Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

NIH awards over $100 million to examine biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease in adults with Down syndrome – UCI News

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 22, 2020 The Alzheimers Biomarkers Consortium Down Syndrome (ABC-DS), a multi-institution research team, co-led by members from the University of California, Irvine, has been awarded an unprecedented five-year, $109 million grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to expand research on the biomarkers of Alzheimers disease in adults with Down syndrome.

UCI principal investigators Elizabeth Head, PhD, professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and Mark Mapstone, PhD, professor in the Department of Neurology, both at the UCI School of Medicine, are renowned researchers in the area of aging and Alzheimers disease in Down syndrome. Together, they will co-lead the international project, along with their colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin, aimed at improving the quality of life of our aging population through advancing progress toward effective prevention and treatment of Alzheimers disease (AD).

Its an honor to be involved in this landmark study and to participate in an historic opportunity to collaborate with world-class researchers across the world in an effort to better understand Down syndrome and aging, said Head. Not to mention, the timing of this announcement couldnt be more appropriate, considering October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month.

Other members of the team include Ira T. Lott, MD, professor emeritus in the Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology at the UCI School of Medicine. Lott is an award-winning pediatric neurologist who initiated the Down Syndrome Program through UCIs Alzheimer Disease Research Center 25 years ago. Eric Doran, MS, manager of the UCI Down syndrome research program, follows people with Down syndrome as they age. Other UCI schools participating in the cross-disciplinary team include the School of Biological Sciences and UCI Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (MIND). David Keator, PhD, research professor in the UCI Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, and Michael Yassa, PhD, director of the UCI Center for Neurolobiology of Learning and Memory, and professor in the Department of Neurobiology & Behavior at the UCI School of Biological Sciences, both have critical roles in the ABC-DS program overseeing the neuroimaging component of the study.

Its tremendously encouraging to see this kind of support for Alzheimers disease and Down syndrome research, said Michael J. Stamos, dean for the UCI School of Medicine. The awareness is building on a national scale and is certainly reflected in the environment at UCI, where we recently approved a new Center for Down syndrome research that will get underway in the coming months.

Down syndrome is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder affecting over 250,000 individuals in United States. People with Down syndrome have a very high risk of developing Alzheimers disease and nearly all have the brain pathology (amyloid plaques) of Alzheimers at death.

Their risk is thought to come from the fact that they have three copies of chromosome 21, where a key gene that produces amyloid is found. Because they have three copies of the gene, instead of two, they overproduce amyloid which is the key pathology of Alzheimers disease, said Mapstone.By expanding our research and increasing our studies involving Alzheimers risk in people with Down syndrome, we have a tremendous opportunity to better understand the development of the disease. This may lead us to new preventative therapies and treatments for Alzheimers in people with Down syndrome and the general population.

Funding support for this award is provided by NIHs National Institute on Aging, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the INCLUDE (INvestigation of Co-occurring conditions across the Lifespan to Understand Down syndromE) project. The INCLUDE project seeks to investigate conditions that affect individuals with Down syndrome and the general population, such as Alzheimers disease, autism, cataracts, celiac disease, congenital heart disease and diabetes.

Alzheimers Biomarkers Consortium Down Syndrome (ABC-DS) includes a cross-disciplinary team from the University of California, Irvine, along with other research teams from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Cambridge, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, University of Kentucky, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, University of North Texas Health Science Center, University of Southern Californias Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute and the Alzheimers Therapeutic Research Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The research teams will assess and examine a wide range of data from biofluid biomarkers to genetic factors, neuroimaging, and everyday cognitive and psychological function. Researchers will see participants every 16 months for up to four visits.

This research will be funded by NIH grant U19AG068054. For more information, visit: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/abc-ds-information-patients-and-families.

About the UCI School of Medicine: Each year, the UCI School of Medicine educates more than 400 medical students, and nearly 150 doctoral and masters students. More than 700 residents and fellows are trained at UCI Medical Center and affiliated institutions. The School of Medicine offers an MD; a dual MD/PhD medical scientist training program; and PhDs and masters degrees in anatomy and neurobiology, biomedical sciences, genetic counseling, epidemiology, environmental health sciences, pathology, pharmacology, physiology and biophysics, and translational sciences. Medical students also may pursue an MD/MBA, an MD/masters in public health, or an MD/masters degree through one of three mission-based programs: the Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM), the Leadership Education to Advance Diversity-African, Black and Caribbean (LEAD-ABC), and the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC). The UCI School of Medicine is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Accreditation and ranks among the top 50 nationwide for research. For more information, visit som.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. Its located in one of the worlds safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange Countys second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

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NIH awards over $100 million to examine biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease in adults with Down syndrome - UCI News

Human Behavior

New model of human brain networks sheds light on how the brain functions – News-Medical.Net

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Oct 20 2020

A team of Indiana University neuroscientists has built a new model of human brain networks that sheds light on how the brain functions.

The model offers a new tool for exploring individual differences in brain networks, which is critical to classifications of brain disorders and disease, as well as for understanding human behavior and cognitive abilities.

The model highlights different brain structures -- cells, groups of cells or specific regions -- and the ongoing, overlapping series of "conversations" between those structures, which are tracked on a more precise time scale than has been previously afforded by other approaches.

"The model gives us a new perspective on the brain that adds clarity to what we already know about how the brain functions," said Richard Betzel, senior author of a new study in Nature Neuroscience. Betzel is a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "It highlights new organizational features that we hope to use down the road as diagnostic tools or as biomarkers for certain disorders."

Because the new model vividly depicts individual differences in brain networks -- the idiosyncratic signature or fingerprint that distinguishes one person's brain networks from another -- the researchers believe it could be useful for classifying brain disorders and disease.

Betzel's lab has begun to use the model in classifications of autism spectrum disorder with IU psychological and brain sciences autism researcher Dan Kennedy.

Working with researchers at the Indiana Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the IU School of Medicine, IU neuroscientist Olaf Sporns has begun to use the model in the context of dementia, memory tasks and executive tasks, to see if they can find a marker for those at risk for Alzheimer's disease.

The model can also help researchers understand how brain networks correlate to certain kinds of behavior or abilities regarding cognitive tasks.

"We've only scratched the surface," said Sporns, Betzel's collaborator on the study. "This is what makes the project so exciting: There's a sense of something new."

Using three large pre-existing datasets, the researchers constructed their model by drawing on the theoretical work of IU network scientist Yong Yeol Ahn, an associate professor in the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. Instead of modeling the interactions among network "nodes," each of which represents a different brain structure, the researchers built a model of the brain where "edges" -- the connections between the nodes -- were front and center.

By taking this step, "we shifted the focus onto how pairs of brain regions converse and communicate across time," Betzel said.

Instead of saying that activations in two parts of the brain are correlated, we get a signal of the conversation itself. Our networks are telling us about co-activity, the conversations, which nobody has done before."

Richard Betzel, Study Senior Author and Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University

Continuing the analogy, Sporns, "One way we think about these edge communities is as patterns of how brain regions talk to each other, as snippets of conversation in a crowded room."

The shift from nodes to edges adds layers of complexity not present in the old model. The new edge-centric approach used a total of 200 nodes, or 200 brain structures, with 19,900 connections between them and looks at the links between these connections. The links between those 19,990 connections is well over 150 million.

"While it's more complicated to keep track of so many numbers, and requires more powerful computers, looking at the data through this new lens uncovers a lot of connections we couldn't previously see," said Joshua Faskowitz, a collaborator and graduate student in Sporns' lab. "It uncovers relationships that the traditional node-centric approach wouldn't have been sensitive to before."

As Betzel put it, "We have a different lens through which to look at the brain."

A key advantage to the model is the view it provides of "pervasive overlap," the extent to which each brain structure participates in multiple ongoing conversations. The new model represents the multifunctionality of brain regions, with every part of the brain participating in several functions.

"We're arguing that this pervasive overlap may be a fundamental feature of the brain," Betzel said. "We're painting a picture of the brain where there's a lot more interaction than we had seen before."

Source:

Journal reference:

Faskowitz, J., et al. (2020) Edge-centric functional network representations of human cerebral cortex reveal overlapping system-level architecture. Nature Neuroscience. doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-00719-y.

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New model of human brain networks sheds light on how the brain functions - News-Medical.Net

Human Behavior

Adolescents’ Impulsive and Risky Behaviors – The Great Courses Daily News

By Mark Leary, Ph.D., Duke University Adolescents choose risky behaviors because of a brain function that dominates their decisions: socioemotional network. (Image: Motortion Films/Shutterstock)

Impulsive and risky behaviors are commonly associated with adolescence. In the United States and most other Western countries, people in their teens and early twenties show the highest rates of risky behaviors. Risky behaviors range from alcohol and drug abuse to criminal actions.

The common belief is that adolescents think of themselves as invulnerable. However, research shows that adolescents perceive risks not that differently from adults. They also have almost equal judgments of how much risk is involved in various behaviors, and how severe the consequences can be.

At the same time, the peak of crime, drug and alcohol use, automobile accidents and fatalities, and rates of sexually transmitted diseases are all in the late teenage years and drop sharply after the beginning of the 20s. Why do they do that, despite all the warnings and correct judgments?

Learn more about why adolescents dont behave like adults.

The socioemotional network is a part of the brain concerned with processing information about rewards, and especially social rewards. The socioemotional and reward system are located in the areas of the brain that handle emotion and motivation, such as the limbic system.

The hormone changes remodel the socioemotional network neurologically during puberty. When puberty begins, the reward centers in the brain change in a way that teenagers pay more attention to potentially rewarding actions. These brain changes can be seen in other mammals too.

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

The network becomes more active and interconnected with other parts, also the one responsible for processing social information. Thus, social factors and social rewards get highlighted in a teenagers life.

The cognitive control network plays a vital role in executive processes, which involve functions such as thinking ahead, planning, and controlling ones impulses. The core component of this network is the prefrontal cortex, but it is distributed throughout the brain. This network takes much longer than the socioemotional network to mature.

Hormones do not change the cognitive control network as they do in the case of the socioemotional network. The cognitive control network matures gradually during adolescence and into young adulthood.

Learn more about why self-control is so hard.

In the bigger picture, there is one system that makes a teenager want to do exciting things that involve social reward. The other system that should stop risky or bad decisions, however, is not as mature as the first yet, and it takes longer to mature.

In other words, the first network pushes adolescents toward risky behaviors because of the social reward involved. The second network, on the other hand, is not strong enough to brake. Another interesting point is that the social and emotional factors take the lead.

When there is no social reward, such as peer attention, teenagers can make good decisions with less risk. When the social and emotional stimuli emerge, the socioemotional system makes dangers look fun to gain social reward afterward. This explains why teenagers are mature when they are alone, but as soon as the friends come over, they turn into the reckless adolescent.

It also explains why studies showed that adults and adolescents perceive risks equally. The studies are done under conditions that do not activate the socioemotional network. As a result, teenagers are in their mature mood, and there is no social reward to hunt. So many of the adolescents risky behaviors occur in groups.

Learn more about why we care what others think of us.

Peer pressure comes from the dominance of the socioemotional network. It is not always that teenagers do dangerous things under pressure. They are convinced by the socioemotional network that what they do is cool, not dangerous.

The social reward coming from committing risky behaviors in a group of peers motivates risky behavior. The maturity of the cognitive networks pushes the adolescents into the more logical phase, where the socioemotional network does not control everything anymore.

Peer influences are also affected by the growth of cognitive network and susceptibility to peer pressure change with age. Further, the influence of peer pressure changes as well. For example, in one study, teenagers took twice as many risks in a video driving game when peers were present than when they played that game by themselves. Among college students, the presence of peers increased risk-taking only half as much as it did among younger teens. And among adults, having peers present had no effect on the risks they took.

Teenagers take risks not because they are less able to analyze situations, or they feel a kind of pressure to look cool, they just have not developed the cognitive brakes yet.

Teenagers know the dangers of risky behavior, yet they take more risks than adults because their cognitive control is not mature enough to help them fully perceive dangers.

Teenagers show risky behaviors because their cognitive control is maturing, and they cannot perceive dangers as adults do. Also, the social surrounding and social rewards always is a great incentive for them.

No. many studies have shown that merely informing teenagers about risky behaviors and their results does not stop them.

Yes, teenagers tend to show more risky behaviors when there is social reward or attention from their peers.

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Adolescents' Impulsive and Risky Behaviors - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

Halting the hogs | UDaily – UDaily

Feral hogs are one of the most damaging, invasive animals that you probably havent heard of. University of Delawares Center for Experimental and Applied Economics researcher Sean Ellis hadnt heard about them either. But, after his economics research on these hogs and how to address the many problems they present, hes unexpectedly become a hog expert. Along with UDs Kent Messer, Ellis is a co-author of new feral hog research published this October in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.

When you think feral hogs, dont think of cute pigs playing around in a barnyard. Think wild boars nine million and growing quickly eating and trampling agricultural crops, damaging streams and spreading disease to livestock and humans.

Controlling feral hogs is very expensive. For farmers, its not just about the risk of what feral hogs can do to their property, its also about the costs of spending money to control them, said Ellis, a postdoctoral researcher. Most farmers are small business owners operating on a thin margin of profit. They have to be very smart about directing their resources to the most impactful areas of their business.

Like many other invasive pests, these hogs run amuck due to a lack of natural predators to control the population. In the United States, they cost estimated $1.5 billion in damages and control costs annually. Genetically, feral hogs are a blend of domestic swine and the Eurasian wild boar; theyve taken the strongest characteristics from each thick fur, a strong sense of smell and superior intelligence making them a prolific species. And the hogs are a carrier of more diseases than a typical wild animal, a topic of which the world is more cognizant than ever given the possible origins of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Now in the U.S. across 35 states, the problem has reached epidemic levels in states across the southeast and spreading north. Highly affected states are more vulnerable to transmission of exotic parasites from these hogs, which can have a dangerous effect on a humans immune system.

Farmers, landowners and public land managers alike are working to combat populations of these swine; like a chain, efforts to stop their spread are only as strong as the weakest link. For example, if one landowner scares the hogs off her property, these resourceful pigs will move next door to another farm or public lands.

There is very little economics research on this issue, but ultimately its an economic problem involving human behavior, said Ellis. Solving the problem requires coordinated community action, but the members of the community face varying levels of risk. The financial loss from feral hog damage and the opportunity cost of investing limited financial resources into solving this problem, instead of elsewhere.

Controlling the hogs is not as simple as sending out hunting parties. Efforts to trap or shoot the wild hogs are often thwarted as these opportunistic omnivores are clever and adaptable. Groups of hogs, known as sounders, move across large areas. Once hunted, they learn to hide or lie still in the presence of humans. They also can become exclusively nocturnal and often change or expand their home range. Feral hog control is also difficult because of the species high fertility. A sounders size can double in four months. A pregnant sow can reproduce as early as six months of age, typically bearing four to twelve piglets per year.

And the hogs arent just staying put on rural lands. Theyre making suburban communities home, especially across the South. While the hogs have reached central Pennsylvania, Delaware has, so far, been spared. From 2014 to 2018, the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program spent more than $1 million in the Keystone State to control the hogs in counties like Lancaster and York. But, given their prodigious birth rates, that doesnt mean populations wont rebound.

Many parts of the country are becoming more suburban. That increases the number of interactions between feral hogs and people, said Ellis. Since they carry a lot of diseases and are physically large animals, that is a concern.

So how can we stop the spread? Like weve seen in the fight against COVID-19, it takes a coordinated community effort. Ellis says farmers and public land managers must work in concert. Even if all area property owners work together, without a local feral hog control program, the hogs will retreat to safer areas like the deep woods or river bottoms, re-populate and come back as strong as before. Conversely, public land managers in highly affected areas have feral hog control programs, but the program cannot stop these animals without participation of surrounding landowners.

While new federal funding has recently become available for feral hog management through the 2018 Farm Bill, how best to spend this money is not well understood. This research is designed to help ensure that these funds are used in a manner that effectively addresses the problem.

One of the most effective methods of controlling feral hogs is a remotely operated trap. However, they come at a hefty cost. For their research, Ellis, Messer and their co-authors at Albany State University and Johns Hopkins University developed a cost-share program to see if they could increase adoption. Landowners could bid in actual auctions around the country for trapping systems that boasted remote monitoring and gate closure features. Included in the price of the trap was a year of cellular service for remote monitoring, as well as delivery, setup and training provided by a Jager Pro contractor.

Our results show that landowners require substantial financial assistance when implementing control efforts with high upfront costs, such as remotely operated traps, said Messer, S. Hallock du Pont Professor and director of the Center for Experimental and Applied Economics. Some landowners may even require a financial incentive to use methods like trapping, as they ultimately cost money to maintain and operate. This research suggests that landowners are reluctant to invest in these traps, if they dont believe that their neighbors will do their part in controlling the hogs.

Through collaboration of researchers from UD, Albany State University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental Research (CBEAR), the study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

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Halting the hogs | UDaily - UDaily

Human Behavior

Air Pollution Causes People to Choose Food Delivery Services, Resulting in Plastic Pollution – Science Times

Researchers from the National University of Singapore discovered a link between air pollution and plastic pollution: food delivery services. In a recent study, office employees tend to call food delivery services when the air outside is unfavorable which results in increased plastic waste from single-use food packaging.

The paper was published recently in the Nature journal Human Behavior. Professor Alberto Salvo said that plastic pollution is a global issue that's only gotten worse in the past few years. There has also been more research on the impact of plastic pollution on global environments but there is a lack of research focused on what influences human behavior to contribute to plastic waste.

With the decline of air quality in urban areas, busy work routines, and the current pandemic, the demand for food delivery services have spiked as well. Their evidence, explained Professor Salvo, includes a collection of single-use plastics ranging from food containers to carrier bags.

The team focused on the online food delivery platform, which has the most registered users in the whole world with nearly 350 million users, from China. They surveyed officed workers from three cities, measured particulate matterpollution in the cities, and quantified the tendency of employees ordering food via delivery services.

Results showed that the increase of particulate matter in air pollution had a direct impact on the number of food deliveries to offices. The team estimated that nearly 65 million single-use meal containers are used every day all over China. Office workers contribute to more than 50% of the plastic waste from food deliveries.

In the heavily polluted cities of Beijing, Shenyang, and Shijiazhuang, 251 office workers were surveyed for their lunch choices between for the first six months in 2018. The researchers also analyzed data from 2016 containing more than three million food delivery orders from more than 350,000 users.

The U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standardis 35 g/m but the three cities were measured to have significantly higher levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations. When PM2.5 levels were increased by 100 g/m, the number of food deliveries increased by 7.2%. At the same time, office worker food deliveries increased by six times.

(Photo: Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Read Also: Researchers Claim Higher Levels of Air Pollution Increases Electricity Consumption

Professor Junhong Chu said that ordering food via delivery services was the only way that office workers could avoid smog or haze outside during their lunch break. Meanwhile, other consumers avoid outdoor pollution by staying at home where they can cook their meals.

"This explains why the impact of air pollution on food delivery is smaller in the firm's order book study than what we observed among workers, particularly those without access to a canteen in their office building," said Chu. On days of greater air pollution in Beijing, 2.5 million more meals would be delivered, meaning a total of five million food containers plus plastic bags.

Professor Haoming Lui shared that although they focused on Chinese cities, the results have implications for other heavily polluted cities such as in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Waste management policies are another major factor in the increase in plastic pollution. They hope that their study can help accelerate the movement of food delivery services switching to eco-friendly packagingand vehicles.

Read Also: Tire Pollution May Be a Significant Plastic Pollutant in Oceans, Researchers Reveal

Check out more news and information on Pollutionon Science Times.

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Air Pollution Causes People to Choose Food Delivery Services, Resulting in Plastic Pollution - Science Times

Human Behavior

Hope And The Patient With Cancer – Curetoday.com

As an individual diagnosed more than 5 years ago with multiple myeloma, I have been struck by the reliance on the part of some cancer patients who place significant emphasis on clinical trials and research, and the desire to battle and fight the disease in order to seek cure and avoid untimely death. This emphasis also applies to healthcare providers and researchers, many of whom are the very originators of this focus. Offering hope supports that singular human need to achieve another state of being. As a need, hope is more than an emotional state with something that could be different in our lives.

Hope is a multifaceted human need that drives one to achieve or craft ones life in a certain direction. More than a guide or roadmap for ourselves, our families, our friends and beyond, hope can influence the essence of very fundamental human behavior from birth to death.

There are many ways of examining the concept of hope as it applies to the cancer patient. At its very core, hope and the patient may be seen through the lens of the quality of life or lifestyle, a religious orientation and faith, and the belief in the human soul.

Hope can produce a quality of life which may be considered a lifestyle. That is, our daily behavior from birth onwards is built around a series of ideas, principles, concepts and others thoughts that from a belief system and ultimately organized as a lifestyle. While the concept of lifestyle is a complicated phenomenon, the idea of grouping the many forms of individual human behavior into a set of mostly observable behaviors can have, at its core, the idea of hope. Hope may well be the driving force as we traverse our way through life. And part of this is the idea that hope is an amazing gift from God which underlies the very essence of a positive quality of life or standard by which we live from birth to death.

In many organized religions, hope is part of the foundation of religious faith which is built around the omnipresent force commonly referred as the concept of God. And, as some religions have espoused, the human soul is the persons window to God, which guides our thoughts and beliefs about our future, and ultimately to our understanding about the hereafter. Hope also helps to form three other aspects of human behavior.

These three beliefs are the belief in the human soul, belief in our own future, and finally, a belief in the hereafter. Aside from biological growth and development, the human being also learns, accepts, and inculcates into our being the beliefs in the human soul, our own future, and the hereafter forming our human core. Hope, then, becomes a primary vehicle for understanding human existence.

So, how do we make sense out of this? My own interest in this topic grew out of my volunteer work as a moderator for a digital support group for people with Blood Cancers.

This group is nationally supported by ANCAN, a cancer information organization. In my moderating work I was struck by the almost exclusive interest on the part of participants in medications they were taking, clinical trials they were participating in, details about their chemotherapy designs, and related topics.

Initially, I was shocked to listen to the conversation. As a psychologist, I had much more anticipated that discussion questions about, What are you feeling? How are you coping? What is your family doing to help you? Are you ever angry about getting cancer? If so, how do you express yourself? And to my professional amazement, these discussion points never came up and when asked if they were interested in talking about this, there was only some quiet grumbling.

The good news is that silence almost always works, so after a moment or two, one brave soul said, you know, I always wanted to know what it will feel like when the end for me is near?Understandably, this generated a good deal of healthy discussion. So, from a hope perspective perhaps what I call Medication Talk is really Help Talk organized in a way that is emotionally acceptable to the participants.

As mentioned earlier, hope can also be viewed as a form of quality of life or lifestyle in which some have built their style of living around the concept. Virtually everything they do involves some consideration of hope. Ones personal thinking about self, spouses, extended and close-in family, siblings, employers, friends and acquaintances, neighbors and virtually all others that we have contact with have hope woven into those relationships. Hope that it will remain the same, or that it will change for the better, or somehow be different. Hope is tightly woven into our very essence or being and is the principle upon which we judge and evaluate virtually all our thinking concerning the past, the present, and the future.

From a practical point of view, the concept of hope is difficult to understand, especially in the presence of catastrophic disease. Disease challenges us to live beyond the confines of the disease as we know it or come to understand it. One way of understanding this is to examine the emotional role of medications at the center of disease treatment, most especially cancer treatment. The principal advocates of this are first the practitioner who provides the diagnostic understanding of the disease and prescribes the medication to fight the disease.

And second are the patients who often develop an fixation around the current medication, the clinical research around new medications, and the overall effectiveness of both. What is interesting to note is this authors own experience with his multiple oncology physicians wherein the regular monthly appointments are almost completely focused on the efficacy of the medications that fight the symptoms of the disease itself and the side-effects of the disease fighting medications. Only under a few rare circumstances have we have conversation about feelings, emotional coping strategies, and end-of-life expectations.

Hope is a complex concept that each of us has a multitude of thoughts about. Conceptually, hope may be characterized as a religious phenomenon involving the idea of God and eternal life. On the other hand, but clearly related, hope can be considered a common part of the human ego or the emotional and biological structure of the human person. Finally, while hope is thought to be a universal aspect of all persons, its parts and dimensions certainly have cultural components that differ for all human beings. How one defines hope is both individualistic and group or culturally determined.

Hope does not equal living per se. Some have the idea that if they go through life embracing hope that they are truly living. Yet, hope alone does not and could not define living.If all our ideas, actions, behaviors, thoughts, and the like are based solely on hope, then indeed we are deferring the present reality for the future which is, by definition, hope oriented. While living, meaning the past, present, and future, does contain elements of hope, it is the totality of the hope concept that is problematic as it could keep us from what is happening because we are focused only on hope elements for the future. It is a sort of childhood version of, when I grow up, Im going to be.Hope for the past, present, and future is necessary, but it is the totality of it that does not constitute living in and of itself.

As mentioned, hope feeds the soul with a sense of identity which enables the person to live beyond the current situation that individuals find themselves in. As humans, we are complex individuals who are relatedly close, but not a copy of one another. We are created with the idea of a soul or a sense of self that combines our past, present, and the future. This is best understood as a combination of behaviors, religious beliefs, thoughts, feelings, guidelines, cultural belief systems and the like that can structure how we think and behave. This is most especially the case as we contemplate future thoughts, wishes, desires, and behaviors. How our soul is developed will determine in part how we will behave in the future. And for many, our souls have an exceptionally large religious or spiritual component which serves to help guide us through all our days on Earth.

This is especially the case for those of us with a terminal illness whose end can and is predicted in terms of time-based sequences and levels of disease. The longer the time with the disease and its level provides a statistical determination of the average life span. Hence, the role of hope and its foundation in God becomes even more important to the cancer patient as one prepares for life hereafter. Perhaps the final and most significant statement about hope is the question about God being eternal life. As cancer patients and others face the probability of near death, the idea that God is about eternal life gathers increasing importance and meaning. As human beings facing imminent death, the idea of the hereafter takes on ever-increasing importance. And, for those of us raised with a concept of God as part of our intellect and being, at the very essence of hope then is an ever-strong belief that God is responsible for our hopeful belief in our daily existence and in the afterlife.

Hope is indeed a complex issue for all human beings to deal with. While this complexity applies to all human beings, it is particularly relevant to those whose illness or age is such that it is likely to be more imperative. Hope provides a livable statement about quality of life. As an alternative to the idea of hope as a pathway for disease-fighting, hope can provide a set of statements or directions to be followed for the living of a quality life. While the concrete approach determining a sort of mechanistic attitude is a normal human process, hope can be useful for conceptualizing a much broader approach to living. The dimensions of this are endless and usually involve other people, family, friends and perhaps even volunteering yourself to assisting others in need.

Even though cancer patients must follow a structured path of treatment for disease resolution, that path does not preclude additional elements which have a broader appeal and usefulness for the patient. In fact, an attitude of belief that the future may be pre-determined because of the disease, adding other dimensions like hope to ones living can strengthen ones approach and add richness to their quality living.

To this end then, hope is a gift and becomes the essence of a quality of life issue for us. We surround ourselves with the idea that hope is a gift, and one which has been nurtured by ourselves over time and often nurtured by other people in our lives. We have been taught or otherwise learned that the idea of hope provides one of the principle ways to achieve happiness in life even within the context of catastrophic disease. As we move through our own individual stages of development, hope is a human quality that enables us to create opportunities for positivity and peace of heart.

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Hope And The Patient With Cancer - Curetoday.com

Human Behavior

The value of what we have lost in 2020 – Brunswick News

My friend Dan will die today. I am writing this on Friday morning, Oct. 16. Later today, doctors will turn off the machines that are keeping Dan alive. Dans symptoms began two days ago. He is young in his early 30s and this is a shock.

As I have learned of Dans short illness and impending death, I have been especially sad for his young wife. Dan does not have COVID-19 but due to the pandemic, his wife has not been able to visit him as he lay dying.

This is a familiar, tragic story for so many families who have lost loved ones this year. So far, COVID-19 has killed almost 219,000 Americans, and we have heard floods of stories not only of grief but also of the added trauma of separation as loved ones die alone.

We have lost so much this year.

As I am trying to wrap my head around all we have lost, I return to one of the more interesting results from the field of labor economics, a trick used to assign a dollar value to human life.

Certainly, the true value of the lives lost cannot be measured and is known best in the hearts and lives of those who loved them.

But, as impossible as it may be and as dehumanizing as it may seem, the ability to assign an approximate value to human life is an important one in many policy decisions. For example, it can be a factor in determining how we set fines for pollution or other behavior that can be shown to be a risk to life. It can be a factor in settling lawsuits involving loss of life. Or it can be a consideration in evaluating insurance premiums and payouts.

There are a couple of ways to think about the value of a life. One is to consider the productive potential of an individual, which, in theory, is approximately equal to what he or she would earn as a participant in the labor market.

Productive potential, however, is a very narrow way to define ones value.

A more all-encompassing technique is to observe human behavior and to infer from our choices the value we place on our own lives.

Every job has associated with it a risk of injury or death. Other things equal, the higher risk involved in a job, the more an individual in that position is paid. When a market is in equilibrium, workers are indifferent between a higher-paying riskier job and a lower-paying safer job.

This is how we know the dollar value workers place on their own lives.

We can observe labor market behavior to see how much money workers are willing to give up for a specific decrease in their probability of death, and this gives us what is known as the value of statistical life.

There have been many estimates of the value of statistical life, but the EPA currently uses a value of approximately $7.4 million, regardless of the age, income, or other characteristic of the individual.

You can do the math, but we really dont need a dollar sign to know we have lost a lot this year. Praying it ends soon.

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The value of what we have lost in 2020 - Brunswick News

Human Behavior

Therapy Plus Medication is More Effective Than Medication Alone for Patients With Bipolar Disorder – Pharmacy Times

Therapy Plus Medication is More Effective Than Medication Alone for Patients With Bipolar Disorder

The review, published in JAMA Psychiatry, assessed data from studies that included adult and adolescent patients who were receiving medication for bipolar disorder at the time of the study. Additionally, the patients were randomly assigned to either an active family, individual or group therapy, or "usual care," which meant that the patient was receiving both medication with routine monitoring and support from a psychiatrist.

In total, the studies reviewed by the researchers followed the patients over a period of approximately 1 year; measured rates of recurrence of bipolar disorder, depression, and mania symptoms; and included study attrition or dropout rates.

The results demonstrated that psychoeducation with guided practice of illness management skills in a family or group setting had greater efficacy in reducing recurrences of mania and depressive symptoms than the same strategies in an individual therapy setting. Also, patients who received family-oriented therapies had lower rates of dropout than other patients.

Additionally, cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy, and interpersonal therapy were more effective at stabilizing symptoms of depression than other types of treatment, according to the study.

The study's lead author, David Miklowitz, PhD, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at University of California, Los Angeles, explained in a press release that these results show the importance of a support system for those with bipolar disorder.

"Not everyone may agree with me, but I think the family environment is very important in terms of whether somebody stays well," he said in the press release. "There's nothing like having a person who knows how to recognize when you're getting ill and can say, 'you're starting to look depressed or you're starting to get ramped up.' That person can remind their loved one to take their medications or stay on a regular sleep-wake cycle or contact the psychiatrist for a medication evaluation."

Miklowitz noted that this can also be true for patients who may not have close relatives to attend family therapy, as these patients could still receive that type of support through the group therapy environment.

"If you're in group therapy, other members of that group may be able to help you recognize that you're experiencing symptoms," he said in the press release. "People tend to pair off. It's a little bit like the AA model of having a sponsor."

REFERENCETherapy plus medication better than medication alone in bipolar disorder. Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles Health Sciences; October 14, 2020. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/uoc--tpm101420.php. Accessed October 15, 2020.

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Therapy Plus Medication is More Effective Than Medication Alone for Patients With Bipolar Disorder - Pharmacy Times

Human Behavior

Corporate execs are talking differently on earnings calls to please the machines – CNBC

Would you talk differently if you knew a machine was listening to you and grading you based on what you were saying, or based on whether you were using positive or negative words, or even if the sound of your voice was optimistic or pessimistic?

Apparently, Wall Street executives are talking differently.They are trying to game machine algorithms on earnings calls.

You've heard of George Carlin's "7 words you can't say on TV?"We may now have "words you can't say on an earnings report."

A recent study found that executives on earnings calls are increasingly avoiding using negative words and trying to sound more upbeat, so machine algorithms will score the call as more "positive" than "negative."

Oh man.Anything to fool the algos.

This is a new round in the war between machines and people.Machines can fool people, but people are trying to fool machines, too.

All of this makes sense if you understand the evolution of trying to figure out what is "really" going on with corporate earnings.

First, there were earnings reports, which came out of the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the early 1930s.Then there were earnings calls.Then there were analysts trying to figure out the "body language" of the executives on the calls to determine how they "really" felt about their company prospects.Then came machines listening to executives for keywords that were deemed important and deciding whether the calls sounded "upbeat" or "downbeat" based on the words being used.

Now, there's a new twist:Seems like the executives have figured out that the machines are listening, and that if they (the executives) avoid using certain words that sound "downbeat" or "negative" they can improve the score they will get, and their earnings call will magically sound more positive.

So say Sean Cao, Wei Jiang, Baozhong Yang & Alan L. Zhang, authors of "How to Talk When a Machine Is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI," published on the National Bureau of Economic Research website.

Their main conclusion:"Firms with high expected machine downloads manage textual sentiment and audio emotion in ways catered to machine and AI readers, such as by differentially avoiding words that are perceived as negative by computational algorithms as compared to those by human readers, and by exhibiting speech emotion favored by machine learning software processors."

In other words, humans are using words they think the machines want to hear and that will give them a more positive score.

The authors noted that this effect was particularly notable on companies that had very high interest in their filings.In other words, the more people paying attention, the more likely the execs were to change their behavior.

Of course, we have known for years about the ability of machines to analyze earnings calls, but the authors say "our study is the first to identify and analyze the feedback effect, i.e., how companies adjust the way they talk knowing that machines are listening."

OK, so we are in a giant hall of mirrors. Humans (investors) are trying to figure out what other humans (corporate executives) really feel about their company's prospects by listening to earnings calls that are analyzed by machines, and the humans (corporate executives) are changing their behavior so the machines will tell the other humans (investors) that things are better than they really are, or at least as good as the executives really meant it to sound.

Got that? What could go wrong?

"Humans are taking machines and using them to analyze emotional signals so we can analyze other humans more efficiently," said DataTrek's Nicholas Colas. "But the machines are doing it on a scale humans could never do.There's an endless loop that is being set up, and expect this to get even more refined over time."

Even the study authors are a little worried about where this will ultimately lead us:"Such a feedback effect can lead to unexpected outcomes, such as manipulation and collusion," they said.

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Corporate execs are talking differently on earnings calls to please the machines - CNBC

Human Behavior

The Key to Business Growth is as Simple as Looking at Your Employees Actions, New Study will Unveil Best Practices – GlobeNewswire

Boca Raton, FL, Oct. 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Brandon Hall Group, the preeminent independent human capital management research and advisory firm, launches its 2020 People Data, Analytics and Algorithms Survey to identify the most successful organizations methods, techniques and best practices.

Data science involves collecting, sorting and analyzing large and highly diverse data sets to identify and predict outcomes, activities and actions. People data science leverages data to predict human behaviors, outcomes and actions. It is critical for identifying internal and external influences that impact peoples behavior and reactions, ensuring only the best, most ethical and productive techniques are used.

There is an increasing reliance on people data for decision-making, and the pace and rate of adoption continues to grow, said Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke. Human resources professionals, having accepted the inevitability of the people data revolution, must now lead their organizations further in this direction.

Part of being more analytically advanced involves how and why data is collected and used, which will be analyzed in this study, said Cliff Stevenson, Principal Workforce Management Analyst at Brandon Hall Group.

Brandon Hall Groups 2020 People Data, Analytics and Algorithms Studyconsists of a survey sent to its global database and scores of qualitative interviews with research participants, HCM Excellence Award winners and its members.

To learn more about this research study or to participate,click here

Those who participate will receive a summary of the results and the ability to connect with Brandon Hall Groups analyst team to gain further understanding of the issues.

-About Brandon Hall Group-

Brandon Hall Group is the worlds only professional-development company that provides data, research, insights and certification to Learning and Talent professionals and organizations. The best companies in the world rely on Brandon Hall Group to help create future-proof employee-development plans for the new era of work and management.

For more than 27 years, BHG empowers, recognizes and certifies excellence in organizations throughout the world, driving the development of more than 10,000,000 employees and executives. Our annual HCM Excellence Awards program was the first to recognize and celebrate organizations for learning and talent, and as the industrys gold standard is known as the Academy Awards of Human Capital Management.

Brandon Hall Groups cloud-based platform delivers evidence-based insights in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Diversity and Inclusion, Talent Acquisition and HR/Workforce Management for corporate organizations and HCM solution providers.

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The Key to Business Growth is as Simple as Looking at Your Employees Actions, New Study will Unveil Best Practices - GlobeNewswire