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Human Behavior

The Woman Who Fought to End the ‘Pernicious’ Scourge of Kissing – Smithsonian Magazine

At a time of widespread public health crises and evolving ideas about how illnesses spread, kissing was an easily avoidable vector of disease. Unfortunately for Imogene Rechtin, most people proved unwilling to give it up. Illustration by Meilan Solly / Screenshots via Newspapers.com, lips vector by Vecteezy

Imogene Rechtin was seized by disgust and terror. Standing in a reception line at a womens society event in Cincinnati in 1910, she watched as the hostess approached, welcoming each of the 30 or 40 women ahead of her with a kiss on either the cheek or the lips.

If only I had something to show that would prevent my being kissed, she thought to herself.

A middle-aged mother of two with a deep-seated fear of germs, Rechtin had long since convinced her husband of the pernicious health risks associated with promiscuous kissing. At the time, a woman of Rechtins class could hardly go a day without encountering a smattering of smooches. A peck on the mouth was the standard greeting between female friends, as common as a handshake today. This Cincinnati soire, with its blatant swapping of bacteria, proved to be the final straw for Rechtin, who over the next year and a half spearheaded a short-lived, largely unsuccessful national movement to abandon the practice of kissing.

Naming her group the Worlds Health Organization, Rechtin distributed circulars outlining the case against kissing and mailed out buttons labeled Kiss Not for a 5-cent contribution. She and her hundreds of acolytesmost of them womencampaigned against kissing in all contexts, from the privacy of the bedroom to casual gatherings with friends.

It is only in unity that sufficient strength can be gained to convince the civilized world that kissing is pernicious and unhealthful, Rechtin declared in a public appeal.

Enduring the ridicule of journalists and the scorn of the medical community, the push ultimately failed to sway public opinion at large. But Rechtins concerns werent entirely unfounded. At a time of widespread public health crises and evolving ideas about how illnesses spread, kissing was an easily avoidable vector of disease.

Until recently, Rechtins story was more or less lost to history. Now, however, a new article in the Journal of Social History recounts her ill-fated campaign.

She was basically right, says study author Peter C. Baldwin, a social historian at the University of Connecticut who stumbled across Rechtins story while trawling through newspaper archives. She basically understood what medical science was teaching us at that time.

Behind Rechtins revulsion was a shifting understanding of disease. In the decades following the Civil War, doctors and researchers built on a nascent understanding of germs to refute outdated ideas about the causes of infection, like miasma theory, which blamed the foul air of decay and refuse. The real culprits, experts were beginning to realize, were microscopic germsbacteria and viruses that could be readily transferred from person to person.

That discovery sets off this evolution of what people get crazy about, says Nancy Tomes, a historian of the Progressive Era at New Yorks Stony Brook University and the author of The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life. By the turn of the century, its casual infectioncoughing, spitting, sneezing, hand shaking. ... Any skin-to-skin contact ... really just [has] almost a phobic quality to it.

When Rechtin started her campaign, typhoid, cholera and syphilis outbreaks were still common occurrences. Tuberculosis, for which no cure was then known, was responsible for as many as one-third of all deaths in Europe in the 19th century.

In the first half of that century, public health officials sought to combat these diseases with collective civic measures like sewer works and clearing out low-income housing. But as the unseen threat of germs became more widely known, says Tomes, experts placed an increasing emphasis on changing human behavior.

The old public health sought the sources of infectious disease in the surroundings of man; the new finds them in man himself, wrote health official Hibbert Hill in 1913.

In 1896, New York City passed an anti-spitting ordinance that aimed to curb the spread of tuberculosis, with penalties of up to one year in jail. Elsewhere, physicians decried the use of a common Catholic communion cup as a menace to public health. In circulars distributed to school boards, public health crusaders like Charles V. Chapin implored teachers to instruct children on the dangers of venereal disease and the virtues of toothbrushing.

Children should be taught that their bodies are their own private possessions, that personal cleanliness is a duty, [and] that the mouth is for eating and speaking, wrote Chapin in 1901.

With this shift, responsibility for public health moved definitively from city hall to the suburbs, where women like Rechtin often led the charge. Under an already old-fashioned theory of gender politics, enforcing the norms of proper comportment and behavior fell firmly in the woman-dominated domestic sphere.

By Rechtins time, says Tomes, women of means had long been using this ideology to get out of the house and spearhead campaigns for the improvement of society. In a seminal 1984 essay, historian Paula Baker described these movements as municipal housekeeping, a way in which women sought to bring the benefits of motherhood to the public sphere.

Women become critical as foot soldiers in helping male political leaders, Tomes says, a kind of grassroots shock troops for progressive causes.

Setting up the Worlds Health Organization in her Cincinnati living room, Rechtin was following an already well-trod[den] path, according to Tomes. Even her hostility to kissing wasnt wholly unprecedented. Per Baldwins paper, several previous health campaigns attempted to limit the practice, albeit not quite so zealously. An Atlanta woman named Avis Boyce, for instance, traveled the country in 1907 to stop the widespread practice of baby kissing. As she told the Chicago Tribune, There is no way to pasteurize kisses. (Boyce acknowledged that grown-ups were hopeless cases unlikely to ever quit kissing.)

As if to inspire future Rechtins, in 1908, the Washington Post even ran a story in which a Philadelphia doctor said she firmly believe[d] that the day will come within a generation when a formidable anti-kissing movement will be established.

[K]issing practically will be confined to the lower classes, she predicted, the educated people having been brought up to see the evils of the habit.

Compared to other health campaigns of her day, Rectins campaign against kissing was far from unusual. The turn of the 20th century saw a dizzying array of wellness gurus and gospels, some far more bizarre and groundless than a ban on kissing.

Like Rechtins, many of these campaigns saw human behavior as the key to disease control, seeking in particular to control lustful, impure or excessive impulses. Political scientist Sylvia Tesh, in her 1982 history of public health, connected this trend to a widespread belief that one could defeat disease by throw[ing] off ancient artificial strictures and liv[ing] in a manner consistent with natural law.

Sylvester Graham, inventor of the graham cracker, cautioned against the disease-causing properties of meat and hot food, instead advocating a simple vegetarian lifestyle. Fasting fads numbering in the dozens demanded adherents weigh their stool and undergo daily enemas to avoid the dangers of fecal self-poisoning.

Many of these campaigns were far more successful than Rechtins. Horace Fletcher, the Great Masticator, advocated chewing food until it liquefied and poured naturally down the throat; his advice proved so popular that it spawned the term fletcherize, meaning to chew food slowly and thoroughly. Never forcibly swallow anything, he wrote. It is safer to get rid of it beforehand than to risk putting it into the stomach.

Yet of all the bizarre turn-of-the-century health trends, Rechtins was perhaps the most grounded in actual science.

Its not really until much later than this period that you get effective treatments for common diseases, Baldwin says. So to kiss somebody who might be carrying tuberculosis, or who might be carrying syphilis, would be a real concern.

Rechtin was eventually able to claim more than 1,000 adherents, including some 70 brides who donned Kiss Not buttons at their weddings. But she faced relentless hostility from the press.

Its very clear from the articles that reporters find this ridiculous, says Baldwin. Theyre thinking that on its face, what shes saying is so absurd that they can add color to their article by quoting her extensively.

On highly illustrated pages crammed with jokey cartoons, reporters declared Rechtins campaign hard-hearted and cold blooded, while comic strips imagined couples joy at breaking anti-kissing pledges.

The medical and scientific communities were similarly dismissive. Much of the criticism, writes Baldwin, painted the idea as impractical and excessive, even paranoid. One prominent officials editorial in the Washington Post decried Rechtins organization as a society for the prevention of pleasure.

Take a darkened nook on a moonlit night, with the beams playing around a couple idly swinging in a hammock; let the antikissing society get to work in such a case, and see what happens, it read. You cant keep it down and theres no use trying so long as good, red blood courses through the veins of American youth.

Baldwin argues that the men of Rechtins time doth protest too much. Behind their disdain was a reluctance to cede to women their right to bodily autonomy, he writes, adding, Young women, in particular, had to be alert for the possibility that any man, whether stranger or trusted friend, might grab them and try to kiss them.

The Kiss Not button was aimed, in part, at the sort of man who might attempt the erotic gambit of a first kiss before any inviting social cues from the woman, Baldwin continues. When American newspapers scoffed at Rechtins anti-kissing campaign, they were following an established pattern of treating unwanted sexual advances as a joke.

Tomes points out that earlier public health campaigns against spitting took aim at lower-class men for spitting in the path of rich women to grab their attentiona form of street harassment that was common in Rechtins time.

[But] whats interesting about Imogene is shes really pushing back against men of her own class, Tomes said. Shes really trying to set a boundary that we can recognize today as dont touch me without my consent.

Ultimately, Rechtins campaign failed to survive her critics. After a year and a half of campaigning, the Worlds Health Organization disappears from the record. Her campaign basically goes nowhere, Baldwin says, and it runs up against a whole bunch of problems.

Rechtin had long since convinced her husband of the pernicious health risks associated with promiscuous kissing.

By the 1920s, womens sexual politics had shifted dramatically. The new woman of the 1920s discarded 19th-century womanhood by adopting formerly male values and behavior, wrote Baker in her 1984 essay. Baldwin, meanwhile, says that these modern women are enjoying sex just like men enjoy sex, making an anti-kissing campaign seem dangerously out of fashion.

Not long after, the introduction of effective antibiotics changed the public health landscape dramatically, greatly reducing the risk of dying from common infectious diseases. The anxiety about hidden germs lurking behind every kiss gave way to a more relaxed attitude toward dirt and disease.

In the end, Tomes deems Rechtins failed campaign a product of a period when the philosophy of public health was changing, from behavior-based approaches to societal problems to more targeted scientific solutions. [Rechtin is] kind of caught in this transition to what public health becomes, she says.

The dieting charlatans and great masticators who outshone Rechtin in her day would soon be reined in, too. In 1910, U.S. science administrator and politician Abraham Flexner successfully pushed to formalize the practice of medicine and greatly suppress what he called the quackery of alternative wellness gurus.

For Baldwin, Rechtins story is ultimately a reflection of just how little following the science can matter in matters of public health. When it comes to the dangers of kissing, Rechtin was rightbut as time proved, in the words of one newspaper headline, it was simply too pleasurable a pastime to abolish.

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The Woman Who Fought to End the 'Pernicious' Scourge of Kissing - Smithsonian Magazine

Human Behavior

GM’s Cruise Wins the Race to Charge for Driverless Rides – The Drive

As of Thursday, June 2, GM's self-driving car service Cruise, secured a permit to charge customers for driverless car rides in San Francisco. With federal regulations moving too slowly, self-driving services such as Cruise, Google's Alphabet Inc., and Waymo have been turning toward state and even city legislators to help push driverless car laws forward. According to Reuters, Cruise just took a big step forward in San Francisco and will have up to 30 driverless Chevy Bolts charging customers for rides in just a couple of weeks.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Cruise's permit in a 4-0 vote, beating out Alphabet and Waymo for San Francisco's driverless ride-hailing privileges. Previously, Cruise and Waymo vehicles had been testing self-driving vehicles in San Francisco but they were either for employees or free public testing and almost always had a safety driver behind the wheel in case of emergency. Now, Cruise can actually charge customers, as a fully-functioning, driverless ride-hailing service.

"This resolution marks another important step in that effort," said CPUC commissioner Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen. "It will allow our staff to continue to gather very important data that will support the development of future phases."

There will be some pretty strict limitations on when and how Cruise's driverless taxis will work. Not only will they be limited to 30 miles per hour, they will be restricted from highways, geo-fenced into areas that avoid downtown, restricted from driving in harsh weather such as heavy rain or fog, and will only be allowed to operate between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. There were some concerns from local police and fire departments about safety, after incidents of self-driving Cruise test vehicles causing safety hazards, such as blocking a firetruck during a three-alarm fire and allowing passengers to exit the car in the middle of the street.

Another recent incident saw a self-driving Cruise car stop unexpectedly, causing a cyclist to crash into it, sustaining injuries. The cyclist's lawsuit was settled out of court, last month. There were also incidents where Cruise vehicles were unable to drive outside of lane markings, which caused issues with parked trucks or cyclists on the side of the road. However, Cruise has apparently fixed all of those issues well enough for the CPUC board to approve its permit.

While there are still questions surrounding how a completely driverless car can respond to unpredictable human behavior, Cruise's cars apparently lean toward caution. Cruise claims its vehicles are programmed to understand the unpredictability of human drivers and drive incredibly defensively.

We're likely still a long way from fully-functioning driverless taxis, which are able to drive everywhere and anywhere entirely on their own. However, this is the first of many steps to reach that point and San Francisco residents should be able to partake in some of the city's first official robo-taxi rides in just a few weeks.

Got tips? Send them to nico.demattia@thedrive.com

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Human Behavior

Dulling the ocean racket to save fish stocks – Devdiscourse

Shipping and sonar bombard the ocean with noise and disrupt fish communication and behavior. Countries need to work together to restore the quiet of the deep.

The boom of sonar, the roar of propellers, and the whine of drills as they rip into the seabed humans pound the ocean with noise. These alien sounds distort marine soundscapes and affect fisheries in many ways. Local catches change straight away as noise disrupts fish behavior and communication, and in the long term, fish stocks are likely to decline. Better regulation and international cooperation are needed to dull the racket. In an area off the Norwegian coast exposed to airgun noise from seismic exploration, catch rates of cod in long-line fisheries reduced by 55 to 80 percent. Meanwhile, the bycatch of cod in trawl fisheries for saithe increased threefold. Noise from seismic surveys reduced long-line catch rates of both Greenland halibut and haddock by 16 to 25 percent but doubled gillnet catch rates for Greenland halibut and redfish. The noisy conditions may cause fish to stop feeding and miss the long-line baits but then move into deeper water and get entangled in gillnets and bottom trawls. Catch rates may also change when human-made noise affects the predators and prey of target fish species. When Ambon damselfish were exposed to passing boat noise, they were consumed more than twice as quickly by dusky dottybacks. When captive grey seals were exposed to the tidal turbine and pile-driving sound playback, they kept foraging in high-density patches of herring and sprat but foraged less in low-density prey patches. Fish rely on natural sounds for several critical life functions, including attracting mates, finding prey, avoiding predators, and navigating dark or cloudy waters. Many fish species also communicate with calls to synchronize foraging, schooling, spawning, and migratory activities.

Human-made noise deters fish from an area, disrupts their behavior, and masks important acoustic cues. Noise may also increase fish stress levels and energy expenditure, leading to smaller fish that mature more slowly. Theoretical models show this could mean long-term catch declines. New insights from empirical studies are critically needed here. Different human activities produce different types of sound, which affect fish in different ways. Noise can be continuous, such as shipping noise, or impulsive, such as seismic shooting and pile-driving. Continuous sounds may lead to more acoustic masking, while impulsive sounds cause more disturbance. When captive European seabass were exposed to both continuous and impulsive sounds, they recovered from their diving response more slowly after they were exposed to impulsive sound.

The good news is noise pollution may be easier to solve than other types of pollution: once the source of the noise is gone, the problem disappears. Regulations could encourage industries to use technology to reduce unintended noise in offshore activities such as shipping and pile-driving. The shipping industry could devise quieter propellers, travel at slower cruising speeds, and chart routes away from ecologically critical areas. In some countries, pile-driving operations must encase the pile with bubble curtains to muffle the noise. Activities such as seismic surveys and navy sonar produce loud sounds intentionally. Incentives could encourage companies and the military to continuously develop novel technologies to replace noisy practices. For example, as an alternative to seismic air guns, oil and gas explorations can be made with marine seismic vibrators on the ocean floor, eliminating potential impacts on fish in the water column. These devices also produce more continuous noise with a narrower frequency band, which may reduce the negative impacts on sea life as it will be heard by fewer species.

Human-induced soundscape change occurs across the globe, so more concerted efforts and collaboration among countries and governing bodies are essential to tackle the issue and improve human stewardship of the ocean. Few high-level international policy initiatives explicitly recognize human-made noise as a problem for marine life this needs to change.

Climate change has had many well-documented effects on the ocean, such as warming waters. It has changed the ocean soundscape too. Noisy cyclones and tropical storms are more frequent, and noise-insulating Arctic sea ice cover is shrinking. Extreme weather events may also degrade marine habitats with high bio-acoustic diversity and importance, such as coral reefs. Warmer waters allow human-made noise to travel faster and further. Limiting climate change will help reduce the problem of ocean noise along with the many other environmental issues it has brought in its wake. Humans increasingly exploit the ocean as an economic resource, so it's more important than ever for societies to manage the 'blue economy' responsibly. Calming our noisy oceans is one way.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Dulling the ocean racket to save fish stocks - Devdiscourse

Human Behavior

Martha Myers, Who Taught Dancers How to Move and More, Dies at 97 – The New York Times

Martha Myers, who influenced generations of dancers both as the founder of the noted dance department at Connecticut College and as the longtime dean of the school of the American Dance Festival, died on May 24 at her home in Manhattan. She was 97.

Her son, Curt Myers, confirmed her death.

Ms. Myers joined the college, in New London, in 1967 and founded its dance department in 1971. In 1969, she became dean of the festival, which presents performances and offers educational programs. It was then in Connecticut and is now based in Durham, N.C.

Charles L. Reinhart, the director emeritus of the festival, said in a statement that Ms. Myers, who was with the organization for more than 30 years, brought new dance ideas and techniques to the festival while respecting tradition.

She was particularly interested in dance medicine and in somatics, which, as she described it to The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., in 1998, is about how you can reorganize neuromuscular patterns so the execution of dance technique produces what you hope its going to produce, which is a wider range of movement qualities for the dancer.

A companion field, focused on things like physical awareness and stress reduction, is known as body therapy, and Ms. Myers preached that its ideas were useful to others beyond dancers.

Not everyone can jog, play tennis or golf, she told The Herald-Sun of Durham in 1981, when she was leading one of the festivals body therapy workshops at Duke University, so we need many different types of movement for people. Many of the body therapies can be done prone on the floor and at ones own speed.

Ms. Myers was diminutive the 1998 newspaper article said she described herself as 5 feet 2 inches and shrinking but impactful. Gerri Houlihan, a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher who considered Ms. Myers a mentor, summed her up succinctly in 2006 when Ms. Myers was feted at Virginia Commonwealth University, the successor institution to the Richmond Professional Institute, where she earned her undergraduate degree.

She has mentored so many young dancers, teachers, choreographers, Ms. Houlihan said at the time. Shes tiny and speaks in a very quiet voice, very poetic, but she persuades you to do things you never thought you would be able to do.

Martha Coleman was born on May 23, 1925, in Napa, Calif. Her father, Herbert Rockwood Coleman, died when she was a young girl, and her mother, Odie Marie Coleman, moved the family to Virginia to be near relatives.

When Martha was a teenager, a neighbor heard her singing in the garden, was impressed and connected her to a voice teacher.

During the rest of my teen years and beyond, she wrote in Dont Sit Down: Reflections on Life and Work, a 2020 memoir, I practiced, studied and dreamt of singing at the Met.

But when she was a sophomore at the Richmond Professional Institute, she auditioned for the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where the professor evaluating her gave her a discouraging assessment that killed that particular dream. It was an experience she carried with her when she became a teacher herself, resolving to have empathy when it came to young peoples aspirations.

I have counseled and encouraged, she wrote in her memoir, reluctant ever to tell a hopeful candidate that their dream is impossible.

The challenge, she continued, is to find ways to open students minds to other possibilities, encourage them to find and shape for themselves the limits of their persistence, passion and abilities.

She herself found another possibility after that disheartening singing audition: dance. She also started spending time in New York City whenever she could.

In 1948, she enrolled in a two-year graduate program in physical education with a concentration in dance at Smith College in Massachusetts. There, she first became interested in somatics. She also taught for about 18 hours each week, which she thought was excessive but, she wrote in the book, the administration argued that in physical education, and dance, there was no preparation.

After earning her masters degree, she stayed at Smith to teach. In 1959, though, she took a leave of absence to create A Time to Dance, a television program produced by WGBH in Boston featuring live performances. Its nine episodes aired in 1960 and are now viewed as a sort of precursor to Dance in America, the long-running PBS series.

Soon, she added another television credit to her rsum. She had married Gerald E. Myers, who, when he took a job at Kenyon College in Ohio, suggested that she write to several Ohio television stations pitching a health-and-exercise show. To her surprise, WBNS in Columbus invited her to audition.

I demonstrated some of the stretching and strengthening exercises that might be appropriate for an 8 a.m. viewership, assumed to be largely housewives, she recalled in her memoir. I laced explanatory, cautionary and encouraging comments into stretches and quad sets, and ladled it out in inoffensive little patties with an icing of info on nutrition, weight control and health news.

She was hired. And then, not long after, she was offered a chance to be a news anchor, a rarity for a woman in the early 1960s.

She participated in some memorable feature segments, including by joining window washers 20 stories up and by riding on the shoulders of Meadowlark Lemon, the Harlem Globetrotter, to dunk a basketball.

After a few years, her husband took a job at C.W. Post College on Long Island, and before long Ms. Myers was working at Connecticut College, where she taught for the next 25 years. Late in her memoir she talked about her approach.

Movement is hard-wired in the body, resistant to change, learned from infancy in the context of family and society, she wrote. When I urge freshness, newness and investigation, I am aware that I am asking for one of the more difficult feats of human behavior. In my teaching career I have compiled strategies which invite my dance students to find new possibilities.

Her husband, who eventually held the unusual title of philosopher in residence of the dance festival, died in 2009. In addition to her son, Ms. Myers is survived by three grandsons.

She often took her expertise to other countries as part of the festivals international outreach, trips that were challenging but also yielded humorous moments, some resulting from language barriers.

I have been surprised when a direction in a somatics class, such as imagine your bones sinking into the floor, produced a perplexed look on some students faces, and giggles from those who knew English, Ms. Myers wrote in an essay she contributed to East Meets West in Dance: Voices in the Cross-Cultural Dialogue, published in 1995. I was told later the translation was imagine your bones disintegrating or decaying on the floor.

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Martha Myers, Who Taught Dancers How to Move and More, Dies at 97 - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Monkeypox outbreak: What to know about symptoms, threat – Medical News Today

This is a developing story. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.

On the heels of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a zoonotic virus seems to be spreading across the globe.

Since early May, Monkeypox has been making headway across at least 30 countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Australia, and the United States. The number of cases has increased to more than 550 worldwide as of June 1, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the U.K., nearly 200 monkeypox cases have been confirmed since May 7. During a press conference on May 17, WHO officials said that these are mostly separate occurrences except for a family cluster with two confirmed cases and one probable case[].

Recently, Canada and the U.S. joined these nations in tracking and tracing the virus.

As of May 19, Canada confirmed two monkeypox cases and said it was investigating more than a dozen suspected cases. The Massachusetts Department of Health also announced a single case in an individual who had recently been in Canada. Several Canadian cases have been linked to this person.

On May 18, Scott Pauley, press officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Medical News Today:

The U.K. notified the U.S. of 8 people in the U.S. who might have been seated near the U.K. traveler when they flew from Nigeria to London [on May 3-4, 2022]. Of these, one is no longer in the U.S., and one was not a contact. The remaining six are being monitored by their respective state health departments. None of these six travel contacts have monkeypox symptoms and their risk of infection is very low.

The WHO officials have been tracking monkeypoxs path through Europe and North America for several weeks. However, with the data available so far, they do not know long the virus has been spreading.

On May 30, the agency said during a public webinar that while it cannot rule out the risk, it is unlikely the outbreak will turn into a global pandemic.

Monkeypox is a zoonotic virus, which transmits disease from animals to humans. Cases typically occur near tropical rainforests, where animals that carry the virus live.

The monkeypox virus is a member of the orthopoxvirus family. It also has two distinct genetic strains or clades: the Central African (Congo Basin) clade and the West African clade. The Congo Basin clade is known to spread more easily and cause more severe symptoms.

Monkeypox naturally occurs in Africa, especially in west and central African nations. Cases in the U.S. are rare and associated with international travel from places where the disease is more common.

Monkeypox symptoms and signs include headache, skin rash, fever, body aches, chills, swollen lymph nodes, and exhaustion. It produces symptoms similar to smallpox, but milder.

The time from infection to the onset of symptoms, which is referred to as the incubation period, can range from five to 21 days. The illness typically resolves within two to four weeks.

Severe cases are more common among people with underlying immune deficiencies and young children. In recent times, the case fatality ratio of monkeypox is around 3-6%.

Transmission of the monkeypox virus among humans is limited, but it can happen through close skin contact, air droplets, bodily fluids, and virus-contaminated objects.

Most of the recent cases of monkeypox in the U.K. and Canada have been reported among attendees of sexual health services at health clinics in men who have sex with men.

Regarding this trend, Dr. I. Soc Fall, the regional emergencies director for the WHOs Health Emergencies Program, cautioned:

This is new information we need to investigate properly to understand better the dynamic of local transmission in the U.K. and some other countries.

During a press conference on May 17, Dr. Fall acknowledged that public health officials still have much to learn about the monkeypox virus.

But the most important thing is we really need to invest in understanding the development of monkeypox because we have so many unknowns in terms of the dynamics of transmission, the clinical features, the epidemiology. In terms of therapeutics and diagnostics also, we still have important gaps, he said.

WHO experts believe that solutions for monkeypox calls must go beyond addressing the disease.

During the press conference, Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHOs Health Emergencies Program, said: [G]etting answers isnt just about getting answers about the virus. Weve got to get answers about the hosts, weve got to get answers about human behavior and practice, and weve got to operate at all levels to try and ensure that human populations are protected.

For more insight, Medical News Today spoke with Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, clinical associate professor in infectious diseases and director of the Global Medicine and Antimicrobial Management Program at the University of Florida.

Being aware of the rash of monkeypox which presents as vesicles is very important. Additional measures include vigilance in those who have traveled in the past 30 days to countries that have reported cases of monkeypox [and] who have contact with a person who is confirmed or suspected of monkeypox. Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi

Dr. Cherabuddi mentioned that smallpox vaccinations offer some protection against monkeypox. He said the Democratic Republic of Congo is currently employing ring vaccination for close contacts of confirmed cases.

The U.K. is also using ring vaccination, in addition to contact and source tracing, case searching, and local rash-illness surveillance, he added.

Dr. Cherabuddi believes that more cases will arise in the U.S., but its difficult to predict how many.

He said he was concerned that with fewer people in the U.S. having had smallpox vaccinations, this could be putting a majority of the population below the age of 40-50 years at risk for infection[]

Dr. Ryan also noted that preventing the disease may not entirely rest on vaccines. He pointed out that the protection offered by previous smallpox vaccination also has reduced[]

He said there might be a need to change agricultural, social, and food storage practices to prevent further outbreaks. Officials hope to help communities understand how the virus spreads so they can address it at its sources.

Dr. Cherabuddi told MNT that vaccines for monkeypox have also been approved for limited circulation.

An approved vaccine for monkeypoxMVA-BNis not widely available. Tecovirimat (TPOXX), as both oral and IV medication is approved in the U.S. for treating smallpox and oral form in Europe to treat cowpox, monkeypox, and smallpox. The FDA also approved brincidofovir (Tembexa) in 2021 to treat smallpox. These medications are not widely available, he said.

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Monkeypox outbreak: What to know about symptoms, threat - Medical News Today

Human Behavior

When politics is local in the Middle East – MIT News

As the old adage has it, all politics is local. That might seem a quaint idea in an age of social media and global connectivity. And yet, as a study co-led by an MIT political scientist finds, it may describe Middle East politics more accurately than many people realize.

More specifically, sectarian identity in the Muslim world especially the split between the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam is often described as a transnational matter, in which people understand themselves as being part of a large divide spanning the Middle East and North Africa regions.

But an on-the-ground survey of Shiite Muslims (those who are Shia) engaged in a massive annual pilgrimage to the Iraqi city of Karbala reveals something different: Sectarian identity is often intertwined with domestic politics and shaped in connection with local social interactions.

We found a different type of sectarian identity that definitely was not focused as much on the transnational dimension, says Professor Fotini Christia, who directed the study.

Among other things, Muslim sectarian identity for participants in the study is not a doctrinal matter, emerging from religious study. Moreover, it also appears that men and women often develop sectarian identities in differing ways.

It seems that its actually local politics seeping into an interpretation of the faith or of sectarian identity, rather than the other way around, with religion affecting peoples engagement, Christia says. There is also a gender dimension to this that has been overlooked.

The paper, Evidence on the Nature of Sectarian Animosity: The Shia Case, is published today in Nature Human Behavior. The authors are Christia, who directs the MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center; Elizabeth Dekeyser PhD 19, a postdoc at the Institute for Adanced Study in Toulouse, France; and Dean Knox PhD 17, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Research on the road to Karbala

To conduct the study, the scholars designed a survey of Shiite pilgrims walking to Karbala for the holy day of Arbaeen a collective mourning ritual at the shrine of Imam Husayn, one of the prophet Muhammads grandsons. This annual pilgrimage, banned under Saddam Hussein, is now one of the largest such annual events in the world, attracting Shia from many places.

Indeed, the structure of the pilgrimage helped the researchers conduct the study. The road from Najaf to Karbala, a 50-mile stretch that is the most heavily traveled part of the pilgrimage, features service tents organized around the areas people are from. That structure allowed Christia, working on the ground in Iraq with a local research team, to develop a sophisticated survey of a geographically diverse group of over 4,000 people in the Shia sect. About 60 percent of the participants were from Iraq, and 40 percent were from Iran; the survey was split roughly evenly by gender.

Overall, the Shia represent only about 20 percent of Muslims globally; they are predominant in Iran, but a minority in almost every other largely Muslim country and have received relatively less attention from social scientists and other scholars.

When we think about the Muslim world there is a lot more focus on the Sunni side, Christia says. It felt like a big missing piece to have not engaged the Shia population in this kind of research.

Due to the complexities of conducting research in Iran, she adds, This is really a chance to engage a religious population from Iran that we could never access in Iran.

All told, as the scholars state in the paper, the survey results show that sectarian animosity is linked to economic deprivation, political disillusionment, lack of out-group contact, and a sect-based view of domestic politics. Rather than representing a transnational, pan-Muslim view of social solidarity, sectarianism seems to operate a bit more like ethno-nationalism, derived from local experiences and bringing itself to bear on national political issues.

The survey data show, for instance, that an increase of household wealth leads to a modest decline in sectarian animosity, while greater disillusionment with democratic government leads to an increase in sectarian animosity. And women in Shia-dominated areas, with less across-sect social contact, have more sectarian animosity. In each case, domestic economic and political factors influence variation in sectarianism more than transnational matters do.

One reason that its so hard to study the origins and correlates of animosity is because the concepts involved are intrinsically hard to quantify, Knox says. We take these issues seriously and validate our measures in numerous ways. For example, we quantify animosity through multiple approaches, including experiments, and we measure out-group contact with everything from self-reported information to smartphone-based location tracking. Ultimately, were able to use a variety of data sources to test the observable implications of existing theories about how and why individuals hold this animosity.

The gender split and lived experience

At the same time, the survey results also yield some distinctive gender differences. Among Iraqi women, for instance, individuals who are more religious tend to be more sectarian, but men who are more religious tend to be less sectarian. Why? The scholars suggest that while Shiite doctrine discourages sectarianism, the social activities of religious practice abet it, by bringing people from only one sect together. For men who already work outside the home and have other means of socialization, this may have little impact on their world views. But for women for whom sectarian religious gatherings are a primary form of socialization, practicing religion more actively can thus increase sectarian views.

Similarly, the connection between democratic disillusion and sectarianism in the survey is primarily driven by women (in contrast to the public image of young Muslim men driving sectarian conflict). The researchers hypothesize that this, too, comes from the greater opportunities for men to absorb varying views in the public sphere, while the more limited socialization opportunities for women reinforce sectarian views.

Providing a full, nuanced analysis of the divergent ways that men and women understand sectarianism is critical, Dekeyser says. For behaviors and beliefs that are heavily influenced by socialization, like intergroup relations, ignoring the entirely different lived experiences across genders can both fail to examine critical variation in beliefs, and lead to incorrect social and political conclusions.

And the fact that lived experience itself is largely localized, for most people, in turn means their views are grounded in those concerns. After all, Christia observes, consider that even people engaged in the Karbala pilgrimage, an international event, organize themselves according to their places of origin.

Even at this event which is transnational, because there are Shia from all over the place, even there, its in a way a celebration of their local identity, Christia says.

All told, the close study of sectarian animosity, rather than a reliance on received notions about it, is necessary for fully understanding the views of people around the Muslim world.

So many other places where politics are problematic and we [the U.S.] have been engaged in the Middle East, like Iraq or Syria or Lebanon or Yemen, have this sectarian dimension, Christia says. We need to think about religion and politics, and how this really manifests itself. The fact that there is this [political] dimension to it, more than this transnational religious dimension, is an important takeaway.

Support for the study was provided, in part, by MIT and Princeton University.

Link:
When politics is local in the Middle East - MIT News

Human Behavior

Bitcoin And The Great Filter – Bitcoin Magazine

This article originally appeared in Bitcoin Magazine's "Moon Issue." To get a copy, visit our store.

Energy money is the catalyst and tip of the spear for an intelligent sentient species transition from a Type 0 into a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale, which measures the energy and technological mastery of a society.

ALL intelligent sentient species are on this path, whether consciously or unconsciously, and must reach this point before they are eliminated by:

This is known as the Great Filter. Energy money initiates a step change in how organic intelligence can operate and forms a critical step on the journey beyond the Great Filter.

Enrico Fermi was a mid-20th century physicist and Nobel laureate who, upon reflecting on the vastness of the cosmos, famously asked, Where are they?

With the practically infinite number of stars and planets in the universe, it seemed like there should be other intelligent species or civilizations capable of developing radio astronomy or interstellar travel, yet to this day, no evidence actually exists.

The Fermi paradox is the term used to describe this lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life in the face of a universe that should be, by the numbers, bursting with it.

While many have proposed solutions as to why this paradox exists, in the 1990s, Robin Hanson postulated a theory that has become known as the Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory suggests that intelligent sentient lifeforms must realize a series of critical steps on their way to becoming an interstellar race and at least one of them must be highly improbable, or their interrelated, path-dependent nature means that they must occur in a particular order and must all happen before a major cataclysm.

Hanson suggested some basic hurdles (or steps) paraphrased below:

But I believe that he was missing crucial elements. I believe that the discovery of energy money is the prerequisite for this grand goal. Energy money initiates a step change in how organic intelligence can operate, because the map truly represents the territory, in high fidelity.

Bitcoin is our energy money. It is our zero-to-one moment. An incorruptible scorecard in the grand game of life. A time and energy superconductor enhancing economic (human action) and behavioral feedback loops, enabling coordination across time and space in a way never before achieved.

It is our tool to get through the Great Filter and we need to remember that so we dont get lost in the minutia.

Ive taken the liberty of adapting Hansons work into what I believe is more accurate, with an emphasis on what Ive added to his general list.

I am convinced step 12 is not only the one most missing from any analysis by physicists all throughout history, but it is the most important and difficult to achieve in light of the technological advancements of an intelligent species and its propensity to want to control the uncontrollable.

Physicists have mastered the empirical study of matter and, through that success, have forgotten to account for the very real and very significant complex, random process of life; humanity perhaps being at the tip of this process.

As a result, they blindly believe that we can just fit reality into a series of models or equations, and as such, engineer our way through the Great Filter without accounting for the complex nature of human consciousness and intersubjective reality. Along this path, they sanitize the very life out of life.

In our dimension and in our timeline, weve had warnings from both sides of the academic spectrum, from Newton to Einstein, Huxley to Orwell, Nietzsche to Rand and Schopenhauer to Oppenheimer. Theyve all reminded us that false actions, arrogance and flying with wax wings can only lead to disaster.

Unfortunately, modernitys vanity and desire for comfort and control, all which stem from its collective fear, have conspired to drown out those voices of reason and replace them with a never-ending stream of meaningless noise designed to conform its constituents by numbing them into submission.

In a bid to control everything, fearful humans and the institutions they make up seek to sterilize the variance and randomness out of life so they can reduce it to a set of repeatable empirical processes. They abstract everything to the point that things are neither physical nor metaphysical, and everything is relative. Only then can they feel empty enough to be comfortable. Huxley explores this phenomenon in Brave New World Revisited, a series of essays written 27 years after his seminal novel by the same name.

The blind pursuit of sterile empirical ends at the expense of life, at the hands of collectivist megalomaniacs, is humanitys greatest threat and the only way to fix that is to reintroduce consequence to human action. To fix this, the map must accurately represent the territory so were all playing the same game, by the same rules.

When you finally become powerful enough to enslave, obsolete or blow yourself up, perhaps an asteroid is the universes way of pressing the cosmic reset button.

The discovery of energy money marks the point at which the science of matter is able to speak to the study of what matters. In this way, it enables, if not a unification, at least a direct relationship between physics and metaphysics.

I call it energy money not because its some literal battery thats storing energy in containers full of miners. I call it energy money because its the only form of scorecard (money) whose validity is priced in actual energy expenditure. The feedback loops between the cost of validation, the risk of fraud, and the demand in the market by humans seeking to cooperate on a functional standard all tie into work.

When resources, energy expenditure and the input of time are tethered to something that cannot be faked, co-opted or cheated, intersubjective value can be accurately measured and market signals, that is, prices become real. We begin to discover once again what things actually cost, and as such we as individuals and societies can make more accurate value judgements.

The behavior at the level of individual realigns toward natural order (arguably the definition of morality) and, at scale, results in functional, useful coordination among members of a society.

Without something like Bitcoin, intelligent sentient species cannot utilize their resources effectively or efficiently enough to become a meaningfully spacefaring species before wiping themselves out!

They cannot reach the point of energy mastery required to actually reach for the stars because 99% of what they do is wasted.

Reconciling physics and metaphysics means an intelligent, sentient species can make accurate value judgments and thus precisely measure and use the scarce resources it has toward maximizing energy output and minimizing time wastage.

Without such a high-fidelity transmission mechanism, the quantum wastage is not only too high but completely unknown. As a result, the road to serfdom via the incessant fear of loss and the knee-jerk reaction to control it all will prevail.

Bitcoin fixes this.

Many, including myself, have called Bitcoin the second Renaissance. As I wrote in a previous article for Bitcoin Magazine, "Bitcoin, Chaos and Order":

By tying the physical to the metaphysical, Bitcoin reunites matter to what matters. As such, it has the capacity to heal the world in the most deep and meaningful of ways.

This is both right and wrong.

Rightbecause Bitcoin will do this, and we will experience a renaissance of thinking, creativity, science, art, exploration, philosophy and more.

Wrongbecause it diminishes the magnitude of this discovery. It implies that it is another cyclical event similar to the Renaissance of yore. The reality is far more grandiose.

I would venture to say that every major enlightenment event along our timechain of human history was a pre-echo of sorts, culminating in Bitcoin.

Whether its the legends of Atlantis, the philosophy of the ancients, the gods of Egypt, the rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, they all represent life reaching for this point of Aufklrung, through the vessel of humanity.

This may be the first or millionth attempt at crossing the Great Filter and I cannot but find myself in awe of the sheer gravity of this moment.

An incorruptible, fixed supply of money is as close to perfect not because of the number of transactions per second it enables, but because of how closely it resembles or embodies the physical laws of nature and the universe.

By enabling humans to effectively measure, manage and transact the product of their labor, it means value can be created, transformed and transmitted with minimal distortion, and it trends toward the elimination of waste and falsehoods.

One cannot celebrate fake facts in the face of an economic reality tied to the physical laws of thermodynamics.

Bitcoin permits maximum fidelity in human action to permeate society,and as a result, feedback loops are shortened so that trade-offs are more evident, consequences are inescapable, and risk can no longer be hidden and subsequent losses socialized (moral hazard). Everyones skin is now in the game, and we all play by the same rules.

This framework unifies matter and what matters because the lies necessary to separate the two can no longer exist.

The study of what matters, the pursuit of truth, of principles and of meaning can once again be anchored to reality, and vice versa. The study and evolution of matter can operate within the framework and toward the ends that matter.

This will have profound implications for humanity and marks what may be the most important fork in the road since Homo sapiens separated from other hominids.

Bitcoin fixes this means we fix the money, to fix human behavior, to fix the world in time to progress beyond the Great Filter.

On a sound foundation, we can know what things truly cost and we can make accurate value judgments in order to engineer and innovate our way forward.

With Bitcoin, the next chapter in humanitys timeline can truly commence.

As Scarface wouldve said, had he been a Bitcoiner: First we fix the money. Then we fix the world. Then we get the galaxy.

Go here to see the original:
Bitcoin And The Great Filter - Bitcoin Magazine

Human Behavior

NOAA warns of ‘aggressive’ dolphin causing ‘concerns for human safety’ off Texas coast – Yahoo! Voices

AUSTIN, Texas Stay away from the too-friendly dolphin.

Officials have identified ananimal thathas gotten a bit pushy in the water off of North Padre Island,theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a press release.

North Padre Island is about 20 miles east of Corpus Christi.

"Biologists report the animal is showing more aggressive behavior, separating children from their parents in the water, and isolating swimming pets from their owners," said the latest release issued on Thursday.

The problem is that people have been feeding, swimming and playingwith the dolphin for more than a year despite warnings from biologists, law enforcement and residents to stay away from it, according to the release.

Officials are warning that a dolphin has gotten too aggressive on North Padre Island and is separating adults from children in the water.

Dolphin attack:$20,000 reward for information about stranded dolphin 'harassed' to death on Texas beach

Watch:Curious dolphin makes a surprise appearance at a Florida beach

It saidthat the dolphin "has become so used to humans that it now seeks out people, boats, and any form of interaction."

The mammal also has wounds caused by boats and there are concerns about its safety, officials said.

People are being asked to leave the dolphin alone. Boaters are asked to avoid stopping if the dolphin comes to close and to slowly move away.

Swimmers are being asked to leave the water if they see the dolphin, the release said.

"While the dolphin may seem friendly, this is a wild animal with unpredictable behavior," according to NOAA. It is showing behaviors similar to other lone, sociable dolphins worldwide, officials said.

What's everyone talking about?: Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day

Those behaviors, according to the release, include following boats and people, losing its natural wariness and starting to play with and swim with people,

The dolphin in now in thelast stage of these behaviors which include showing dominant and aggressive behavior toward people, according to NOAA.

Story continues

NOAA and biologists are working to determine how to protect the dolphin.

Any interaction with the dolphin that may injure or change its behaviors is considered to be harassment and is illegal under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Feeding or attempting to feed wild dolphins is also illegal.

Violations can be reportedto NOAAs Enforcement Hotline at (800) 853-1964. Violationsare punishable by a fine up to $100,000up to 1 year in jail.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: NOAA warns of 'aggressive' dolphin looking for people off Texas coast

See more here:
NOAA warns of 'aggressive' dolphin causing 'concerns for human safety' off Texas coast - Yahoo! Voices

Human Behavior

Making room for wildlife: 4 essential reads – The Conversation

Millions of Americans enjoy observing and photographing wildlife near their homes or on trips. But when people get too close to wild animals, they risk serious injury or even death. It happens regularly, despite the threat of jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.

These four articles from The Conversations archive offer insights into how wild animals view humans and how our presence affects nearby animals and birds plus a scientists perspective on whats wrong with wildlife selfies.

In some parts of North America, wild animals that once were hunted to near-extinction have rebounded in recent decades. Wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, beavers and black bears are examples of wild species that have returned to large swaths of their pre-settlement ranges. As human development expands, people and animals are finding themselves in close quarters.

How do the animals react? Conservation researcher Kathy Zeller and her colleagues radio-collared black bears in central and western Massachusetts and found that the bears avoided populated areas, except when their natural food sources were less abundant in spring and fall. During those lean seasons, the bears would visit food sources in developed areas, such as bird feeders and garbage cans but they foraged at night, contrary to their usual habits, to avoid contact with humans.

Wild animals are increasing their nocturnal activity in response to development and other human activities, such as hiking, biking and farming, Zeller reports. And people who are scared of bears may be comforted to know that most of the time, black bears are just as scared of them.

Read more: Black bears adapt to life near humans by burning the midnight oil

When a recovering species shows up on its old turf or in its former waters, humans arent always happy to make room for it. Ecologist Veronica Frans studied sea lions in New Zealand, a formerly endangered species that moves inland from the coast to breed, often showing up on local roads or in backyards.

Frans and her colleagues created a database that they used to find and map potential breeding grounds for sea lions all over the New Zealand mainland. They also identified potential challenges for the animals, such as roads and fences that could block their inland movement.

When wild species enter new areas, they inevitably will have to adapt, and often will have new kinds of interactions with humans, Frans writes. I believe that when communities understand the changes and are involved in planning for them, they can prepare for the unexpected, with coexistence in mind.

Read more: When endangered species recover, humans may need to make room for them and it's not always easy

How close to wildlife is too close? Guidelines vary, but as a starting point, the U.S. National Park Service recommends staying at least 25 yards (23 meters) away from wild animals, and 100 yards (91 meters) from predators such as bears or wolves.

In a review of hundreds of studies, conservation scholars Jeremy Dertien, Courtney Larson and Sarah Reed found that human presence may affect many wild species behavior at much longer distances.

Animals may flee from nearby people, decrease the time they feed and abandon nests or dens, they report. Other effects are harder to see, but can have serious consequences for animals health and survival. Wild animals that detect humans can experience physiological changes, such as increased heart rates and elevated levels of stress hormones.

The scholars review found that the distance at which human presence starts to affect wildlife varies by species, although large animals generally need more distance. Small mammals and birds may change their behavior when people come within 300 feet (91 meters), while large mammals like elk and moose can be affected by humans up to 3,300 feet (1,006 meters) away more than half a mile.

Read more: Don't hike so close to me: How the presence of humans can disturb wildlife up to half a mile away

There are stories from around the world of people dying in the act of taking selfies. Some involve wildlife, such as a traveler in India who was mauled by an injured bear in 2018 when he stopped to photograph himself with the animal.

Tourists are often the culprits, but theyre not alone. As ocean scientist Christine Ward-Paige explains, scientists who have special permission to handle wild animals as part of their field research sometimes use this opportunity to take personal photos with their subjects.

I have witnessed the making of many researcher-animal selfies, including photos with restrained animals during scientific study, Ward-Paige recounts. In most cases, the animal was only held for an extra fraction of a second while vigilant researchers simply glanced up and smiled for the camera already pointing in their direction.

But some incidents have been more intrusive. In one instance, researchers had tied a large shark to a boat with ropes across its tail and gills so that they could measure, biopsy and tag it. Then they kept it restrained for an extra 10 minutes while the scientists took turns hugging it for photos.

In Ward-Paiges view, legitimizing wildlife selfies in this way encourages people who dont have scientific training or understand animal behavior to think that taking them is OK. That undercuts warnings from agencies like the National Park Service and puts both people and animals in danger.

Instead, she urges fellow scientists to work to show the vulnerability of our animal subjects more clearly and help guide the public to observe wildlife safely and responsibly.

Read more: Even scientists take selfies with wild animals. Here's why they shouldn't.

Read the rest here:
Making room for wildlife: 4 essential reads - The Conversation

Human Behavior

PAU Launches the Technology and Mental Health Concentration within its MS in Psychology Degree – PR Web

PALO ALTO, Calif. (PRWEB) June 03, 2022

Starting in the fall of 2022, the Master of Science in Psychology program at Palo Alto University (PAU) will offer a Technology and Mental Health Concentration. This concentration will explore the important role technology plays in todays society, the negative and positive effects of technology on mental health, and the complexity of the interaction between technology and human behavior.

Utilizing technology to enhance mental health is an emerging area of study, and PAU is at the forefront of this burgeoning field. Students will learn to identify the impact of technology on human psychology, which digital tools contribute to mental health, and how to develop these digital tools.

Students in this concentration will pair traditional training in graduate psychological science with cutting-edge courses about how technology affects mental health and how we can use technology to develop new treatments and improve mental health in the future.

Tech and Mental Health Coursework

The Technology and Mental Health Concentration covers current trends in mental health and wellness and includes these courses:

1) Technology and Mental Health for Children and Adolescents: Screen Time, Digital Interventions, and Teletherapy. This course explores the effects of technology on children and adolescents.

2) Evidence-based Digital Internet Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities. This course discusses the development and efficacy of technological innovations in healthcare.

3) Using Evidence-based Principles of Multimedia Learning for Product Design. Students will learn how people learn and process information and apply this framework to multimedia content design.

4) Mental Health and Design in the Digital World (User Experience). Students will learn how the development of technology has positively affected our wellness, learn the skills and strategies for UX product design, and become leaders of these future trends in mental health.

Careers in Technology and Mental Health

Students who graduate with this concentration become experts in the application of technologysuch as smartphone apps, virtual reality, and video gamesto enhance mental health in various industries. This concentration prepares students for technology-related employment in the fields of:

Graduates will understand the changing demands of mental health and tech in the workforce, the expansion of mental health and technology in the corporate sector, and the ways in which an understanding of psychology can benefit those who want to work in technology.

Click here to apply or learn more about PAUs MS in Psychology program, Technology and Mental Health Concentration. Applications are due August 5, 2022.

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PAU Launches the Technology and Mental Health Concentration within its MS in Psychology Degree - PR Web