Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Autonomous Vehicle Market Trends, Growth, Size, Analysis and Forecast by 2026 – 3rd Watch News

Premium market insights delivers well-researched industry-wide information on the Autonomous Vehicle market. It studies the markets essential aspects such as top participants, expansion strategies, business models, and other market features to gain improved market insights. Additionally, it focuses on the latest advancements in the sector and technological development, executive tools, and tactics that can enhance the performance of the sectors.

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Scope of the Report

An autonomous vehicle is a robotic vehicle that is designed to travel between destinations without a human operator. They combine sensors and software to control, navigate, and drive the vehicle. Autonomous vehicle uses LiDAR, and RADAR sensors for its operation. Most self-driving systems create and maintain an internal map of their surroundings, based on these sensors. The factors such as mobility as a service, reduction in accidents caused due to drivers error and reduction of hazardous gas carbon dioxide) by using driverless cars, stringent government regulations regarding safety supplement the growth of the market. However, operation issues in certain types of environment, difficulties in identifying human behavior, and lack of abilities to perform in uncertain situations hamper this stated growth. Furthermore, increase in penetration of smart cars, and favorable government regulation are expected to present numerous opportunities for market expansion.

The market is segmented into level of automation, component, application, and region. Based on level of automation, it is categorized into level 3, level 4, and level 5. Based on component, it is segmented into hardware, software, and service. The application segment is divided into civil, robo taxi, ride hail, ride share, self-driving truck, and self-driving bus. Based on region, the market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and Middle East (LAMEA).

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KEY BENEFITS

This study comprises analytical depiction of the global autonomous vehicle market with current trends and future estimations to depict the imminent investment pockets.

The overall market potential is determined to understand the profitable trends to gain a strong foothold in the market.

The report presents information related to key drivers, restraints, and opportunities with a detailed impact analysis.

The current market is quantitatively analyzed from 2019 to 2026 to highlight the financial competency of the market.

Porters five forces analysis illustrates the potency of the buyers and suppliers.

KEY MARKET SEGMENTS

By Level of Automation

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5

By Component

Hardware

Software

Services

By Application

Civil

Robo taxi

Ride hail

Ride share

Self-driving truck

Self-driving bus.

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Geographically, this report focuses on product sales, value, market share, and growth opportunity in key regions such as United States, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and India.

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Autonomous Vehicle Market Trends, Growth, Size, Analysis and Forecast by 2026 - 3rd Watch News

Human Behavior

The Next Wave of Violence – National Review

(Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)

On the menu today: Our biggest cities have seen a lot of shootings, stabbings, and violence in the past weeks, a crime surge that appears to be unrelated to the ongoing protests; a look at what the unexpected dramatic reduction in summer jobs means for Americas youth; and the NR crew chews over the surprising and in many eyes, frustrating Supreme Court decision inBostock v. Clayton County.

The Non-Protest-Related Wave of Violence That Is Plaguing Our Cities

The shooting at a protest in Albuquerque, N.M.,between rival groups disagreeing about the removal of a statue of Juan de Oate, the conquistador of New Mexico, is a big deal, and is getting considerable attention this morning. But you probably wont hear as much about the ongoing wave of shooting and violence that is plaguing many American cities as they gradually reopen from lockdowns and quarantines, violence that appears to be quite separate from looting, arson, or other crimes connected to the protests against police brutality.

New York City: Over the month until June 7 including the crucial Memorial Day weekend New Yorks murder rate more than doubled, to 42 murders, from 18 the year before a jolt of 133 percent.Shooting victims, including wounded, are up 45 percent. Stabbings are up, too.

Minneapolis, Minn.: Investigators say a fight broke out inside the 200 Club on West Broadway Avenue, also known as the Broadway Pub & Grille, at about 2 a.m. It then spilled into the street, with several people pulling out guns and firing at each other. Six people went to the hospital early Sunday morning. One of them, a man in his 20s, died Monday.

Chicago, Ill.: While Chicago was roiled by another day of protests and looting in the wake of George Floyds murder, 18 people were killed Sunday, May 31, making it the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The labs data doesnt go back further than 1961. That was a few weeks ago; this past weekend, two men were killed and 31 other people were injured in shootings across Chicago over the weekend.

Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Division of Police confirmed seven shootings injured nine people and killed one man within 10 hours.

Saint Louis, Mo.: Seven people were shot two of them fatally in the City of St. Louis within a 6-hour span on Monday. The shootings come after a violent weekend in the city where 21 people were shot from Friday to Sunday. Six of those people were fatally shot.

South Bend, Ind.: Police are asking for your help after at least 5 people were shot and over 300 shots were fired following a violent weekend in South Bend. Patrol Division Chief Eric Crittendon say it is one of the most shots he has ever seen in one weekend since joining the South Bend Police Department nearly 30 years ago.

Ocean City, Md.: Thus far this month, the incidents have been decidedly more frequent and more violent involving larger groups of individuals intent on disturbing the peace. In the span of about a week beginning last Sunday, there have been at least two stabbings and several major altercations on the Boardwalk including a major fight last Tuesday that resulted in the severe beating of a young man.

New Orleans, La.: Fifteen reported shootings have injured 17 people and killed five since Friday.

Baltimore, Md.: In the first incident in Fells Point, five people were shot on Broadway early Saturday morning . . . The second incident happened around 3 a.m. Sunday in the 2300 block of Winchester Street in west Baltimore. Officers were responding to multiple complaints about a large party in a parking lot. As people were leaving, a Range Rover barreled into the lot, police said. Minutes later, the driver, 30-year-old Christopher Earl from Windsor Mill, shot an officer during a struggle.

Philadelphia, Pa.: Two people were slain, five others were shot, and four were stabbed from Friday through Sunday in Philadelphia. The deadly violence pushed the citys number of homicide victims this year to 182, an increase of 35 victims, or 24 percent, compared with this time last year, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.

Pittsburgh, Pa.: Police are investigating after three people were injured from a shooting during a backyard party in Pittsburghs Manchester neighborhood. According to investigators, there about 20 gunshots while a backyard party was happening in the area. Its unclear how many people were there at the time. Three people, including a woman and a girl, were hospitalized after being grazed by bullets. A third victim walked into Allegheny General Hospital after also being struck.

San Antonio, Texas: No arrests have been made three days after a shooting at a North Side bar that injured eight people, San Antonio police said Monday. Police are still searching for the man who allegedly opened fire in the parking lot of REBAR, a bar in the 8000 block of Broadway, around 11:30 p.m. Friday. Five women and three men, ages 23 to 41, were shot and hospitalized but are expected to survive, police said over the weekend.

Houston, Texas: Children ran for their lives and ducked for cover under vehicles to avoid being hit by gunfire that broke out at a block party in north Houston. Police say at least one person was shot to death. The shooting happened off Chapman Street around 9 p.m. Sunday. There were 200-300 people partying in the street when police say three people pulled out guns and started shooting. One man was shot and killed.

Union County, S.C.: A large block party turned violent when attendees started shooting at one another, Union County Sheriff David Taylor said. Seven people were shot and 2 of them died. The coroner identified the victims as Jabbrie Brandon, 17, of Union, and Curtis Lamont Bomar, 21, of Spartanburg.

These shootings do not appear to be tied to the protests. Some of these shootings occurred at bars (Minneapolis, San Antonio) and parties (Houston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Union County, S.C.), and may well be the participants first large gatherings since the lockdowns and quarantines. (Excessive alcohol consumption and firearms is not a good combination.)

How likely is it that this surge of violence has something to do with the 13.3 percent unemployment rate; the closure of all schools in the country since March; the cancelation of summer jobs programs;the closure of basketball courts, gyms, and many other public recreation locations; the lack of almost all athletic events; the lack of movies in movie theaters; and the widespread disruption to normal human behavior since March?

How many of the participants in this almost-entirely nocturnal violence have to get up and go to work in the morning on Monday?

What Are Young People Supposed to Do Without Those First Summer Jobs?

This summer in the United States, there are no major or minor league ballgames, no hot dog vendors walking up and down the aisles of the stadiums. No one is working the soda machine at the concession stand or refilling the ketchup and mustard dispensers. We have few movie theaters with fewer teenagers working the concession stand or selling tickets. We have fewer restaurants, hiring fewer waiters and waitresses and busboys and hostesses. Closed pools have no need for lifeguards. Retail stores are slow to rehire. Many companies canceled their planned summer internships.

Our response to the coronavirus yanked away what was usually a vital first step in young peoples preparation for adulthood:

Riverside Golf Club in Riverside, Ill., normally hires nearly 140 teenaged caddies with roughly 70 working on any given day, said Joe Green, the clubs caddie master. Courses are open but local laws dont permit caddies to work this summer.

Mr. Green said many of his summer caddies can make between $5,000 and $6,000.

I dont see how were going to bring them back safe this year, he said. To me, its the best job these kids can have. It teaches discipline, social skills, networking. Its a great learning experience.

Summer jobs are not glamorous and usually dont pay all that well, but for a lot of people, theyre a key first step on the path of their careers. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote in From the Ground Up, the value of early work experiences can exceed the amount of a paycheck. Work done well building a house, helping a customer find the perfect new shoes, earning a promotion by serving cups of coffee imbues us with a sense of self-worth as well as a sense of purpose. With dignity. And if youre a lost young person with little proof of your potential, work can provide a window into yourself.

ADDENDA: Im no legal scholar, but Michael Brendan Dougherty, Alexandra DeSanctis, Ilya Shapiro, and the Editors all see problems in the Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County. The editors conclude, The law is now read to mean something different in 2020 from what even the most liberal Justices would have said in 1964. Congress for years has been debating bills to amend the statute to cover these topics; the Court just did its work for it, and without any of the compromises or conscience protections that legislators typically debate.

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The Next Wave of Violence - National Review

Human Behavior

What moves people? Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao, who will direct the new MIT Mobility Initiative, brings – MIT News

Its easy to think of urban mobility strictly in terms of infrastructure: Does an area have the right rail lines, bus lanes, or bike paths? How much parking is available? How well might autonomous vehicles work? MIT Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao views matters a bit differently, however.

To understand urban movement, Zhao believes, we also need to understand people. How does everyone choose to use transport? Why do they move around, and when? How does their self-image influence their choices?

The main part of my own thinking is the recognition that transportation systems are half physical infrastructure, and half human beings, Zhao says.

Now, after two decades as a student and professor at MIT, he has built up an impressive body of research flowing from this approach. A bit like the best mobility systems, Zhaos work is multimodal. He divides his scholarship into three main themes. The first covers the behavioral foundations of urban mobility: the attitudinal and emotional aspects of transportation, such as the pride people take in vehicle ownership, the experience of time spent in transit, and the decision making that results in large-scale mobility patterns within urban regions.

Zhaos second area of scholarship applies these kinds of insights to design work, exploring how to structure mobility systems with behavioral concepts in mind. What are peoples risk preferences concerning autonomous vehicles? Will people use them in concert with existing transit? How do peoples individual characteristics affect their willingness to take ride-sharing opportunities?

Zhaos third theme is policy-oriented: Do mobility systems provide access and fairness? Are they met with acceptance? Here Zhaos work ranges across countries, including China, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S., examining topics like access to rail, compliance with laws, and the public perception of transportation systems.

Within these themes, a tour of Zhaos research reveals specific results across a wide swath of transportation issues. He has studied how multimodal smartcards affect passenger behavior (they distinctly help commuters); examined the effects of off-peak discounts on subway ridership (they reduce crowding); quantified car pride, the sense in which car ownership stems from social status concerns (its prevalent in developing countries, plus the U.S.). He has also observed how a legacy of rail transit relates to car-ownership rates even after rail lines vanish, and discovered how potential discriminatory attitudes with respect to class and race influence preferences toward ridesharing.

People make decisions in all sorts of different ways, Zhao says. The notion that people wake up and calculate the utility of taking the car versus taking the bus or walking, or cycling and find the one that maximizes their utility doesnt speak to reality.

Zhao also wants to make sure that decision makers recognize the importance of these personal factors in the overall success of their mobility systems.

I study policy from the individual subjects point of view, says Zhao. Im a citizen. How do I think about it? Do I think this is fair? Do I understand it enough? Do I comply with the policy? It is more of a behavioral approach to policy studies.

To be sure, Zhao is more than a researcher; he is an active mentor of MIT students, having been director of the JTL Urban Mobility Lab and the MIT Transit Lab, and chair of the PhD program in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). And at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Zhao is also co-director of the MITEI Mobility System Center. For his research and teaching, Zhao was awarded tenure last year at MIT.

This May, Zhao added another important role to his brief: He was named director of the new MIT Mobility Initiative, an Institute-wide effort designed to cultivate a dynamic intellectual community on mobility and transportation, redefine the interdisciplinary education program, and effect fundamental changes in the long-term trajectory of mobility development in the world.

We are at the dawn of the most profound changes in transportation: an unprecedented combination of new technologies, such as autonomy, electrification, computation and AI, and new objectives, including decarbonization, public health, economic vibrancy, data security and privacy, and social justice, says Zhao. The timeframe for these changes decarbonization in particular is short in a system with massive amounts of fixed, long-life assets and entrenched behavior and culture. Its this combination of new technologies, new purposes, and urgent timeframes that makes an MIT-led Mobility Initiative critical at this moment.

How much can preferences be shaped?

Zhao says the current time is an exhilarating age for transportation scholarship. And questions surrounding the shape of mobility systems will likely only grow due to the uncertainties introduced by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

If in the 1980s you asked people what the [mobility] system would look like 20 years in the future, they would say it would probably be the same, Zhao says. Now, really nobody knows what it will it look like.

Zhao grew up in China and attended Tongji University in Shanghai, graduating with a bachelors degree in planning in 2001. He then came to MIT for his graduate studies, emerging with three degrees from DUSP: a masters in city planning and a masters in transportation, in 2004, and a PhD in 2009.

For his doctoral dissertation, working with Joseph Ferreira of DUSP and Nigel Wilson of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Zhao examined what he calls preference-accommodating versus preference-shaping approaches to urban mobility.

The preference-accommodating approach, Zhao says, assumes that people know what they want, and no one else has any right to say what those tastes should be. But the preference-shaping approach asks, To the degree preferences can be shaped, should they? Tastes that we think of as almost instinctual, like the love of cars in the U.S., are much more the result of commercial influence than we usually recognize, he believes.

While that distinction was already important to Zhao when he was a student, the acceleration of climate change has made it a more urgent issue now: Can people be nudged toward a lifestyle that centers more around sustainable modes of transportation?

People like cars today, Zhao says. But the auto industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to construct those preferences. If every one of the 7.7 billion human beings strives to have a car as part of a successful life, no technical solutions exist today to satisfy this desire without destroying our planet.

For Zhao, this is not an abstract discussion. A few years ago, Zhao and his colleagues Fred Salvucci, John Attanucci, and Julie Newman helped work on reforms to MITs own acclaimed transportation policy. Those changes fully subsidized mass transit for employees and altered campus parking fees, resulting in fewer single-occupant vehicles commuting to the Institute, reduced parking demand, and greater employee satisfaction.

Pursuing joyful time in the classroom

For all his research productivity, Zhao considers teaching to be at the core of his MIT responsibilities; he has received the Committed to Caring award by MITs Office of Graduate Education and considers classroom discussions to be the most energizing part of his job.

Thats really the most joyful time I have here, Zhao says.

Indeed, Zhao emphasizes, students are an the essential fuel powering MITs notably interdisciplinary activities.

I find that students are often the intermediaries that connect faculty, Zhao says. Most of my PhD students construct a dissertation committee that, beyond me as a supervisor, has faculty from other departments. That student will get input from economists, computer scientists, business professors. And that student brings three to four faculty together that would otherwise rarely talk to each other. I explicitly encourage students to do that, and they really enjoy it.

His own research will always be a work in progress, Zhao says. Cities are complex, mobility systems are intricate, and the needs of people are ever-changing. So there will always be new problems for planners to study and perhaps answer.

Urban mobility is not something that a few brilliant researchers can work on for a year and solve, Zhao concludes. We have to have some degree of humility to accept its complexity.

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What moves people? Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao, who will direct the new MIT Mobility Initiative, brings - MIT News

Human Behavior

King Philip High School’s val and sal want to study humans and the universe – The Sun Chronicle

WRENTHAM King Philip Regional High Schools valedictorian wants to study human behavior, its salutatorian the universe.

Ainsley Bonin, 17, of Plainville, takes top honors as the valedictorian.

Bonin was a member of the National Honor Society as well as the Math and Science National Honor societies. She was awarded Excellence in English and French, as well as distinction in mathematics for statistics. Last year, Bonin was awarded the Wellesley College Book Award and Excellence in Pre-calculus.

One of my proudest moments was receiving the Henry Carr Scholarship, Bonin said. Although I personally did not know Henry, I witnessed the extraordinary impact he has had on our school and have heard about what an incredible person he was; I am extremely honored and humbled to have received his memorial scholarship, for he truly means so much to the King Philip community.

Bonin also took part in the peer mentoring program and was a peer mentor to a special needs student.

Outside of school, she performs in the fall and summer shows at Triboro Youth Theatre in Attleboro. Bonin dances at Edge Dance Academy on their competition team and is a receptionist there, and teaches dance at the Franklin and Foxboro YMCAs where she says her students give her a lot of pride. She has been dancing for 15 years.

I attribute my success to time management and a really great group of teachers, Bonin said. I am also interested in a lot of different things and didnt come upon many classes or subjects I didnt enjoy, which helped to motivate me to do well.

She says her favorite subject is math, but she also loves to write and draw.

KP truly has so many teachers who care so much about their students and aspire to build meaningful relationships with them, Bonin said. I am really going to miss all of them, and I truly appreciate how much they have inspired me and molded me into the person I am today.

She is the daughter of Elizabeth Bonin, the district data analyst for North Attleboro schools, and Jeffrey Bonin, a software engineer.

Bonin will attend Colby College, with a double major in economics and either math or psychology, and is interested in a career in the field of behavioral economics.

Whether that means research, consulting, or academia, I feel like behavioral economists and understanding human behavior can have an enormous impact on peoples lives, and I hope to use these studies to help others make better decisions and lead fuller lives, Bonin said.

Thomas Ciavattone, 18, also of Plainville, is the class salutatorian.

His awards were Excellence in Mathematics, Excellence in Physics, Letter of Commendation from National Merit Scholarship Program, Top School Scorer in American Mathematics Competition 10, Bausch + Lomb Honorary Science Award, Presidents Education Awards Program Award for Outstanding Academic Excellence, and Honorable Mention at UMass Model UN.

Scholarships Ciavattone was awarded included the Dorothy & Kenneth G. Goodman Memorial Science Scholarship and Northeastern University Honors Scholarship.

Activities he participated in at KP High included Model UN, Honors Societies, and Debate, Chess and Eco-Warriors clubs he says among his most meaningful and proudest accomplishments was being elected to run some of the clubs.

Ciavattone attended Plainville schools before KP Middle, as Bonin did.

Many really kind teachers that I will never forget, Ciavattone said of KP.

He is the son of Daniel and Jennifer Ciavattone.

Ciavattone will go to Northeastern University to study physics his favorite subject.

I hope to either become a professor or researcher in the field of physics in order to discover more about the universe we live in, Ciavattone said.

Stephen Peterson can be reached at 508-236-0377.

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King Philip High School's val and sal want to study humans and the universe - The Sun Chronicle

Human Behavior

Stephen Lewis: A meditation on what spring portends – Traverse City Record Eagle

On the north side of my house, so close I can almost open the window and reach their branches, are ancient lilacs trees.

As I sit here looking at them this last week of May, they have started to show off their fragrant purple blossoms. Each spring as those blossoms emerge, I am first reminded how spring comes here later than it does in my native New York, and then the opening line of Walt Whitmans lament about the assassination of Lincoln, unbidden, pops into my mind:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomd.

That would be on April 14, 1865, when lilacs on the east coast were in bloom,and John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. Reacting to that event and the emerging season, Whitman, consciously or not, yoked together the unchanging regularity of natures cycle, and in contrast the unpredictable and disruptive vagaries of human behavior.

Other poets have observed the same contrast. The opening lines of Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales, salute the arrival of spring, again specifically in April, with that months warming breezes and showers waking up nature, and in sync with this regular occurrence, longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. Chaucer sees how the natural movement from the end of winter to the revival of spring leads to a religious impulse to celebrate the souls victory over death in its hoped-for resurrection. How genuine and heartfelt that feeling is among those joining the imagined pilgrimage to Canterbury is revealed in the wide variety of tales, from bawdy to pious in the tales the pilgrims tell, all set against the steady backdrop of the natural world in springtime.

Fast forward from Chaucers 14th century to the early 20th for another poets view of the winter to spring transition. In his The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot begins by stating, April is the cruellest month. The poem goes on to explain the cruelty of the springs return to life promising an accompanying spiritual rebirth that is not realized, in depressing contrast to natures annual revival.

Whitman, Chaucer, and Eliot, each in his own way explores how natures annual spring awakening encourages us to look for a corollary in people. Whitman feels devastated that Lincoln, a beacon of human aspiration, is felled by very human hatred. Chaucer delights in the variety of human behaviors against the background of, and in contrast to, natures unchanging pattern.

In a sense, though, Eliot might be the most apt window into our current experience. Eliot was writing not only after the carnage World War I but the great influenza pandemic of 1918 as well. I also note the similar sources of both the Spanish flu and our pandemic. The Spanish flu is said to have entered humanity in the spring from an avian source: our coronavirus is thought to have crossed into the human bloodstream from a bat.

I am struck with how both pandemics remind us that as uplifting as springs revival is, nature, in the form of a virus carried by creatures of the natural world, can offer a counter narrative and remind us that it is neither friend nor foe, neither supportive nor hostile.

Rather, it just is. No doubt, human activity influences the natural environment, and disrupts natural patterns. But human nature, as opposed to Nature with a capital letter, has its own consistency in its seemingly unquenchable appetite for outbursts of mindless violence as we have seen in the recent civil unrest in response to an unspeakable act.

On the one hand, my lilacs will, as they do, bloom on schedule. And on the other, people, sadly, will do as they do.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

Stephen Lewis, originally from Brooklyn, New York is a retired college English professor and writer whose novels include three mysteries set in northern Michigan. Contact stevelew@charter.net.

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Stephen Lewis: A meditation on what spring portends - Traverse City Record Eagle

Human Behavior

Try this app to avoid ticks this summer – Futurity: Research News

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A new app could help you avoid ticks and the risk of contracting Lyme disease.

We dont want people to be afraid. We just want them to take a few precautions so they can still enjoy being outside, says Jean Tsao, an associate professor in the fisheries and wildlife department at Michigan State University who researches ticks and tick-borne illness and helped develop The Tick App.

More than 300,000 people contract Lyme disease each year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

dont panic. Just be aware, take proper precautions and enjoy being outside this summer.

We know being in nature is good for peoples health, but we just dont want them to have a bad experience with ticks or tick-borne diseases, Tsao says.

Tsao worked with scientists at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin to develop the smartphone app, The Tick App. It provides information on ways to prevent tick exposure. The app also shows how to identify different kinds of ticks and the diseases they transmit.

In addition, app users have the opportunity to be citizen scientists and help researchers understand how human behavior influences the risk of contracting ticks. Close to 3,000 people used the app in 2019, Tsao says.

Were interested in knowing if people use prevention methods, which prevention methods are used and what factors might influence the prevention methods used, Tsao says. These data will aid the development of more effective prevention strategies.

Tsao says one of the best ways to prevent contact ticks is to avoid their habitat.

When hiking, its important to remember to not stray from the trail, she says. This is particularly relevant now during the coronavirus crisis since people need to social distance by staying six feet away from others, even on trails.

If you start feeling ill, go to a doctor and show him or her your tick.

Also, people should do a thorough tick check after being in tick habitat and take a shower or bath to reduce the chances of getting Lyme disease.

Lastly, Tsao says if you do get bitten by a tick, carefully grab it with tweezers at the point closest to your skin to remove it. Then, take a clear photo and submit it to The Tick App so the team can identify the species.

Afterward, put the tick in a plastic bag labeled with the date and geographic location where you think you may have contacted it, then store it in your freezer.

If you start feeling ill, go to a doctor and show him or her your tick, Tsao says. The species and degree of swelling can help with diagnosis and treatment. But dont panic. Just be aware, take proper precautions, and enjoy being outside this summer.

Download The Tick App for free here or find it on Google Play or the App Store.

For more on ticks and tick-borne disease, visit the CDC.

Source: Michigan State University

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Try this app to avoid ticks this summer - Futurity: Research News

Human Behavior

Why clients leave (and what to do about it) – dvm360

It hurts when a client chooses to leave your veterinary practice. Customer attrition not only can make you feel like failure, it threatens the viability and growth of your business.

When we study why clients leave veterinary practices, we tend to focus on the clients themselves, butdoing so treats only the symptoms, not the disease. Customer churn is usually the end result of a long chain of events, the root cause of which is almost always leadership and culture. Lets approach this topic from a different angleone rooted in biology and psychology.

Much of human behavior can be understood from the perspective of chasing or avoiding hormones and neurotransmitters:

At the core of every behavior, every action, every goal, we are looking to amplify some of these chemicals and minimize others.

What hormones and neurotransmitters are dominant in your workplace? If you motivate employees through serotonin and dopamine, you have probably found them to be capable motivators. People like chasing rewards, and they will always work to avoid cortisol. But this comes at a costeven if its largely hidden. Cortisol and dopamine are meant for short bursts and are unsustainable. Oxytocin and serotonin are the hormones that we should be artfully employing to create happier, more productive and more fulfilling environments.

The primary source of discontent among staff and clients alike in veterinary practices is failed leadership. The hospitals leaders aren't incapable or bad people, but they absolutely need to change their approach. A leader has two primary responsibilities: to ensure the physical and emotional safety of their tribe, and to provide clear guidance on where the tribe needs to go.

Consider the following scenario: A technician administers the wrong medication to a dog. The dog has a bad reaction and almost dies. The technician is in distraught. Her supervisor can structure the ensuing conversation using one of two contrasting styles of leadership: correcting mistakes versus providing safety.

Listen, Becky, we just cant have this. That was a serious mistake. And its become a pattern. I need you to figure this out, or we just cant have you here. Do you understand?

I guarantee you that Becky will be motivated to correct her mistakes after this conversation, but I doubt shell be successful. She will have a high baseline of cortisol when working. Nobody does their best work that way. Shell be thinking about her fears and insecurities instead of the task at hand.

Hey Becky, please sit down. You know, when I was your age, I misplaced an IV line in a dog that was recovering from surgery. The dog almost died. I was devastated. I felt like a failure, like I just wasnt cut out for this. I almost quit that evening. But I wasnt a failure, and you arent either. Now, how can I help you?

This conversation provides Becky with what she truly needs to course correct: emotional safety. Most of us are afraid that we arent good enoughthat there is something lacking within us, and maybe that something is intrinsically wrong. But it isnt true. What real leadership does is help us to believe in ourselves. This is the most powerful gift you can give someoneand we all deserve it.

Downstream of leadership is culture. When you work to prioritize the emotional safety of your team, their self-confidence and their feelings of connectedness to the larger mission, you create the necessary conditions for exceptional culture, one in which people lift each other up, are attentive to each others emotional needs and self-actualize.

When a team is constantly worried about messing up, they inevitably underperform and self-isolate. Cortisol haunts their every action. But a team whose psychological needs are met can develop their talents and serve the deeper needs of your customers.

Once the practice leadership is effective and the culture is empowering, you can forcefully address the last link in the chain: how you are making your customers feel. This is the sole determinant of why clients stay or leave, and their needs are actually the same as those of your staff: They want to avoid cortisol. They love genuine bonds and feelings of self-worth, and you and your team should strategize about how to create these neurochemical experiences at every possible stage of the veterinary visit.

How are you reducing cortisol during their time in the waiting room and exam room? How are you encouraging feelings of self-worth and status when they walk through your door? How about when you speak with them? How do your interactions encourage the release of oxytocin?

Once you are here, I would encourage you to become fanatical about reverse-engineering a customer visit from the perspective of how youre making someone feel. Its hard work, but you now have the right questions to ask.

Luckily for them, they have you.

Robert Sanchez is the founder and CEO of Digital Empathy, an award-winning web design and marketing firm for veterinary practices. He frequently lectures at national conferences, leads a team of wonderful employees, sits on the board of VetPartners and shares his home with two very spoiled dogsCole and Lula.

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Why clients leave (and what to do about it) - dvm360

Human Behavior

Aggressive rodents not issue in LR, experts say – Arkansas Online

Despite federal public health officials' warnings of "unusual or aggressive behavior" by starved rodents in cities shut down by the coronavirus, exterminators say Little Rock-area rats and mice have kept their usual routines.

The lack of a stay-at-home order likely helped the state's whiskered, string-tailed residents, according to pest professionals and experts.

Ongoing business activity kept rats in apple cores, chicken bones and ketchup packets, said Richard Sims, a pest control manager for Curry's Termite, Pest and Animal Control.

Some cities that did close a little bit more "had more of a larger [rodent] presence felt, just because of the absence of the food," he said. "[But] I am not observing anything here in Central Arkansas."

Jim Fredericks, chief entomologist with the National Pest Management Association, agreed. "Many of the rats in these metro areas are under food stress right now, and part of that is due to the shelter-in-place restrictions and the quarantine restrictions," he said.

[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]

In May, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website urged health regulators to watch for upticks in rodent activity, drawing comparisons with behavioral changes seen after natural disasters. Industry webinars emphasized the same issue, Sims said.

But thus far, the Arkansas Department of Health hasn't received reports of newly mobilized vermin, said that agency's public health veterinarian, Dr. Laura Rothfeldt.

She surmised that could be because of grass and fields in close proximity to the capital city, as well as fewer business interruptions amid the outbreak.

"We don't have that big concrete jungle. They have options," she said of rats, mice and other rodents. "We do have concerns about it, of course, if that were to happen, because they are vectors of certain diseases."

In Arkansas, environmental health officials look into rodent complaints to monitor for leptospirosis and salmonella, bacterial infections that spread via animal urine and feces. Tularemia, another infection, comes from the rodents' ticks and fleas.

The illness most popularly associated with rats -- plague -- hasn't been seen in Arkansas since at least 1970, according to CDC data. (Research published in the journal PNAS in 2018 also questions a connection between rats and the Black Death pandemic, which killed millions of people but actually may have spread through body lice and human fleas, scientists wrote.)

Broadly, it isn't as if Central Arkansas lacks for rodents, exterminators say. Since January, Sims said, he has had more than 80 commercial calls to attend to house mice, roof rats and Norway rats, often in the downtown area where sewers and structures are older and to their liking.

"The Heights is probably one of the most expensive real estate [locations] in Little Rock, but it has almost as much rodent activity as downtown, just because it's an older neighborhood," he said. Plentiful bird feeders in that area don't help.

Though he's seen few changes in rodent activity levels this spring, recent heavy rains are the sort of weather that leads to more rat, mouse and ant calls, said John Clark, an owner of Clark Exterminating in North Little Rock.

Sightings also surge in the fall, in his experience. When the weather turns, rodents scout places to nest, squeaking through air-conditioning units, holes in gas lines or dryer vents -- "anything the size of a dime," he said.

NO 'APOCALYPSE'

Nationally, the CDC's rat alert sparked a rash of lurid headlines, including reports of possible cannibalism among rats in New York City. But experts said most people shouldn't worry -- much -- about four-footed intruders.

"What we aren't going to see are hordes of angry rats leaving the downtown area," Fredericks said.

People should work to control any infestations as they usually would, he said, in part because mice are thought to contribute to allergies and, via chewing of electrical cords, to house fires.

Hendrix College biology professor Maureen McClung, whose research studies how human activity affects animal behavior, said she found the CDC's choice of words "kind of vague," adding that people shouldn't feel anxious about "aggressive" rodents.

"I would not imagine by this term that folks have thrown around -- 'aggression' -- that we should expect rats to be attacking us in our beds at night," she said. "This isn't the rat apocalypse."

Rats and mice are shy by nature and most active at night, so unusual behavior could mean being out during the day or being more bold, she said. More signs of their activity -- droppings, nests, a growing urine smell -- also can suggest strain as they fan out in search of food.

While rodent stress or, in the worst case, population collapse might sound tolerable, even agreeable, to some, McClung said it would cause problems for owls, hawks and larger mammals, all of which eat rats and mice.

For that reason, she suggests avoiding the use of rat poison and glue-style traps, so as not to inadvertently hurt backyard birds and other animals. Many people enjoy and want to support that wildlife, she said, even if they're not too concerned about rodents.

"No one's got their binoculars out to look at the rats," she said.

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Aggressive rodents not issue in LR, experts say - Arkansas Online

Human Behavior

Clumsy baby elephant looks embarrassed after falling face first into the mud – Yahoo Singapore News

With self-drive safaris now allowed again in Kruger National Park after seven weeks of lockdown in South Africa, I didnt waste any time and took the opportunity to visit the Park for a day. It did not take too long before I came across a small herd of elephants standing around a mud wallow. It was a hot morning in the African bush and the elephants took the opportunity to cool down, splashing mud all over their bodies. While keeping their bodies cool with the mud, the elephants also get the opportunity later on to clean their rugged skins by scratching of the dry mud, using a tree or rock to scratch against.

In the process the elephants get rid of ticks and parasites trapped in the dry caked mud on their bodies. Majority of the herd finished their mud bath and slowly moved on. At the mud wallow remained a male baby elephant and his mother. The mother elephant casually continued splashing herself with mud while her calf was already covered in mud. The calf caught my attention when he stopped splashing mud over himself and started leaning forward slowly. It looked like the baby elephant was attempting to rub his forehead in the mud. That idea did not go so well for the baby elephant. While leaning forward to get his forehead in the mud, the elephant calf suddenly slipped and fell, face first into the mud. Like lightning the baby elephant got back onto his legs, looking a little flustered and embarrassed at the same time.

The elephant calf immediately turned around, slowly climbed up the bank and went to hide in the nearby bushes. Again, this behavior gave me the impression that the elephant calf felt a little embarrassed by his face plant into the mud. I felt sorry for the little one but at the same time found the whole incident funny. Immediately I could relate the incident back to the scenario when you fall flat on your face in public, quickly jump with the hope that no one saw you, then slowly making an effort to disappear while acting as if nothing happened. I left the scene with a smile on my face and I was filled with the greatest admiration for how much of the behavior of the baby elephant could be related back to our own human behavior.

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Clumsy baby elephant looks embarrassed after falling face first into the mud - Yahoo Singapore News

Human Behavior

Life, disease and fear across the years – Abilene Reporter-News

Arthur Cyr Published 1:45 p.m. CT June 12, 2020

The media'sfocus on COVID-19 continues, even as we begin to reopen and return to a more normal existence. To provide context, media talking heads often mention the devastating Spanish Flu pandemic 0f 1918.

The reference ignores health challenges over the intervening decades.

This is strikingly similar to superficial discussion of the international financial crisis of 2007-08, often described as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Arthur Cyr(Photo: Contributed Photo)

In both the economic crash of a decade ago and the current public health challenges, descriptions of the past often ignore important developments between the earlier time cited and the present. That is revealing.

Consider the decades between the onset of the Great Depression and the financial crash early in the current century, which resulted from casino-capitalism style speculation.

In the 1970s, a destructive threat faced the international economy stagflation, meaning high inflation combined with high unemployment. Earlier, professional economists especially in the academic world had confidently predicted this devastating combination could not occur.

A belief based on the Phillips Curve, which indicated historically there was a direct tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, turned out to be mistaken regarding future developments. Once again, as through history, collective human behavior undermined assumptions based on selective evidence drawn from the relatively recent past.

During the 1960s, rapidly escalating U.S. federal spending and fiscal deficits brought on the curse of relentlessly rising prices, and the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil embargo and extreme price increases of 1973 and 1979 fueled the financial flames. High and rising unemployment failed to provide the sort of relief expected by acolytes of the Phillips Curve.

High oil costs rapidly spread through other parts of the economies of industrialized nations generally, and growth stagnated. This continued through the decade. Paul Volcker, nominated by President Jimmy Carter to head the Federal Reserve Board, finally broke the back of the inflation beast with restrictive monetary policy and high interest rates. Significant strong economic growth followed.

Before the stagflation decade, flu pandemics plagued the United States and many other nations. During 1957-58, the Asian Flu was a major public health problem. The pandemic originated in China, as the misnamed Spanish Flu of 1918 probably did as well.

The Hong Kong flu came to the United States in September 1968 and spread rapidly. Troops returning home from service in the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia introduced the virus. President Lyndon B. Johnson was among the many who became severely ill as a result.

Approximately 100,000 Americans and an estimated 1million people worldwide died from the Hong Kong flu. This was far less than the estimated 675,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide who perished from the 1918 flu.

The 1968-69 U.S. flu illness and death rates were roughly comparable to what is occurring now. Mercifully, young people appear to be relatively immune to COVID-19. That was not the case with these earlier pandemics.

Yet there were no mass isolations, government restrictions or media obsessions. People generally viewed disease as a part of life. The scourge of polio, which devastated children, only was defeated in 1955 with the Salk vaccine. The last case of smallpox in the U.S. was in 1949.

The good news is collectively we are so secure that anything less is a shock. The bad news is that we are extremely vulnerable to fear.

Fear can kill an individual, institutions, and eventually a society.

Email Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College, acyr@carthage.edu.

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Life, disease and fear across the years - Abilene Reporter-News