Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

The Secret to AI Is People – Harvard Business Review

Executive Summary

In a five year multistage study the authors learned how leaders can get the most out of AI. The secret to making this work, they found, is the business model itself, where machines and humans are integrated to complement each other. Machines do repetitive and automated tasks and will always be more precise and faster. However, those uniquely human skills of creativity, care, intuition, adaptability, and innovation are increasingly imperative to success.From their research they developed a framework of intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication (the Four I model) that creates environments for humans and machines to make the most of one another. They conclude that competing in the age of AI is not about being technology-driven per se; but, rather, is about human talent and new organizational structures that use technology to bring out the best in people.

Too many business leaders still believe that AI is just another plug and play incremental technological investment. In reality, gaining a competitive advantage through AI requires organizational transformation of the kind exemplified by companies leading in this era: Google, Haier, Apple, Zappos, and Siemens. These companies dont just have better technology they have transformed the way they do business so that human resources can be augmented with machine powers.

How do they do it? To find out, we conducted a multistage study over five years, beginning with a survey of senior managers and executives, followed by interviews and surveys across a wide range of industries to identify technology implementation strategies and barriers, and in-depth studies of five leading organizations. Our key takeaway is counterintuitive. Competing in the age of AI is not about being technology-driven per se its a question of new organizational structures that use technology to bring out the best in people. The secret to making this work, we learned, is the business model itself, where machines and humans are integrated to complement each other. Machines do repetitive and automated tasks and will always be more precise and faster. However, those uniquely human skills of creativity, care, intuition, adaptability, and innovation are increasingly imperative to success. These human skills cannot be botsourced, a term we use to characterize when a business process traditionally carried out by humans is delegated to an automated process like a robot or an algorithm.

From our research we have developed a four-layer framework that shows organizational leaders how they can create a human-centric organization with super-human intelligence. The four layers are not steps, which would imply a sequential progression. The four layers of intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication (the Four I model) must be stacked all together, or else the use of AI will fail to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage. Heres how it works.

The first layer of the Four I model is intentionality of purpose, beyond the mere pursuit of profits. An intentional organization knows why it matters to the world, not just its shareholders. A good example of intentionality in the use of AI comes from Siemens, which evolved from a shareholder-profit-maximizing power generation and transmission company into a leading provider of electrification, automation, and digitalization solutions with energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies driven by AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) in service to society. This cultural shift toward a higher human-centric purpose impacted not just marketing and product design but also the strategic decision to, as Scott D. Anthony, Alasdair Trotter, and Evan I. Schwartz wrote for HBR, divest its core oil and gas business and redeploy the capital to its Digital Industries unit and Smart Infrastructure business focused on energy efficiency, renewable power storage, distributed power, and electric vehicle mobility. While financial performance and shareholder value will always be important, creating human-centered, technology-powered organizations will actually drive financial performance in the age of AI.

To that end, Siemens is launching a combination of hardware and software that enables AI throughout its Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) architecture, an approach that aligns Siemens mission with its AI strategy. The TIA architecture uses AI as a bridge that spans from corporate headquarters out to industrial end users. Siemens proprietary MindSphere is a cloud-based IoT operating platform that reaches into Siemens industrial user-operated controller and field device products. The MindSpheres neural processing unit module allows human users to benefit from Siemens in-house AI capabilities, while also enabling human users to impart their own experience to train the machines. According to Siemens Factory Automation specialist Colm Gavin, With artificial intelligence we are able to train, recognize, and adjust to allow more flexible machinery. Because, do we want 10 machines to package 10 different types of products, or a tool that accommodates different packages and different sizes and automatically adjusts to the new format? Smarter machinery with TIA architecture leverages AI to advance the companys intentionality, while increasing flexibility, quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for its end users.

Alternatively, a negative example of the relationship between intentionality and AI is illustrated by recent issues confronting Facebook. Facebooks mission, to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together, sounds noble. Yet recent use of its AI has raised concerns from advertisers and civil rights groups alike.The social media giant has struggled to align its mission with its use of AI that seems to have the opposite effect: Facebooks content feed is driven by algorithms that prioritize inflammatory, misleading, and socially divisive content. Facebooks use of AI seems to drive social division, which is antithetical to its purpose as a social media company, and is having financial consequences. Because its algorithms have promoted disinformation, violence, and incendiary content, major advertisers are now cutting ties with Facebook, dealing a strong blow to the company that derives 98% of its income from ad revenue. Some of the largest brands in the world, including Coca-Cola and Unilever, pulled advertisements from Facebook for promoting content antithetical to their brands values, resulting in a one-day drop of 8.3% in market value, or $56 billion.

The second layer of the Four I model is integration of human and AI resources across the organization. To lead in the technology era, companies must shift away from silos to organizational structures with flexible teams that integrate people horizontally and vertically, from product creation to strategic decision making. As one executive we spoke with explained, before the AI shift, it was necessary for workers to have deep knowledge of a narrow area. Today, deep analytical content can come from AI. What is needed is the ability of workers to synthesize information, which means collaborating across functions and working in cross-functional teams. To foster innovation and adaptability, organizations need to transition from rigid hierarchies to flexible, agile, and flatter structures. Google, Haier, and Zappos may have differences in their organizational structures, but the common elements are flatness and fluidity. The recommended structure is more like a playground for smart, talented people to generate customer-centric products. Employees have fluid roles in cross-functional teams around problems as opposed to individual roles and responsibilities. These teams spontaneously form when problems arise, then dissolve when the work is done, reallocating human resources as needed.

The other side of this which can easily be forgotten is that human and AI teams should also be structured in an integrated manner. This allows humans to transcend their ordinary cognitive limitations, without placing unreasonable reliance on a robot to perform human tasks that require high degrees of care and skill. An example comes from the medical context, where AI offers tremendous potential not as a substitute for, but as a supplement to, physician-driven care. Recent research in the journal Nature found that, good quality AI-based support of clinical decision-making improves diagnostic accuracy over that of either AI or physicians alone. This means high-stakes, highly-skilled human decision-making can benefit from AI so long as it is integrated properly within the human decision-making context.

The third layer of the Four I model is implementation. Implementation requires engaging human talent, tolerating risk, and incentivizing cross-functional coordination. An executive at a large pharmaceutical we spoke with said, you have to get people to believe in the technology. We saw this in another of the companies we spoke with when we learned that despite having integrated AI, managers were modifying the output values from the algorithm to fit their own expectations. Others in the same company would simply follow the old decision-making routine, altogether ignoring the data provided by algorithms. Therefore, human behavior is central to implementing AI.

Top performing companies spent significant time communicating with employees and educating them, so that the human talent understood how machines made their jobs easier, not obsolete. To build trust in AI, it is imperative for leaders to communicate their vision transparently, explaining the goal, the changes needed, how it will be rolled out, and over what timeline. Beyond communication, leaders can inoculate their workforce against fear of AI by arranging for visits to other companies that have undergone similar transformations, providing a model for workers to see with their own eyes how the technology is used.

We saw many approaches to this in our research. Pilot projects where technology is rolled out in a limited scope give workers some ownership over the adoption process. Giving workers an opportunity to tinker with the technology before a final adoption decision is made eases the transition. Financial services firm Capital One even created an internal training institute called Capital One University that offers professional training programs to promote a broader understanding of analytics throughout the organizations culture.

The fourth layer of the model is indication or performance measurement. Ultimately, success and progress need to be measured, and leading companies have moved from traditional productivity measures to aspirational metrics. Using the right indicators can drive improvements and help a business focus on what they deem important. Aspirational metrics that incentivize innovation and creativity encourage employees to exercise those uniquely human traits. The lesson is to be careful what you measure. Monitoring the wrong performance indicator has a strong tendency to lead to the proverbial tail wagging the dog. Humans are clever, and if incentives are not properly aligned with intelligently designed performance metrics, human workers will resort to lazy, clever, and cynical hacks to game the system, maximizing the appearance of performance under one measure while actually failing to deliver the output that management was actually hoping for when they implemented that measure.

Most companies use KPIs, but in our research we saw that successful companies more often used Objectives and Key Indicators (OKRs). What we learned was that KPIs by themselves dont encompass strategic and ambitious goals needed in the age of AI and they dont motivate to reach for the sky. The goal of OKRs is to precisely define how to achieve ambitious objectives where failure is imminently possible, through concrete, measurable specifications. They encourage creative, novel, and aspirational performance by showing progress toward a goal even if the goal itself is unattained. Google famously started using OKRs in 1999; a change some even credit as a critical element of Googles success. At Google, OKRs have helped develop transparency. Everybody knows the companys goals, what everyone is doing, how they have done in the past, the trajectory they are on, and how they are getting to where they want to go.

Our research shows that AI is so much more than just the latest incremental improvement in existing technology, however deploying it effectively takes leadership and coordination across all sectors of a company. Unlocking the full potential of an organizations human resources by adopting AI strategically requires revisiting the very structure of the company and how it measures its progress toward fulfilling its mission. These issues are core issues to the identity of a company and modifications here are fraught with insecurity and risk, but this is a risk needed to compete in the age of AI. Intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication must be layered in order to create a human-centric enterprise governed by super-human intelligence. Achieving this requires talent at all levels to have systems-thinking, understand how the work being done meshes with that of others elsewhere in the organization, how it meets customer needs, and how it impacts the companys strategy and financial picture. By following the Four I model, companies can unlock super-human intelligence without losing the human touch.

We were surprised to discover how few organizations have unlocked this secret. But we were encouraged by the progress of the ones that had. With this model, we hope, more companies can create the conditions for realizing super-human intelligence and performance, delivering sustainable competitive advantages in the age of AI.

Originally posted here:
The Secret to AI Is People - Harvard Business Review

Human Behavior

Victim of Shark Attack Saved after Husband Punches Shark Repeatedly – The Great Courses Daily News

By Jonny Lupsha, News Writer

Mike Tyson may have some boxing competition in Australia. According to ABC News, Mark Rapley and his wife Chantelle Doyle were spending the day at Shelly Beach at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, when the shark, which was described as being between six and 10 feet, attacked Doyle and threw her off her surfboard, the article said.

Rapley [] paddled to his wifes board as she tried to climb back up while the shark grabbed her right calf. Rapley grabbed onto his wifes surfboard and began punching the shark until it let her go.

Survival instincts tell our bodies to do things we would think were crazy under normal circumstances. But sometimes they can save our lives.

There are a lot of ways that we get in the way of our own instincts: We shut out our sensory input, we lull ourselves into a false sense of security, we make assumptions about human behavior, or we resign ourselves to what we think is inevitable, said Dr. Nancy Zarse, Professor of Forensic Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

But even when we are aware and do acknowledge our instincts, we can go astray in our assessment of the situation. This can happen in a few ways.

Among the ways listed, Dr. Zarse first mentioned that we worry about the social consequences of how we act. For example, we may sense that someone is dangerous, but just in case they arent, we worry that well appear rude if we treat them as though theyre a dangerous person. Alternatively, we may worry about getting in trouble or seeming insubordinate if we speak up about what our instincts tell us.

We train for things on purpose and protocol is sometimes necessary to ensure the safety of many people, but we need to balance that with a healthy respect for what our instinct is telling us.

Instincts are our impulses encoded into our bodies evolutionarily to help us or our species to survive, Dr. Zarse said. They often manifest as strong, almost overwhelming urges or drives. A baby crying is instinctive behavior; a mothers physical urge to comfort the crying baby is instinct.

Dr. Zarse said that sexual desires can be traced back to instinct as can desires to retaliate against injustice. She said although we can choose how we act on those instincts, we can rarely choose how they make us feel.

Some of these instincts are emotions, and we call these primary emotions, she said. The most common ones are fear, sadness, happiness, and anger. These happen as direct responses to an external experience.

Whether or not we are punching a shark to save a loved one, instincts can kick in and drive us to actions we never knew were possible for us.

Dr. Nancy Zarse contributed to this article. Dr. Zarse is a Professor of Forensic Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where she also received her PsyD.

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Victim of Shark Attack Saved after Husband Punches Shark Repeatedly - The Great Courses Daily News

Human Behavior

Latino Theater Company Streams Archival Recording of Fully-Staged Production of LA OLLA – Broadway World

View LA OLLA on demand for 10 days: Sept. 1-Sept. 10.

Tune in to La Olla - an archival video presentation of the Latino Theater Company's 2016 production. A bit player in a shady 1950s L.A. nightclub finds a pot full of cash in this adaptation, by Evelina Fernndez, of the Roman comedy, The Pot of Gold by Plautus. Inspired by the Rumberas films of the golden age of Mexican Cinema, the LTC incorporates its distinctive style of comedy, music, dance and imagery to explore one of the most basic aspects of human behavior: greed.

Written by Evelina Fernndez Directed by Jos Luis Valenzuela Starring Esperanza America, Evelina Fernndez, Fidel Gomez, Castulo Guerra, Sal Lopez, Xavi Moreno, Geoffrey Rivas, Lucy Rodriguez Choreography by Urbanie Lucero Scenic Design by Yee Eun Nam Lighting Design by Pablo Santiago Sound Design by John Zalewski Projection Design by Yee Eun Nam and Pablo Santiago Presented by The Latino Theater Company

ON DEMAND: Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. PT / 10 p.m. ET thru Thursday, Sept. 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. A follow-up, online conversation with the artists will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 2 at 7 p.m. PT / 10 p.m. ET, and remain available on demand for 10 days.

Streaming at http://www.thelatc.org/

FREE

Performed in English with Spanish subtitles

Photo credit: Grettel Cortes

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Latino Theater Company Streams Archival Recording of Fully-Staged Production of LA OLLA - Broadway World

Human Behavior

Emerging Consumer Behavior Shifts: Six Ways Food & Beverage Innovation Is Evolving in the Face of COVID-19 – Business Wire

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ADM has identified six emerging behavioral changes that will power innovation and growth in the months ahead.

Consumers attitudes, priorities and behaviors are shifting significantly, said Ana Ferrell, VP of Marketing, ADM. This evolution is providing a unique opportunity for forward-looking food and beverage companies to bring a suite of trailblazing new products to market.

Recent ADM OutsideVoice research shows that 77% of consumers intend to make more attempts to stay healthy in the future. Food and beverage manufacturers who successfully balance consumer health concerns with affordability are most likely to win with consumers.

ADM has identified six behavioral shifts that will create opportunities for food and beverage manufacturers to gain market share in an increasingly uncertain business environment.

Food and beverages designed to elevate mood, sustain energy and reduce stress will grow in popularity in the months and years to come. ADM also projects new opportunities for comfort foods, snacks and baked goods offering nutrient-rich ingredients and functional health benefits.

These behavioral shifts are likely to persist well after the pandemic crisis peaks. ADM has responded by developing tailored solutions aimed at giving brands an edge in an ever-changing marketplace.

About ADM

At ADM, we unlock the power of nature to provide access to nutrition worldwide. With industry-advancing innovations, a complete portfolio of ingredients and solutions to meet any taste, and a commitment to sustainability, we give customers an edge in solving the nutritional challenges of today and tomorrow. Were a global leader in human and animal nutrition and the worlds premier agricultural origination and processing company. Our breadth, depth, insights, facilities and logistical expertise give us unparalleled capabilities to meet needs for food, beverages, health and wellness, and more. From the seed of the idea to the outcome of the solution, we enrich the quality of life the world over. Learn more at http://www.adm.com.

1 FMCG GURUS: Twelve Step Guide for Addressing COVID-19 in 2020 and Beyond, April 2020

2 ADM OutsideVoice

Source: Corporate release

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Emerging Consumer Behavior Shifts: Six Ways Food & Beverage Innovation Is Evolving in the Face of COVID-19 - Business Wire

Human Behavior

Ai Weiwei’s new film goes behind the scenes of the Wuhan lockdown – DW (English)

After threeyears in Berlin, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei now lives in Cambridgein the UK, but his latest film, Coronation, is set in the Chinese city of Wuhan as it undergoes a draconian lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Using footage filmed by citizens after the Chinese state locked down the city on January 23, Coronation observes the militarized and often brutal nature of the government-enforced quarantine until it was lifted in early April. It also reveals its efficiency in stopping the spread of the virus.

In an exclusive written interview with DW, Ai Weiwei shared his thoughtsabout the making of the film, and whether he believes the pandemic will fundamentally change society.

DW: What was your motivation for making Coronation?

Ai Weiwei: As with most of my activities, the motivation for making Coronation was to try and gain a deeper knowledge of a new and unfamiliar incident, such as with the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the refugee crisis in 2015. I wanted to provide a first-hand experience in understanding China and the Chinese people and how they responded to the coronavirus. Under these dramatic conditions, we can better understand the politics and humanity of any society.

Ai Weiwei: New film a window into understanding Chinese society

What was the biggest challenge directing a film from a remote location?

With today's technology, remote directing a film is possible. The biggest challenge for a director when approaching a subject is the concept.

Read more:Ai Weiwei's presents his 'Manifesto without Borders'

You can see in the film that young people, nurses and doctors and other health professionals came to Wuhan within days on buses. China is probably the only nation that could achieve that with such speed and spirit. You can see how the state built the infrastructure, including the emergency field hospitals, and equipped those on the frontlines with the necessary rescue equipment. Those details surprised me and are a profound revelation of human behavior under authoritarian control.

We also managed to show how they recruited those young people into the Communist party and the celebration after the lockdown was lifted. Those positive, objective parts about a very highly controlled authoritarian state are difficult to film.

You can see another person, a construction worker who came to Wuhan to assist the emergency effort, prevented from leaving the city. He attempts to navigate this typical Kafka-esque bureaucracy to get out. Unfortunately, we later learned Meng Liang managed to return home to be with his family, but he had financial issues and decided to hang himself. A tragic and banal story about life in these times.

How did you make sure your Chinese crews were safe?

I cannot make sure anyone is safe. I gave them daily instruction and they have the absolute choice to film the way they think is safe. They are all equipped with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and instructed on necessary medical protocols. Still, [it] could have been very damaging for the people filming. So we asked them to send out the material every day through the internet to protect those materials. We did not know what we had until we started to review and to edit. Most of the cameramen are amateurs, and this is their first time working on a film.

A still from 'Coronation': Wuhan's deserted train station

You have often critiqued China for its strict policies. What would be your critique at present?

China, as an authoritarian state, has been the most efficient in taking on a situation as challenging as a pandemic. In doing so, China's suppression of human rights, individual rights, privacy, and personal will has been heavy. Basically, China has consumed everyones liberty into its own power. That is the basic character of this nation's fast development and how it has closed the gap between itself and the West. It has worked very well over the last 30 years.

At the same time, China has created a society which has no trust, the controlling party has never gained legitimacy through the people's recognition but rather through police force, heavy propaganda, and by limiting balanced information. The Chinese state and its population do not trust each other but the state must be obeyed because maintains control through law and violence.

Instead of strictly cordoning off Wuhan, could there have been a more appropriate response to the initial coronavirus outbreak?

They made a good decision to seal off Wuhan. China has another 100 cities of similar size to Wuhan. If they [had not limited] the travel to and from the root city in this pandemic, we would [have seen] a true humanitarian disaster. At the same time, the method of sealing the city should not have been through literally sealing off people's doors, placing people in detention, or hiding the truth about the situation. This has caused a great panic.

Read more:'Wuhan Diary': 60 days in a locked-down city

Before the authorities sealed off Wuhan on January 23, there was a month or two when they knew the coronavirus was human-to-human transmissible. They covered up the number of infected and the death toll.

Do you think that societies will be forever changed due to the pandemic?

I am very pessimistic about what we will learn from this. I think that things will return to normal, people will simply take off their masks and throw them away into the rubbish bin. I don't think people will learn that much in general. Even if they have learned something, it will be superficial, like what has happened in China.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Chairman Mao died in 1976. His death also marked the end of the Cultural Revolution. In the mid-1980s, modern artists started experimenting with the figure of Mao in their imagery - which at that time was still associated with considerable risks. Inspired by Andy Warhol's work, Ai Weiwei approached China's difficult relationship with Mao, the icon of the Cultural Revolution, in his "Mao Images."

Geng Jianyi (born 1962) was one of the big avant-garde names in China's modern art scene. He was part of one of the 179 artists' groups that formed during the 1980s. For his thesis, he painted not this but another couple, but the painting was rejected as being too "cold," as it did not correspond to the positive image of the socialist person that the regime wanted to perpetuate. Geng died in 2017.

Wang Guangyi (born 1957), was part of the "Group of the North" in the late 1980s, a group that focused extensively on Western philosophy writings. With his skilful combination of propaganda art from the Cultural Revolution with Pop Art aesthetics, his works became known as "Political Pop". "Great Criticism" is his best-known and -paradoxically - most commercially successful series.

Yue Minjun (born 1962) is also considered as a leader in China's avant-garde movement. He has long become one of those Chinese stars featured at international auctions. One can recognize his own facial features in his signature laughing grimaces. After the events on Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, his "Cynical Realism" approach helped shape the direction of the socio-critical artist movement.

Born in 1963, painter and woodcutter Fang Lijun was featured at the groundbreaking exhibition "China Avant-Garde" in Beijing in 1989. He later developed his trademark style with his bald men against the backdrop of the sea or the sky. His imagery became the epitome of a new awakening in Chinese art. His works show people looking bored and angry at the same time - a reflection on Chinese society.

"The Great Chairman" shakes hands with his doppelganger in this work by Feng Mengbo. Feng was born in Beijing in 1966, when the Cultural Revolution started. Even as a student, the video and installation artist used his imagery to deal in a subversive manner with China's revolutionary idol. Feng has continued to recycle images from the Mao era in his videos and animations.

Zeng Fanzhis' painting "The Last Supper" measures four meters in width and has fetched a record sum of $23.3 million at an auction for Asian art in Hong Kong in 2013. In Zeng's work, which is modeled after Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, Jesus' disciples have all been replaced with pioneers wearing red scarves. Only "Judas" is seen wear a western tie - a reference to China's turn to capitalism.

Cao Fei is one of China's most recognized media artists, who is always represented in important international exhibitions on Chinese art. Her works often present a subjective mixture of fiction and documentation. This is how she addresses the fast pace of urban life in China, while also highlighting the impact of the latest technologies on people as well as their social consequences.

Huang Yongping (born 1954), is one of the earliest artists of the Chinese avant-garde. In 1986, he co-founded the group "Xiamen Dada", whose members were known for publicly burning their paintings after exhibitions. In 1989, he was one of the first Chinese artists to take part in an art show in France at the Centre Pompidou. After June 4, 1989, he stayed in Paris, where he still lives to this day.

Wang Renzheng a.k.a. "Nut Brother" spent 100 days in Beijing in 2015 to collect the smog-related dust particles from the air using an industrial vacuum cleaner. The artist from Shenzhen later mixed the particles with clay and baked this mixtures in a factory to form bricks. Air pollution at your fingertips - that is his commentary on the relationship between man and nature.

Author: Sabine Peschel (ss)

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Ai Weiwei's new film goes behind the scenes of the Wuhan lockdown - DW (English)

Human Behavior

Why Sign The Duke Compact? | Duke Today – Duke Today

Duke started this semester with a campus safety plan that relies heavily on wearing masks, washing hands, physical distancing, robust testing and signing the Duke Compact.

The first four have a lot of science behind them. But what about signing the Duke Compact? What good does that do?

It turns out even the Duke Compact has research backing it. Let Dan Ariely explain.

The university professor and behavioral economist has made a career of studying how incentives (and disincentives) affect human behavior. He sees several reasons shown in research as to why the Duke Compact may make the campus safer.

One, when we sign something, we read it more carefully, Ariely says. Signing makes us more committed to following it. In pre-Corona times, when we agreed to something, we shook hands. When you shake hands, you take the agreement more seriously. The same with signing.

Finally, weve shown that signing a statement gets people to be more honest and they adhere more to what they sign.

Now, theres a caveat, Ariely says. Signing a document doesnt magically mean our misbehaviors go away.

But will it help? Absolutely. In fact, we should sign it again time to time to refresh our memory and commitment. This would remind us that there are a few important standards of behavior that we should all take to reduce the risk of COVID-19. After all, COVID-19 isnt just about us, its also about helping others and helping the entire community.

The Duke Compact was distributed to 45,000 university faculty, staff and students. As of Aug. 18, about 95 percent of undergraduate students have signed it, and 80 percent of graduate and professional students have signed. Nearly 19,000 faculty and staff have signed the compact, including 1,100 faculty who committed to teach in-person classes this semester. Overall, about 34,000 people around 75 percent -- have signed the Compact. Of the remaining 11,000, many of these are seasonal staff, retirees and other affiliates who are not routinely on campus.

Leigh Goller, Chief Audit, Risk and Compliance Officer at Duke, has received hundreds of questions university from community members about the Compact. Some express resistance, but most simply arent sure about certain points. The Compacts website provides answers for many frequently asked questions.

Here are some of the most common questions and concerns raised about the Compact.

Signing the Duke Compact is a condition of maintaining access privileges for university facilities on and off campus. Employees who choose not to sign can continue to work remotely, Goller said; however, if its not possible to do the job remotely, it may affect employment status.

The goal of the Compact is to help our community stay healthy and reminds us of our responsibility to keep those around us healthy classmates, colleagues, family and friends, Goller said. Its meant to inspire us to make a personal commitment to do the things we need to do to support a wider Duke community. This is to ensure everyone working and learning in the university setting has affirmed their commitment to practice the safety principles that will enable us to be in close proximity with one another. Part of that is understanding that everything you do when you are not on campus, you carry back with you if you come to campus.

The Compact follows employment status: It is required of university employees but doesnt apply to the Duke University Health System, which has its own guidelines for pandemic safety. This has created some confusion for faculty and staff in the two health schools -- medicine and nursing -- because although they are university employees, many spend much of their time in working with health system colleagues.

University leadership extended the Compact to them because they wanted the entire university community committing to the same set of behaviors, Goller said. This is an experiment on how to have a trusted and common set of behaviors among all people on campus, she said. All faculty, staff and students coming to campus are riding the same buses and walking the same sidewalks and occupying facilities together.

Weve had questions as to whether an employee can go visit family members or attend a wedding, Goller said. Duke has restricted non-essential university-funded travel. Duke is not telling you cant take a personal trip; thats your call.

If you do travel or attend an event, you should monitor your symptoms and use the SymMon app to help decide whether you need to come into campus. If you are traveling to a hot spot, we may ask you to follow Employee Health or Student Health guidance to stay at home for a few days before returning to campus, Goller said.

The state of North Carolina and City of Durham currently restricts most gatherings of more than 25 people, and Duke restricts most gatherings of more than 10.

Local and state ordinances differ. based on local conditions. As a porous campus, Goller said, Duke officials hope that everyone will be attentive to that guidance while off campus and to Duke's guidance while on it. As with personal travel, Duke may ask you to follow Employee Health or Student Health guidance to stay at home for a few days before returning to campus.

The university will accept certain religious and medical exemptions for taking the flu vaccine. But outside of those cases, getting a flu vaccine is part of the behaviors that will go a long way to maintaining community health this winter.

Dr. Cameron Wolfe, one of Dukes leading experts on infectious diseases, said no patient wants to get a double hit from the flu and from COVID. And unfortunately, it looks like both are going to be around this winter.

We need to do all we can to not let the two co-circulate, Wolfe said. The challenges of co-circulation of influenza and COVID-19 on a campus are not insignificant -- for many, the illness is similar. It would be clinically indistinguishable for me to separate them in front of a patient. Yet the management is quite different especially for people who develop severe illness. The extra PPE; the extra resource utilization; additional testing; challenges with quarantine requirements when you're not sure which virus you're dealing with.

I'm hopeful the masking and social distancing, and de-densifying that's occurred throughout the university will also help reduce flu. But we have an instrument, in a flu vaccine, that is recommended for almost every adult. This is the year, more than ever, if we're going to go to great lengths to keep our campus virus free, that means both.

Thats what Duke President Vincent Price and other university leaders had in mind when the Compact was presented. It was written following extensive collaboration with faculty, staff and students across the university, whose advice significantly shaped the final version. What didnt change was a core message about our responsibility to community health.

When it comes to COVID, we can behave in a way that contributes to the health and safety of others or we can behave in a way that frankly endangers others, Price said during a Leadership Conversation this past week. We needed to articulate that in a clear way, and the Duke Compact came out of that need. It is a collective statement about the basic things that each of us have to do to serve and support each other.

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Why Sign The Duke Compact? | Duke Today - Duke Today

Human Behavior

Iroquois prophecies warn of grave dangers – Turtle Island News

By Doug George-Kanentiio: On Prophecy and the Enlightened Ones Across the broad band of the human experience we have looked to philosophers, seers, psychics and prophets to give us insights into our place within the universe and to provide us with direction as to events which lay before us. Prophets (Enlightened Teachers: Raonkwe:ta:shon:a in Mohawk) in particular believe they have been selected to carry out specific tasks from the Divine, that they have a unique personal experience with a spiritual entity which delivers to them, in a state of urgency, revelations about future events which are, in turn, based on moral teachings meant to direct, condition, exclude or advocate human behavior. Generally, prophets are exclusive since other spiritual practices are either condemned or re-defined; social changes are enacted towards a

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Iroquois prophecies warn of grave dangers - Turtle Island News

Human Behavior

Peninsula Delivers a Heist Film in the Train to Busan Universe – Film School Rejects

Filmmakers have one very important choice to make before moving forward on a sequel to a popular movie. Do you go with more of the same and what clearly already worked? Or do you take a chance and try something new? Films have found success on both paths, so theres no right or wrong answer here necessarily, but not every film can swing both. 2016s terrifically intense and heartfelt Train to Busan is a rarity in that its received two follow-ups, both of which are entirely different creations. While Seoul Station (2016) is an animated prequel, Peninsula is a new live-action story set in the same world that too often feels like every other post-apocalyptic zombie thriller.

Captain Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won) sees the zombie plague growing and works to evacuate family members from the city before its overrun, but his efforts run afoul of human behavior. Four years later, still grieving his loss and feeling guilty over his failure, he heads back into South Korea on a mission to retrieve millions in U.S. cash. He and the team are successful, but their extraction doesnt go nearly as smoothly. Jung-seok finds himself in league with two industrious young sisters (Lee Re, Lee Ye-won) and their equally capable mother (Lee Jung-hyun), and soon hes once again trying desperately to escape the city.

Director/co-writer Yeon Sang-ho returns with Peninsula, but rather than deliver a direct sequel or more of the same he instead aims for a different kind of familiar. The film forgoes much of what makes Train to Busan so intensely affecting in favor of a somewhat more generic setting the world is populated by pockets of survivors, the city is filled with zombie hordes, and the most dangerous villains remain the living. Where the last film found terror and emotion by unleashing the undead into an otherwise normal day recognizable to us all, Peninsula drops viewers alongside new characters into the overly familiar sci-fi setting of a post-apocalyptic landscape.

By definition, this means more CG as well, and thats just one more layer of disillusionment between viewers and the unfolding action. Driving scenes, of which there are several, are a mix of CG and rear projection, and zombie masses are equally artificial. The result is a series of zombie attacks and action beats that lack the immediacy and terror of its predecessor. Add in a muted color palette and emotional beats that range from lackluster to exaggerated, and Peninsula is an undeniably lesser experience than Train to Busan.

Of course, all of that said, its a fantastic idea blending a zombie movie with a heist film, and Yeon has fun with the concept. The sub-genre has been stale for a long time, and injecting it with a bit of a Fast & Furious vibe is an entertaining move. The film feels bigger too, from its English-speaking news broadcast at the start (complete with the requisite terrible acting from Westerners) to its slightly more international vibe moving from Korea to Hong Kong and back to Korea again. The script layers the heist element with difficulty and double-crosses, and while most of it is visible well in advance Yeon still crafts the beats with style and energy. Vehicular shenanigans, gun fights, and last-second reprieves fill the time with a balance of high-stakes drama and silliness.

Train to Busan succeeds in part because of the emotional investment it encourages in its characters, and while Peninsula cant compete to the same degree the characters are still engaging. The emotional interactions are frequently heightened to exaggerated degrees, particularly in the third act, but its a silliness that works for the antics at hand. The sisters, in particular, are capably plucky and given plenty of action beats of their own. The desire to deliver fun and thrills leaves the film feeling less threatening, but the two young actors are are unavoidably affecting. The adults are a mix of familiar post-apocalyptic character types, but heroes and villains (Koo Kyo-hwan, Kim Min-jae) alike tear through the CG-afflicted landscapes with enjoyable abandon.

Peninsula is an energetic and entertaining ride through an urban landscape littered with both the skeletal remains of civilization and the cliches of the subgenre. What it lacks in originality, though, it makes up for with competency and enthusiasm as Yeon has fun riffing in a world of his own creation. Sure weve seen villains feeding other humans to zombies for sport, but here the undead come crawling out en masse in creepy as hell fashion youve seen it before but never quite like this.

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Peninsula Delivers a Heist Film in the Train to Busan Universe - Film School Rejects

Human Behavior

How Smooth Muscle Cells in the Human Airway Behave To Trigger Asthma – Technology Networks

These days, novel diseases such as COVID-19 are pushing scientists to work real hard and real fast to find treatments and cures for patients.

But there are also many other types of old foes that live within usdiseases that have been part of our lives for such a long time that we can easily forget how much (or little) we know about them and their causes.

Asthma is one of these diseases, and it affects millions and millions of people around the world.

Scientists think that asthma results from the behavior of unhealthy cells within the human airway. But now, researchers at Northeastern have found that the way those cells trigger asthmatic attacks isnt only a result of how they communicate with one another.

Rather, that behavior is also a result of the interactions of airway cells with a mesh of important proteins and molecules known as the extracellular matrix, which isnt part of the cells but serves as a structural and biochemical support for them.

The new findings show how even healthy human airway cells in contact with each other can respond to a stimulus in a similar way as the unhealthy cells from an asthmatic personthat is, if they are also in contact with an unhealthy extracellular matrix.

We have known for decades that there are pathological changes to the extracellular matrix, says Harikrishnan Parameswaran, an assistant professor of bioengineering who led the study. But its functional consequence in asthma was not known.

During an asthma attack, the cells in someones airway react to different substances and constrict, or stiffen. That swelling affects the capability of the airway to supply air to the lungs.

Because that reaction occurs when those cells receive a very small dose of the substance that causes such physiological response, conventional research to tackle asthma has largely focused on it as a disease of those particular cells.

The new findings, however, show that asthma is not entirely a disease of those cells. Instead, Parameswaran says, it could be a result from a situation in which healthy cells find themselves in a bad extracellular environment.

Thats because as the disease progresses over time, the properties of the material outside the cells, as well as its influence on them, can also change.

This gives you a mechanism by which this extracellular matrix remodeling actually impacts constriction, Parameswaran says.

Research into better treatments for asthmatic people normally focuses on the pathology of the cells, and leaves the matrix outside of the equation.

Scientists have generally focused on the collective behavior of the kinds of cells that line the airway, known as smooth muscle cells. These types of cells coordinate different kinds of involuntary stretching and squeezing in various parts of our insides, including the gut, uterus, and other hollow organs.

Many of our cells use small openings within them, known as gap junctions, for intracellular communication. Those openings work like tunnels of a highway system that create communication networks. Through those gaps, cells can talk to each other, and send the various types of signaling molecules that trigger the physiological machinations that orchestrate simple and complex bodily functions.

Cells are known to use calcium waves extensively to communicate with one another through gap junctions. But even after disassembling those gaps, Parameswarans team didnt see a change in the way calcium propagated along the muscle.

On those extracellular layers, cells responded differently to the stimulus when they were together than when they were apart. And their mechanical communication responded as if they had received a very strong dose of histamine, even though they did not.

That observation told Parameswarans team that the airway cells do not rely on gap junctions. Instead, he says, the stiffening of the extracellular matrix appears to connect them and create the collective action that triggers the stiffening in response.

Parameswaran says he believes asthma persists because of the molecular changes within the matrix that scientists havent targeted extensively.

Thats why, he says, in the specific case of the human airway, the discovery means that researchers might need to start developing therapies that can target stiffening of the extracellular matrix in the airway to treat asthma.

There is no cure for asthma, Parameswaran says. Because we have specific evidence that pathological stiffening in the extracellular environment is sufficient to cause hyper-constriction, it is imperative now to see if we can target matrix stiffening as a therapy.

Those findings fit within an active area of research in biophysics that explores how cells use more than just gap junctions to trigger collective actions within the body. The discovery of how they coordinate collective behavior in the airway is something that scientists have previously not been able to see, says Erin Cram, a professor of biology who co-led the new study.

These cells respond differently as a collective than they do as individuals, Cram says. Its kind of like a mob that responds differently to a stimulus than four or five individuals spread out over a field.

In the long run, unveiling ways of intercellular communication like that could also help other scientists understand how smooth muscles in the airway and other organs interact with the rest of the biochemistry of the body, says Cram, whose lab studies the reproductive system of Caenorhabditis elegans, a microscopic worm with cells that behave in similar ways to human smooth muscle cells.

If you think about the cells of your airway, theyre all interacting together, she says. You dont have a cell here and a cell therethe whole thing is lined with cells. This is a much more realistic picture of whats probably actually going on.

Reference:Stasiak, S. E., Jamieson, R. R., Bouffard, J., Cram, E. J., & Parameswaran, H. (2020). Intercellular communication controls agonist-induced calcium oscillations independently of gap junctions in smooth muscle cells. Science Advances, 6(32). doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba1149

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How Smooth Muscle Cells in the Human Airway Behave To Trigger Asthma - Technology Networks

Human Behavior

How can humankind find a sustainable future in the midst of climate change? This scientist has some ideas. – Anchorage Daily News

Grassroots Stewardship: Sustainability Within Our Reach

By F Stuart Chapin III. Oxford University Press, 2020. 222 pages. $38.50 hardcover, $19.19 E-book.

Grassroots Stewardship: Sustainability Within Our Reach, by F Stuart Chapin III

F Stuart Terry Chapin, emeritus professor of ecology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has been a leading figure in scientific circles for decades as the author of hundreds of scientific papers and texts in ecosystem ecology and stewardship and as a participant in international fora. In 2019 he won the Volvo Environment Prize, one of the scientific worlds most respected environmental prizes, for his work in earth stewardship.

Now, Chapins years of research, learning and hard thinking about the relationship between people and nature has culminated in an optimistic argument for a grassroots movement leading away from the Earths destruction to sustainability. Grassroots Stewardship: Sustainability Within Our Reach marries science and ethics in a way that recognizes what ecology itself teaches everything connects. Although this is not a work directly about climate change, that issue, about which Chapin is intimately informed, underlies much of the discussion. The question that keeps him awake at night, he says, is how can global society shape our planets future so that our grandchildren and their grandchildren can thrive?

Scientists are trained to deal with data and objectivity and are notoriously poor at communicating with the general public. Happily, Chapin commands an ability to explain science in ways that ordinary people can not only understand but will find interesting and relevant to their lives. He understands that storytelling is at the heart of communicating. He admits midway through the book, Ive only recently come to appreciate the power of stories in setting the stage for effective dialogue about societal and environmental issues. I should have made this connection long ago. Just as his grandchildren beg him for stories, not facts, audiences of all kinds look for stories from scientists that, while consistent with facts, are about people and events.

Indeed, a reader of Grassroots Stewardship is unlikely to remember what climate models tell us about the expected global warming by 2100 (2.5 to 8 degrees F. higher than today) while easily recalling stories of Newtok, Alaska, losing ground to permafrost thaw and erosion, of Miami, Floridas frequent flooding, and Capetown, South Africas water emergency in 2018. Chapin includes personal stories from his boyhood, such as bodysurfing on the Carolina coast, and from his life of travel and research. He tells of wandering through Stockholms allotment gardens, where citizens tend urban gardens that connect them to nature and community and help with food security and resilience. He tells numerous stories of time spent in Alaska Native communities and what he learned about respect for the land and what it provides.

While the author initially details some of the challenges facing humankind and the worlds ecosystems, the emphasis throughout is on how we might, starting as individuals, move forward into sustainable practices and an ecological model of living. Chapins four-tiered stewardship strategy is about solutions. The four tiers are individual actions, effective communications built on trust, collaborating on shared goals, and political action.

Each chapter lays out an issue or approach and ends with a What can we do? section of bulleted, practical acts. For example, the chapter on individual actions discusses attachment to place, cities that have reinvented themselves, patterns of consumption, and the kinds of trade-offs that can be made to better the environment and human health. This is followed by a list of starting points that include experiencing nature, understanding how consumptive choices affect nature, and modeling good behavior regarding consumption.

While the suggested actions throughout emphasize grassroots that is, individuals and like-minded people who join together Chapin is clear that theres a chain of influence, from making personal earth-friendly choices, being informed, talking with people on all sides of an issue, collaborating and compromising, and eventually directing government policies and enacting laws. The book was finalized just as the coronavirus pandemic began upending lives, but it recognizes that even before that we were caught up in a world of great economic disparity, inequality and political divisiveness. Chapin emphasizes again and again the necessity of holding honest and respectful discussions with those outside our own circles, to find ways we can move forward together.

Is the author a Pollyanna, too optimistic about human behavior and possibilities for derailing the coming cataclysm? We might ask this. But we might also ask, why cant Chapins vision, his four-tiered strategy, be realized? Everything he suggests from adopting new technologies to educating women to protecting forests and wetlands to reducing population growth and consuming less is doable, if humankind can only agree on some fundamental shifts. Continuing business as usual is not an option, if we want future generations to inherit a livable world.

Grassroots Stewardship will likely be adopted for use in classes on stewardship and sustainability, but its readability and applicability to the lives of ordinary citizens should put it on reading lists more broadly. Photos, diagrams, and charts enhance the text. Back-of-the-book materials, besides notes and an index, include a useful glossary and a list of climate-action guides.

[Because of a high volume of comments requiring moderation, we are temporarily disabling comments on many of our articles so editors can focus on the coronavirus crisis and other coverage. We invite you to write a letter to the editor or reach out directly if youd like to communicate with us about a particular article. Thanks.]

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How can humankind find a sustainable future in the midst of climate change? This scientist has some ideas. - Anchorage Daily News