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Human Behavior

There Is No Such Thing as a Fossil Mind – Discovery Institute

Photo: Tree of Life, a cave painting from Borneo, Indonesia, by Lhfage at English Wikipedia [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

This month,The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith:Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos(Harvest House 2021) appeared. The basic theme of the handbook, as described by editorsWilliam Dembski, Casey Luskin,andJoseph Holden,is how Science and Christianity are often presented as opposites, when in fact the order of the universe and the complexity of life powerfully testify to intelligent design.

I wrote one of the chapters, What Is Evolutionary Psychology? It concerns the effort to understand human psychology by appealing to a prehuman evolutionarypast. As such, it explains a large variety of human behaviors as the unconscious enactment of a Darwinian survival scenario among not-quite humans that is wired into modules in our brains.

Thus, the reasons we do things are not at all what we suppose:

Evolution explains, for example,why we shop: Gatherers sifted the useful from things that offered them no sustenance, warmth or comfort with a skill that would eventually lead to comfortable shopping malls and credit cards.Or gossip:Back in the day, if you didnt care to find out what was going on, you were more likely to die and less likely to pass on your incurious genes. Oh, and anger over trivial matters was oncekey to our survival.

As the examples above illustrate, EP does not explain puzzling human behavior so much as it offers Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest explanations for conventional behavior, whichsupplant traditional ones.

For example, why we are sexually jealous (not fear of abandonment, but sperm competition); why we dont stick to our goals (evolution gave us a kludge brain); why we developed music (to spot the savannah with little Pavarottis); why art exists (to recapture that lost savannah); why many womendont know whenthey are ovulating (if they knew, theyd never have kids); why some people rape, kill, and sleep around (our Stone Age ancestors passed on their genes via these traits), and why big banks sometimesget away with fraud(we havent evolved so as to understand what is happening).

EP alsoaccounts for dreams(they increase reproductive fitness),false memories(there might be a tiger in that tall grass ),menopause(men pursuing younger women),monogamy(control of females or else infanticide prevention),premenstrual syndrome (breaks up infertile relationships),romantic love(a hardwired drive to reproduce), rumination onhurt feelings(our brains evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences but slowly from the good ones),smiling(earlier, a cringe reaction), andwonder at the universe (explained by how early man lived).

In the chapter, I offer many more examples of the current effort to explain aspects of life or human behavior in a narrow, Darwinian way. These explanations satisfy a need felt by many for a scientific account of their behavior. But often, the science behind evo psych is nothing more than the fact that the persons offering the explanation have degrees in one or another field of psychology and a knack for coming up with an idea that is easy to market in popular media. The output has earned considerable skepticism.

Of course, we are free to accept these ad hoc evo psych explanations if we wish. Like astrology and palm reading, they make good conversation pieces. But the claim that they are science does not strengthen them and should not give them more credibility.

American philosopherSubrena E. Smithrecently launcheda sharp attackon evo psych. She points out that neuroscience has never identified the brain modules or systems that would enable evo psych to make sense.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institutes Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

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There Is No Such Thing as a Fossil Mind - Discovery Institute

Human Behavior

Tuskless Elephants: Is These Animals’ Tusklessness a Result of the Mozambican Civil War? – Science Times

Recently published research describes animals as well adapted to the conditions, including the behavior of other creatures like humans.

Such a human behavior,The Economistreported, can force radical changes on "species an evolutionary eyeblink."

Princeton University biologist Shane Campbell-Staton investigates how animals adjust to human creations such as pollution and cities.

As indicated in the report, his interest was piqued by a movie featuring tuskless female elephants of Gorongosa National Park located in Mozambique.

ALSO READ:Capybaras: Everyone's Favorite Dog-Sized Rodent

(Photo : tontantravel on Wikimedia Commons)Tuskless bull Asian Elephant in Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary

The absence of tusks of these elephants was believed to be a result of another man-made creation, specifically the Mozambican civil war, as described in theMass Atrocity Endingssite, which started in 1977 and ended in 1992 and was partly paid for by elephant killing for their ivory.

Approximately 90 percent of pachyderms that lived in Gorongosa are believed to have been killed. According to biologists, they wondered if rising tusklessness might be an adjustment to make elephants less attractive to their human predators.

Dr. Campbell-Stato said it was a possible theory, although no one had actually tested it. Through a combination of surveys and old video footage, he, together with his colleagues, concluded that approximately 18 percent of the female elephants in Gorongosa were "tuskless" prior to the war.

Thirty years after, after it was over, the number had gone up to 50 percent. As suggested by computer simulations, the possibility of such a drastic change occurring by chance, even in a reduced population, was little.

Elephant X Chromosome

ANewsAroundWorldreport said, aside from verifying the change, the researchers were able to unravel these animals' genetic roots. As the study specified, tusklessness is a result of a mutation in a gene on what the authors describe as the elephantine X chromosome, which is described in general by theNational Library of Medicine. As with humans, two X chromosomes would make a female, and an X and Y would make a male.

Regrettably for males, researchers said, "mutation is a package deal" that comes with changes to genes nearby that delay the development of the embryo.

Males who are inheriting the mutant gene are dying before birth. Females, on the other hand, can avoid the deadly side effects if one of the two X chromosomes they have has a non-mutated gene, although they will still grow up tuskless.

Fortunately, for the females, the details of the manner the mutant gene is inherited are making it possible for them to inherit two copies.

Since mutant males are dying before birth, those surviving to reproductive age carry just the non-mutated versions of the X chromosome, guaranteeing their daughters will have at least a single copy, as well.

Currently, the continuous reintroduction of non-mutant X chromosomes from pales is setting a limit on the extent to which tusklessness can spread through the female populace.

Dr. Campbell-Staton explained that given time, as well as genetic recombination, evolution might unravel the "mutation for tusklessness from the maladaptive mutations" specifically in its nearby genes, opening the door for males to shed their tusks, as well.

He added, rumors have spread, of tuskless male elephants in the wild, although, so far at least, there's no concrete evidence.Finding one now seems unlikely. With the war over, the evolutionary pressure from poaching has eased. Tusks have gone back to being useful tools, helping their owners strip bark from trees and dig for water.

In recent years, the prevalence of tuskless females has dropped to roughly 33 percent. However, the speed of the change serves as a reminder that wars can change evolutionary history, as well as humans.

Related information about tuskless elephants in Mozambique is shown on News Headlines CN1's YouTube video below:

RELATED ARTICLE:Echolocation: Nature's Built-in GPS

Check out more news and information onAnimalsin Science Times.

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Tuskless Elephants: Is These Animals' Tusklessness a Result of the Mozambican Civil War? - Science Times

Human Behavior

Study to assess impact of passing boats on dolphin’s behavior and stress levels – DVM 360

The results may help strengthen conservation efforts to protect dolphins and other regional marine mammal species.

The Morris Animal Foundation has funded researchers at the MareCet Research Organization in Malaysia to launch a study examining the effects of underwater noise on the behavior and stress levels of 2 locally endangered dolphin speciesthe Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin and the Irrawaddy dolphin. This research aims to accelerate conservation strategies for protecting dolphins and other regional marine mammal species.

According to an organizational release, dolphins rely significantly on sounds using whistles, squeaks, and echolocation (eg, clicks) to navigate, communicate and forage. The MareCet team suspects human activities including boat traffic from tourism, sea transportation and fishing, increase underwater noise to dangerous levels for dolphins.

We want to understand if this noise pollution is impacting their vocalizations, making it harder to hear each other or forcing them to use more energy to whistle louder than the passing boats, said Saliza Bono, PhD, MS, the studys principal investigator, in the release. We believe it could be potentially dangerous, making it difficult for them to hunt for food or even separating individuals from their pods.

Throughout the next year, the team will analyze acoustic responses of both Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins and Irrawaddy dolphins in 2 sites in Northwest Peninsular Malaysia. Using a hydrophonean underwater audio recording deviceinvestigators will trace the dolphins sounds in relation to nearby boats.

The researchers will analyze the dolphins whistle rates, frequency levels and duration before a boat approaches them, while it passes and after it leaves. This data will be used to assess metabolic costs (stress levels) of the animals.

According to the release, whistles utilize a significant amount of a dolphins energy; therefore, if they are forced to whistle louder, longer or more frequently, it could cause them to expend energy needed to look for food. If a dolphin whistles less frequently during these periods, it may miss a critical opportunity to vocalize or signal danger to their pod.

This project could close a crucial knowledge gap and inform new conservation measures that might be needed to help these dolphins thrive, said Janet Patterson-Kane, BVSc, PhD, chief scientific officer at Morris Animal Foundation.

As with so many other species, its important to understand how our human activities are impacting them so we can adjust our behaviors to improve both their welfare and ensure their very survival, she added.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies Irrawaddy dolphins as endangered and Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins as vulnerable. These species inhabit tropical, coastal, shallow waters of Southeast Asia and due to their proximity to the land are threatened by pollution, habitat loss and entanglement in fishing nets.

Reference

Are dolphins harmed by noise from passing boats? New study will assess impact on behavior. News release. Morris Animal Foundation. October 20, 2021. Accessed October 20, 2021. [email].

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Study to assess impact of passing boats on dolphin's behavior and stress levels - DVM 360

Human Behavior

Michigan’s COVID-19 cases are rising while they fall elsewhere; here’s why that could be – WXYZ

(WXYZ) Despite falling COVID-19 cases across the country, Michigan is bucking the national trend. Cases remain high.

In fact, new daily COVID-19 cases in the state remain nearly twice as high as much larger states like Florida and California.

So why is Michigan different? Infectious disease experts say there are no easy answers.

The state has been through multiple surges of COVID-19. The latest is fueled by the delta variant, and as we move into the colder months, Michigan remains one of just five states that have yet to stop rising cases.

According to Dr. Matthew Sims of Beaumont Health, it is not unusual for Michigan COVID-19 cases to ebb and flow out of step with the rest of the nation. He said that's just one of the ways the delta surge is unique. Past surges have been shorter and sharper.

"Prior times, we would get this tremendous number of cases over a short period of time, and then it would fall immediately," he said.

But during the delta surge, cases have been climbing slowly and steadily since the end of June. The peak hasn't been as pronounced with this surge. It's likely just as large.

"Because it sort of spread out over more time, that's probably more cases overall involved. The reasons for these aren't 100% clear," he said.

Sims said one of the reasons states in the south, including Florida and Texas, saw peaks during summer may be the intense heat driving people inside just as the delta variant hit. Michiganders were spending more time outdoors.

Another factor in Michigan is the return to school. Last week, Michigan reported 100 new outbreaks. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said K-12 outbreaks are outpacing all other settings.

Sims said pediatric cases are a key driver of the surge and point to districts without mask mandates.

"The data is absolutely clear that in the school districts without mask mandates, there are higher cases of COVID-19," he said.

Now, we're entering the cold months with family gatherings and holiday celebrations.

Michigan's COVID-19 positivity rate, case rate, percent of inpatient hospital beds with COVID-19 patients and the death rate are all up.

"Do you expect this slow, steady surge to continue into and through the holidays, maybe into 2022?" I asked.

"It may. And that's frustrating and scary," Sims said.

The challenge in getting to the bottom of the surge in Michigan is that a lot of factors are driven by human behavior.

It's the same delta variant in Michigan as it is everywhere else.

Health experts say masking, vaccinations and staying home when you are sick will be critical in stopping the surge as we move into the cold weather season.

Additional Coronavirus information and resources:

View a global coronavirus tracker with data from Johns Hopkins University.

See complete coverage on our Coronavirus Continuing Coverage page.

Visit our The Rebound Detroit, a place where we are working to help people impacted financially from the coronavirus. We have all the information on everything available to help you through this crisis and how to access it.

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Michigan's COVID-19 cases are rising while they fall elsewhere; here's why that could be - WXYZ

Human Behavior

Reading the signs – National Catholic Reporter

Why do you not know how to interpret the present time? (Luke 12:59).

Rom 7:18-29a; Luke 12:54-59

Jesus would make a good meteorologist as he describes just how predictable the sky is about future events. Clouds blowing from the west signal it will rain. Or if the wind is coming up from the south, it means a hot day. Palestines location by the Mediterranean to the west and above the deserts of Arabia to the south made predictions easy if you recognized the direction of the wind.

But of course, his purpose in taking about the weather was to challenge the crowds for failing to draw the same obvious conclusions about the signs of the times. Human events also stirred up predictable storms. Tensions were evident in the activity of the Zealots against the Roman occupation that made it easy to predict the dangerous conflicts building in the nation. The ministry and preaching of John the Baptist had increased the expectation of Gods intervention.

In fact, Jesus wanted the crowds to recognize that his preaching and presence was itself a call to repentance and conversion. Why were they so blind to what was happening spiritually? He uses the example of someone going before a judge who fails to settle early with his opponent and is thrown in jail. Failure to reconcile when you have the chance can lead to deeper problems, so be reconciled.

The added detail of finding yourself in prison until you pay the last penny is a brilliant metaphor for just how conflicts, if allowed to take hold and lead to bitterness that lasts until we resolve them totally, without any residual trace of hurt or resentment. Marriage counselors know the value of early resolution and urge couples to never let the sun go down on their anger, for by morning even some small ill feeling will be deeply embedded.

St. Paul also reflects in his letter to the Romans how evil desires hide in our best intentions. I want to do the right thing, but compulsively do the opposite. Selfish habits trip us up on to way to some disciplined intention, trapping and humiliating us. This unconscious conflict within human behavior is resolved only because God is merciful. Failure aids in teaching us humility. No one is without faults, especially those who cannot admit their weaknesses.

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Reading the signs - National Catholic Reporter

Human Behavior

LIVING WITH CHILDREN: Stop parenting and start childrearing instead – YourGV.com

QUESTION: A friend recently pointed out that I constantly nitpick my 9-year-old sons behavior. Her words were, Youre on his case all the time. Why do I nitpick and how can I stop?

ANSWER: Nitpicking a childs behavior is almost always the consequence of personalizing, which is believing that any fault in your child reflects a fault of equal or greater magnitude in yourself.

Many, if not most, of todays parents moms, especially have fallen prey to the myth that childrearing is deterministic. Why moms, especially? Because mothers are the primary consumers of childrearing materials, and overwhelmingly so. And because many a modern mom believes in childrearing determinism, she personalizes. And because she personalizes, she is beset by anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Thus, she complains that childrearing is the hardest thing Ive ever done.

We have come full circle. Mothers, because they read entirely too much, believe in psychology. Because they believe that childrearing is deterministic, moms are more likely to personalize when their kids behave badly. Because they personalize, they nitpick. Nitpicking is a form of micromanagement, all forms of which are driven by anxiety.

People believe in psychology the same way they believe in any other unproven hypothesis: to wit, psychology has been marketed such that most people believe it is a science and, therefore, full of facts. Psychology is not a science. Thats a fact. It is a philosophy of human nature. It is also a fact that none of psychologys theories concerning human nature have ever survived the scrutiny of the scientific method. They are speculations. In fact, whenever a psychologist says that someone is behaving a certain way because (fill in the blank with a psychological explanation of human behavior), he is theorizing/speculating. He cannot prove that what he is saying is true.

When mothers did not read parenting books, they did not say things like, Raising a child is the hardest thing Ive ever done. And by the way, a mother who says such things is not thinking straight because raising a child, approached with a proper attitude (i.e., one that does not give credence to the musings of professional psychological speculators), is a simple matter.

I am a psychologist who writes parenting books. More accurately, I write books on mere childrearing, which is very, very different from what we now call parenting. The reason so many parents these days are experiencing so many problems is because they are parenting a post-1960s aberration based on bogus psychological theory. Mere childrearing is done with common sense, which most parents still have unless they have been parenting for so long that they cant break the bad habit. The difference between the two approaches is a matter of their goals. The goal of parenting is to raise a child who is happy and successful. The goal of mere childrearing is to emancipate a responsible citizen in the shortest possible time.

All of which is to say, if you stop parenting and begin merely childrearing, you will relax, stop nitpicking, and have a much happier parenthood.

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LIVING WITH CHILDREN: Stop parenting and start childrearing instead - YourGV.com

Human Behavior

Washington’s hospital occupancy could stay high through the year as delayed surgeries are expected to resume – The Spokesman Review

Hospital occupancy will likely remain high throughout the winter as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, a new modeling report from the Washington State Department of Health shows.

While hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have declined in recent weeks, modelers project that hospitals will be quite busy due to increases in people seeking health care and elective procedures deferred at the peak of the delta surge, as well as staffing shortages, the report says.

The influenza season could also keep hospitals busy throughout the winter.

What COVID activity will look like this winter largely depends on human behavior, and how much people use masks, travel, gather or spend time indoors.

Modelers estimate that 63.5% of the total population have immunity either from getting COVID-19 or being fully vaccinated in Washington, which leaves a little more than a third of the total population vulnerable to the virus.

If COVID cases increase modestly, COVID hospitalizations could continue to decrease through December. If COVID cases moderately increase, however, COVID hospitalizations might decline until the end of November, when they would begin to increase again.

Public health officials continue to encourage vaccination for those who have not received a COVID-19 vaccine, as well as booster doses for those who are eligible.

Statewide, 72% of the eligible population are fully vaccinated. In Spokane County, 59% of the eligible population are fully vaccinated.

The Spokane Regional Health District reported 325 new COVID-19 cases and no additional deaths on Thursday.

There are 139 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Spokane.

The Panhandle Health District reported 354 new COVID-19 cases and 14 additional deaths.

There have been 578 deaths due to COVID-19 in Panhandle residents.

There are 133 Panhandle residents hospitalized with the virus. Kootenai Health is treating 135 patients with COVID-19, including 44 in the critical care unit.

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Washington's hospital occupancy could stay high through the year as delayed surgeries are expected to resume - The Spokesman Review

Human Behavior

Doctor offers optimism — and caution — as COVID numbers improve – Rapid City Journal

As COVID-19 numbers tick down in the region, Dr. Shankar Kurra acknowledged encouraging signs surrounding the pandemic. He also offered a caution.

These are definitely encouraging signs that things are getting better, said Kurra, vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health Rapid City Hospital, talking in his office on a recent morning. The only thing I would point out is that these come in waves And its human behavior that causes waves.

Kurra said people tend to become more careful when cases rise, and then tend to let up when the situation looks brighter.

On Wednesday, active cases in South Dakota totaled 5,723, according to the South Dakota Department of Health, down from 7,325 at the beginning of the month.

Despite the improving numbers, Kurra said, hospitals are still operating at capacity.

Across the state, all three (health) systems are completely full, he said. At Monument, we are at capacity. We are managing. We still have to provide care not just for COVID patients but for regular folks who also have chronic diseases who need care.

Kurra said the Rapid City Hospital has approximately 260 patients in an in-patient setting, about 50 of whom are COVID-19 patients. He said the hospital had only three COVID-19 patients in June a number that peaked in August at more than 100.

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The numbers are going down, but theyre not down to where we were in June, and thats where we need to get to, he said.

Kurra reiterated the importance of the vaccination.

We have a vaccine that works, thats safe, thats effective and that prevents hospitalization and death, he said. Were talking about 90% protection for those vaccinated versus those who are not.

Kurra said about 190 million people in the country have been fully vaccinated.

They are doing very well, he said. So far, the evidence is strong, very clear.

In South Dakota, 66% of people 12 years old and older have received at least one vaccination, according to the South Dakota Department of Health.

The three vaccines in circulation are all effective at preventing serious illness and death, Kurra said, even though studies have shown some differences among the vaccines.

The real story is that all three vaccines are effective at preventing deaths, he said. If you got the vaccine it doesnt matter which one you got your risk for death (from COVID-19) is almost negligible.

Kurra touched upon the recent death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was fully vaccinated but who died from complications related to COVID-19. Kurra noted that Powell had multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that impeded the vaccines effectiveness.

People who have such conditions, Kurra said, along with young children not eligible for the vaccine, are especially dependent upon other people becoming vaccinated.

These folks are reliant on society acting as a firewall to prevent the disease from getting to them, he said.

Kurra mentioned recommendations regarding mask-wearing, as well, regardless of vaccination status.

If youre indoors and if youre with a lot of people, then you definitely want to wear a mask because you cannot distance yourself, he said. Ventilation is another reason why we recommend wearing a mask indoors.

Outdoors, he said, no masking is needed unless youre in a crowded stadium or a large gathering where its difficult to maintain that distance.

Such facts particularly about vaccines are presented frequently, Kurra acknowledged, often from faraway sources who may not harbor the trust of people who have not yet opted to receive the vaccine. And so he described the benefits of face-to-face conversations, noting that hes been holding in-person sessions about the vaccine, sometimes at the request of employers.

Ive had people tell me after the session was done that if only someone had explained this, I would have been more willing to get the vaccine, he said.

These sorts of close, one-on-one conversations, he said, are often vital for people wondering what the best thing for them to do might be.

Talk to your doctor, talk to your provider, talk to your pharmacist, he said.

As Kurra explained the importance of vaccines, and of people protecting each others health, he reflected on the larger framework of science.

Science is a humanistic tradition, he said. Its all meant to alleviate suffering and harm. The only way we can get folks who are still hesitant is to get the message to them that this is actually helpful and will prevent death and disease.

He stressed, too, that in an atmosphere of deep discord, thoughtful conversation creates the strongest path to conveying knowledge.

In the end the person receiving the message is another human being, Kurra said. It is very important to give them the information and let them decide. You cannot do that in a judgmental manner.

Kurra said the latest information about COVID-19, including news about potential booster shots, can be found on the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at https://www.cdc.gov/.

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Doctor offers optimism -- and caution -- as COVID numbers improve - Rapid City Journal

Human Behavior

Brian Laundries parents behavior while searching Carlton Reserve is not normal as theyre not frantic,… – The US Sun

BRIAN Laundries parents werent acting frantic enough while searching for their fugitive son on Wednesday at a Florida nature reserve, according to a body language expert.

Patti Wood told The Sun: What were seeing is different from that norm."

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The norm is to behave with a sense of urgency, walk together and be constantly shifting their heads to find any clue.

Wood didn't see that in the Chris and Roberta's behavior during the short couple video clips she evaluated.

"Theyre not together and not doing normal sweeping to side to side motion or looking low, at a regular level and looking up and away," she said. Theres not a franticness.

The FBI identified the skeletal remains found yesterday belonged to their 23-year-old son using his dental records.

"On October 21, 2021, a comparison of dental records confirmed that the human remains found at the T. Mabry Carlton, Jr. Memorial Reserve and Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park are those of Brian Laundrie, a statement by the FBI reads.

Two detectives shared their findings by paying a visit to the Laundrie's home in-person on Thursday evening.

The FBI also confirmed the identification in a statement.

"On October 21, 2021, a comparison of dental records confirmed that the human remains found at the T. Mabry Carlton, Jr. Memorial Reserve and Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park are those of Brian Laundrie," it read.

Authorities had been searching Brian since his parents Chris and Roberta reported him missing on September 17.

Laundrie had told his parents that he was going for a hike at the 24,000-acre Carlton Reserve on September 13 - which was the last time they saw him.

The fugitive has been on the run since his fianc Gabby Petito was found strangled to death in Wyoming on September 19.

The FBI confirmed the shocking discovery during a press conference on Wednesday, where they also characterized the death of Gabby as "murder" for the first time.

Chris and Roberta Laundriewere at the scene after joining the search when the remains and personal items were found.

During Wednesdays fruitful search at the swampy reserve, the parents were shadowed by authorities and reporters sifting through the rough terrain. <<>>

At one point, Chris can be seen veering into an isolated bramble while Roberta continues walking several yards ahead on the main trail.

Wood thought their different actions on that walk were especially telling.

I found it interesting that instead of walking and moving and doing the search together they separate out, she said.

They go off in different directions.

I find it interesting that he goes directly into a secluded, dark more challenging, and secretive area - and she walks away to a clear, you can see over a distance path.

They separate out like that.

Wood explains that the demeanor of the Laundrie parents struck her as outside the norm.

...Shes not walking that much far ahead of him even though hes going through deep brush, said Wood.

The lack of urgency by the head movements of Chris and Roberta as they looked around the wilderness for their missing son stood out to Wood.

Typically when youre searching like that, your body and head or upper part of face would be sweeping side to side, head down looking side to side, be on [the] same standing looking side to side, and looking up side to side, she said.

"Chris didn't want to pick the bag up because he wanted law enforcement to see it," their attorney Steven Bertolino said, adding: "This was caught on camera."

Bertolino explained that it was Chris who foundBrian's white plastic dry bag in full view of a news reporter who was about 20 feet off the trail, while police uncovered his backpack and human remains.

"Chris couldn't find the law enforcement because they were then out of sight, because Chris had been in the woods, so he didn't want to leave the bag there with the news reporter standing nearby, so he picked it up."

Once he found the item, Bertolino insists that Chris informed authorities.

"They looked at the contents of the bag," the lawyer explained.

"At that time, law enforcement officers showed him a picture on the phone of a backpack that law enforcement had located also nearby, and also some distance off the trail."

In a separate moment captured by Fox News, Chris and Roberta can be seen conversing with a police officer on a hiking trail in Myakkahatchee Creek after Brians belongings and partial skeletal remains were found and the park closed down.

In the clip, the officer at one stage seems to tell them "we've found something" and advises the pair to go home.

The officer places his hand on Chris Laundrie's right shoulder during the exchange.

Roberta then gazes up at face him and wipes his left cheek.

The tender moment between the parents struck Wood revealing how strong their loving bond is.

When theyre informed of what appears to be the findings of human remains, Wood notices Chris and Roberta collapse down of the arms as they come closer in to the sides to touch - to gain security and show some fear as his shoulders hunch over.

She then notices him settling a hand in his pocket suggesting something is shifted quite radically between left and right side.

As far as Roberta wiping Chriss tear-marked cheek, Wood is convinced the motion is intimate and proves their very close relationship.

What shes doing is an indication of great intimacy and caretaking.

Shes touching - the brush is going downwards - any touch in that intimate zone of the face would indicate that they have a very close relationship, [the] kind of touch shes done before or been in that area to do it out in public.

Wood compared it to a mother nurturing their child.

She said its similar to a mum wiping a childs face with a Kleenex.

She added: Its the same kind of maintenance and care thats very very intimate.

Chriss reaction to his wifes tender hand is also very informative.

She noticed how Chriss response is not to pull away.

Instead, his response is yes, thats it ok. I feel comforted by that.This kind of grooming behavior while learning their child may be gone,speaks to a long relationship, Wood said.

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Brian Laundrie timeline

Brian Laundrie has not been seen since the morning of September 13. Here is a timeline of Laundrie's latest whereabouts:

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Brian Laundries parents behavior while searching Carlton Reserve is not normal as theyre not frantic,... - The US Sun

Human Behavior

Does raising the minimum wage kill jobs? The elusive answer shows why economics is so difficult but data su – pennlive.com

Veronika Dolar, SUNY Old Westbury

For decades it was conventional wisdom in the field of economics that a higher minimum wage results in fewer jobs.

In part, thats because its based on the law of supply and demand, one of the most well-known ideas in economics. Despite it being called a law, its actually two theories that suggest if the price of something goes up wages, for example demand will fall in this case, for workers. Meanwhile, their supply will rise. Thus an introduction of a high minimum wage would cause the supply of labor to exceed demand, resulting in unemployment.

But this is just a theory with many built-in assumptions.

Then, in 1994, David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of this years Nobel winners, and the late Alan Krueger used a natural experiment to show that, in the real world, this doesnt actually happen. In 1992, New Jersey increased its minimum wage while neighboring Pennsylvania did not. Yet there was little change in employment.

When I discuss their work in my economics classes, however, I dont portray it as an example of economists providing a definitive answer to the question of whether minimum wage hikes kill jobs. Instead, I challenge my students to think about all the ways one could answer this question, which clearly cannot be settled based on our beliefs. But rather, the answer requires data which in economics, can be hard to come by.

Economics studies the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. And so, like other social sciences, economics is fundamentally interested in human behavior.

But humans behave in a wide variety of often hard-to-predict ways, with countless complications. As a result, economists rely on abstraction and theory to create models in hopes of representing and explaining the complex world that they are studying. This emphasis on complicated mathematical models, theory and abstraction has made economics a lot less accessible to the general public than other social sciences, such as psychology or sociology.

Economists also use these models to answer important questions, such as Does a minimum wage cause unemployment? In fact, this is one of the most studied questions in all of economics since at least 1912, when Massachusetts became the first state to create a minimum wage. The federal wage floor came in 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

And its been controversial ever since. Proponents argue that a higher minimum wage helps create jobs, grow the economy, fight poverty and reduce wage inequality.

Critics stress that minimum wages cause unemployment, hurt the economy and actually harm the low-income people that were supposed to be helped.

Most students in my introductory microeconomics class can easily show, using the standard supply and demand model, that an increase in the minimum wage above the level that the market sets on its own should drive up unemployment. In fact, this is one of the most commonly used examples in introductory economics textbooks.

However, this result assumes a perfectly competitive labor market in which workers and employers are abundant and employees can change jobs with ease. This is rarely the case in the real world, where a few companies frequently dominate in what are known as monopsonies.

And so others theorized that because monopsonistic companies had the power to set wages artificially low, a higher minimum wage could, perhaps counterintuitively, prompt companies to hire more workers in order to recover some of their lost profitability as a result of the increased labor costs.

How can economists tell which of these two theories may be right? They need data.

Studying the real world is difficult, and its constantly changing, so it is not easy to obtain all the relevant evidence.

Unlike in medicine or other sciences, economists cannot conduct rigidly controlled clinical trials, a method vacinologists used to test the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Due to financial, ethical or practical constraints, we cannot easily split people into treatment or control groups as is common in psychology. And we cannot randomly assign a higher minimum wage to some and not others and observe what will happen, which is how a biomedical scientist might study the impact of various treatments on human health.

And in studying the minimum wage, we cannot simply look at past times when it was increased and check what happened to unemployment a few weeks or months later. There are many other factors that affect the labor market, such as outsourcing and immigration, and its virtually impossible to isolate and pin down one factor such as a minimum wage hike as the cause.

This is where the pioneering work of natural experiments like the ones Card and Krueger have used over the years to study the effects of raising the minimum wage and other policy changes comes in. It began with their 1994 paper, but theyve replicated the findings with other studies that have deepened the amount of data that shows the original theory about the minimum wage causing job losses is likely wrong.

Their approach isnt without flaws mostly technical ones - and in fact economists still dont have a clear answer to the question about the minimum wage that I posed earlier in this article. But because of Card, Krueger and their research, the debate over the minimum wage has gotten a lot less theoretical and much more empirical.

Only by studying how humans actually behave can economics hope to make meaningful predictions about how a policy change like increasing the minimum wage is likely to affect the behavior of the economy and the people living in it.

Veronika Dolar, Assistant Professor of Economics, SUNY Old Westbury

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

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Does raising the minimum wage kill jobs? The elusive answer shows why economics is so difficult but data su - pennlive.com