleepwake cycle. It is involved in synchronization of the circadian rhythm, including sleep-wake timing and blood pressure regulation. For most animals, the timing of sleep and wakefulness is in synch with the circadian control of the sleep cycle and all other circadian-controlled rhythms. Humans, on the other hand, have the unique ability to cognitively override their internal biological clock and its rhythmic outputs.

Related Links:University of Arizona

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Blue Light Therapy Helps Recovery from Mild TBI - HospiMedica

Human Behavior

Twitter users negatively react to an article published by The Famuan – Famuan

Ryan Stanley. Photo courtesy FAMU Athletics

Ari Payne, a senior broadcast journalism student at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, recently faced backlash from other students and alumni on Twitter. The backlash regarding his most recent article Dont expect Ryan Stanley to play in the NFL began following its publishing in The Famuan.

In his article, Payne says that he did not think FAMUs quarterback, Ryan Stanley should go to the NFL. Payne acknowledges that Stanley had a great career at FAMU, but argues that this is where his career will end.

FAMU students and alumni negatively reacted to Paynes article on Twitter questioning why another student would write negatively on their peers.

Noah Harris, a graduating senior, even referenced the mentality crabs in a bucket, in reference to the article.

The crab in a bucket mentality says that if multiple crabs are in a bucket, while one is clawing its way to escape, the others will tear it down. This mentality speaks on human behavior and I used it in this context to blatantly call the writer a hater, Harris said.

Harris believes the article was distasteful and did not represent the university well.I believe the right to have an opinion, but the opinions/energy you choose to put into the atmosphere speaks about you as a person and this student, in my opinion, did not represent themself well, Harris continued.

While Harris acknowledges J school students have freedom of the press, he thinks some things should be left in your head, or your personal accounts. Some students even questioned why The Famuan would allow such an article to be written.

Twitter user, @The1GoldenBoy, tweeted Thats terrible Journalism from The Famuan especially with a D1 transfer quarterback coming into the program.

Bobby Rondil, the sports copy desk editor for The Famuan, says, Here at The Famuan we welcome anybody to voice their opinion as long as the information supporting the opinion is credible and accurate. We allow anybody to voice their opinion such as another student in James Williams who wrote a rebuttal in response to the article. So at the end of the day, we welcome all opinions as long as the information is correct.

Payne says he expected backlash from the article, but he did not expect personal attacks.

I want Ryan to know I have nothing against him. Id be happy if he made it to the NFL and was successful. If what I said is proven to be wrong, I will be the first to write about why I was wrong, said Payne.

Stanley says when he initially read the article, he felt like the writer had something personal against him, but he could care less. He was only shocked that the school would allow it to be published.

There will always be haters There were also a lot of people who stuck up for me and Im thankful for everyone who has my back and all the real rattlers out there, said Stanley.

Stanley also adds that he feels that the university supports him and has supported him throughout his career, and he still plans on entering the draft despite anyones opinion.

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Twitter users negatively react to an article published by The Famuan - Famuan

Human Behavior

Trends That Are Shaping The Future Of The Workplace – Allwork.Space

LinkedIns Global Talent Trends report for 2020 provided major insights into the trends that are expected to shape the future of the workplace. Of the four major trends to emerge from the report, they all found that keeping the human experience at the center of HR is vital in attracting and retaining top talent.

The report combined survey results from over 7,000 professionals across 35 countries, behavioral data and 40 interviews with experts.

The report found that 96% of professionals said the employee experience has become more important. This is leading HR to focus on how to make the best experience for workers, including collecting feedback on a regular basis and collaborating with employees to build an experience that works for everyone.

People analytics will also emerge as the key to understanding and capitalizing on human behavior. Having a better understanding of employees allows companies to better plan their workplace, predict attrition and evaluate worker performance.

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The data also found that role changes within companies have increased by 10% over the last five years as organizations are learning how to reskill internally instead of hiring new talent.

Additionally, the report found that 89% of professionals said a multigenerational workforce makes a company more successful. In order to attract a broader range of generations, companies have started offering more flexible work options, career paths and ways to share intelligence. The key to having a healthy, diverse workforce is to create an environment that encourages collaboration and knowledge exchange.

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Trends That Are Shaping The Future Of The Workplace - Allwork.Space

Human Behavior

3 Steps for Building an Effective Compliance Program in Sleep Therapy – HomeCare

Being diagnosed with a medical condition is the first step towards a healthier life. The second step, however, too often gets in the way of the best health possible: effective and consistent treatment of the diagnosed condition. What use is a diagnosis if its not paired with effective treatment? Adherence to a treatment plan is a universal issue in health care; according to the World Health Organization, nonadherence accounts for 125,000 deaths and 25% of hospitalizations annually.

Our goal as care providers is to partner with patients to effectively treat their conditions and improve their lives. But patients have free will. How do you ensure they take their medication and follow their treatment protocols? What role does patient engagement play in long-term adherence, and how do providers work to ensure their programs create engagement with their patient base?

Lets take a closer look at patient compliance in sleep therapy, a prime example of how patient engagement can help with therapy compliance.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious medical condition with well-understood treatment options that can be administered at low cost in the home. These treatment options are supported by strong science and are easily understood. Yet OSA therapy compliance is estimated to be below 60% nationally.

While compliance is ultimately up to the patient, Id argue that a providers compliance rateas measured by patients who continue with insurance-covered therapy after the initial 90 daysis a key performance indicator to determine how they are doing. Our team at Cape Medical Supply has spent years studying the issue and working on a variety of improvement efforts to help build and maintain an industry-leading compliance rate that we can be proud of and share with our referral and payer partners.

I believe there are three high-level areas to focus on to ensure you are supporting strong results.

As early in the the referral process as possible, you must work to engage patients. They need to understand that OSA is a serious medical condition and that positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy is the gold standard for treating and managing it. If they commit to the therapy, they will enjoy a higher quality of life and create a better chance at improved overall health. PAP therapy, especially in the early days of treatment, isnt easy, so getting a patient to commit to sticking with iteven if its uncomfortable at firstis the key goal. Sleeping with a mask on your face is a major lifestyle adjustment, but pointing out the numerous health benefits of therapy will help patients commit to their treatment and set the table for a successful life with PAP therapy.

Telehealth is a buzzword in health care right now and a space seeing significant investments from payers, private equity firms and health systems. It has the potential to transform community-based care and is a valuable tool for patients requiring connectivity to adhere to therapies or care plans. Remote patient monitoring is supported by the manufacturers of PAP therapy devices, who have their own cloud-based environments to access machine utilization and monitor several points of clinical performance for patients. Having a dedicated function to analyze this data and intervene where needed is essential to being a good health care partner.

Sleep coaches can encourage patient success and can frequently rescue patients who are struggling with therapy. The key here is stratifying patients into buckets and focusing your interventions where they will deliver the best possible outcomes. Some patients are self-driven and require no support, while others have no commitment to therapy and no amount of intervention will improve their compliance. Find the middle sweet spot, where intervention will deliver results.

Having a strong plan around how to use data strategically is the final point of emphasis as you build out a compliance program for your sleep therapy practice. What information do you have to present to referral partners on the success of your program? If a payer asked about your sleep therapy program, what would you give them as a point of differentiation? Data is everywhere; turning the data you have into actionable information for your team, your patients and your partners needs to be a focal point for progressive companies in the sleep therapy space. Durable medical equipment providers and the industry as a whole need to be able to demonstrate value. What better way to do that than to have a deep data repository that provides information to decision-makers who would benefit from it? A scientific, data-driven approach to health care delivery is required in a value-based environment; providers of all stripes would be well-served by ensuring their data capture and sharing practices are aligned with current macro initiatives within health care.

The modern health care system in the United States is riddled with inefficiency, waste and suboptimal outcomes. Much of that is due to system design and perverse incentives among current players. However, some comes down to patient nonadherence to prescribed medications or therapy regimes. Effective and involved compliance programs can ensure that sleep therapy providers, as a whole, provide system-level solutions for nonadherence.

Plato is credited with saying that human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge. If you apply that idea to our operating environment, you can focus on:

If you can do that, you will have set the stage for effective therapy and will have patients much more attuned to therapy and ready to work with your team to achieve their best possible outcomes. You will also be providing health care services with a higher level of effectiveness and more sustainability over a longer time horizon.

Patient engagement is the center of any effective compliance program. Taking the time to learn about your customers journey through the continuum of care becomes essential to understanding how to build a program that is patient-centric. Start by discussing and documenting that journey, and your compliance program will create itself from there.

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3 Steps for Building an Effective Compliance Program in Sleep Therapy - HomeCare

Human Behavior

Nearly a decade later, animal life has returned to Fukushima – CMU The Tartan Online

The devastating nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan occurred in 2011. Nine years later, wildlife populations have returned to the areas affected by the catastrophe. Researchers at the University of Georgia recently performed a camera study published in the Journal of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. They took more than 267,000 wildlife pictures of the landscape, showing that more than 20 species have returned to the area, including raccoon dogs, pheasants, foxes, Japanese hares, wild boars, red foxes, weasels, sika deer, black bears, masked palm civets, and macaques.

According to James Beasley, a wildlife biologist and associate professor at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory at the University of Georgia, both the public and the scientific community have inquired as to the whereabouts and livelihoods of wildlife in the years following nuclear accidents such as those in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Our results represent the first evidence that numerous species of wildlife are now abundant throughout the Fukushima Evacuation Zone, despite the presence of radiological contamination, Beasley remarked in a press release. He stated that the species most commonly seen in the photos from the study, like wild boars, typically come into conflict with humans. This suggests these species have increased in abundance following the evacuation of people, he explained.

To effectively study Fukushima, Beasleys team worked with Professor Thomas Hinton at the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity at Fukushima University to split the landscape into three zones by contamination level: the highest where humans were completely excluded, intermediate where humans were restricted, and low radiation where humans were permitted to inhabit. These designations were largely based on those established by the Japanese government following the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe.

Cameras captured pictures of the landscape over 120 days. Over 26,000 of these images were from the uninhabited area, about 13,000 were from the restricted area, and roughly 7,000 were from the inhabited area. An overwhelming 46,000 of the photos contained wild boars. A few other species that were more common in the uninhabited and restricted zones were raccoons, Japanese marten, and Japanese macaque.

The control zone for the research was the uninhabited zone since no data was recorded on wildlife populations in the evacuated areas. This was ideal as it was close to the human-inhabited zone and had a similar landscape. The researchers also investigated how variables such as vegetation type and elevation affect wildlife populations.

The terrain varies from mountainous to coastal habitats, and we know these habitats support different types of species. To account for these factors, we incorporated habitat and landscape attributes such as elevation into our analysis, Beasley noted. Based on these analyses, our results show that level of human activity, elevation, and habitat type were the primary factors influencing the abundance of the species evaluated, rather than radiation levels.

Although the activity pattern of most species was similar to that of their activity pattern in other regions, wild boars were more active in the day than other wild boars in human-inhabited areas were. Researchers speculate that they are changing their behavior due to the lack of humans. Japanese serow also appear to be changing their behavior; they usually avoid humans, but the photos showed that they were often present in rural regions inhabited by humans. This behavior is likely a reaction to the increasing population of boar in the uninhabited zone.

While this study does not attempt to accurately assess an individual animals health, Hinton said, [it] makes an important contribution because it examines radiological impacts to populations of wildlife, whereas most previous studies have looked for effects to individual animals.

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Nearly a decade later, animal life has returned to Fukushima - CMU The Tartan Online

Human Behavior

The Objects of a Time Passed: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw | The Truffle Hunters – Filmmaker Magazine

Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell?

Our film is about a group of mirthful old truffle hunters who live in the forests of Northern Italy. The time spent in their world felt like moving through a fairytale storybook where every object had a past and every cobblestone street and wooded path holds a secret waiting to be discovered. Their homes are constructed from age-old techniques that have kept them standing for hundreds of years. Their lives are filled with handmade objects that seem to be from another era. The forests that they grew up in are still a part of their daily lives. The layers of history that their world was built on created a feeling of mystery and magic, and it was this feeling that inspired our approach to filming.

For us, this meant creating a film that showed the world as it could be, a real-life fairytale. Each day was the opportunity to film a new page of the storybook. To capture this feeling, we chose to build the film as a series of single-shot uncut scenes with mostly static frames. We spent very little time with the camera rolling; on most days, we would shoot only one scene in a single uninterrupted take. Instead, our days were spent engaged in the truffle hunters lives, observing their routines, their relationships, the way they lived, and the objects they surrounded themselves with and, most importantly, building relationships with them.

That knowledge guided where we put the camera, who and what we included in the frame, and how we shaped the light. We built deep focus into our scenes to allow the opportunity to study the objects, materials, and textures that define our characters existence. Each of the 106 compositions in the film is a study in stillness, created to reveal the poetry in the small details of human behavior and a way of life that remains comfortably hidden from the trappings of modernity. These deliberate choices in how we constructed the film were made to capture the intangible feeling of a life lived with nature and the objects of a time passed.

By presenting each moment in uncut continuity, we ask our viewers to participate in the discovery of the story, and perhaps experience something beyond information, language, and the mechanics of narrative, to feel the humanity in our characters and revel in the fleeting moments of beauty that fill everyday life. By combining the monumental stillness of each frame with the movement of life and rhythm of editing, we sought to construct a film that flowed like a stream of paintings to tell a story that is felt more than understood. With this in mind, we set out to make a film that would express something deeper than facts, and translate the feeling of this place, its mystery and magic into a cinematic experience.

Sundance Responses 2020

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The Objects of a Time Passed: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw | The Truffle Hunters - Filmmaker Magazine

Human Behavior

Sundance Review: The Nest Meticulously Unpacks the Futility of Wealth with Impeccable Craft – The Film Stage

One of Sundances most stunning break-outs in the past decade was Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkins remarkably crafted, psychologically deft exploration of an upstate New York cult starring Elizabeth Olsen. After nearly a decade, the director finally returns to the festival with his feature follow-up The Nest, another exquisitely mounted drama that revels in letting minute character details slowly become elucidated as Durkin puts trust into his audience to pick up the pieces along the way. In peeling back the layers of a fractured family and the soulless drive for wealth, the emptiness underneath is patently revealed, so much so that it backs itself into a heavy-handed corner.

Set in 1986, the OHara family seemingly enjoy their nice life in a New York suburb. Rory (Jude Law) and Allison (Carrie Coon) raise their children Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell) and Samantha (Oona Roche)Allisons daughter from a previous relationshipwith just the right amount of attention, complete with soccer matches outside and entertaining dinner chatter. When Rory gets the opportunity to move back to his native home country of England to return to former colleagues, the rest of the family agrees with some hesitation. Their new home is a massive, weathered manor, full of secret doors and hiding places, set on a sprawling estate. Right from the bat with the opening credits font, there are indeed Kubrickian touches, from Durkins formal control (including a few well-timed crossfades) to the way his script picks at the subtleties of human behavior. Yet, while this set-up has the right ingredients for quality gothic horror, the only dread on display is tied to the way Rorys blind, hopeless yearning for status and money causes his family to crumble.

Cinematographer Mtys Erdly, best known for his frenetic, claustrophobic portraits of chaos such as Son of Saul and the Durkin-produced James White, shows a different side here. Until some use of handheld in the third act to match the familial ruination we witness, virtually every shot prior is a wide master that steadily opens up the spaces on display and lets the story carefully unfold amongst them. Its a similar approach to Durkins last feature, which also had a sole central location, but hes clearly been given more budget here and the production design shows, juxtaposing the sleek, empty surfaces of Roys office life with the isolation felt throughout their vast, creaky home. Richard Reed Parrys haunting score also plays into the unsettling atmosphere, which is rendered with splendid detail.

Law is well-cast as the smarmy, charming commodities trader with an empty, wayward soul. As he chats his way through utterly hollow business-minded conversations, Durkin excels at painting him as a man who literally doesnt know any other way as he tries to fill a meaningless hole in his life. Where Durkins script trips up is the thuddingly obvious metaphor of Allisons horse, shipped over from the U.S. and is now living a life as isolated as the rest of their family in their newly built stableone that Rory didnt have the money to pay for. Disregarded by the family, the horse becomes a symbol of the festering sickness pervading Roys life as he ignores what is most important right in front of him. For as understated as the rest of the script is, its a strange decision to key into such a clear-cut allegory, and particularly in how snowballs even larger in the third act.

As Allison, Carrie Coon steals the show. Introduced as a timid, obedient wife who trusts her husband to provide for her and her family, things begin to shift as new details begin to add up. As her world comes crashing down, she delightfully blossoms and decides to take on independence on her own terms in richly satisfying, emasculating ways. From the initial realization that Rory lied to herhe went after this position in London, it wasnt offered to himto the ways in which her sycophantic husband is trying to posture as a prosperous success in his field, Coons priceless reactions and maneuvers to establish a semblance of power in their marriage will certainly be memed as the film finds a wider audience.

The Nest may not reach the sustained highs of Martha Marcy May Marlene, but theres still a great deal to admire in the way Durkins total mastery of composition and perspective carry through to the final shot. A measured exploration of marriage and the ways in which it can all crumble through dishonestyas well as a look at the mindless, soul-sucking rat race of capitalismThe Nest is another clear-eyed drama from Durkin that shows genuine vision. The finishing of the narrative puzzle isnt as graceful as the mindful setting of its pieces, but this is a rare director who has something compelling to convey with each choice he makes behind the camera. Its invigorating to see his return, and heres hoping the wait for his next film wont be as prolonged.

The Nest premiered at Sundance Film Festival.

See more Sundance coverage here.

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Sundance Review: The Nest Meticulously Unpacks the Futility of Wealth with Impeccable Craft - The Film Stage