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Immunology

T-cell study adds to debate over duration of COVID-19 immunity – Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - A small but key UK study has found that cellular immunity to the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus is present after six months in people who had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 - suggesting they might have some level of protection for at least that time.

FILE PHOTO: Convalescent plasma samples in vials are seen before being tested for COVID-19 antibodies at the Bloodworks Northwest Laboratory during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Renton, Washington, U.S. September 9, 2020. Picture taken September 9, 2020. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo

Scientists presenting the findings, from 100 non-hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Britain, said they were reassuring but did not mean people cannot in rare cases be infected twice with the disease.

While our findings cause us to be cautiously optimistic about the strength and length of immunity generated after SARS-CoV-2 infection, this is just one piece of the puzzle, said Paul Moss, a professor of haematology at Britains Birmingham University who co-led the study.

There is still a lot for us learn before we have a full understanding of how immunity to COVID-19 works.

Experts not directly involved with the study said its findings were important and would add to a growing body of knowledge about potential protective immunity to COVID-19.

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed by other experts but was published online on bioRxiv, analysed the blood of 100 patients six months after they had had either mild or asymptomatic COVID-19. It found that while some of the patients antibody levels had dropped, their T-cell response - another key part of the immune system - remained robust.

(Our) early results show that T-cell responses may outlast the initial antibody response, said Shamez Ladhani, a consultant epidemiologist at Public Health England who co-led the work.

The study also found the size of T-cell response differed, and was considerably higher in people who had had symptomatic COVID-19 than those who had no symptoms when infected.

The researchers said this could be interpreted in two ways: It is possible that higher cellular immunity might give better protection against re-infection in people who had symptoms, or equally, that asymptomatic patients are better able to fight off the virus without the need to generate a large immune response.

These results provide reassurance that, although the titre of antibody to SARS-CoV-2 can fall below detectable levels within a few months of infection, a degree of immunity to the virus may be maintained, said Charles Bangham, chair of immunology at Imperial College London.

This ... bodes well for the long term, in terms of both vaccine development and the possibility of long-term protection against re-infection, said Eleanor Riley, an immunology and infectious disease professor at Edinburgh University. She stressed, however, that we dont yet know whether the people in this study are protected from re-infection.

While more than 46 million people worldwide have been infected with COVID-19, confirmed cases of re-infection are so far very rare.

(Fixes typo in name in para 7)

Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Steve Orlofsky and Nick Macfie

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T-cell study adds to debate over duration of COVID-19 immunity - Reuters

Human Behavior

New global archive logs changes in behavior of Arctic animals – UW News

Environment | News releases | Research | Science

November 5, 2020

A moose in Denali National Park.Laura Prugh/University of Washington

The Arctics dramatic changes warmer winters, earlier springs, shrinking ice and more human development are impacting native animals. Researchers have long been observing the movements and behavior of animals in this region, but its been difficult to discover and access these data for meaningful collaborations.

Now scientists from around the world have established the Arctic Animal Movement Archive, an online repository for data documenting the movements of animals in the Arctic and Subarctic. With this archive, scientists can share their knowledge and collaborate to ask questions about how animals are responding to a changing climate.

So far, researchers from more than 100 universities, government agencies and conservation groups, including the University of Washington, are involved in the archive. The project currently contains over 200 projects with the movement data of more than 8,000 marine and terrestrial animals from 1991 to the present.

The global archive and several case studies on wildlife movement and behavior are described in a paper published Nov. 5 in Science. The archive project is led by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany and the Ohio State University.

In terms of recent calls for more open science, platforms likethis are a major leap forward in making valuable data discoverable anduseful for researchers to address far more science questions than wouldotherwise be possible, said project collaborator and co-author Laura Prugh, associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

One of the case studies, led by Prughs lab at the UW, looked at the movement speeds of bears, caribou, moose and wolves from 1998 to 2019 and found that all species changed their movement rates in response to climate conditions but with no consistent pattern. This inconsistency shows that responses of large mammals to climate change in the Arctic may not be straightforward to predict.

This work has highlighted strong changes in movement rates in responseto climate, but the reasons why animals are moving more or less arestill not understood, Prugh said. I hope the work spurs future research tounderstand the why behind our findings, and whether these changes areindicative of positive or negative climate change impacts.

Movement rates are important to track because they can influence how effective animals are at finding food and other resources, when animals encounter predators, and how much energy they expend during different seasons. Additionally, large mammals in the Arctic are adapted to cold conditions and may experience heat stress due to warming temperatures, the authors explained.

How animals respond to variable weather conditions through movement will have interesting implications for species competition and predator-prey dynamics, said co-author Peter Mahoney, who conducted this research as a UW postdoctoral researcher and is now a wildlife biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

To create the case study of two decades of movements of bears, caribou, moose and wolves that is included in the new archive, Prugh and Mahoney relied on data from nine national and international institutions. The case study was funded by a grant from NASAs Arctic and Boreal Vulnerability Experiment program.

In related work, Prugh currently is leadinga new NASA-funded project to understand how changing snow conditions areaffecting ungulates such as deer, moose and elk, and carnivores like wolves, cougars and coyotes in northern Washington and Alaskas Denali National Park. The UW team will examine how changes in snow affect movement and predator-prey interactions.

While hundreds of studies are already included in the animal-movement archive, the resource is continually growing as data are transmitted from animals in the field and as more researchers join. This should help to detect changes in the behavior of animals and ultimately in the entire Arctic ecosystem.

We are also providing a much-needed baseline of past behaviors and movements, said Sarah Davidson, project co-lead and data curator at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. This can be used to improve wildlife management, address critical research questions and document changes in the Arctic for future generations.

See a related press release from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

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New global archive logs changes in behavior of Arctic animals - UW News

Human Behavior

Funding the Quiet Good: Gifts that Support the Humanities and Social Sciences – BU Today

Of the $42 billion the federal government spends on research and development each year, less than 5 percent ($1.9 billion) goes to social and behavioral science research. Photos courtesy of iStock, Unsplash, and Wikimedia

HumanitiesTheyre often small, but they change the world in big ways

When Jack Dorsey, the cofounder and CEO of Twitter and Square, donated $10 million to Boston Universitys Center for Antiracist Research in mid-August, the gift was remarkable in the world of philanthropy for two reasons: the speed with which it arrivedonly six weeks after the BU center openedand the choice of the beneficiaryan academic center dedicated to research in the humanities.

Put simply, research gifts of that magnitude typically go to cure cancer. They dont go to improve human behavior.

When it comes to funding for academic research, the humanities and social sciences have long been the poor cousins to traditional sciences like engineering, computer science, and mathematics, and even to nonsciences like business management and law.

In fiscal 2019, the social sciences accounted for approximately one percent of all research expenditures at Boston University, and the humanities accounted for another one percent. The nonsciences, which include business management, communications, and law, among other areas of study, accounted for 4 percent. Meanwhile, the traditional sciencescomputer science, life sciences, and engineering, to name a fewaccounted for the remaining 94 percent.

When money is given to academic centers that focus on research in the humanities and social sciences, like the antiracist center that Ibram X. Kendi, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of history, launched at BU on July 1, it has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people, and even to change society as we know it. But that work, unlike, say, the study of Alzheimers disease or breast cancer or robotics or business management practices, frequently happens with little fanfare. And because societal change might take decades, or even generations, to achieve, its difficult for the public to grasp the importance of the work because they might never reap the benefits of it.

But examples of social and behavioral sciences touching lives abound. It was social science research that revealed how the walkability of neighborhoods influences obesity rates, which in turn impacts the incidence of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other health outcomes. Psychology and economics research concluded that people are too passive about saving for retirement, a finding that led the federal government to enact the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which encourages employers to adopt automatic enrollment, employer contribution, contribution escalation, and qualified default investment alternative practices. And political science research has mined foreign language data to yield a better understanding of international strife and inform decisions on conflict resolution.

Anthony Petro, a CAS associate professor of religion, a Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program faculty member, and a National Endowment of the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor, says humanities research is especially crucial in times like these. Scientific research helps us save lives, says Petro. Research in the humanities asks why we save some lives and not others, shows us how to bring meaning to our lives and to the overwhelming number of lives lost. It teaches us how to imagine better futures.

Despite those virtues, social science funding can seem like an afterthought when compared to overall spending by the federal government. Of the $42 billion the federal government spends on research and development each year, less than 5 percent ($1.9 billion) goes to social and behavioral science research. One note on the bright side: Boston University generally garners a fair amount of that money. In FY 2018, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Higher Education Research and Development Survey, BU ranked 9th out of 530 colleges and universities ranked by the Consortium of Social Science Associations in terms of social science funding, which includes combined federal research and development expenditures for social sciences, psychology, law, communications, and social work.

James Uden, a CAS associate professor of classical studies and a 2019 winner of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, says the humanities help us understand the how and why of our own culture.

Its never been more important for us to learn how the actions and ideas of the past have shaped the present, and how to communicate with each other, says Uden. We have to train ourselves to do it. Thats where the humanities come in.

Karl Kirchwey, a CAS professor of English and associate dean of the faculty, humanities, says foundation grant and fellowship support is crucial in a moment when the work of the humanitiesexploring the moral, spiritual, historical, and creative dimensions of living a fully human lifebecomes only more relevant to the challenges now confronting us.

Research in the humanities asks why we save some lives and not others, shows us how to bring meaning to our lives and to the overwhelming number of lives lost. It teaches us how to imagine better futures.

Gifts to centers for social science are particularly important because of their potential to use research to make positive, long-lasting changes to the world says Anna Pruitt, managing editor of Giving USA, an annual report on philanthropic giving in the United State. Pruitt knows that potential well. She is also a researcher at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis, which was established in 2012 with help from an $8 million bequest from Ruth Lilly, whose great-grandfather founded Eli Lilly and Company.

Previously known as the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, the academic center helped Indiana University establish the field of philanthropic studies, which included starting the nations first bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees in the field. In 2015, the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy established the Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy, which seeks to understand the perceptions, practices, and needs of underrepresented communities.

When BU Today looked for other examples of private gifts that support social science and humanitarian research with the potential to make our society safer, healthier, and more equitable, we didnt have to look far or too deep in the past. On August 13, the City University of New York (CUNY) received $10 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand several COVID-19related initiatives and advance social and racial justice. Of that gift, $3 million will support the development of programs in Black, race, and ethnic studies; $2.5 million is earmarked for the Chancellors Emergency Relief Fund and will help students who have experienced job losses and other financial setbacks during the pandemic, putting the completion of their degrees in jeopardy; and another $2 million will help expand the CUNY Cultural Corps, which was created in 2016 as a pipeline to careers in New York City arts and arts administration for students from underrepresented communities. Other monies will fund a program called Transformative Learning in the Humanities, which will train humanities faculty in ways to make their classes more participatory, and will bolster the number of humanities course offerings.

Another $10 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a perennial funder of the humanities and social sciences, awarded to the University of California in January 2018, marked the first stage of a $30 million permanent endowment to sustain the core activities of the UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) and the UC Humanities Network, which is intended to advance collaborative, interdisciplinary humanities research and education throughout the UC system. The UCHRI is a nationally known and highly regarded humanities institute that hosts residential fellows and projects and sponsors a system-wide consortium of interconnected campus humanities centers and multicampus research groups that foster interdisciplinary and collaborative research.

UCHRIs Horizons of the Humanities initiative explores ways that changes in technology and society shape humanistic inquiry and knowledge. It seeks answers to questions such as how advances in digital technology are shaping our thoughts about what makes us human, and how people adopt disparate identities across public, private, and digital interfaces. The initiative also explores the challenges and opportunities of supercharged cultural, religious, and political differences and the consequences of those differences for democracy.

In January 2017, MITs Media Lab and Harvards Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society jointly received $5.9 million from the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, which was created with initial support of $27 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Omidyar Network, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and others. The grant designated the two centers as the founding academic institutions of the fund, whose purpose is to help bridge the gap between the humanities, the social sciences, and computing by addressing the global challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) from a multidisciplinary perspective. The funds projects address such things as the global governance of AI, and the ways the use of AI may reinforce existing biases, particularly against underserved and underrepresented populations.

Since then the Miami Foundation, fiscal sponsor of the fund, has issued dozens of grants for projects aimed at ensuring that AI is used in the public interest. In July 2017, it gave $7.6 million to nine projects that aim to bolster the voice of civil society in shaping the development of AI in the public interest.One project is investigating questions regarding the safe and ethical use of AI to promote social good in Asia; another is looking at how AI is being developed in Brazil and Latin America. A New Yorkbased project is studying the integration of AI into critical infrastructures, looking specifically at bias, data collection, and healthcare. Others will work with data protection authorities to develop practical guidelines that protect user rights, educate public and private authorities about rights, and conduct case studies on data protection issues relating to algorithms and AI in France and Hungary.In 2019, it funded seven projects, including an initiative to help newsrooms and researchers analyze documents through crowdsourcing and machine learning, an effort to train journalists to produce articles about the impact of technology on low-income communities, and a project aimed at combating misinformation on WhatsApp and other chat apps in India.

Sometimes a gift to the humanities is just that: a gift to the humanities. Thats the case with a $10 million gift that the University of Wisconsin received from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2010. The gift to the Universitys Strengthening the Core Humanitiesprogram, which was matched by the state, has enabled the university to hire new faculty and support postdoctoral and graduate students in the humanities. The university used $2.5 million to create an endowed chair in ancient Greek philosophy, and aimed other monies at two-year fellowships for graduate students who were writing their dissertations.

At BUs Center for Antiracist Research, $9 million of Start Smalls $10 million gift goes to the centers endowment, and $1 million is available for immediate use, allowing the center to hire staff and fund its first research and policy teams on COVID-19 racial disparities. Start Smalls gift is the second of three significant contributions to the center. In June, it received $1.5 million from the Vertex Foundation, a long-term source of charitable giving and part of the corporate giving commitment of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. And in October, the Rockefeller Foundation, a global science-driven philanthropy founded more than a century ago, committed $1.5 million to the center over the next two years.

Kendi envisions the center as a place where researchers from many fields, including law, social work, the humanities, computer science, communication, medicine, and public health will collaborate with researchers from other universities, as well as data analysts, journalists, and policy experts. His goal, he says, is to help create racial change, change that is about creating equity and justice for all, and a human community that values equity and justice for all.

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Funding the Quiet Good: Gifts that Support the Humanities and Social Sciences - BU Today

Human Behavior

Hot or Cold, Weather Alone Has No Significant Effect on COVID-19 Spread – UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

AUSTIN, Texas The link between weather and COVID-19 is complicated. Weather influences the environment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new host. But it also influences human behavior, which moves the virus from one host to another.

Research led by The University of Texas at Austin is adding some clarity on weathers role in COVID-19 infection, with a new study finding that temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in coronavirus spread.

That means whether its hot or cold outside, the transmission of COVID-19 from one person to the next depends almost entirely on human behavior.

The effect of weather is low and other features such as mobility have more impact than weather, said Dev Niyogi, a professor at UT Austins Jackson School of Geosciences and Cockrell School of Engineering who led the research. In terms of relative importance, weather is one of the last parameters.

The research was published Oct. 26 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Co-authors are Sajad Jamshidi, a research assistant at Purdue University, and Maryam Baniasad, a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University.

The study defined weather as equivalent air temperature, which combines temperature and humidity into a single value. The scientists than analyzed how this value tracked with coronavirus spread in different areas from March to July 2020, with their scale ranging from U.S. states and counties, to countries, regions and the world at large.

At the county and state scale, the researchers also investigated the relationship between coronavirus infection and human behavior, using cellphone data to study travel habits.

The study examined human behavior in a general sense and did not attempt to connect it to how the weather may have influenced it. At each scale, the researchers adjusted their analyses so that population differences did not skew results.

Across scales, the scientists found that the weather had nearly no influence. When it was compared with other factors using a statistical metric that breaks down the relative contribution of each factor toward a particular outcome, the weathers relative importance at the county scale was less than 3%, with no indication that a specific type of weather promoted spread over another.

In contrast, the data showed the clear influence of human behavior and the outsized influence of individual behaviors. Taking trips and spending time away from home were the top two contributing factors to COVID-19 growth, with a relative importance of about 34% and 26% respectively. The next two important factors were population and urban density, with a relative importance of about 23% and 13% respectively.

We shouldnt think of the problem as something driven by weather and climate, Jamshidi said. We should take personal precautions, be aware of the factors in urban exposure.

Baniasad, a biochemist and pharmacist, said that assumptions about how coronavirus would respond with weather are largely informed by studies conducted in laboratory settings on related viruses. She said that this study illustrates the importance of studies that analyze how the coronavirus spreads through human communities.

When you study something in lab, its a supervised environment. Its hard to scale up to society, she said. This was our first motivation to do a more broad study.

Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Georgia who was not part of the study, said that the research offers important insights about weather and coronavirus across scales.

This important work clarifies some of the innuendo about weather-COVID-19 connections and highlights the need to address science challenges at the appropriate scales, Shepherd said.

UT Austin, NASA and the National Science Foundation provided funding for the research.

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Hot or Cold, Weather Alone Has No Significant Effect on COVID-19 Spread - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Human Behavior

Social Image and Its Importance in Society – The Great Courses Daily News

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Not caring about what other people think is becoming more and more trendy, but there is nothing wrong with worrying about the impressions that we make in social interactions. (Image: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

Everybody with an average level of mental health cares about what others think of them. Recently, it is becoming a trend to live without caring about ones social image and trying to impress other people. But why do we care so much about other peoples opinions, in the first place?

Most people keep an eye on the impressions that they make on other people as they try to present themselves as they are. Knowing that other people perceive one in undesired ways usually triggers efforts to make the perception right. Sometimes, they control the impressions and try to behave in a way that leads to their desired impression in a given situation.

Today, most people try not to care about these impressions and what people perceive. However, it is not possible or necessary to do that.

Learn more about where do peoples personalities come from?

Despite recent trends and how superficial or inauthentic it is to care about other peoples opinions, trying to maintain a positive social image is a natural, normal, and adaptive human motive. Humans need to be accepted in their society to survive.

Some people claim not to care what other people think, but the concern reflects in everyday life. People are happy when they are perceived as competent, moral, and desirable unless they have psychological problems. Sociopaths, for example, are relatively unconcerned with what other people think of them. What would happen if nobody cared?

If suddenly everyone stopped caring about what others think, the world would face some dramatic changes. The first thing would be that people stop grooming and staying clean because they no longer care about the image they would convey with these things.

Next, they would not be as nice and polite to others. Relationships with friends, romantic partners, and family members would all change. True, sometimes people worry too much about their image and even do things that they should not. Nevertheless, this does not mean it is by nature wrong to care about social image.

This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

People interact with each others impressions. A persons behavior toward another person is shaped by what they perceive. An impression of being friendly, trustworthy, and interesting brings along different behaviors from being perceived as unfriendly, untrustworthy, and boring.

Thus, people try to convey impressions that they want, as most desirable outcomes in life depend on being perceived in particular ways. Starting a relationship, maintaining, and promoting it requires certain characteristics depending on the nature of the relationship. To be invited to social gatherings, to be chosen for teams and committees, to have much of a social life at all, people must be viewed in certain ways.

Even though impressions are the base of almost all relationships and social life, they do not form without an effort.

Learn more about why are so many people so stressed out?

Even when a goal has nothing to do with other people and their impressions, when people are not actively engaged in creating an image, the impressions can still matter. For example, when somebody is giving a lecture, their purpose is to convey some scientific messages that are delivered with or without good social impressions. However, people normally prefer to be viewed positively as a lecturer.

Over 50 years of research shows that people usually do not try to convey fake images. Normally, they try to select from all of the different true things that they could convey about themselves, those images that will make the impressions they want to make in a particular situation.

There is no room and no necessity to reveal everything about oneself in an interaction. Hence, people try to reveal those that make the desired impression in a situation. Exaggeration and self-presentational lies also occur from time to time, but not all the time.

It is neither negative nor inauthentic to worry about the impressions we make on other people unless it turns into an obsession that triggers numerous lies and exaggerations.

A persons social image is how they are perceived by others in a society. Normally, people try to build more acceptance for themselves by caring about what others think about them.

Some people care so much about their social image that they have constant anxiety, which is neither healthy nor logical. However, a certain level of caring about other peoples opinions is natural and necessary for achieving the desired social status.

Yes. It is common to lie for creating a better social image. It can range from the tiny, unimportant lies like Im fine, when that is not true, to big lies about skills, wealth, etc.

It is the social image that determines the level of acceptance in a society. If a person is viewed negatively and nobody accepts them as a member of the group, their chances of survival drop. Thus, people care about what others say or think about them.

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Social Image and Its Importance in Society - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

Social Anxiety: What Would People Think? – The Great Courses Daily News

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Social anxiety is good for people until it gets so severe that it leads them away from social situations and interactions. (Image: Motortion Films/Shutterstock)

Almost every normal person has experienced social anxiety on job interviews, on dates, when meeting new people, or when speaking in front of groups. It is a natural consequence of trying to make the right social impression and convey the right messages about oneself. Social interactions are built upon peoples impressions of each other, so everyone tries to create impressions that lead to the desired behavior from other people.

From a social psychological standpoint, keeping an eye on how one is perceived and evaluated by others can be very beneficial. A world with people who do not care about other peoples opinions is a world of unstable and destroyed relationships. However, like all other negative emotions, social anxiety can also turn into a problem.

Learn more about why do we have emotions?

When a person worries too much about the impressions they create, they might avoid social situations. People who are afraid of making bad impressions fall into a loop of social anxiety and bad impressions: they feel anxious that they might not leave a good impression, so they withdraw from interactions. Then, they fear that running away from interactions also leaves a negative impression, so their anxiety increases.

The anxiety can grow so big that people begin to commit harmful and dangerous actions to create the desired impression.

Some accidents that lead to serious injuries or even death are not preventable. Nevertheless, a large number of accidents and injuries are caused by peoples deliberate actions, sometimes in self-presentational attempts. For example, teenagers try to impress their group of friends by reckless driving, which is why there are thousands of car accidents involving a carload of teenagers every year. In a study on dangerous things that teenagers would do to impress their peers, 30% of the teenagers reported that they had driven recklessly in order to impress their friends.

There are numerous other cases where people hurt themselves or get themselves killed by risky or stupid things that they do to impress others. Examples include riding on the tops of cars, jumping from very high places into the water, and racing downhill in runaway shopping carts. It might not be a surprise that men engage in such actions more than women.

This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

Studies show that men are more likely to engage in stupid actions with the aim of impressing others. This does not mean that men are more reckless or stupid by nature. It is a result of different image values among men: fearless, cool, or fun-loving is valued more among men than women.

Also, for evolution-based reasons, men may be biologically predisposed to take risks to obtain social attention and status. Males with higher social status have a higher chance of attracting a female and reproducing.

Learn more about how much do men and women really differ?

The harms do not stop at accidents. There are at least a million new cases of skin cancer in the United States each year, and a large proportion of those cases are people purposefully trying to get a tan. People get cancer over impressing others! Why has this increased recently? Because values have changed due to changes in society.

In the 1800s, the lower-class workers, such as farmers, worked outside and had a deep tan. Thus, pale skin was valued for white people, as it meant they were not laborers, but professionals. However, in the 1900s, the industrial revolution moved much of the working class inside into factories, so blue-collar workers had pale skin. On the other hand, upper-class people had time for vacations and getting a tan. Hence, today it makes a positive impression to be tanned.

Another example is being old. In a society where older people are not viewed or treated as well as younger adults, senior citizens try not to look old. They resist getting help from others and use anti-aging products. However, in a society where old people are taken care of and treated with more respect, nobody would resist help or dye their gray hair.

Social anxiety is a psychological factor that follows us through life and never disappears in a mentally-healthy person. However, high doses of it can cause serious problems or disorders and even lead to death.

The most common cause of social anxiety is to be highly motivated to make a desired impression but to be fairly certain that one will not be able to make it.

Yes, social anxiety is often useful because it alerts people to situations in which they need to pay special attention to how they are perceived by other people.

Yes. Social anxiety is a very common experience in the face of social situations, like job interviews or dates, meeting new people, or speaking in front of groups.

Not necessarily. Social anxiety helps people behave more attentively in situations that require more attention and are more important. A certain level of it is necessary for success, but higher levels affect life negatively.

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Social Anxiety: What Would People Think? - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

Birds Sang a New Song During the Pandemic – Eos

Human behavior changed drastically with the COVID-19 pandemic. So too did animal behavior, researchers have now shown: Birds altered their songs as anthropogenic noise plummeted thanks to stay-at-home orders and elective quarantining. These findings highlight the malleability of behavioral traits and birds resilience to noise pollution, researchers have suggested.

The Golden Gate Bridge, built in 1937, is a major transportation artery in the San Francisco Bay Area: In recent decades, more than 100,000 vehicles have traversed its span each day. But in April of this year, during Californias COVID-19-induced shutdown, vehicle crossings fell to fewer than 35,000 per day, a level not seen since the 1950s. That pronounced decrease in traffic contributed to significantly lower noise levels in urban areas, Elizabeth P. Derryberry, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and her colleagues found.

By comparing sound recordings made in April and May 2020 with prepandemic data collected in 2015 and 2016, Derryberry and her collaborators found that background noise in urban San Francisco and Richmond decreased by roughly 7 decibels, or about 55%, during Californias shutdown. Intermittent noise, such as planes flying overhead and dogs barking, also decreased by about the same amount, the researchers showed.

Birds took advantage of that new soundscape, Derryberry and her colleagues demonstrated: Male white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) sang differentlyand more effectivelyduring the shutdown than they did prior to the pandemic.

The teams results were published in Science in September.

To begin with, the team found that the birds sang more softly. That makes sense, Derryberry and her collaborators proposed, because of the Lombard effect. This phenomenon, observed across species, refers to an animal making louder vocalizations in the presence of higher levels of noise.

Theyre not shouting anymore.Theyre not shouting anymore, said Derryberry.

But the researchers were surprised to discover that the sparrows were overcompensating: They were singing about 35% more softly, whereas the Lombard effect predicted a decrease of only about 3%. Theyre singing even more softly than we thought they would only due to the Lombard effect, said Derryberry.

The scientists also discovered that the birds sang at different frequencies. In prepandemic times, the lowest frequencies of the sparrows songs tended to be masked by traffic noise. But as that background noise faded in spring 2020, the birds adjusted their vocalizations, said Derryberry. As the traffic noise dropped out of those lower frequencies, they widened the bandwidth of their song.

That change boosted the males appeal to potential mates, the researchers proposed. Females are particularly interested in song that has a wide bandwidth, said Derryberry.

Below are two audio recordings, the first taken before the pandemic and the second, during the pandemic.

White-crowned sparrows were able to communicate over longer distances in 2020, Derryberry and her colleagues showed. Thats because the drop in background noise outpaced the drop in the birds volume. The sparrows roughly doubled the distance at which they could be heard by another bird, the researchers calculated.

That change, combined with the males more enticing songs, might have led to more mating, a hypothesis Derryberry and her collaborators plan to investigate next spring by doing more fieldwork. We can go in and see if theres a bumper crop of young birds, said Derryberry.

Itd be interesting to know if many species are as plastic as the white-crowned sparrow.Its remarkable that these birds changed their songs so quickly, said Sue Anne Zollinger, a behavioral physiologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom not involved in the research. Itd be interesting to know if many species are as plastic as the white-crowned sparrow.

These nearly immediate changes are heartening because they underscore the birds resilience to noise pollution, said Derryberry. It takes a while to see the positive outcomes to things like recycling or reducing your emissions.

Katherine Kornei (@KatherineKornei), Science Writer

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Human Behavior

Self-Presentation at Different Ages: What Is the Price? – The Great Courses Daily News

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Self-presentation is not specific to an age or a situation, but its techniques and purposes differ according to environmental factors. (Image: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock)

People care about what others think of them and are concerned about the social impressions that they make. It is normal and even necessary, as most interactions are founded upon impressions. However, some people create a big web of lies so as to create a particular impression on others. What may seem as perfectly fine may turn into a kind of disorder.

People who score high on Machiavellianism are those who mispresent themselves so often to get what they want. Machiavellianism is a personality characteristic where people would do whatever it takes to get other people to do what they want, even if it means being deceptive and dishonest, and presenting inaccurate images of oneself. The name is derived from the Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. In his book The Prince, he advised political rulers to do whatever it takes to control their people, even if it is deceitful and immoral in nature.

Psychologists designed a questionnaire that shows peoples scores on Machiavellianism. Those who score higher are very good at managing social impressions, even if it requires significant lies. Machiavellians do not necessarily present a positive false image. They present whatever image helps them get what they want in a situation and make people do what they want. Unfortunately, they are very persuasive.

Learn more about can subliminal messages affect behavior?

Normally, people try to create positive social impressions but not Machiavellians. For example, people sometimes play dumb when they think that appearing less knowledgeable or less competent is more beneficial. Studies show that despite common belief, men play dumb more than women do, especially in interactions with their bosses.

Teenagers might mess up household chores intentionally to make sure that the next time, their parents will not ask them to do the same thing. Some people tend to present themselves as intolerant, impatient, and hostile if that makes others do what they want. Many bosses try to use self-presentation techniques that create a critical and demanding image so that employees try their best to deliver tasks accurately.

One study showed that hospitalized mental patients showed significantly fewer symptoms of schizophrenia when it was beneficial to appear mentally healthy. On the other hand, when being seen as mentally ill had benefits, they appeared much more psychologically troubled.

This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

A person might hide their stress and negative feelings in front of others. Many people do that. At the same time, the same people might not only express their stress but exaggerate it in a different situation. The decision of whether to exaggerate or downplay emotions is determined by the situation and how one would get the desired behavior from other people.

Almost everybody controls impressions to some extent. Despite what many might believe, achieving a certain age or certain stability does not stop self-presentation efforts. For example, a person keeps trying to get the best behavior from their spouse after marriage, even though they are not trying to impress them as they did before marriage.

Old people do not stop caring about what others think, either. They do tend to care less about many things, but the amount of anti-aging creams and treatments shows that old people care about not being seen as old and inefficient. Thus, self-presentation efforts are normal until they cause high social anxiety.

Learn more about why do hurt feelings hurt?

Social anxiety is a common experience. People feel nervous on job interviews or on dates, when meeting new people, or while just being at a social gathering where they do not know anybody. The most common experience and cause of social anxiety is speaking in front of groups. It is normal to feel anxious in such situations, and the highest level emerges when one is highly motivated to make the desired impression but is fairly certain that they will not be able to make it.

The positive side is that social anxiety creates the level of alertness that one needs to have in more critical situations. The negative side, on the other hand, is how it makes some people totally avoid social situations or have trouble interacting successfully.

Self-presentation might get significantly disturbed by anxiety when it passes a normal level. However, self-presentational techniques can be used to somehow control the anxiety when it is in a normal range.

Self-presentation is a persons effort to present himself or herself in the right way and make the desired impressions on other people. It is natural to try to make a positive impression unless lies and exaggeration are hugely involved.

Lying and exaggeration are two of the most common self-presentation strategies in many situations.

It is not genuinely negative to make self-presentation efforts since people need to convey certain messages to make the right social impressions. However, some peoples efforts get deceptive, which is no longer normal or natural.

No. self-presentation is present in all social situations and at all ages. Getting married or getting old does not stop the efforts, but decreases and changes them.

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Self-Presentation at Different Ages: What Is the Price? - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

4-OCEANS Project: Assessing the Importance of Marine Life to Human Societies – SciTechDaily

Two researchers from Trinity College Dublin are among a four-strong team of principal investigators spearheading a new 10.4 million project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) to assess the importance of marine life to human societies during the last two millennia, with a focus on understanding the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development.

The project, 4-OCEANS, has been funded via an ERC Synergy Grant. These highly prestigious grants support transformative work that addresses major research challenges that would fall beyond the scope of any single ERC award and can only be tackled by collaborative approaches spanning multiple disciplines.

This project will bring together leaders with expertise in marine environmental history, climate history, natural history, geography, historical ecology, and zooarchaeology, nurturing a unique collaboration and integration of researchers from the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Professor Poul Holm, Trinity College Dublin, talks about the 4-OCEANS project. Credit: Trinity College Dublin

The 4-OCEANS team is comprised of principal investigators, Poul Holm, Professor of Environmental History, and Francis Ludlow, Assistant Professor of Medieval Environmental History, from Trinity; James H Barrett, Reader in Medieval Archaeology and Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge; and Cristina Brito, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences and the Deputy Director of CHAM Centre for the Humanities, at NOVA University Lisbon.

Professor Holm said:

We are excited to have secured this grant to embark on a fascinating and important project that will provide us with an unparalleled understanding of humanitys recent interactions with the oceans, which will likely inform future symbioses with the many, varied aspects of marine ecosystems that enrich and support us.

Specifically, combining history and archaeology with marine science and socioeconomics, the 4-OCEANS team will examine when and where marine exploitation was of significance to human society; how selected major socio-economic, cultural, and environmental forces variously constrained and enabled marine exploitation; and what were the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development.

Professor Ludlow added:

There are many avenues of research that we look forward to pursuing, but the most important goal of the project is to conduct the first-ever globalized evaluation of the role of marine resources for societal development across two millennia, and thereby advance our understanding of the role of ocean life in human history.

Long-term data and an understanding of changes in ecosystems and human behavior over many centuries is critical to informing the continued development of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and the Decade for the Oceans, from which the historical dimension is still missing. The 4-OCEANS project will ultimately introduce much-needed chronological depth to how we view urgent societal and environmental issues across the globe, through the understanding of our past.

Dr. Barrett said:

By combining archaeology, history and environmental science we aim to map, date, and measure past harvests of marine life. Untangling human and natural drivers, 4-OCEANS will explain how diverse historical trajectories created global networks, fuelling major centers with the products of distant ecosystems with lasting consequences for both societies and the sea.

Professor Brito added: The project 4-OCEANS will deepen our understanding of the oceans past and the relationships that different human societies established with this environment and their resources, helping to bridge the gap in knowledge about and the emotional connection of people with the oceans. By addressing the human history of marine life, our interdisciplinary research will emphasize the importance and value of the humanities for the study of the ocean and address current environmental and societal issues.

Professors Holm and Ludlow will oversee 5.4 million of the 10.4 million research funding total allocated to 4-OCEANS. Over the course of H2020, Trinity researchers have secured 37 ERC Investigator grants to date (valued at approximately 68 million), which equates to around 50% of all H2020 ERC awards in Ireland.

Dr. Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity, said:

Synergy Grants are regarded as the most competitive of the ERCs awards, all of which are awarded on the basis of research excellence. We are very proud of Poul and Francis success in this regard and are particularly pleased that they will form a unique collaboration that brings together world-leaders in multiple disciplines spanning the humanities, natural, and social sciences. We look forward to tracking the progress of the 4-OCEANS project, and the many important and varied contributions it promises to make.

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4-OCEANS is Professor Holms second ERC award after his ERC Advanced Grant NorFish: North Atlantic Fisheries: An Environmental History, 1400-1700, while Professors Ludlow, Barrett, and Brito were also all previously funded under the Excellence Pillar of H2020 through Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

Professor Ludlow received an MSCA Individual Fellowship before going on to win an Irish Research Council Starting Laureate Award for his project CLICAB: Climates of Conflict in Ancient Babylonia.

Dr. Barrett, who led pioneering work on the incorporation of scientific methodologies into humanistic research, is a co-leader of the MSCA International Doctoral Training Network SeaChanges: Thresholds in human exploitation of marine vertebrates.

Professor Brito, coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Oceans Cultural Heritage, is also the coordinator of the MSCA Research and Innovation Staff Exchange project CONCHA: The construction of early modern global Cities and oceanic networks in the Atlantic: An approach via OceaNs Cultural HeritAge (2018-2021).

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4-OCEANS Project: Assessing the Importance of Marine Life to Human Societies - SciTechDaily

Human Behavior

The behavioral science behind post-election violence | TheHill – The Hill

As tension builds while election officials continue to count votes, law enforcement officials around the country prepare forpost-election civil unrest. Earlier this year, I predicted that the coronavirus wouldnt cause widespread chaos in the U.S. But the election might; focus on how we resolve counting ballots and the rhetoric of political and civic leaders.

Ive spent my career studying violence, terrorism and coercion. What Ive found is that violence typically occurs when violence is feasible, when people are motivated and when a leader benefits from violence occurring.

Heres a simple way to think about violence:Like a fire, violence requires three components fuel, oxygen and heat. Dry grass alone, for example, does not create a wildfire, but requires a spark. In the U.S. right now, we have all three.

Fuel: Feelings of anger and hopelessness have been brewing for months. The fuel of political violence grows when the innate human need for self-preservation for self and kin struggles. We live in a world of scarcity. Violence is, at its core, an economic problem. By economic, I dont mean that players are seeking monetary gains; I mean that organized violence results from a market in which individuals predictably pursue their self-interests in conditions of scarcity. Disenfranchised people who see the election outcome as literally threatening their survival or the survival of their families whether because of the effects on unemployment, stock markets or changing social norms provide the fuel of violence.

The oxygen of political violence is the feasibility or possibility of violence. People must have the ability to engage in violent acts. If the state is all-controlling, like North Korea or Cuba during Fidel Castros reign, violence cannot break out, although coercion squeezes the lungs of the masses. In a democracy like the U.S., however, violent acts can and do occur. The oxygen of possibility abounds.

Thirdly, violence requires a spark often in the form of a charismatic leader, an entrepreneur of violence, in economic terms, who can speak to the aggrieved people in all of their forms of desire for greed, power and grievance. This leader could be a political leader, the leader of a civil rights group, a foreign political leader, a nationalist or even a cultural icon. In 1968, immediately after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Nina Simone sang Mississippi Goddam, an indictment of the slow pace of the civil rights movement, at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. During the performance, she ad-libbed a line in the middle of the song: I aint about to be nonviolent, honey, and the crowd erupted in applause.

It is important to emphasize that angry people, alone, dont cause violence, and that violence is not always bad. Perhaps Nina Simone was right, at that time and that place. As a scholar of violence, I was recently asked if I would ever resort to violence, and my first thought was enfranchisement. If people believe they are a part of a system and have a voice to bring about change from the inside, then they might protest but ultimately fight peacefully for change. If disenfranchised hopeless then expect rocks thrown through windows.

Violence lies along a spectrum of human actions and human choices a continuum of possible decisions made by individuals within competitive markets, by individuals confronting scarcity of time, wealth, information and freedom. People compete against each other and against the state this is the nature of the human condition. We will not end violence, but we can work hard to better understand why some protests remain peaceful and others erupt violently.

Ultimately, viewing violence within the framework of economics and the science of human behavior also offers some reassurance: market power will not remain up for grabs for long. As the election results are resolved and elected leaders assume their positions, any post-election violence will likely resolve as well.

Gary M. Shiffman, Ph.D. is the author of The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism. He teaches economic science and national security at Georgetown University and is the creator of Dozer and GOST.

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The behavioral science behind post-election violence | TheHill - The Hill