Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Opinion: Be it resolved human nature is not violent – The Appalachian Online

We are not born violent. Outside factors depict who we become. Like John Locke theorized, we are born with a blank slate. Some scientists propose that humans are innately violent. For example, David Carrier hypothesized that human hands evolved for us to be better fighters. However, there is evidence from other anthropologists, like Douglas Fry, proving that humans can make peace without resorting to violence.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest relatives. Some scientists argue that humans, especially males, are inherently violent like chimpanzees. While male chimps fight for territory and females, bonobos tend to be more peaceful and share meat. Bonobos are female-dominated troops, so males may be less violent due to reduced competition for mating. It seems most violence from chimps stems from competition for limited resources. One study showed that bonobos are kind and generous to those outside of their groups. Behavior like this is not typically seen in chimps, who are aggressive to outsiders, while bonobos are usually not. Humans are more like bonobos than chimps: they want to collaborate and make peace with one another. In society today, most developed countries no longer need to fight for resources. Instead, we work together through trade and peace treaties.

The environment shapes our nature. For example, Brad Bushman and L. Huesmann studied how violence in mass media affects adults and children. They found that children will experience long-term effects of aggression because they mimic their environment. They explained that through classical conditioning, a child may then react with inappropriate fear or anger in a novel situation that is similar to one that the child has observed in the media. Adults may experience long-term effects of violence depending on their past exposure to aggression.

Viewing violence in mass media desensitizes us to it. We become less sympathetic to others and more antisocial. People are not innately violent: what we learn and observe can make us violent.

What we experience and learn makes us who we are. People become violent, angry, and fearful because of what they see in mass media and real situations. One literature review on how child abuse affects a childs behavior revealed that physically abused children have structural brain changes proving that outside factors shape our minds. Children who were abused tend to show the following signs: fighting with others, suicidal thoughts, poor grades, anxiety, depression, high probability to commit crimes such as underage drinking, drug use, etc. This means that our experiences help determine our behavior. Children who were abused may be more violent or rebellious because of their upbringing, not because they were born with a violent nature.

Some scientists also argue that genetics help determine our behavior. For example, genetics shape our personalities, and in some cases, affect our behaviors and attitudes. However, as we have different experiences over time, our personalities may change. Why? Because outside influences affect our behavior. Brent Roberts and Daniel Mroczek studied the changes in personalities from youth to adulthood. They explained that our personalities usually change as we grow older. For instance, someone who was an introverted teen may become more extroverted as they get older depending on their experiences.

In one experiment, scientists studied 3-month-old infants reactions to two different scenarios: one with a Climber trying to reach the top of a hill where a Helper pushed them up or a Hinderer pushed them down the hill, and the other control scenario with inanimate objects. Results showed that 10 out of 12 children valued the Helper while five out of 12 liked the Pusher-Upper inanimate object. The research proved that infants can interpret positive social cues and motivations, such as the Helper guiding the Climber up the hill.

The way we are raised and what we experience shapes us. We mimic our environment; if we see violence, we may become violent and reflect negative emotions.

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Opinion: Be it resolved human nature is not violent - The Appalachian Online

Human Behavior

DREAM Collective to host webinar on diversity training – AdVantageNEWS.com

Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilles DREAM Collective and Anti-Racism Task Force are hosting a webinar, Re-thinking Diversity & Multicultural Trainings for Professions, from 10:30 a.m.-noon Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Registration is available athttps://siue.zoom.us/webinar/. College faculty, administrators, presidents and others are invited to join.

For a few decades, higher education has operated under the model that having a designated diversity or multicultural course in certain program curricula would provide degree seekers with competency in these areas. With the growing presence of movements like #BLM and #metoo in the cultural zeitgeist, is an update to this model warranted?

This panel discussion will explore the experiences of teaching multicultural content in the training of helping professionals, including examples of how said content has been/can be embedded across program curricula.

Featured speakers will include SIUEs Courtney R. Boddie, associate dean of students for diversity and inclusion and director of counseling services; J.T. Snipes, assistant professor and co-director of the College Student Personnel Administration program in the Department of Educational Leadership; Jayashree George, assistant professor in the Art Therapy Counseling program; and Jennifer Hernandez, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning.

A team of faculty activists from the SIUE School of Education, Health and Human Behavior launched the DREAM Collective in June. The group is building on decades of scholarship to conduct the important work of Dismantling Racism through Education, Advocacy and Mobilization. SIUEs Anti-Racism Task Force includes university administration, and a faculty of experts in equity scholarship and advocacy.

For more information, contact the DREAM Collective atTheDREAMCollective@siue.eduand follow the DREAM Collective on Facebook @dreamcollective20, Twitter @DREAMcollect20 and Instagram @DREAMcollective20.

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DREAM Collective to host webinar on diversity training - AdVantageNEWS.com

Human Behavior

INTERVIEW ALERT: RTI Expert Available to Comment on the Importance of Flu Vaccine Amid COVID-19 Pandemic – PRNewswire

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --As flu season approaches amid the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the time to get the message out to Americans that it is crucial to get a flu vaccine. This fall, flu vaccines will have heightened importance as preventing seasonal flu could help mitigate strain on a health care system already overburdened by the pandemic.

Brian Southwell, PhD, an expert in communication and human behavior and a researcher at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, is available for interviews to discuss efforts to promote the flu vaccine this year. As institutions seek to increase seasonal flu vaccinations to eliminate the flu from the public health equation during the COVID-19 pandemic, they face challenges in terms of misconceptions and human dynamics.

Dr. Southwell is an expert in misinformation research and public understanding of health and science . His work in this area includes a recent book and numerous studies on misinformation, including how it spreads and how to best to counter it, as well as perceptions of other emerging infectious diseases such as Zika virus disease, avian influenza, and Ebola virus disease.

To request an interview, contact [emailprotected].To access more RTI research about global health, visit http://www.rti.organd follow RTI on Twitter @RTI_Intl.

About RTI InternationalRTI International is an independent, nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. Clients rely on us to answer questions that demand an objective and multidisciplinary approachone that integrates expertise across the social and laboratory sciences, engineering, and international development. We believe in the promise of science, and we are inspired every day to deliver on that promise for the good of people, communities, and businesses around the world. For more information, visit http://www.rti.org.

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INTERVIEW ALERT: RTI Expert Available to Comment on the Importance of Flu Vaccine Amid COVID-19 Pandemic - PRNewswire

Human Behavior

Caleb’s Concepts: Be it resolved human nature is violent – The Appalachian Online

Be it resolved, human nature is violent. Violence is everywhere in 2020. From police killings to partisan extremism violence is unavoidable. No matter what, violence follows humans everywhere because thats how we are wired. Prehistoric humans drove animals extinct in Eurasia and the Americas are currently spearheading a sixth mass extinction. Yet, this trait is not uniquely human. Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, also overhunt. Between 1975 to 2009, chimpanzee hunts resulted in the red colobus monkey population declining by 89%. Yet, humans and chimps dont hurt other species, but members of our own.

History is filled with death, violence and destruction. However, evidence suggests human violence is a recent phenomenon because neolithic and paleolithic groups coexisted peacefully. However, murderous humans conquered these people and established new systems. How could this happen? Evolution through natural selection proposed in On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Cultures that successfully conquered other groups valued strength. People that exhibited these traits passed their genes to the next generation, reducing the instance of passive traits. Even peaceful societies are not exempt from using violence. Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues in Righteous Mind that peaceful societies can use violence to maintain peace. People that do not adhere to group values are removed and are not able to pass on their genes.

Violence among group members is known as intragroup aggression, however, humans also commit violent acts against other groups. In World War II alone, 85 million people died and tragically intergroup violence did not stop there.Some researchers argue it is the scarcity of resources that causes violence. When your group is pressured into survival and needs resources, it is forced to do the unthinkable to survive.

In one study, Muzafer Sherif studied the behavior of 12-year-old boys to determine their response. The boys shared demographics and were divided into two rival groups. Sherif organized competitions for the two groups to participate in, which resulted in overt prejudice from one group to another. As the competitions progressed, prejudice grew worse. One group ransacked the other groups cabin, stealing valuables, while the other group burned their oppositions flag. Soon, violence ensued and the researchers had to stop the two groups from getting physical. At the end of the study, researchers asked the group of boys to give a post evaluation of their experience. The boys listed positive traits for their group, while negative traits for the other. Because neither group was starved and resorted to unethical behavior towards other groups, they reject the theory that groups are violent when resources are scarce.

Sherifs findings are consistent with behaviors observed in our simian friends, the chimpanzee and bonobo. Primatologist Jane Goodall discovered a period known as the Gombe Chimpanzee War where two groups of once-friendly chimps split and began viciously attacking each other. Bonobos, our other closely related cousin, also display intergroup aggression. Researchers found that social cohesion increases within the troops when attacking other groups. However, not all primates violently resolve disputes. Orangutans and gorillas usually resolve disputes peacefully, namely to prevent permanent damage since the strength of those apes makes confrontation lethal. However, humans and chimpanzees share more similarities genetically and culturally, meaning inter and intragroup violence is not uniquely human. What is interesting is the closer a primate is to a human, the more violent it becomes.

Still not convinced violence is innate? Look at our hands. Researchers found that a fist is more effective for maximizing pain than a palm strike. One could argue that fists also enable us to hunt and gather more efficiently by being able to grip a tool or pick more food. However, having an open palm shouldnt prohibit you from scooping berries off the ground. This means that a fists only other function could be to use tools more effectively. What were tools used for? Hunting. What is hunting? Killing. Therefore, our ability to make fists makes us better killers, and through sexual selection humans that could form a closed fist passed on their genes to subsequent generations.

While there are cultures that frown upon violence and practice pacifism, these cultures are kept intact through removing people that dont adhere to these norms. Thus, they are not actually peaceful towards difference. Yes, there are pacifist human groups, such as the Enga in Papua New Guinea. These groups will avoid direct confrontation and flee versus fight. Yet, they are often smaller and are not indicative of humans as a whole since most groups use violence to maintain cohesion.. Furthermore, peaceful groups are at a disadvantage when compared to aggressive groups because those groups have no qualms about violence.

Human imperfection is not a new concept. North African philosopher Saint Augustine wrote about it in ancient Rome. In his masterpiece, The City of God, Augustine coins the phrase peccatum originalis or original sin. Augustine argued that our nature is flawed because we rebelled against goodness true form. No matter what we do or what we try, we will fail to have peace because our nature is flawed. Humans are wired to put group survival first and that means removing anything that challenges group survival.

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Caleb's Concepts: Be it resolved human nature is violent - The Appalachian Online

Human Behavior

The Complex Interface of Humans and Wildfires – The LumberJack

Every fire season, blankets of smoke roll over Humboldt County. Here on the coast, thats as close to wildfires as some of us get. But our practice of fire suppression is a relatively new state for our woodlands and the lack of fire is taking its toll on the county.

Humboldt countys interesting. Most of the county really hasnt experienced much fire over the last few decades, said Jeffery Kane, associate professor of fire ecology and fuels management at Humboldt State University.

High levels of rainfall and a more temperate climate contribute to a lower risk of fire, but that doesnt mean fire isnt a natural part of Humboldts environment.

When there are ignitions, and there are ignitions here from lightning and humans from time to time, they are usually fairly easy to put out, Kane said. That nice fog layer, thats going to moderate fire behavior.

Inland Humboldt county is not as protected by our temperate, coastal environment. But Kane said that quick fire suppression may not be the safest or most environmentally friendly way to manage wildfire in the long term.

The thing that we know is most effective is to treat areas with a combination of thinning and burning, Kane said.

The suppression of small wildfires can make future fires more difficult to control. Dense canopies and the buildup of dry fuel makes fire more dangerous. By thinning the forest, the trees become less tightly packed. When the canopy has more gaps, fires spread slower. Then after the canopy is thinned, a prescribed burn can take care of the natural dry fuels and remaining debris created from thinning. Thinning and burning can make an area less vulnerable to uncontrolled wildfires.

Although Humboldt is relatively protected, this area still would see wildfire activity every few years if not for the relatively recent introduction of American colonizers. Due to the danger of wildfire to settlers and property, wildfire is almost completely suppressed.

Disturbance Ecology Professor Rosemary Sherriff studies the impact fire suppression has on local woodlands. She thinks there can be a balance between protecting settled areas and letting wildfires run their course.

Lightning strikes and Indigenous burning would have introduced fire to local oak woodlands. These woodland areas suffer without the fire that shaped the ecosystem.

In the past few years weve had fires that have gone into more urban areas, a lot of it stemming from more wildland areas, Sherriff said. Theres been a substantial amount of urban-woodland interface and these are really extremely hazardous places to live.

In addition to providing more fuel to fires, the removal of wildfire has come at the cost of native biodiversity. Removing a natural phenomenon that was encouraged by local Indigenous tribes has consequently impacted our landscape. Local ecosystems are adapted to wildfire and removing fire allows fire sensitive species to grow without natural inhibitors.

Inland we have oak woodlands, for example, that historically would have had a lot of fire, said Sherriff.

Lightning strikes and Indigenous burning would have introduced fire to local oak woodlands. These woodland areas suffer without the fire that shaped the ecosystem.

What weve seen is a lot of encroachment of native douglas fir into these oak woodlands, Sherriff said. So theres been a loss of the oak woodland open areas.

This loss of oak woodlands can be seen throughout Humboldt County. This destroys native biodiversity. But fire suppression is not the only consideration.

Fire suppression has certainly shaped the landscape, Sherriff said. We cant disregard the fact that settlements and communities and ranches and homeownership and the cannabis thats happening also shapes and reshapes the landscape and can contribute significantly to shifts in fire behavior.

The balance between human settlement and fire suppression is a difficult medium to reach.

It becomes extremely tricky when its someones livelihood, Sherriff said. Its very easy to sit at the university and say yeah, more fire on the landscape but its extremely hard to make it happen with all the structures and policies in place.

Lenya Quinn-Davidson is an advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension. One of her projects is the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association. Its a loose cooperative of land owners and community members that implement prescribed burns. While structures and policy is slow to change, theyve proactively decided to put fire back into their land themselves.

A lot of people want to use prescribed fire, Quinn-Davidson said. By the time were actually there lighting the fire, theres already been a ton of work making sure that its safe, effective and that it wont get out of control. Its not like were just going out and lighting things off.

Prescribed burning is a tool that landowners can use for fuels management, invasive species control and habitat restoration. The encroaching firs that Sherriff studies are a main target of controlled burn.

Were losing our oaks at a pretty astonishing rate, Quinn-Davidson said. So a lot of the landowners that have oak woodlands really want to use prescribed fire to get in there while those firs are small and kill the firs. The oaks survive just fine because theyre very fire adapted.

Though douglas firs are native, there are some invasive species that landowners can keep back with prescribed burns. There are invasive species of grass like the medusa head that smother local grasslands. Ranchers want to make sure their cattle grazing lands are free of medusa head.

It creates this thick thatch that prevents other plants from growing, so it turns into this homogeneous field of grass that nothing can eat. Quinn-Davidson said.

Fire is necessary for keeping our natural landscape healthy and biodiverse. Where forest and human settlements meet, controlled burning can help maintain a healthy habitat with less danger to human life. With those buffer zones established, wildfire can be allowed to burn in a controlled manner, establishing a careful balance between fire and safety.

Quinn-Davidson thinks getting to a meaningful scale of fire management will take a combination of state intervention and owners taking control of their land.

Its a real community thing. Quinn-Davidson said. People just love it.

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The Complex Interface of Humans and Wildfires - The LumberJack

Human Behavior

Nothing announce new album, The Great Dismal – Treble

Philadelphia shoegazers Nothing have announced a new album. On October 30, theyll release The Great Dismal via Relapse. The first track theyve released from the album is titled Say Less, and you can check it out below.

A press release states that the album was recorded during quarantine with producer Will Yip, and that its songs explore existentialist themes of isolation, extinction, and human behavior in the face of 2020s vast wasteland. It features guest appearances from harpist Mary Lattimore, singer/songwriter Alex G, and classical musician Shelley Weiss. The albums release also arrives just as the band approaches their 10-year anniversary.

The Great Dismal follows 2018s Dance on the Blacktop.

Nothing The Great Dismal tracklist:

1.A Fabricated Life2. Say Less 3. April Ha Ha 4. Catch a Fade 5. Famine Asylum 6. Bernie Sanders 7. In Blueberry 8. Memories 9. Blue Mecca 10. Just a Story 11. Ask The Rust

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Nothing announce new album, The Great Dismal - Treble

Human Behavior

This Is What We Mean When We Say ‘Character Is Destiny’ – The Dispatch

There are many, many strange things about the Republican political reaction to the Donald Trump presidency, but one of the strangest is the refrain Ive heard time and time againPay no attention to what Trump says. Pay attention to what he does. In essence, the argument is that the Trump administration consistently saves Trump from himself by enacting policies that are far superior to Trumps pronouncements.

Why do I say this is strangeespecially since some of Trumps policies are, in fact, better than his pronouncements? (This is not just true of Trump, by the way.) Well, because its been received conventional wisdom since the foundation of this republic that the presidents words matter. They matter a great deal.

Remember the endless arguments over whether Barack Obama should include the word Islamic when describing our jihadist foes? Remember how weve marked the great moments of prior presidencies by whether they rose to the occasion with words the American people needed to hear in times of fear and distress? Communication is a central part of the presidents job description.

And that brings me to the revelations this week that Donald Trump knew the coronavirus was far more deadly than the flu and yet deliberately played down the threat. Im not going to rehash all the quotes, but the summary is in the tweet below, and the relevant recorded segments of Bob Woodwards interviews with Trump are at the link:

And if you remotely doubt (even now) that Trump did what he said and did play down the virus, the receipts are everywhere:

The point of this piece is not to say that lying is bad. Of course its bad. The point instead is to note that these lies mattered. Back on March 10, one day after Trump compared COVID-19 to the flu, I wrote a newsletter that argued coronavirus requires a high-trust response in a low-trust time:

To minimize the risk of facing the kind of crisis that has killed thousands, crippled Chinese cities, damaged the Chinese economy, and is afflicting Italy, Americans will have to take the coronavirus seriously, and theyll have to engage in at least some degree (even if small) of personal sacrifice.

That requires trustincluding trust in your neighbors, in members of the media who transmit information about the virus, and in public health officials. That trust will require a change in behavior even if no one you know is sick, even if you feel healthy, and even if the virus isnt yet in your community.

By March 10, a total of 30 Americans had died from coronavirus. Today, almost exactly six months from the day I wrote those words, the death toll is now more than 195,000 Americans. Thats likely an underestimate.

We will debate for years why the worlds wealthiest and most powerful nation, a nation chock-full of many of the best doctors and hospitals in the world, experienced such a disproportionately staggering death toll. But heres one reason: A man who millions of people trust and who sets the tone for communications from massive right-wing news outlets and for massive right-wing celebrities told a series of lies. Those lies were transmitted and believed. People acted on those lies.

If you know anything about the right-wing media-entertainment complex, you know that many of its leading lights dont just reject mainstream media or progressive critique. They thrive on it. They relish it. If these folks have a unifying ethos surrounding leftist attacks, its the silly sentence, If youre taking flak, it means youre over the target.

No, it can also mean youre wrongsometimes seriously wrong.

In fact, the celebrities of right-wing media are often so powerful within their own institutions that arguably the only person who can influence or check their public speech is the one man their audience loves more than them, President Trump. Yet make no mistake, as the president downplayed the virus for weeks, many of his champions carried that rhetorical torch with glee. A New York Times analysis found a host of communications that now, after almost 200,000 deaths, seem simply stunning:

A review of hundreds of hours of programming and social media traffic from Jan. 1 through mid-March when the White House started urging peopleto stay home and limit their exposureto others shows that doubt, cynicism and misinformation about the virus took root among many of Mr. Trumps boosters in the right-wing media as the number of confirmed cases in the United States grew.

Some details:

On Feb. 27, Mr. Hannity opened his show in a rage. The apocalypse is imminent and youre going to all die, all of you in the next 48 hours. And its all President Trumps fault, he said, adding, Or at least thats what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think. His program would be one of many platforms with large audiences of conservatives 5.6 million people watched Mr. Hannity interview the president on Fox last week to misleadingly highlight statistics on deaths from the seasonal flu as a comparison.

On Feb. 28, Mr. Limbaugh read from an article from The Western Journal, a website that wasblacklistedby Apple News last year for promoting articles Apple determined were overwhelmingly rejected by the scientific community. The coronavirus, Mr. Limbaugh said, appears far less deadly than the flu, but the government and the media keep promoting panic.

More:

Faced with the inescapable fact that the virus was killing people, many conservatives started sounding fatalistic. Yes its deadly, they acknowledged, but so are a lot of other things. How many people have died this year in the United States from snake bites? the conservative radio host Dennis Prager asked in an online fireside chat posted March 12 to his website, PragerU, where it has been viewed more than 600,000 times.

Ill be honest with yall. I really try to resist anger. Theres just too much anger in American politics. In fact, a key theme of my book is that anger and enmity represent their own independent threat to the American republic. But the presidents deception makes me angry.

Ive spoken to too many people in my neighborhood, church, and community who absorbed the presidents words, heard their favorite figures in the conservative media, and believed themeven to the point where when the president pivoted and began to acknowledge the full dimensions of the crisis, many of those folks believed that the presidents pivot was artificial, a product of Dr. Faucis nefarious influence and not a product of undeniable and deadly facts.

To condemn the presidents deception is not to defend the deceptions, mistakes, and bad faith of other actors in this national drama. Bill de Blasio, for example, deserves an entire wing in the coronavirus hall of shame. Conflicting early masking guidance and the obvious politicization of public health in response to Black Lives Matter protests also helped damage public trust and confidence. In any crisis so pervasive, there is often blame to go around.

And yes, Ive seen folks in the conservative mediaincluding friends of mineargue that if the president had been sounding the alarm accurately and consistently that he would have faced immediate pushback from the Democrats and the media. I agree that the reality of negative polarization means that there are too many people who oppose anything Trump says simply because Trump said it. But that does not relieve the president of the obligation to tell the truth.

Ive also seen Trumps defendersincluding Trump himselflatch onto his claim that he was trying to stop a panic as a defense. Here was Trump yesterday:

First, I must confess that its a little bit unusual to see Trump shun alarmism. He consistently hypes threats. He has argued that Joe Biden election could destroy this nation. Just yesterday he tweeted this entirely calm and temperate claim:

But putting aside the presidents typical alarmism, isnt there a happy medium between denial and panic? Its called the truth. Prepare the American people with calm conviction. Communicate to them that you understand the truth, were in this together, and we can endure, persevere, andultimatelytriumph.

American history is replete with examples of presidents preparing Americans for long and painful struggles, and in many ways that kind of preparation was perhaps even more indispensable at the onset of this pandemic than it is when preparing Americans for most military conflicts. After all, flattening the curve and limiting the spread of the virus required public acceptance of the threat and massive voluntary compliance with public health guidelines and mandates. There are not enough police in the country to enforce mask mandates (nor would we want police to be so pervasive).

We had to do this together. We had to believe this was real. At a key moment, with hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, the president lied. He made many Americans disbelieve. When critics of the president declared, beginning even in 2015, that character is destiny, this is what we meant. When the time would come to tell the hard truths, the president was likely to failand fail he did.

One more thing

One of the interesting coronavirus questions is the impact of individual choice versus government policy as a driver of human behavior. When America shut down, was the shutdown driven more by individual choice or government policy? Or, did the government policy merely ratify a civic shutdown that was already in process? Theres a fascinating new paper from Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson arguing that the lockdowns may have been far less decisive than we think:

The collapse of economic activity in 2020 from COVID-19 has been immense. An important question is how much of that resulted from government restrictions on activity versus people voluntarily choosing to stay home to avoid infection. This paper examines the drivers of the collapse using cellular phone records data on customer visits to more than 2.25 million individual businesses across 110 different industries. Comparing consumer behavior within the same commuting zones but across boundaries with different policy regimes suggests that legal shutdown orders account for only a modest share of the decline of economic activity (and that having county-level policy data is significantly more accurate than state-level data). While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection. Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly tied to the number of COVID deaths in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from larger/busier stores toward smaller/less busy ones in the same industry. States repealing their shutdown orders saw identically modest recoveries--symmetric going down and coming back. The shutdown orders did, however, significantly reallocate consumer activity away from nonessential to essential businesses and from restaurants and bars toward groceries and other food sellers.

Read the whole thing.

One last thing

On Wednesday I shared the Dune trailer. While it was magnificent, I realized that some small slice of my readers (perhaps two percent?) dont fully understand what the trailer meant. They dont truly understand the glories that await. So, for you, heres a Dune trailer explainer. Great stuff.

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This Is What We Mean When We Say 'Character Is Destiny' - The Dispatch

Human Behavior

Brain Organoids Reveal the Early Stages of Angelman Syndrome – Technology Networks

New research from North Carolina State University provides insights into the earliest stages of Angelman syndrome. The work also demonstrates how human cerebral organoids can be used to shed light on genetic disorders that affect human development.

Angelman syndrome is a genetic disorder associated with delayed development, intellectual disability, speech impairment and problems with movement. A great deal of research has been done on Angelman syndrome, primarily involving laboratory studies of mice and natural history studies of humans. However, while researchers have established that the complex disorder is tied to the behavior of a gene called UBE3A, and strong evidence in mice has shown that prenatal time periods may be important in disease development, researchers had yet to find a way of monitoring the earliest stages of the disease in human neural cells.

"Obviously we cannot do studies on developing humans, so we wanted to know whether it was possible to study the molecular dynamics around UBE3A using cerebral organoids," says Albert Keung, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State. "When is the gene turned on? How do drugs affect gene and neuronal functions? Does the gene behave differently in different types of cells? These are complex questions, but we found that you can learn a lot through the cerebral organoid model."

Human cerebral organoids are millimeter-sized tissues comprised of the cell types typically found in the different regions of the brain. They are made by culturing stem cells. For this study, the researchers monitored the behavior of the organoids for 17 weeks after culturing the cells.

For example, the researchers mapped when UBE3A was turned off or on in different types of cells and at different stages of neurodevelopment - as well as where in each cell the gene was active. This can shed light on things such as the extent to which UBE3A might be regulating the activity of other genes, and when the delivery of therapeutic treatments may be most effective.

One of the things the researchers discovered is that UBE3A appears to be playing an important role in the development of brain tissue earlier than anyone knew - potentially even within three weeks of culturing the organoids.

"We had the ability to see how UBE3A's behavior changed over time in the organoid," says Dilara Sen, first author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "We were also able to see how different drugs affected the gene's behavior - and how those changes affected the function of neurons in the organoid."

"This is fundamental, proof-of-concept work," Keung says. "But hopefully it demonstrates how the cerebral organoid model can facilitate the development of therapeutic strategies for people with Angelman syndrome. We believe the model can do this by advancing our understanding of the disease, which can inform research into possible treatments. We also believe that this model could be used to screen drugs that are candidates for therapeutic interventions. Organoid models aren't new. But they may be more powerful tools than we previously anticipated."

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Brain Organoids Reveal the Early Stages of Angelman Syndrome - Technology Networks

Human Behavior

OST Accelerates Business Growth in Minneapolis with a partnership with Azul Seven, New Leadership and Office Expansion – PRNewswire

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. and MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OST, a digital and IT consulting firm, announces plans for exponential business growth in Minneapolis to power a more unified human-centered design and innovation practice leveraging expert IT strategy and execution.

Igniting the growth, OST has fully integrated human-centered design firm Azul Seven and hired Mitch Prust as vice president of enterprise solutions to further expand its Minneapolis presence.

As a result of the business growth, customers will benefit from OST's expanded capabilities in core services including digital transformation, healthcare IT, IoT, digital commerce and data, as well as new services Azul Seven brings, such as experience strategy and design, qualitative customer insights and service design. Helping to lead the growth strategy, Prust will work closely with sales to drive solutions utilizing the new managed services within the expanded Minneapolis office.

"OST's new initiatives deepen our experience in healthcare, financial services and other complex regulated industries that add value to OST's already strong practice in these areas," said Meredith Bronk, President and CEO of OST. "We have been doing work for enterprise organizations like Thomson Reuters, Toro, and Hennepin Health in the Twin Cities for over a decade and we are excited about the opportunity to advance our presence in the Minneapolis area through a number of new business initiatives."

Founded in 2008, Azul Seven has built a national reputation for producing insight-led digital product and service innovation. Working for a number of clients, from forward-looking industry leaders to start-ups, Azul Seven designs digital and service experiences that retain customers, build brands and generate real business value.

"We've always been a market leader in human-centered design practices," says Lisa Helminiak, CEO of Azul Seven. "Azul Seven's work shows that when you design technology to meet real customer needs, you retain customers, reduce costs and ultimately diminish risk in an increasingly accelerated market. Everyone at Azul Seven is excited to continue providing value to clients through our new partnership with OST."

To lead OST's Minneapolis business growth, Prust has been hired as vice president of enterprise solutions to oversee managed services and infrastructure teams. In his role, he brings his more than 20 years of experience in achieving revenue, profitability, budgetary and customer satisfaction objectives to assist OST in determining market positioning that aligns with customer needs.

In addition to new Minneapolis leadership, OST is expanding the Minneapolis office and investing in the future in the Twin Cities market. Over the next two years, OST intends to double the workforce, growing from 50 to 100 Minneapolis employees to accommodate increasing market share in the region. The large-enterprise organizations headquartered in Minnesota require next-gen digital business models, which for OST translates to growth and the creation of additional tech jobs as we support these companies with their critical strategies.

"One element that really drew me into working for OST was the diversity of offerings and past work portfolio," said Mitch Prust, vice president of enterprise solutions at OST. "The company has so many leaders with great experience across a number of industries and I look forward to helping OST continue to grow in ways beyond what we already have."

Information regarding OST's business offerings can be found at https://www.ostusa.com/expertise/.

About OST OST is an award winning, 290-person, integrated, cross-functional global technology and digital consultancy with offices located in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Detroit, Michigan; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. For over two decades, we have worked side by side with our clients to optimize and grow their businesses with offerings that include strategy & insights, digital experiences, connected products, cloud infrastructure and enterprise managed services. At OST, we use human behavior as our north star to bridge the distance between insights, technology and strategyin smart, meaningful ways that yield transformative results. This is all wrapped in a friendly, flexible, people-centered culture.To learn more, visit https://www.ostusa.com.

MEDIA CONTACT Victoria Heatherly PR Manager [emailprotected]

SOURCE OST

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OST Accelerates Business Growth in Minneapolis with a partnership with Azul Seven, New Leadership and Office Expansion - PRNewswire

Human Behavior

John Cleese On Awakening Your Creative Instincts – Here And Now

John Cleese, one of the comic geniuses behind Monty Python, A Fish Called Wanda, and the classic television series Fawlty Towers, has become something of an expert on human behavior.

Teaming up with his psychiatrist, Robin Skynner, hes written books like Families and How to Survive Them.

But in his new 95-page book, Cleese cuts to the chase. Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide is about how the brain is often operating on a subconscious level when it comes to being creative.

Fascinated by human behavior, Cleeses book guides readers through ways to hone in on their creative thinking skills and contains tips from psychologists he admires.

He keeps it short, sweet and practical on purpose, he says. His ideal reader is someone who wants to learn the key ideas but cant be bothered with the rest of it.

I deliberately left out a lot of the stuff that you'll find in books about creativity by psychologists, because it's all very interesting that people who've traveled a lot in their youth are likely to be more creative, he says. But it's not much use to you unless you can move backward in time.

On keeping his book short

I'll tell you why. Because you know that lovely phrase, I think it was Mark Twain, I'm sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one. Well, I have the time to write a shorter book.

It's a very, very small book. There was a nice lady on Radio 4 in England, and when she told me she'd read it in just over an hour, I was very happy because I think in a lot of books that most of the interesting stuff is in the first 60 or 70 pages and then they pad out to 300.

On how your mind works overnight and a sketch he rewrote on the Church of England

Our parents would say, 'Sleep on it.' There's a lot of wisdom there because your mind goes on working on it overnight. What I found often is that if I'd written a sketch, in particular, couldn't think of a good ending and I'd sit there and then give up. The next morning, within 90 seconds, I had the solution and I couldn't understand what the problems had been the previous night because it was quite clear what the solution was. And this happened a number of times. And I thought, Well, this can only make sense if the mind's been working on the problem.

I wrote a script with Graham Chapman, dear old Graham, and I lost it and he would get cross with me when I did that because I was vague and always losing scripts. So I wrote the thing from memory, rewrote it, and then I found the original. I compared them and the second one was better. It was neater and slightly clearer and slightly funnier than the first. And I thought, 'But I wasn't even trying to improve it.' I was just trying to remember it. So my brain had improved it during this time it had been lost.

[The sketch] was to do with a sermon about Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. And the pastor or the rector or whatever you would call it, was during the sermon, it suddenly struck him how extraordinary that was you know, that Lot is suddenly looking at his wife, who's become a pillar of salt. And it was about his astonishment at this unusual event.

The joke was that he just read this in the Bible, like so many things. And people once they read it in the Bible, they figure, OK, fine. But if you actually think of the three wise kings following a star and then they stop at Bethlehem and they look up at and they say, 'Yes, this is the stable that's right underneath the star.' I mean, have you ever tried to stand right under a star?

On the German organic chemist, August Kekule von Stradonitz, who discovered the structure of benzene by staring at a wood fire

One night he was sitting very tired, dozing in front of the fire and the fire was crackling away. And he started looking at the flames, which seemed to be leaping out further than they usually did. And he suddenly saw them as snakes. It just, you know, as a kind of almost a half dream. And then he thought that they were biting their own tails. And that, of course, formed a ring. And he realized that the structure of the carbon molecule was a ring. And it's extraordinary.

... [Thomas] Edison, who had more patents than anyone else in world history, he used to have his ideas sitting in a comfortable chair. In his right hand, he would have some little metal balls and he would sit with his hand just over the edge of the chair and a metal plate below it. And he would just start to get in this very dreamy mood where he felt that he was in his absolute most creative mood. And when he actually fell asleep, his hand would relax and the ball bearings would drop onto the plate, make a bit of a noise and wake him up. And he'd lean down, pick up the ball bearings in his hand and go on in that dreamy state until he fell asleep again. And that was the stage in which he thought he had his most creative ideas. So you see, everyone thinks this is a bit wooly and yet all the greatest scientists in the world confirm it's not wooly, it's the best way to be creative.

On his comment in 2019 bemoaning that cities like London dont seem English anymore, which some saw as an attack on multiculturalism

Well I think differences to notice that there's a complete difference between race and culture. Because you can choose your culture. You can't choose your race.

On whether he is still someone who skewers the uptight, white Englishman

Yes, of course. I mean, you only have to see A Fish Called Wanda to see the fun I was making in that. There was a lot wrong with the old English culture and a lot right with it. But that's the case with most cultures.

You now have people say, Well, you can't really make jokes. Well, the point of humor is that it's about things going wrong and it's about imperfect people. If you write a character who's perfect, who's kind, wise, generous, thoughtful, all those things, that's great. But he's not going to be funny. Basil Fawlty and W.C. Fields might be funny, but they're deeply, deeply imperfect. And if you're going to say, well, we can't laugh at anything anymore because it's been cruel to people who you're laughing at. The answer is they don't understand that some teasing is very mean and awful and we don't do that and a lot of teasing is just affection. It's actually a bonding mechanism. But people who are paranoid and who think things can only be 100% good or 100% bad are poisoning the atmosphere.

Emiko Tamagawaproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withTodd Mundt.Serena McMahonadapted it for the web.adapted it for the web.

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John Cleese On Awakening Your Creative Instincts - Here And Now