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Human Behavior

The eternal state of the human mind a theory – Economic Times

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think. ~ Horace Walpole

Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspectthe knowledge of the brain? ~ Dracula

The lifetime blues minimum to face anything and the nerves caused disorders that became the target of treatment and debate between doctors. Oh, no! I dont have any psychological illness but physiological disorders.

A deeper import lurks in the legend told my infant years than lies upon that truth we live to learn.

One of the intellectual strengths of humans is the ability to imagine impossible things. When you have the fullest flower of intelligence, personality, and pluck.

Virginia Woolf, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath especially Robin Williams are historical figures in the field of psychology because of their mental disturbance.

I too have the horrible ailment Neurasthenia minus any emotional disturbance excluding my well-known anger.

I am never hostile, I am bold to stand against any sort of injustice or opinion or deed which is not morally good. Theres no yelling and melancholy madness.

My anger is like the basic human emotions, as elemental as happiness, sadness, anxiety, or disgust. These emotions are related to my basic survival and were honed over the course of my life history. Anger is related to the fight, flight, or freeze response of the sympathetic nervous system; it prepares humans to fight. But fighting doesnt necessarily mean throwing punches; it might propel communities to combat injustice trying to change laws and thoughts or enforcing new behavioral norms. Thus this is my tool for survival and I get angry against anything done wrong.

Prolonged-release of the stress hormones that accompany anger can cause physical suffering. Sometimes emotional states, particularly stress and anxiety, can also increase my anger. My anger had never been jealous anger, in my instability, vulnerability, and continuity of pain a hollow feeling of the sorrow of grudge would not lead my battle to a successful end. Mind is bogged down by lingering illness, it goes swoon to a tee those who want to flee are held by a shackle to Gods project Earth.

I have nothing to lose, I cant try to live again a perfect life, relaxed and healthy, under trees bearing chocolates, mountains of books but being less imaginary I say I dont want to lose this life with my Mum and the instances of delights divided by twilight.

The midbrain dopamine system comprises a group of dopamine-releasing neurons and their axonal projections in the brain. Although the dopamine system contains only a small set of neurons, this little population exerts a strong influence over a large area of the brain through dense and wide axonal dendrite. Dopamine neurons organize a variety of neural functions, including voluntary movement, action selection, motivation, reward-related learning, and memory. Serotonin helps regulate mood and is often called the bodys natural feel-good chemical.

Serotonin contributes to normal bowel function and reduces appetite as I eat to help you know when Im full. The neurotransmitter also plays a protective role in the gut. But my Mum is the antithesis trying to stuff food inside me even when I am full.

I dont know if this feel-good hormone is really controlling my sleep or bone density because my legs are getting weaker and I knew this might happen someday and hence after my surgeries, even liver transplant I never thought of using a wheelchair. The kind helpers used to offer me one but I denied it.

After surviving a life-threatening surgery when the doctor said everything is in Gods hands I always felt rewarding and felt good, woohoo! How many times does this make?

Wrist-cutting arriviste doesnt know various religions of the world have traditionally condemned suicide because, as they believe, human life fundamentally belongs to God.

The Italian poet Dante Aligheri, in The Inferno, reasoned from traditional Catholic beliefs and placed those who had committed the sin of suicide on the seventh level of hell, where they exist in the form of trees that painfully bleed when cut or snipped.

In Hinduism, suicide is referred to by the Sanskrit word atmahatya, literally meaning soul-murder. Soul-murder is said to produce a string of karmic reactions that prevent the soul from obtaining liberation. According to the Hindu philosophy of birth and rebirth, if not reincarnated, souls linger on the earth, and at times, trouble the living.

Buddhism also prohibits suicide, or aiding and supporting the act, because such self-harm causes more suffering rather than relieving it,suicide violates a fundamental Buddhist moral precept: to refrain from taking life.

Schizophrenia is a neuropsychiatric disorder that is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, loss of initiative, and general cognitive dysfunction. Its human-speci?c character and its genetic origin, coupled with its similar prevalence across societies varying in climate, level of urbanization, culture, industrialization etc., led to the early hypothesis that human brain evolution may have played a role in vulnerability to the disorder. They have a sort of disconnectivity problem disruptions of these organs of connection.

Bipolar disorder is a common and chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by mood disturbances with recurrent episodes of mania, hypomania, and depression interspersed by euthymic periods with none or subsyndromal mood symptoms. Studies, been associated with less grey matter volume in prefrontal brain areas.

Findings indicate that neuroanatomical traits potentially impacted by bipolar disorder are signi?cantly associated with multiple neurobehavioural domains. Findings suggest in the case of depressive disorder impaired reward-related learning signals in the ventral tegmental area during remission in patients with depression. This merits further investigation to identify impaired reward-related learning as an endophenotype for recurrent depression. Moreover, the inverse association between reinforcement learning and anhedonia(inability to feel pleasure) in patients implies an additional disturbing in?uence of anhedonia on reward-related learning or vice versa, suggesting that the level of anhedonia should be considered in behavioral treatments.

All such brain-behavior problems need optimism and are treatable.

My will power and mental concentration when my physical body, the container of my spirit which needs repairing so often is the most dangerous disease ever seen on the planet, and my recuperative power and the enjoyment of my mothers love when I make her furious are beyond imagination.

Fog hoveringOpaque, phantasmalMistral howlingMind shut like a clamKeep out the dustLive in gloryWracked fade in forgetfulnessLive heroically

Gray vapor aroundGrayness of tintThe sky made of ashSpleenful murky gray cloudsInky black firmamentImpertinent commentWise and profound

Grayness wrapping wings aroundHollow minds their indulgenceInsensate peopleWhere all is calm,Calm is calm, just silence,Hiemal commentsWalking on a tightrope plunging the fogMakes it a thrilling dream.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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The eternal state of the human mind a theory - Economic Times

Human Behavior

The Holocaust, history and today’s politics – The CT Mirror

On January 6 the world watched as domestic terrorists stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC. The pictures seared into our memories of this day are replete with symbols of hatred, racism, and extremism: The Confederate battle flag, the white power hand gesture, and the gallows erected near the Capitol reflecting pool.

What many may not have noticed within this sea of white supremacy was the prominence of anti-Semitic images: the black sweatshirt reading Camp Auschwitz, Work Brings Freedom, and T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: 6MWE = 6 million wasnt enough above Italian fascist symbols. Those who wore these shirts invoked the Holocaust, not to deny it, but to promote the continuation of its aims and ideology.

Sixteen years ago, the UN officially declared January 27 an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of victims of the Holocaust. By the time Soviet troops arrived at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, the SS forcibly had marched almost 60,000 starved and exhausted prisoners from the Auschwitz camp system westward into Germany; more than 15,000 would die on such death marches. At this camp, the Nazis exterminated 1.1 million people, 90% of whom were Jewish.

Among those Jewish prisoners liberated at Auschwitz, however, was a 25-year-old Italian chemist by the name of Primo Levi. Two years later, Levi would publish his account of his 11 months at Auschwitz under the title If This is a Man (later translated into English as Survival in Auschwitz). Levis account of Auschwitz focused not only on the day-to-day existence of the camp and the interactions amongst the prisoners he encountered there, but also dissected, in clinical and dispassionate fashion, what Levi termed the demolition of man, the process whereby the inmates at Auschwitz were completely dehumanized.

The existence of Auschwitz serves as a reminder of just what humans are capable of. When we teach about Auschwitz, we must remember that the camp stands as a symbol of the failure of humanity to stand up to unchecked hatred, bigotry, and tyranny, as a symbol of the challenge that confronts good people when faced with the absolute worst of human behavior.As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reminds us: The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.

In recent years, this noticeable rise in hate speech, antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia has provided renewed momentum to legislative efforts to fix the problem, and by the end of last year, 16 states mandated some form of Holocaust and genocide education. Even so, state boards of education rarely provide the additional resources necessary to gain specialized training on the topic. Thus, the memory of the Holocaust is actually subverted and trivialized, used by politicians to avoid doing the hard work of fixing a broken educational system. Indeed, as Alvin Rosenfeld argued in The End of the Holocaust: the very success of the Holocausts wide dissemination in the public sphere can work to undermine its gravity and render it a more familiar thing. . . . Made increasingly familiar through repetition, it becomes normalized.

Aseducators, we know that the fix to rampant and willful ignorance, baseless hatred, and vile behavior is not so simple. We need a massive investment in basic internet and information literacy to save our democracy. Our belief in democracy rests on humans ability to reason, to separate fact from fiction, myth, and conspiracy theories. Equipping people with these basic tools is a starting point. We absolutely need to teach our students about Auschwitz and about gas chambers, but we also must teach them to distinguish between historical facts and the twisted lies of conspiratorial fiction and propaganda.

Teaching the Holocaust, alone, is not the solution to confronting antisemitism, racism, bigotry, and hatred.Teaching the Holocaust, alone, out of context, will not save our democracy. We need a systematic framework that teaches students the responsibilities of citizenship, the basics of human rights, and addresses massive income disparities and wealth gaps that plague public education in this country.

Teachers need to be trained how to teach difficult topics, how to engage in difficult conversations, and not to avoid what feels uncomfortable. If teachers teach the Holocaust, they need to be able to explain how easily a democracy can be subverted, how easy it is for ordinary people to turn their heads and look away, and how a system of discrimination can evolve into a policy of extermination.

Thepervasiveness of the symbols of the Holocaust swastikas, facile comparisons to concentration camps and Nazism across the political spectrum indicate that the lessons of the Holocaust have not been learned. Indeed, they have become completely trivialized. This at a time whenNazis are literally marching in torch-light parades, carrying out pogroms in synagogues, and attempting to take over Congress.

Holocaust denial and distortion is not new, but for a long time it was fostered by a relatively small number of lunatic conspiracy theorists. The growth of the right-wing internet and social media means that a prominent space now exists, purposefully built and shared, where antisemitism, racism, and white supremacy can feed off one another.

The crowd that attacked the Capitol on 6 January not only proudly demonstrated their white supremacist beliefs but also indicated their readiness to put beliefs into action. They seek to use violence and hatred to create a world that matches their goal: destruction of those who believe in the equality of humans.

Holocaust education, by itself, will not be enough. Let us resolve to teach our young people how to determine the difference between historical fact and fiction. Let us equip our students with the tools to recognize hate speech, conspiracy theories, and dubious web resources. Let us hold big tech companies accountable for profiting off organized hate and discrimination, while hiding behind claims to free speech only when it is convenient. Let us hold them responsible for funding basic internet and information literacy. Maybe then we can help people understand why taking over Congress in an Auschwitz shirt is indicative of deep and real threats to our democracy.

Avinoam Pattis a Professor and Director of Judaic Studiesat the University of Connecticut. Laura Hilton is a history professor at Muskingum University in Ohio.

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The Holocaust, history and today's politics - The CT Mirror

Human Behavior

Use Your Power To Go First And Change The Way We Work And Live – Forbes

Relationships changed in 2020. How, when, where, and why we interact changed, as well as what we talk about and do together. Of course, some of these changes are due to the outbreak of a deadly and contagious global pandemic, but other were a long time coming. Weve moved on from the Industrial Revolution, but many of our ways of being at work and at home have not. Children born in each subsequent year are native to ever-more technologies for communication and otherwise that are evolving at an ever-increasing rate. Social dynamics have pushed equity and justice to their right position front of mind, across racial, physical and mental ability, economic, geographic, gender, sexuality, political, and other divides.

Some of these changes, like social distancing and remote work have been largely adopted, at least in some communities. Others, like equitable hiring and just access to healthcare, remain very much aspirational. We all have a lot to do in catching up with these changes and being part of, or even accelerating the healthier, more equitable, just, inclusive, and sustainable way of interacting that is possible.

Making these changes offers massive rewards for us as individuals, as well as the teams and communities were part of, and the people and planet around us more broadly. Those who do will emerge as the trusted, innovative, and resilient leaders who will win customers, employers, and investors in the next chapter. To say nothing of being happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. But it is effortful to change in these ways it requires hard, deep, and lifelong work. Some have compared it to the labor of birth, or a caterpillars transformation in the cocoon.

Caterpillars retreat to a cocoon to liquefy and rebirth themselves as butterflies.

So how do we change the way we relate to each other, at work and in our lives, to be healthier, more equitable, just, inclusive, and sustainable? The prerequisite foundation is improving our relationships with ourselves. We must take the time to understand our unique way of being how do we think, what do we need to recuperate, who do we benefit from spending time with, when do we focus best, or not at all. We can also learn how to best care for ourselves through the universal elements of human experience, including grief, joy, shame, pride.

Evolving our relationship with ourselves in this way is the only path to upgrading our relationships with other people to the level called for in a healthier version of capitalism. Reverend angel Kyodo williams put it clearly in a conversation with Krista Tippett: To transform as a society we have to allow ourselves to be transformed to be transformed as individuals. And Jerry Colonna says, to lead means to be a better person, or more succinctly: better humans make better leaders.

OK, so we have to transform into better humans. Is that all it takes to build the relationships required for an economic system that works for everyone? Well, no, there are a lot of policy, organizational, and interpersonal shifts that will be required. But if when we each do the work required to be our best selves, those policy changes are a lot more likely come up on the legislative agenda and get passed. CEOs and line managers will design meetings and hiring processes and performance management systems that recognize the power of diversity for their teams performance. Because very few humans on the face of this Earth, in their best selves, want to eradicate polar bears or perpetuate racist or misogynistic workplaces. But we are doing both of those things in our current status quo because we have allowed media, habits, inertia, and fear to prevent us from uncovering and acting on our true best selves.

There are lots of how-tos out there about becoming your true or best self. Which is a good thing, because it is a very personal process that each of us do somewhat differently. But its also important to recognize a point raised by Brene Brown in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, which is that knowing the steps to do something is not sufficient to make it happen. There are things that get in the way, and prevent us from doing things even when we want to do them and know how to do them.

Most human behavior is aimed at keeping us safe and/or making us feel loved or respected. And doing things differently is not generally associated with safety or celebration. So our natural drive for safety and acceptance prevent us from making the changes necessary to work and live in a way thats healthier, more inclusive, equitable, just, and sustainable.

Jerry Colonna emphasizes Growing Up as the key to effective leadership.

In a recent webinar, Colonna identified a critical element of shifting the way we

interact, so that we could achieve this new way of relating. Someone has to go first. Theres a bit of a prisoners dilemma here, in that we now have the research and experience to know a lot of the ways of relating that would be conducive to healthier, more inclusive, equitable, just, and sustainable teams and organizations. But we remain humans, with innate drives to stay safe and loved. So we are loathe to change our behavior.

What is required, Colonna said, is that someone go first. He suggests that those of us who have some kind of status power age, seniority, race, title be the one to take the risk of acting differently, since it is not actually risking our safety or loved-ness at all in that context. This might be at home, in your office, with friends, or on a board or committee where you serve. And the issue might be a trivial one that joke was offensive to me or strategic we have to remove our preference to hire Ivy League graduates. The important thing is that you recognize a source of power that is keeping you safe, and then take the not-so-significant risk to interact differently.

And of course, keep doing the work on yourself, toward recognizing the truth that you can be safe and loved, even if you choose to relate to other people differently, and indeed making those changes will improve your well-being, performance, and life satisfaction.

Email us for a free worksheet to think about how and why you might want to go first in 2021. And read more about how to connect your mundane daily habits to larger purpose here.

Do you want to be a butterfly enough to enter a cocoon?Do you dare be the first to go in?

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Use Your Power To Go First And Change The Way We Work And Live - Forbes

Human Behavior

Verified: More Parking Puts More Cars on the Road – Sightline Institute

Do cities create greener lifestyles? Or do they just enable them?

Its very, very, very clear that people who live closer to other people drive less. But how much of this is due to the fact that people who were already predisposed to driving lessthose of us who dont particularly enjoy driving, for exampleare deliberately living where parking is scarce and buses are frequent?

A forthcoming academic paper finally begins to answer this crucial question. Its breakthrough conclusion: Bigger parking lots make us drive more.

Even if we ignore the breathtaking economic costs of dedicating scarce urban space to car storage, mandatory parking isnt an all of the above strategy that simply lets people choose their favorite mode of transportation. Instead, as UCLA professor Donald Shoup put it in 1997, parking spaces are a fertility drug for cars.

Speaking scientifically, the key to proving a cause-and-effect relationship is finding a randomized sample of human behavior.

And in their new paper, What Do Residential Lotteries Show Us About Transportation Choices?, four Californian academics found such a sample: the free, site-specific lotteries that San Francisco uses to select who gets to live in the price-regulated homes of new apartment and condo buildings. (Because this is San Francisco, a two-person household generally can qualify while earning up to $118,200, equivalent to 120 percent of city median income. So these findings dont apply only to people who would struggle to afford a car.)

Its so hard to do this kind of research, wrote Jessica Roberts, a principal at Portland-based Alta Planning + Design and one of the countrys leading experts on the science of transportation behavior. Their elegant experimental design is a huge breakthrough.

After surveying the auto ownership and basic transportation habits of the residents of 2,654 homes in 197 projects built since 2002, the authors (Adam Millard-Ball, Jeremy West, Nazanin Rezaei, and Garima Desai) found that projects with more on-site parking induce more auto ownership:

Buildings with at least one parking space per unit (as required by zoning codes in most U.S. cities, and in San Francisco until circa 2010) have more than twice the car ownership rate of buildings that have no parking, the authors write.

Do buildings with less parking and car ownership limit the job prospects of their occupants? Apparently not. The team found no correlation between parking supply and employment status at the time of their 2019 survey.

They also found that more parking led to more driving, less transit use, and less walking. And they checked the locations of the 197 projects and found that non-automotive transportation choices seem to be induced by higher AllTransit scores (a measure of nearby mass transit quality by street address), higher WalkScores (a measure of the diversity of destinations within walking distance, inspired in part by an old Sightline blog post), and higher BikeScores (a measure of the quality of nearby bike networks).

Its not just that people who enjoy walking to the store will choose to live near stores. Its that living near stores makes us more inclined to walk, and less inclined to drive.

We shape our buildings, Winston Churchill said. And afterward, our buildings shape us.

This paper doesnt close the book on the questions of how much our buildings shape us, and in which ways, and which of us they shape more or differently. Its one study in one city from one year.

But it is a big new confirmation of one of the central hypotheses of the modern pro-housing movement.

Weve known that Amsterdam, built mostly before the automobile was invented, has much lower energy use per person than Seattle, despite their comparable population and wealth. Weve known that this pattern holds within countries, too. When youre measuring greenhouse emissions per person within a country, density is all but destiny. Weve known that if everyone on the world could consume energy like Netherlanders rather than like Cascadians, it would be far easier to find our way to a planet that can remain both prosperous and habitable for human life.

But at least here in the States, we havent actually had much solid evidence that building cities differently will actually change our behavior enough.

This new study strongly suggests that its possible, all these centuries later, to build new Amsterdams.

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Verified: More Parking Puts More Cars on the Road - Sightline Institute

Human Behavior

Global Societal Surveillance Market Research 2021: COVID-19 has Dramatically Reinforced the Notion that Surveilling Citizens Provides a Net Benefit to…

Dublin, Jan. 27, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Societal Surveillance Market by Technology, Solution, Applications, and Services 2021 - 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This research evaluates the companies, strategies, technologies and solutions involved in this emerging surveillance society market. It provides analysis and forecasting for key technologies and solutions including digital identity, tracking, mobile payments, blockchain technology, social credit systems, social distancing solutions, digital twins, augmented and virtual reality.

Based on several key drivers, there is a major cultural shift underway towards a surveillance society, which entails primarily observation, tracking, and analysis of human behaviors. Rapidly becoming a social norm in some parts of the world, surveillance gained substantial societal support due to the need to surveil certain individuals that may be foreign state-actor supported terrorists, or in some cases, domestic enemies of the state.

However, other factors, such as state control over civilian behavior have taken the fore with the rise of social credit monitoring and the advent of COVID-19, which have dramatically reinforced the notion that surveilling citizens provides a net benefit to society. Recent concerns and threats stemming from the pandemic have added a new dimension of safety and security to protect human lives. The new expectation will have a longer-term impact of routine behavior and processes. In addition to physical threats associated with pandemics, bad actors also seize the opportunity to engage in various threats against cyber infrastructure.

By way of example, a recent initiative known as the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), was formed by leading technology companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and others for purposes of tracking COVID-19 vaccinations. More specifically, the VCI's stated purpose is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records based on open, interoperable standards so they can achieve two things: (1) protect and improve their health, and (2) demonstrate their health status to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy.

When viewed as a whole as positive, the notion is that societal surveillance provides greater benefits than losses in terms of overall personal privacy. These benefits may include the ability to mitigate the impact of pandemics. On the other hand, the downside of civil surveillance is considered trading safety for liberty. Especially in the United States, the freedom to act anonymously is considered by many to be a core right of democracy in terms of civil liberties identified in the Bill of Rights.

The post-pandemic era provides ample justification for persistent citizen identification and continuous tracking and tracing of location and social interactions. All of the key technologies used are evaluated throughout this research, which includes radio communications with devices, optical analysis via video and still pictures, and even via advanced biometrics such as unique biological signatures and presence as may be detected by ubiquitous sensors with reads transmitted via IoT and evaluated via AI-enabled analytics.

Many of the technologies used for machine-related monitoring and analysis, such as computer vision for autonomous vehicles, shall be augmented for use in the social distancing solutions market in terms of identification, tracking, and tracing human behaviors. For example, real-world physical access is anticipated to be impacted in a big way due to the pandemic. Accordingly, the publisher sees a keen need for physical access controls, transforming how citizens travel, use public places, and interact with other people. These social distancing market technologies will provide the basis for solutions that enable tracking/identifying people for access to airports, parks, sporting venues, and other public places.

The ability to identify, track, and correlate digital and physical identity is of paramount importance to the societal surveillance market. By way of example, digital currencies such as Bitcoin provide for a certain level of anonymity in terms of financial transactions. However, the underlying technology in support of crypto-currencies, blockchain technology, is being adopted by China as it looks to unveil a digital-only version of its currency, which would provide unprecedented governmental oversight and control over transactions. This fits with their drive towards a social credit society in which every citizens' actions are observed and considered.

There is an emerging market for surveilling society, which includes observation, tracking, and data analytics to gather and analyze data. This market also involves the use of additional technologies such as the combination of digital twin technology, augmented and virtual reality to provide an improved means of observing and interacting with citizens. Additionally, governments may leverage the ability to observe citizen behaviors by tracking digital payments in an increasingly cashless global society.

This market also includes the ability to score citizens as part of an overall social credit system that goes beyond "acceptable" and "unacceptable" individual behaviors to focus on government mandates such as compliance with public safety rulings associated with virus outbreaks.

Select Research Findings:

Target Audience:

Key Topics Covered:

Asset Tracking Market by Technology, Infrastructure, Connection Type, Mobility, Location Determination, Solution Type, and Industry Verticals

1. Executive Summary

2. Asset Tracking Market Segmentation

3. Introduction

4. Asset Tracking Solutions

5. Asset Tracking in Industry Verticals

6. Company Analysis

7. Asset Tracking Market Forecasts 2021 - 2026

8. Conclusions and Recommendations

9. Appendix: Slap-and-Track Asset Tracking Solutions Market 2021 - 2026

Blockchain Technology Market by Service Type, Applications, Solutions, Industry Verticals

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Blockchain Ecosystem and Marketplace

4. Blockchain Market Outlook and Forecasts 2021 - 2026

5. Blockchain Vendors

6 Conclusions and Recommendations

Human and Machine Trust/Threat Detection and Damage Mitigation Market by Technology, Solution, Deployment Model, Use Case, Application, Sector (Consumer, Enterprise, Industrial, Government), Industry Vertical, and Region

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Technology and Application Analysis

4. Company Analysis

5. Market Analysis and Forecast 2021 - 2026

6. Conclusions and Recommendations

Social Credit Market by Physical and Cyber Infrastructure (Sensors, Cameras, Biometrics, Computer Vision), Software (Machine Learning, Data Analytics, APIs), Use Cases, Applications, Industry Verticals, and Regions

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Social Credit System Technologies and Applications

4. Company Analysis

5. Social Credit Systems Market Analysis and Forecasts

6. Conclusions and Recommendations

7. Appendix: Social Credit Market Supporting Technologies

Social Distancing Solutions Market by Technology, Gear, and Applications in Industry Verticals

1.0 Executive Summary

2.0 Introduction

3.0 Technology and Application Analysis

4.0 Social Distancing Solutions Company Analysis

5.0 Social Distancing Market Analysis and Forecasts

6.0 Conclusions and Recommendations

7.0 Appendix

Digital Twins Market by Technology, Solution, Application, and Industry Vertical

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Digital Twins Company Assessment

4. Digital Twins Market Analysis and Forecasts

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

Artificial Intelligence in Information and Communications Technology: AI and Cognitive Computing in Communications, Applications, Content, and Commerce

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. AI Intellectual Property Leadership by Country and Company

4. AI in ICT Market Analysis and Forecasts 2021 - 2026

5. AI in Select Industry Verticals

6. AI in Major Market Segments

7. Important Corporate AI M&A

8. AI in ICT Use Cases

9. AI in ICT Vendor Analysis

10. Summary and Recommendations

11. Appendix: Key AI in ICT Patents

Big Data Market by Leading Companies, Solutions, Use Cases, Business Cases, Infrastructure, Technology Integration, Industry Verticals, Region and Countries

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Big Data Challenges and Opportunities

4. Big Data Technologies and Business Cases

5. Key Sectors for Big Data

6. Big Data Value Chain

7. Big Data Analytics

8. Standardization and Regulatory Issues

9. Key Big Data Companies and Solutions

10. Overall Big Data Market Analysis and Forecasts 2021 - 2026

11. Big Data Market Segment Analysis and Forecasts 2021 - 2026

12. Appendix: Big Data Support 0f Streaming IoT Data

Next Generation Mobile Payments by Implantable Technology

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Mobile Payment Technologies and Solutions

4. Mobile Payments Ecosystem

5. Regional Mobile Payment Market Analysis and Forecasts 2021 - 2026

6. Conclusions and Recommendations

Augmented and Mixed Reality Market by Technology, Infrastructure, Devices, Solutions, Apps and Services in Industry Verticals

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Augmented Reality Ecosystem

4. Augmented and Mixed Reality Market Drivers and Opportunities

5. Company Analysis

6. Market Analysis and Forecast

7. Conclusions and Recommendations

Original post:
Global Societal Surveillance Market Research 2021: COVID-19 has Dramatically Reinforced the Notion that Surveilling Citizens Provides a Net Benefit to...

Immunology

Herd immunity could be reached by end of summer: Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar immunology expert – The Peninsula Qatar

The first COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered in Qatar and around the world, offering hope that an end to the pandemic could be in sight. Professor of Teaching in Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar (WMC-Q), DrAli Sultan, says if the ongoing vaccination campaign goes well, herd immunity could be reached by end of summer and situation closer to normal by the end of 2021.

How would you see the pre-COVID vaccine and post COVID vaccine times?Scientists, including myself, are very excited at the prospect of an effective vaccine and the prospect of returning to normality. Starting a mass vaccination program is an important first step towards ending this pandemic. And it has come relatively quickly. Producing an effective vaccine against an infectious disease is a long process that in the past has usually taken many years. The development of the COVID-19 vaccine within a span of 8-9 months, on the other hand, has been extraordinarily fast. It has shown how quickly scientific development can be achieved via collaborative hard work, and how much the will can produce the means.

In addressing the above question, I will consider the following issues:1: What next after vaccination: One has to remember that COVID-19 vaccine won't be available immediately for everybody. Early evidence suggests that the available vaccines reduce peoples risk of developing COVID-19 by around 80-95 percent. Coronavirus is likely to continue its rapid spread until a large majority of the population is vaccinated or has survived a natural infection. The bottom line is that although an effective vaccine will certainly diminish greatly the relative risk of transmission, we still should not completely abandon basic public health measures, including the wearing of masks, hand hygiene and physical distancing.

2: Another issue to consider is re-infection, though rare, may still occur. Hence, strict practice of physical distancing, wearing a mask when in public, and frequent hand washing remain key. In the winter, it is particularly important to not gather indoors in small or large groups. Also, get a flu shot.

3: Post-COVID effect on the health of those infected: We are just beginning to learn more about the after effects of the infection. Some people, now referred to as long-haulers, are also reporting that their COVID symptoms keep dragging on for weeks. These symptoms include everything from headaches and cognitive problems to mood changes, fatigue, decreased exercise tolerance, and body ache.

4: The most important lessons that that this pandemic taught us are:a) Science and data should guide our decision now and in the future.b) Practicing good hygienic measures in hospitals, schools and other public places, could drastically reduce the spread and thereby eliminate new cases of COVID-19 and help to protect us from other infectionsc) Health authorities and government bodies should have plans and preparedness programs in place in order to avoid future pandemics.d) The COVID-19 pandemic has been a test, demonstrating that multilateral cooperation is the key to overcoming global challenges.

The first COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered in Qatar and around the world, offering hope that an end to the pandemic could be in sight: How long could it take to reach this in reality?If the ongoing vaccination campaign goes well, herd immunity could be reached by end of summer and situation closer to normal by the end of 2021. This estimate is dependent on significant numbers of people in Qatar and around the world being willing to be vaccinated with one of several vaccines in various stages of development.

If 75% to 80% of people are vaccinated, then we should reach the herd immunity threshold by the end of summer and by the time we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end of 2021. This may allow us to reach some degree of normality that is close to where we were before the pandemic. If vaccination levels are significantly lower, (for example less than 50%), it could take a very long time to reach that level of protection and herd immunity.

Confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine grows, but at same time global concerns about side effects are on the rise: How could the confidence be built in people?There are number of surveys done on vaccine confidence, which showed that strong intent to get a COVID-19 vaccine has risen in countries like USA, UK, China, Brazil, Australia and South Korea. One of the main reasons for people who dont want to get a COVID-19 vaccine is concern about side effects. Even in countries where vaccines available to wider sections of the population, one hurdle will be public resistance to vaccination, or what is known as vaccine hesitancy or anti-vaxxers. Through the following facts and information we can build the people confidence in taking the COVID-19 vaccine:1. The first fact is that the public health authority in each country and the media have important role to play by explaining that there are some temporary side effects that happen with any vaccine injection such as pain at the site of the injection, mild fever, aches and sometimes headaches. These temporary side effects are good news because it means that the vaccine is doing its job by stimulating the immune system to fight. So it is common for highly effective vaccines to give people some symptoms. This is a sign the vaccine is doing what it was meant to do: Wake up the immune system and prepare it to fight off an infection in the future.2. The second fact is that COVID-19 vaccines do not contain a live or whole coronavirus, so the vaccinated person cant get COVID-19 from the vaccine.3. COVID-19 vaccines do not contain microchips or tracer technology.

There has been a lot of debate on whether people who had COVID-19 shall/shall not take the vaccine, whats your intake on that?The current data pointing to the fact that the people who have become sick with COVID-19 have some immunity, but we don't have enough evidence about antibody persistence to confidently say recovered patients are protected. Data suggest that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 from infection lasts at least 6-8 months, but we don't know enough yet about the degree to which previous infection confers immunity.We know that cases of reinfection have been documented; they appear to be rare. Likewise, an asymptomatic reinfection may go unnoticed, yet the individual may still transmit it to others. It would not be good if that person happens to be a healthcare worker. So, there is an argument to vaccine healthcare workers, even if they got infected because vaccines provide more robust immune protection than natural infection. Those at the highest risk of spreading the virus and those who might be tipping ICU capacity over the limit, are the ones who should be first in line for immunization.

Regarding the new COVID-19 variants that appeared in some countries, will the vaccine be effective in stopping them?New mutations of the coronavirus have been reported, which may change the nature of the proteins on its surface. This has led to fears that the vaccines developed so far may or may not work against these new variants because vaccines are based on teaching the body to recognize those proteins and attack them in future.The new mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus detected in UK created a new variant that is more transmissible than the earlier variants. However, there is no evidence that the new mutations seen in the SARS-CoV-2 will affect the vaccine efficacy or increase the severity of COVID-19.The vaccines teach the body about multiple spike proteins on the virus surface, and those spikes are also what the virus uses to get inside our cells. So a change in one protein because of a mutation doesnt automatically make the whole vaccine useless. But its important to keep looking for mutations in the coronavirus thats infecting people now. This will help researchers working on the vaccine field to know if we need to change the current vaccines or make new vaccines against COVID-19.Meanwhile, scientists are still studying whether changes in the coronavirus are making it more likely to infect children and teenagers. It will take time to find all these things out. Thats why its important to continue to wear masks in public, and stay away from large gatherings and unmasked interactions with people who dont live with you.

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Herd immunity could be reached by end of summer: Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar immunology expert - The Peninsula Qatar

Immunology

Delaying the second Covid dose in the UK is controversial, but it’s the right decision – The Guardian

A recent YouGov poll shows that the British are among the most willing in the world to take the Covid-19 vaccine. This is good news. But there are still questions about the vaccines and the way theyre being deployed, especially after the government decided to spread out the time between the two doses from three weeks to 12 weeks. The confusion is understandable, as we are in a developing situation. Clear messages about why tough decisions are made can get lost in the noise.

First, it is absolutely clear that the two Covid-19 vaccines that are being deployed in the UK will save lives. Moreover, they will reduce the burden on hospitals. The Pfizer data, measured from day 14 post-vaccination, showed only one severe case of Covid-19 in 21,000 vaccinated people. The AstraZeneca data showed no hospitalisations or severe disease in 6,000 vaccinated trial participants. The caveat to this was that there were a small number of cases in the first two weeks after the first vaccine dose. This brings me to an important point.

The vaccines need time to work. Vaccines prepare our immune system to defend against infection by showing it a small part of the virus, in this instance a spike protein that appears on the outside of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. Our immune system produces a bespoke response to this protein, making antibodies and memory cells which it stores away against future need. Creating these initial antibodies and memory cells can take a couple of weeks, so there is a lag time before you start to be protected. If our immune system later sees the spike protein again, it can bring out all its pre-made resources to act immediately.

So why do we need two jabs? Immunity elicited by the vaccine can be boosted. When the spike protein appears a second time and the immune system brings its armoury out, the immune memory cells will rapidly increase in number and more antibody will be produced to neutralise the virus. This will happen whether the spike protein is in the vaccine or on a live virus. To get the best response possible, the current vaccines were designed to have a second boosting dose after the first priming dose.

The UK governments decision to change the timing of the second vaccine dose has been controversial. After all, if you have evidence that scheme A works, why would you use an untested scheme B? But the decision will not have been taken lightly and there is some basis in the current data available. AstraZeneca trials reported early indications that a longer interval between doses is beneficial. Pfizer trials did not have such data, but the similar Moderna vaccine elicited immunity lasting just under two months after one dose. It boiled down to simple sums based on real-world scarcity: if a vaccine protects people from disease by 89% after one dose and 95% after two doses, and someone gives you just 200 doses this month, you can choose to protect 95 people after three weeks or 178 people for 12 weeks.

One worry is that the change in timing could encourage virus escape, resulting in worrisome new variants. The rationale is that if you dont kill off a virus immediately, mutations will enable the virus to survive better. But it has equally been argued that allowing natural infection would also be a reason to cause mutations. After all, the new variants that concern us now from England, Brazil and South Africa appeared before vaccines were rolled out. Also, simply by fighting the virus with these vaccines we are putting it under pressure to evolve. An optimistic view is that our immune memory is diverse and dynamic enough to adapt and counter any viral escape. It is encouraging that early data from the mRNA vaccines show they work against some of these variants. Close monitoring of the situation is necessary, but in the face of the current emergency we should try to save as many lives as we can as soon as possible.

This is why its crucial that we do not change our good social behaviour just because of vaccination. Even with 95% vaccine efficacy, one in 20 people could get Covid-19. We also need to consider virus carriage and transmission. When we catch the virus, our immune systems immediately roll out to fight it. The response may be so effective that we dont have any symptoms or even realise that the virus has briefly inhabited our bodies, yet we could still have passed it on to others.

We do not yet know to what extent the vaccines block this type of virus transmission. The recent reports from Israel of up to 60% protection after just one dose do not really contradict the Pfizer study data (which show 89%), because the former measured the presence of the virus and the latter measured disease symptoms they may simply illustrate the point that protection from disease is not the same as protection from having the virus, and 60% protection from carrying the virus is encouraging.

Immunity is not all or nothing. There are degrees of protection depending how good the vaccine is and how good your immune system is in responding to it. Some factors, such as age, health status, and type of virus variant, may mean that immunity is reduced. What we urgently need now is robust monitoring of the vaccine rollout to help us understand how different individuals immune systems respond to the vaccine, how the vaccines work against the different variants, and how the changes in dosing schedule affect the efficacy of responses. This will help us be more certain of our answers in the future.

Deborah Dunn-Walters is professor of immunology at University of Surrey and chair of the British Society for Immunologys Covid-19 and Immunology taskforce

This article was amended on 27 January 2021. There were a small number of cases in the first two weeks after the first vaccine dose, not two months as an earlier version stated due to an editing error.

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Immunology

Samsung Bioepis Opens the New State-of-the-Art Headquarters to Accommodate Next Stage of Growth and Innovation – BioSpace

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/370961b4-344f-49bf-86e4-e882f7265b1c

INCHEON, Korea, Jan. 25, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Samsung Bioepis Co., Ltd. today announced the opening of its new headquarters in Koreas Bio Cluster of Songdo, located in the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), a specially-designated economic zone in the city of Incheon. The new site is approximately 52,000 square feet, and will be the hub of Samsung Bioepis drive for development of next-generation biologic medicines. Construction of the new building was completed in December 2020.

We are very excited to be opening our new headquarters which will serve as the foundation for the companys next stage of growth. Our colleagues who were previously stationed in two campuses in Korea will be working together at the new headquarters to accelerate our passion for health, said Christopher Hansung Ko, President and Chief Executive Officer, Samsung Bioepis. With the new office equipped with the state-of-the-art laboratories, we look forward to providing our high-quality biologic medicines with more agility and with stringent quality control so that patients around the world can have access to our proven medicines more quickly and more widely available.

The newly established 12-story building will house approximately 1,000 employees, who will be working at the 17,300-square-foot laboratory space and 15,200-square-foot office space. Attached to the main building is a three-story Welfare Center which includes 4,750-square-foot cafeteria, a gymnasium and a fitness center for employees to enjoy. Furthermore, the company has an onsite childcare center to support employees with young children.

Established in 2012, Samsung Bioepis has rapidly grown to have five biologic products in immunology and oncology with more than 215,000 patients treated with the companys immunology products in Europe alone. The company is continuing its work to improve access to medicines through its unique process innovation development platform and currently has five biologic candidates in its pipeline ranging from hematology and ophthalmology.

About Samsung Bioepis Co., Ltd.

Established in 2012, Samsung Bioepis is a biopharmaceutical company committed to realizing healthcare that is accessible to everyone. Through innovations in product development and a firm commitment to quality, Samsung Bioepis aims to become the world's leading biopharmaceutical company. Samsung Bioepis continues to advance a broad pipeline of biosimilar candidates that cover a spectrum of therapeutic areas, including immunology, oncology, ophthalmology and hematology. Samsung Bioepis is a joint venture between Samsung Biologics and Biogen. For more information, please visit: http://www.samsungbioepis.com and follow us on social media Twitter, LinkedIn.

MEDIA CONTACTYoon Kim: yoon1.kim@samsung.com

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Physiology

11 MSU employees found in violation of OIE policy are still affiliated, LSJ reports – The State News

Content warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse and sexual harassment.

Out of 49 Michigan State faculty and staff in violation of university sexual misconduct policy since 2015, at least 11 are still affiliated with the university in some way, according to an 18-month Lansing State Journal investigation.

At least 14 people had multiple people accuse them of sexual harassment or sexual assault, five of which remain employed: marketing Professor Tomas Hult, criminal justice Professor David Foran, anatomic pathology Professor Matti Kiupel, communications Professor William Donohue and physiology Professor Robert Wiseman.

Despite being found responsible for sexual harassment of a coworker and being accused of sexual misconduct two other times, Hult was a member of the presidential search committee that brought in current MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr.

The former Osteopathic Medicine Dean William Strampel as well as political science professor William Jacoby, were allowed to retire prior to the completion of the investigation or any punishment. According to the report, this allowed them to keep some retirement benefits, such as health and life insurance.

Strampel was arrested and jailed in 2019 for his willful neglect of the ongoing abuse committed by former MSU doctor Larry Nassar, as well as 11 months of misconduct in office.

Two retired professors lost their emeritus title, two are under review and while four others were allowed to keep them, according to the report.

Much work has been done to change the culture of Michigan State University," Deputy Spokesperson Dan Olsen said. "To foster culture change, we continue to make broad-based systemic improvements to our handling of any behavioral issues of our faculty and staff. We have strengthened compliance through our changes to the Discipline and Dismissal of Tenured Faculty for Cause Policy, Consensual Amorous or Sexual Relationships with Students Policy, Travel Policy and Emeritus Policy. Communication and collaboration have increased with Human Resources and the accountable administrators at all levels to address any and all behavioral issues. We review and investigate all reports of misconduct. Notice and transparency has strengthened the universitys ability to address behaviors, apply interim measures, and improve the quality of the working environment for the students, faculty, and staff. Culture change does not happen with one individual, it takes the whole system to work collectively to achieve the same goal ofpreventinginappropriate behaviorand creating a culture where the behavior is not tolerated. Theres no mistake we have more work to do and the university is committed to that work.

Olsen also confirmed that the contents of the report are accurate.

University administrators sent a preemptive response to MSU faculty, staff and students Friday, Jan. 15, outlining policy and procedure changes surrounding relationship violence and sexual misconduct three years after 204 women provided nine days of impact statements in Ingham and Eaton Counties in the wake of Nassar's abuse.

"Their powerful testimonies continue to remind us that MSU failed survivors and our community," the email said. "Their stories and voices challenge us to create culture change at MSU, and we know we have more work still to do."

Lansing State Journal made 25 public records requests to Michigan State University over the course of the investigation, spending nearly $2,000 for public documents.

Stanley, along with Provost Teresa Woodruff, Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Information Officer Melissa Woo and Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Norman Beauchamp, signed the message.

"We are sharing this with you not to excuse past decisions; rather, we want you to know the actions we have taken the past few years and continue to take will improve our consistency and accountability," the email said. "Changes have been made, and more work will be completed soon to address inequities in the disciplinary outcomes and further strengthen our disciplinary actions."

Wendy Guzman contributed to the reporting in this article.

Editor's note: This article was updated to properly aggregate reporting by The Lansing State Journal.

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Physiology

Taking temperature is not a reliable way of detecting Covid-19 – The Star Online

Making people stand in front of a scanner to have their body temperature read can result in a large number of false negatives, allowing people with Covid-19 to pass through airports and hospitals undetected.

Leading experts in physiology have suggested that taking temperature readings of a persons fingertip and eye instead would give a significantly better and more reliable reading, and help identify those with fever.

The study, co-led by human physiologist and expert in temperature regulation Professor Mike Tipton, was published in the journal Experimental Physiology.

Prof Tipton from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom says: If scanners are not giving an accurate reading, we run the risk of falsely excluding people from places they may want or need to go, and we also risk allowing people with the virus to spread the undetected infection they have.

The study found four key factors:

Prof Tipton says: Using a surface temperature scanner to obtain a single surface temperature, usually the forehead, is an unreliable method to detect the fever associated with Covid-19.

Too many factors make the measurement of a skin temperature a poor surrogate for deep body temperature skin temperature can change independently of deep body temperature for lots of reasons.

Even if such a single measure did reflect deep body temperature reliably, other things, such as exercise, can raise deep body temperature.

The pandemic has had a devastating global effect on all aspects of our lives, and unfortunately, its unlikely to be the last pandemic we face.

Its critical we develop a method of gauging if an individual has a fever thats accurate and fast.

A change in deep body temperature is a critical factor in diagnosing disease with as little as a one degree increase indicating a potential disease.

The most common symptom of 55,924 confirmed cases of Covid-19 reported in China up to Feb 22, 2020, was fever, followed by other symptoms, including dry cough, sputum production, shortness of breath, muscle or joint pain, sore throat, headache, chills, nausea or vomiting, nasal congestion, and diarrhoea.

However, the researchers say a significant proportion (at least 11%) of those with Covid-19 do not have a fever, and that fewer than half of those admitted to hospital with suspected Covid-19 had a fever.

Although the majority of positive cases go on to develop a high temperature after being admitted to hospital, they were infectious before their temperature soared.

Prof Tipton says: We think we can improve the identification of the presence of fever using the same kit, but looking at the difference between eye and finger temperature its not perfect, but it is potentially better and more reliable.

He adds: During the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in 2003, there was a need for a fast and effective mass-screening method and infrared thermography became, and remains, the cornerstone measurement, despite concerns over its reliability.

A 2005 study of 1,000 people comparing forehead temperature with three different infrared thermometers gave different temperatures, ranging from 31C to 35.6 C.

The same infrared thermometer alone varied by as much as 2C.

In another study, more than 80% of the 500 people tested using infra-red thermometers, gave a false negative result.

Such differences in skin temperature could be due to a range of reasons, including whether the individual has recently exercised, has an infection, sunburn or recently drunk alcohol, how close they stand to the scanner, the air temperature, how much fat they have, and even their blood pressure.

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