Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

AI and Remote Monitoring Technologies Play a Critical Role in Tackling Pandemics like the COVID 19 – Express Computer

Authored by Mr. Vijai Shankar Raja, Founder of HELYXON

In December 2019, Canada-based Artificial Intelligence backed platform BlueDot spotted a cluster of pneumonia-like illnesses spreading in Wuhan, China. Scanning health data from multiple sources, the platform was able to identify the contagion, warning its clients about an impending global outbreak. BluDots prediction came much before WHO officially warned the world about the novel coronavirus threat. AI-based data analytics andpredictive modellingtechniques give an in-depth insight into the spread of diseases and helps forecast future outbreaks in time to be able to prevent them. This is just one example of how the use of Artificial Intelligence is helping the human race identify, tackle and manage such diseases. To be fair, the world is not new to pandemics. In fact, over the past 10 years a series of such outbreaks have jolted the world be it SARS, Ebola, Nipah or COVID 19 the latest and the most devastating of zoonotic diseases to have hit the globe. While the world is still grossly under-prepared to deal with such pandemics, new age digital and Artificial Intelligence backed technology using biosensors and remote monitoring is offering remarkable new ways to tackle such health crisis.

Much like other fields, AI has also boosted healthcare with intelligent machines that can emulate human behavior, offer greater precision and can analyze loads of scattered data and make sense of it. According to a market research, the global artificial intelligence in healthcare market is expected to reach USD 31.3 billion by 2025[1]. Some factors fuelling this surge include increasing adoption of precision medicine, use of big data in healthcare and co-opting of cost cutting technologies in healthcare.

Speeding diagnosis and flattening the disease curve

With faster diagnosis critical to containing the disease spread and flattening the curve, Artificial Intelligence backed interventions are emerging key solutions in the global fight against COVID 19. A number of new AI-based inventions are helping the medical fraternity improve its diagnosis capability. Researchers in China have claimed to have successfully used AI to diagnose COVID 19 from CT Scans of lungs, which is a much faster diagnostic solution that the sputum test currently being used. Another set of researchers in the US and UK have developed an AI model that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. According to the researchers this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited[2].

Similarly, a team of biotechnology students and a professor from Mumbai has claimed to have developed an AI tool to test COVID-19 through voice-based diagnosis using a smartphone[3].

Clearly, AI based tools offer the new age solution to diagnose, tackle and address such pandemics in the future.

Mass screening of patients

Experience has shown that countries that were successful in widening their testing net were the ones that fared better in the fight against COVID 19. A wider testing net allows access to more accurate information about disease penetration and Spread. This in turn allows for better informed policy decisions. Screening of people in public places, offices, hospitals or public transport systems such as airports, railway stations etc is another area that needs to be taken seriously. Accurate screening can allow authorities to better curtail entry of suspected people ad contain the disease spread. However, thermally screening thousands of people every day at such joints is an uphill difficult task and also raises the threat of a large crowd gathering in waiting queues to be screened. AI-based mass screening tehnology can be an effective answer to this. In fact, Baidu, a Chinese multinational has already built AI-based solutions to effectively screen large populations and detect a change in their body temperature while they are on the move. This system can examine about 200 people per minute without disrupting the flow of people. Such technologies are ideal to be implemented in crowded areas, hospitals, railway stations, airports, etc to quickly identify suspected patients and quarantine them.

In Israel, a health insurance providing organization is using AI technology to run a data screening on its members to identify those who are most at risk of severe covid-19 complications. This tool draws upon data such as age, BMI, existing health conditions and previous history of hospital admissions to spot at-risk individuals and fast track their diagnosis.

Effective monitoring of patients

Another critical usage of AI technology is in improving treatment outcomes and installing better patient monitoring mechanisms. COVID 19 patients, particularly those deemed high risk, need constant monitoring of health parameters. However, with hospitals inundated with patients, manual monitoring of patients is not easy. AI based tools offer a valuable solution to automate monitoring of patients parameters such as heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, among others. Digital solutions such as the ones created by Helyxon in collaboration with IIT Madras are helping hospitals across the world institute better patient monitoring mechanisms. Not just in hospitals, these digital systems offer an effective way to monitor patients quarantined at home as well. Helyxons devices use biosensors and keep a track of the bodys vital parameters. The devices keep a track of the spikes and aberrations and whenever an anomaly is observed a system-generated call alert is made to the user while an automatic escalation to the local provider is done. Interestingly, the devices are also equipped with Geo-fencing tracking alerts to keep a track of patients movements and ensure isolated patients do not violate the provisions of quarantine.

Use of AI platforms, biosensor devices and remote monitoring technologies is helping create better disease management protocols by improving diagnosis, screening and monitoring drives. The use of such technology has also made it easier for researchers to find relevant data and studies to acquire new insights or approaches to address the COVID-19 outbreak.

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AI and Remote Monitoring Technologies Play a Critical Role in Tackling Pandemics like the COVID 19 - Express Computer

Human Behavior

How the Coronavirus Has Changed Animals’ Landscape of Fear – Scientific American

A family of lions takes a midday nap in the middle of a road in South Africas Kruger National Park. On a nearby golf course, a lioness sips water from a pond while spotted hyenas and African wild dogs play wrestle on the grass. Halfway around the world, a herd of wild goats feasts on a Welsh towns manicured lawns and hedges. And in California, black bears wander through empty campgrounds. With so many humans cooped up at home during the coronavirus pandemic, these animals and others have been adjusting to a world relatively free of peopleand the fear they engender.

Animals that are afraid of predators rely on a sort of mental map of their habitats. They use this map to stick near safer areas and avoid riskier ones, a phenomenon scientists call the landscape of fear. All predators influence their prey, but we humans are unique in our extensive ability to shape that landscape because we are such prolific killersand because we slay animals at all levels of the food web. Human hunters can use extremely efficient lethal technologies. We can collaborate with dogs to pursue prey. And we routinely kill animals without even trying to, such as by hitting them with our cars. So it makes sense that our disappearance from roads, golf courses and other spaces we usually dominate is letting animals relax to a very noticeable extent. This is certainly all consistent with the landscape of fear, says Liana Zanette, a biologist at Western University in Ontario who studies the topic. How animals react while humans are holed upand then again as we emergeis something of an unintentional experiment that could offer new details about the pervasive ways a wariness of humans shapes the natural world.

The bodies of fearful animals flood with stress hormones, which fuel quick responses. If such creatures see, smell or hear a predator nearby, they might drop whatever they are doing to run away and hide, gear up for a fight or freeze so their movements do not give them away. Even if there is no sign of an immediate threat, anxious animals may search for food less in order to have more time to monitor their surroundings for potential danger.

Whereas some fears are innatesuch as humans fear of spiders or snakes or a ground squirrels fear of foxesothers are learned, either through direct experience or observing others. Most animals have good reason to be terrified of people: a 2015 analysis reported that recreational and commercial hunters fell their prey at rates up to 14 times higher than those of nonhuman predators. Human prey even include apex predators such as cougars, which hunters kill around nine times more frequently than nonhuman predators do. Some biologists have begun to call our species superpredators.

Research conducted by Zanette and others shows how the special dread of humans changes the behaviors of many types of animals. In a 2016 experiment, Zanette found that European badgers were more fearful of people than they were of dogs and bears. Though badgers initially hid in their burrows when loudspeakers broadcast the sounds of bears or dogs, their need for food eventually spurred them to leave safety. But when they heard the sounds of people, the badgers never emergedthey would not even poke their head out.

Large, intimidating carnivores fear us as well. A 2017 investigation by Zanette found human conversations played over loudspeakers rattled cougars in northern California so much that they abandoned their kills before getting enough to eat. They ate about half as much just because they thought people were around, she says. Numerous studies have shown that even when animals seem tolerant of people, they invariably wind up altering their day-to-day lives to cope with stresses we create: a 2018 paper, for example, revealed that sea lions and fur seals spent less time resting on the beach when gawking tourists got too close or too loud.

Now that the world has become at least a little bit less terrifying for wildlife, it is reasonable to expect that at least some animals would react in noticeable ways. Im not surprised at all, says Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We have seen studies that animals move less [and] become more nocturnal around people and adjust their behavior to avoid us. So it is definitely possible that these patterns are reversing with humans stuck at home during the current pandemic.

Some exceptions may be animals dwelling in urban and suburban areas, Gaynor says. With more people entering local parks and natural areas to get out of the housein the absence of options such as restaurants and sports venuesthese animals may be even more stressed than they were before.

When COVID-19 lets up, and people once again venture from their homes more regularly, Gaynor expects things to return to some version of normal, with animals once again going well out of their way to avoid us. But the transition probably will not be like flipping a light switch. It wont necessarily happen immediatelyand not necessarily uniformly, she says. For example, creatures that once steered clear of roadways might take time to resume their avoidance, and in the meantime, speeding cars may hit more of them than usual. When wild animals lose their fear of people is generally when they get into trouble. Until they regain it, humans may have to to accept some inconveniences to avoid harming them in unexpected places. That response may mean driving more slowly or keeping pets on short leashes. We might need to renegotiate our relationship with wildlife, Gaynor says.

She and Zanette also note that the current situation has had interesting repercussions for field research into such animal behaviors. On one hand, scientists can follow the movements of some creatures using GPS collars and motion-activated cameras to see what they do when humans are out of sightand then as we return. It has turned into an accidental experiment, Gaynor says.

But on the other hand, some work has been put on pause. Ironically, Zanette had earlier planned to travel to Kruger National Park and surrounding areas this summer to see if mammals such as impalas and kudu were more wary of human noise when they were in areas that allowed hunting, compared with the parkwhere they cannot be hunted but may have to contend with the constant presence of tourists. The Skukuza Golf Club, where large carnivores were recently filmed enjoying the sunshine, was to be one of her field sites. Its incredibly frustrating, she says. This is the perfect time to go and study these superpredator questions weve been interested in.

Despite those frustrations and the temporary nature of the current respite for wild animals, Gaynor sees the anecdotes of creatures out and about as reasons to remain sanguine about wildlife conservation. It is a testament to the fact that animals are often incredibly resilient and flexible, she says. It gives me hope that they can bounce back from human disturbance.

Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.

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How the Coronavirus Has Changed Animals' Landscape of Fear - Scientific American

Human Behavior

This Tokyo pub has a machine that sprays customers with disinfectant as they enter – CNN

(CNN) As businesses around the world adopt new practices due to coronavirus, one Japanese pub is taking a novel approach to customer safety.Visitors to Kichiri Shinjuku, a traditional Japanese-style pub known as an "izakaya," are sprayed with a fine mist of disinfectant before they are allowed to enter.

"We want customers to feel safe when they come inside," spokeswoman Rieko Matsunaga told CNN. "This is geared to promote social distancing and prevent infections."

Upon arrival at the pub in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, customers are greeted by a hostess on a monitor, who tells them to wash their hands and take their temperature with a thermometer.

Next, they walk into what looks like an airport security scanner, where they are sprayed with a mist of chlorine-based disinfectant for 30 seconds.

Customers then pick up a map that shows them where to sit, and scan a QR code to bring up a menu on their phone, from which they can place their order. Diners sit separated by clear acrylic screens.

The pub is owned by Kichiro & Co., which has 103 locations in Japan. The company installed the machine at its Shinjuku branch on May 14, and a Kichiri pub in Osaka got its own machine on May 19.

While Matsunaga cited guidance from the Japanese Ministry of Health in the company's decision to use hypochlorous acid water to spray customers, the World Health Organization (WHO) says spraying people with disinfectant is a really bad idea.

"Spraying disinfectants can result in risks to the eyes, respiratory or skin irritation and the resulting health effects," the WHO said in an updated advisory published Saturday.

"Spraying or fogging of certain chemicals, such as formaldehyde, chlorine-based agents or quaternary ammonium compounds, is not recommended due to adverse health effects on workers in facilities where these methods have been utilized."

Japan continues to battle the pandemic and has implemented what it calls a "soft lockdown."

On May 6, the government extended the country's state of emergency until the end of the month, while introducing controversial "new social behavior guidelines."

An expert panel told the population to permanently adopt measures such as wearing face masks and keeping two meters between people.

Other advice included telling restaurant customers to sit outdoors, side-by-side while keeping conversation to a minimum. This left people wondering why Japan's advice differed from many other countries'.

"I'm dumbfounded ... There are no other experts urging this kind of advice in the world -- just experts in Japan. It's like they studied the virus, but not human behavior. What's scarier than the virus is ignorant people giving society guidance on how to tackle it," said one Twitter user.

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This Tokyo pub has a machine that sprays customers with disinfectant as they enter - CNN

Human Behavior

Reopening Connecticut: Is It Too Soon To Reopen Our State? – The CT Mirror

Today, Connecticut begins the long, winding process of reopening. Were kicking off a new series on Steady Habits to explore some of the most challenging questions as it plays out.

Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Its May 20, which means the reopening process in Connecticut is underway. Thousands of workers across the state will return to their workplaces as some businesses resume their operations. It comes as the state has seen a steady decline in coronavirus-related hospitalizations in recent weeks, and dramatically increased its testing capacity.

Still, some say more time may have been needed, including one of our guests this week.

Dean Sten Vermund of the Yale School of Public Health and Dr. Tom Tsai of the Harvard Global Health Institute talk with John Dankosky on the inaugural episode of our new reopening series on Steady Habits.

Listen to the episode using the player above or read an edited transcript of the conversation below.

DANKOSKY: If youre listening on the day we drop this episode, May 20th, you will note its the day the states been targeting for a partial reopening of state businesses. Now, to this point, only businesses considered essential have been operating in Connecticut. And thats meant a lot of people are out of work and a big part of our economy is suffering. The phased reopening is being done based on meeting goals for testing and a reduction in the transmission of coronavirus. And as youll hear, the state is making some progress. So that means pretty soon youll be able to eat in restaurants again. But only if you eat outside, and only if not that many of you are in the restaurant. And frankly, your waitress will be wearing a mask. And it probably doesnt sound like a whole lot of fun. You might, though, have been looking forward to getting a haircut. I mean, I dont know about you, but Ive been getting these kind of homemade haircuts for the last couple months.

My wifes been doing as well as she possibly can, but I could use to go back to the barber. But thats going to have to wait because this week, Governor Lamont pushed when salons could open up until June to coincide with the neighboring state of Rhode Island. Other businesses are being told now that theyll have to wait until later in June. Some businesses feel like, well, this pace is too slow. We want to open up more quickly. Others say give us more time and public health experts to kind of split on when to reopen different parts of the economy. So on this episode, two views from the public health sphere, from Dr. Tom Tsai from the Harvard Global Health Institute. And first from Sten Vermund. Hes dean of the Yale School of Public Health. Now, his colleague, Dr. Albert Ko, who has been helping to lead Connecticuts effort to reopen the economy. Vermund told me hes been pleased with the states response so far.

VERMUND: Im happy that the governor and legislature havent tried to move too quickly. Just two weeks ago, we had 440 patients in Yale New Haven Hospital with coronavirus. And now we have 240. Thats clear progress and were clearly on the downswing. But thats still a lot of patients and a lot of people got infected last week. So we are prudent and I think thats good. I also feel like, you know, opening up some industries, some businesses can be done expeditiously. Others may have to wait a little bit.

DANKOSKY: When we talk about this phased in nature of the reopening of our economy, some businesses going back, others taking a little bit longer. From a public health standpoint, are there certain benchmarks that you feel the state needs to meet before we start to open up restaurants? And what are what are some of those guide points that we have to hit?

VERMUND: Well, over a month ago, we had federal guidance that I thought was very thoughtful, 14 days of steady, declining case numbers. And that is a rule of thumb that was evaluated by the folks who do the mathematical modeling and forecasting. And they had reason to recommend that a two week span, because that would suggest that the wave of transmission was moving on, shall we say. And its a shame that states have ignored that guidance, because I think that would have been much more prudent. Georgias whats highlighted the news. I dont have any special knowledge about Georgia, but certainly judging from the news, they were especially aggressive at reopening. And Im not so sure that was such a good idea. Texas seems to have had a surge now. Maybe thats just a pocket or maybe its going to be more generalizable. But I dont think that you can be penny wise and pound foolish. Opening up too early and substantially risking another wave will simply disrupt the entire point of this shutdown to begin with. So I do feel like were in a good position now to thoughtfully reopen the state in stages. Other parts of the state that are considerably lower risk than other parts. And we can be more liberal in opening them. And we can also take a look at the big three. This is physical distancing, hand and face hygiene and mask use. And theres a lot we can do when we adhere to those big three.

DANKOSKY: I think my big question, though, comes with some of the the social aspects of of this crisis and how weve seen human behavior around these various milestones that were hitting. When the states start to open up, and a state like Connecticut which is I think we can all agree more thoughtfully doing it then Georgia starts to open up a bit more, youll start to see what I think you and I both might have witnessed over this past weekend. You had a couple sunny days. You get more people out and about. Maybe we get more people going to the stores that are open, not wearing masks. Theres almost a social effect of saying, well, were past this certain point and now were going to start to open up. Do you fear from a public health standpoint that people are going to take the message that things are fine and we dont have to be as vigilant as we have been for the past two or three months?

VERMUND: That is a challenge for the policymakers, political leaders, journalists, public health officials, academics. We need to impress upon people that a declining rate is not a zero rate. And if we continue to have transmission of the virus in the state of Connecticut, which we expect to well into the summer, it is highly prudent to physically distance, use masks and be aggressive with hand hygiene. Its not asking very much. Thats not a huge burden. If I can go to the movies and be a few seats away, lets be honest, most the movies I go to are not jam packed anyway. So its a matter of the movie theater owner being thoughtful in sort of the hot cross bun seating arrangement and making a bit of an educational effort to please sit in the seat where you see a mark and youll distribute people in the theater and people will be safer. Its not so difficult to sit in a theater and wear a mask, and its not so difficult to use the hand sanitizer that the clever theater owner will place conveniently at the entrance and exit and the bathroom.

DANKOSKY: But let me just stop you, because I think what were all though, noticing that there will probably be some theater owners, there will probably some bar owners, when bars are able to open up, that arent going to be so thoughtful. And there will be some places where people will crowd in as though its Mardi Gras and we just have had been locked up and cant wait to go party. Im wondering how much of a problem you see from a potential transmission standpoint, increased contact over the summertime as people begin to get into situations where, frankly, the businesses or the individuals themselves are not being that thoughtful?

VERMUND: Well, I think that the Department of Public Health and some of us in public health academia can be helpful. If our data in the state suggests that our problem is exceedingly low at the time, then liberalization is not unreasonable. If there is little to no transmission, then one might resume normal behavior, much as we do outside of flu season. Were much more cautious about hygiene in flu season than we are at the rest of the year. And maybe we should always be that cautious, but we arent. And so if the circumstances are highly favorable, liberalization is fine. But if we continue to have transmission, then were just inviting another wave. If were too relaxed and and we dont take those precautions and were going to open up the state. The governors aside of this, theres a broad consensus across the state that when we hit that sort of two week declining span, there is good reason to believe that the wave of transmission that washed over us from New York City will have largely dissipated. And until we know for sure, it is a fools errand to ignore physical distancing, handwashing and mask use. I honestly think we owe it to each other as denizens of our state to try to keep each other safe.

DANKOSKY: Even though its a small state, do you do you feel, though, because New York City has been the hot spot in the United States, maybe in the world, that Fairfield County and surrounding areas are in a little bit of a different situation than than Hartford County or the or the eastern part of the state?

VERMUND: I do believe they are, yes. They have business and social intimacy with New York City, far greater than any other part of the state. Their home of Stamford and Greenwich, which were hit right away very hard. And theres just no question that it was due to the tied by the hip kind of relationship theyve got with New York City. So I was disturbed seeing the evening news yesterday by folks in New York City, not bothering with masks, not bothering with any kind of distancing in some of the bars. And itll be interesting to see what Mayor de Blasio does about that, because we do have a tradition in public health of getting tough with people if theyre unsafe and theyre threatening the health of the community. It is it is true in all 50 states that an active tuberculosis patient who refuses therapy can be incarcerated and treated for two weeks until theyre no longer infectious to others.

And nobody sees that as a violation of individual liberty because theres a point at which that individuals irresponsible behavior threatens me. Its similar to running a red light or are driving recklessly or driving under the influence. We dont hesitate to enforce these things. And all of a sudden, public health people are saying, well, Im not so sure that that persons behavior is a risk to me. So I just all let it pass. But I think we should remind people courteously and in a cordial and reasonable way. Would you mind wearing a mask? Could you use that hand sanitizer? Could you stay a couple feet away, a couple more feet away? Thats not unreasonable. And I do it with people. I try to do it in a way thats friendly and supportive. And Im getting away with it without having my face smashed in so far. And I think if we do that with each other and set up a different kind of social contract that we agree to try to protect each other, then perhaps well be better off.

DANKOSKY: I want to ask you about this. The social contract or social compact? I think its such an important point and theres two questions I want to ask about it. One is that that is a slightly different thing than an enforcement mechanism, right? If theres a mechanism that says we cannot tolerate people without masks going into a certain establishment or we cannot tolerate someone who we know is actually a carrier of this virus being out in public, were going to incarcerate them. Thats a very different thing than us all getting together in deciding that were gonna take care of each other. Can you just parse those two things out for us? Because I believe that the social compact is a wonderful idea, but it may be a utopian idea in the America that we live in currently.

VERMUND: Good point. Now that weve been in a bit of a plateau of a peak of infection, there have been more rigorous regulations. The governor has required mask use to go into a store. A friend of mine was at a store the other day that was doing, you know, you were ordering in advance and then they would bring it to you and you could even pay in advance. And they had the six foot distancing of people. There was one gentleman in the whole line who wasnt wearing a mask and the store owner refused to serve him. And he got all upset, but the store owner said the governor has said that you have to wear a mask. Im not serving people who dont wear a mask. And everybody in the line cheered the store owner. Nobody took the side of the one person out of six or seven who refused to wear a mask because it was sociopathic. It was anti-social behavior. It was not a reasonable point of view. And as the gentleman left, my friend told me that he he mumbled, Oh masks dont help anyway. Which is simply untrue. So, you know, we do have a problem with people who dont want to do what they feel is inconvenient it for them. And these are not the people who are helpful in a pandemic.

DANKOSKY: The last thing for you, sir. Where do you think we need to get to in terms of testing in the state for us to more fully open back up? Because we hear from so many health experts that without an expanded and increased testing, were not going to be able to take those next steps toward more liberalization.

VERMUND: So if Im a store owner and I want to protect all my employees and my clients, I would like to get my employees tested for the antigen, meaning for the virus, before they return to work. So I might ask them to go to the CVS or other drivethrough or whatever is available my community and get a test. I think I would reimburse them for the costs of the test, because I would want to incentivize them to get that test. And then I would know that I have a returning workforce, none of whom is infectious to others. And they will stay uninfected the same way the health workers stay uninfected, which is use of personal protective equipment. In this case, were only asking for handwashing and masks and distancing, and that would protect my business. I will not then end up in the newspaper as a place that had a coronavirus case because Im going to lose a lot of business as soon as people see that my employees have gotten ill. And so I think its mutually self-interested. Its good for the business. Its good for the client. And having that ability to test people as they come back into group settings would be a powerful tool.

DANKOSKY: And do you think that theres some magic in the state number of wanting to get 40000 tests a week?

VERMUND: Others have done that calculation. I havent double checked it, but my colleague Albert Ko was happy with that number and I think hes done the research. One of my other colleagues, Forest Crawford, is working with the state. I dont think hes actually on the advisory group, but hes consulting the advisory group and I think theyre coming up with those numbers with his assistance. I believe that tens of thousands of tests that we could definitely quite to be needed because we may not think of ourselves as a large state, but there are three and a half million of us. If you take a million children out of the equation for the need for testing, you still have a couple of million people. And thats a lot of people.

DANKOSKY: So were starting a series this week called Reopening Connecticut. And we wanted to go outside the state for some perspective. Dr. Tom Tsai is from the Harvard Global Health Institute. Theyve been taking a close look at testing for coronavirus and how that can be used as a gauge for loosening restrictions on businesses. I asked him what hes looking for states to do as they consider how to reopen.

TSAI: The most important things to focus on as we look forward to next few weeks in terms of reopening is making sure that we continue to test broadly and counterintuitively the need for testing may actually increase as you reopen despite lower cases, because the reason for testing is going to change. Over the last several months, weve been really focused on just diagnosing COVID-19, basically testing patients with symptoms and confirming that they had coronavirus infection. But as we move towards reopening, were moving from a paradigm of diagnosis to one of screening and surveillance. So we need to get the tests out of the hospital and really into the communities and be able to adequately perform testing, contact tracing and supported isolation.

So I think there are two key metrics we need it will be looking at and state governors should be looking at as you move from looking at just the structural indicators of whether or not we have enough tests to now actually measuring our processes for testing and for reopening. That means we need to be measuring the number of people who are actually being traced through contact tracing. Among those, the number of people who are actually being tested because we have to make sure were testing those contacts in order to cast a wide enough net to get our arms around infection. The second part is to make sure that our tests are coming back at a fast enough rate so we can actually inform behavior. If testing is supposed to increase peoples confidence in the health care system, in society and in the economy, they cant wait four to five days for a result to come back. Thats four to five days of being self-isolated at home, unsure if you have the coronavirus and unsure if you may have inadvertently affected your friends, families or loved ones. So we really also need to be measuring the turnaround time. And ideally, that needs to be, you know, below 48 hours, below 24 hours if we have to make sure that the tests are immediately actionable.

DANKOSKY: How close do you think we are toward getting the right number of tests done, toward getting that turnaround time so that we can have the sorts of impact that youre looking for?

TSAI: I think were heading in the right direction. In Massachusetts, the governor recently announced a testing threshold, a target of 45000 by July and 75000 by December. I think similarly, Connecticut and other states have also increased their testing goals for the next few weeks to months. But, you know, Connecticut still has a test positive rate thats close to about 10 percent. And we need to be making sure that states like Connecticut are continuing to drive down the test positive rate.

The way to think about this is its not enough to make sure your car is going slower, going 10 miles per hour versus 60 miles per hour. The goal is to bring that car to a stop. So we have to actively be applying the brakes, actively decelerating and slowing down. And the quality of that is the test positive rate, continue to decrease and decrease in a fast enough rate. Thats what we know that the infection rate is going down, that fewer and fewer people are being infected. So a lot of progress has been made. I think were heading in the right direction, especially as states begin to move into phase reopening. There is an even more important need for continued vigilance around all the things that work. You know, that includes universal masking, physical distancing and really minimizing unnecessary social contact and exposure again. Because even though the infection has slowed down, its not over yet. And theres always a chance that if we take the lid off that things could bubble over again.

DANKOSKY: What conditions might make it easier for the virus to come back in another wave, to bubble back over again? I mean, if you if you look at a phased reopening like this, what could go wrong in a state like Massachusetts or Connecticut that would they would have the numbers start to head in the wrong direction again?

TSAI: We know that the virus tends to be spread easiest in close settings, indoor settings where theres not a lot of air circulation, but theres a lot of high frequency and high duration of contacts. So, you know, these are things like factories and plants. You know, weve seen how rapidly clusters can emerge and some of these meat packing or food processing plants. So thats why we have to be even more vigilant going forward to make sure that were testing, but also redoing repeated surveillance testing of nursing home residents and nursing home workers, testing any visitors. Now, the same goes for prisons. The same goes for new workplaces. You know, as they open, that may be sort of that higher risk.

So I think its really a focusing of the vulnerable populations or underserved communities. And the way this works is its a snowball effect if youre testing widely in these vulnerable populations, not only protecting the high-risk individuals, but if you actually following through with not just testing, but contact tracing for each new case, youre testing at least five to 10 additional individuals. And some of those may be new cases. And then you go contact tracing those individuals so that this becomes a snowball where, you know, one test becomes 10 tests, becomes 100 tests. And thats how you do sort of a targeted surveillance thats both screening the population, but also, you know, following the epidemiologist for the disease through contact tracing. And thats the way to move forward is by making sure that we can identify some of these cases early enough before they become, you know, emerging as huge clusters of cases.

DANKOSKY: The states are really only starting to ramp up their contact tracing efforts. Do you think that enough has been done at the state level in order for us to feel confident that we can start to go back to work? Because were testing more people, obviously, but still, those numbers are relatively low compared to what public health experts would have wanted. And now we seem to be just slowly ramping up contact tracing. I guess Im just wondering, Doctor, if weve if weve done enough so far to give you confidence.

TSAI: I think weve made a good start in lots of states, but I think we could be doing better. We always can be doing better. The goal of testing and the contact tracing is to make sure that we are creating confidence in the society and the public and the economy to safely reopen. And the best way to create that confidence is to make sure were testing broadly. I mean, think about, you know, your confidence in going back to work or bringing children back to school would be many fold higher if you know that you didnt have coronavirus, your child didnt have coronavirus, their teachers didnt have coronavirus, your colleagues have coronavirus. So, you know, I dont think were there yet. But thats the degree of confidence we need to be building in society. And the only way to do that is to be making sure that were testing broadly. And the only way to make sure we are testing broadly is to make sure that were actually doing adequate contact tracing. So I think weve made an important start.

We want the states hiring contact tracers. In Massachusetts, over 10,000 phone calls have been made to potentially exposed contacts. But I think thats just stage one. You know, step one. Where we really need to be moving is making sure those 10,000 individuals all get tested. I think thats where we need to be looking beyond just the number of tests as our metric for success and start measuring how effective our policies are, how effective our processes are. Thats where we need to be looking at the number of tests per contact, the turnaround time per test. These are second order metrics that will shine some light on how well the phase reopening plans are actually being implemented, because that will tell us whether or not ultimately were improving the outcomes for the public, which is decreasing the number of COVID-19 cases.

DANKOSKY: If you were on the line with Ned Lamont, the governor of Connecticut, and he asked you, Is it time to start a phased reopening, to start some businesses going back as early as the 20th of May, some others starting as early as June 1st? what would you tell him? I mean, do you think that we are going about this too quickly or not quickly enough? Do you think that were doing it just about right?

TSAI: So Im just looking at the numbers and in Connecticut so I have no skin in the game, being a resident in Massachusetts. By looking at the numbers in Connecticut, the positive rate seems to be stabilizing around 10 percent. Thats good, but not good enough. I want to see that drop below 10 percent and keep dropping. The number of positive tests has also stabilized, but I want to see it continue to go down. So, you know, the good news that the number of tests has increased over the last several weeks in Connecticut. So, again, I think there are some there are some early signals. Want to make sure that what were seeing are truly signals and not noise. So I think it may still be too early for Connecticut. But whats more important than dates is that our deadline should be driven by the data. So we shouldnt hold ourselves to specific dates.

But what we should really be holding ourselves accountable to is what the data show us. The data shows that the number of cases continues to go down at the positive rate is not just stable, but continues to go down below 10 percent. Number of deaths continue to go down and our number of tests continue to go up. All these, you know, signs have been are pointing the right direction that the pandemic is truly slowing down. I think thats a point where the phased reopening approach is important. The second part I would tell Governor Lamont is that just as important as to the goals, the gating criteria for moving to phase one, is how do we measure how was success in phase one looks like? Because if we see that rise in cases during phase one, how do we hold ourselves accountable for having made the right policy decisions? We wont even be making sure that the state of Connecticut, and that goes for every state in the Union, needs to have very transparent metrics on what success or failure looks like in terms of phase reopening because our lives that are at stake.

So we need to be making sure that we are very clear about what the goalposts are and we hold ourselves accountable to those moving forward. We cant have, you know, sort of moving targets. You know, there needs to be something that we work towards to during phase one for reopening. And if we meet those, great, move on to the next phase. But we all seem to know what happens if we dont meet those and we may have to reinstitute some forms of social distancing or even though double down on even more testing in order to be able to contain the pandemic. So its the the response is what Ive been seeing in a lot of the state plans. And I think thats incredibly important because that transparency is whats going to breed accountability, which is whats going to breed confidence in our public health system and our economy as well.

DANKOSKY: For the last couple months, we went from thinking that maybe if we elbow bumped instead of shook hands, that would be OK. And then we started to distance ourselves a little bit more. And then there was a lockdown and then more and more things shut down. And weve been only really essentially increasing the amount that we have distanced from each other and protected ourselves and each other. And now with this phased reopening, there seems to be a sense in society that weve turned a corner and that the behavior is going to start heading in the other direction. And I guess from a public health standpoint, Im wondering if it worries you that even if the testing gets up to a certain point, even if our metrics look good, we are sending a signal that things are back to normal and so that people who have heretofore been acting a lot differently than they ever have are going to go back to acting exactly the way they were in January of this year.

TSAI: There is no normal. The new normal is this brave new world that were in now. It is no longer ever going to look like December 2019. Now, this is a once in a generation, once in a lifetime pandemic. And what the public needs to realize is that, you know, it was actually easy to do one really big thing. Well, the big thing was staying at home. Now we have do lots of small things well. You know, masking, physical distancing, making sure we get tested, you know, making sure we answer the phone if we get contact traced, you know, following the guidelines at work. You know, were at school. You know, all these things are really hard to do well and to have this complete cultural change than just doing the one big thing while staying at home. So I think the next few months are actually going to be very challenging and difficult.

But, you know, Im confident that, you know, residents of Connecticut, as in every other state, you know, get it. People understand, you know, their friends, family members whose lives have been lost in this. People understand the tragedy and the depths of this pandemic. So my hope is that people will continue to translate, you know, that level of concern into their everyday practice, because its not just, you know, going back to the way things were. You know, this is a new world that were sort of reopening to and thats a world that requires vigilance. But the important thing to understand is that everybody has a role to play, that in this new world means that everybody has a sense of control because you are responsible for breaking your link in the chain. And when you do that, youre not just helping some hypothetical person across the country. Youre helping your friends, your family, your loved ones for potentially being infected.

So I think theres a credible role for individual responsibility on that. I think thats the message we have to focus on going forward.

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Reopening Connecticut: Is It Too Soon To Reopen Our State? - The CT Mirror

Human Behavior

Horace’s How-To | by Gregory Hays – The New York Review of Books

Horaces Ars Poetica: Family, Friendship, and the Art of Living

by Jennifer Ferriss-Hill

Princeton University Press, 301 pp., $45.00

Among the previously uncollected pieces in Donald Barthelmes Sixty Stories is a six-pager called How I Write My Songs. The I, like many of Barthelmes narrators, is initially anonymous; we learn his nameit turns out to be Bill B. Whiteonly in the second-to-last sentence. The songs he writes, or that Barthelme has written for him, are country- and blues-inflected numbers, vacuous yet weirdly plausible:

Goin to get to-geth-erGoin to get to-geth-erIf the good Lords willin and the creek dont rise.

White is evidently a master of his craft: When Last Night was first recorded, the engineer said Thats a keeper on the first take and it was subsequently covered by sixteen artists including Walls. Such reminiscences alternate with helpful hints, all of them comically banal: Various artists have their own unique ways of doing a song. It is also possible to give a song a funny or humorous twist. In the final paragraph the lecture modulates into a pep talk (The main thing is to persevere and to believe in yourself) before ending on an oddly defiant note: I will continue to write my songs, for the nation as a whole and for the world.

The story reads like a parody of something we half-recognize but cannot quite put our finger on. Is it the emptiness of popular song lyrics? The vapid idiom of Parade magazine? Or is it, we might wonder uneasily, Barthelmes own readers who are being gently mocked? For the story purports to answer that question asked innumerable times of every famous artistWhere do you get your ideas?with its implicit corollary: How can I do it?

Whatever else Barthelmes story may be, it is a sly rewriting of one of the classics of American literary criticism, Edgar Allan Poes The Philosophy of Composition. In that essay Poe, in his best professorial voice, explains how he went about writing his most successful poem, The Raven. He began, he tells us, by settling on the ideal length (a hundred lines or so), the effect to be aimed at (beauty), the tone (sadness), the central device (a refrain), the nature of the refrain (a single word), and the kind of word needed (one with prominent o and r sounds, these being sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis). In such a search, he adds complacently, it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word Nevermore. In fact, it was the very first which presented itself.

But how should the refrain be introduced? At this point things take a perilous turn: Hereimmediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself. A brief vision flashes before our eyes: a nervous schoolchild standing before a prize-day audience to recite Edgar Allan Poes The Parrot. But no, disaster is averted: the parrot is weighed and considered, but ultimately discarded in favor of a raven (equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone). Like his great detective, C. Auguste Dupin, Poe reconstructs logically for us the process that led ineluctably to the poem we know and love. This most emotional and romantic of poems was, it turns out, the product of cold calculation at every turn.

Or was it? Is this how anyone writes a poem? And if Poe could really reason himself into writing this smash hit, how is it that he never wrote another poem as successful? The more one reads the essay, the more one suspects that Poes account is a typical Poe hoax, swallowed whole by gullible readers as his circumstantial account of crossing the Atlantic in a balloon was by the New York Sun. Surely it was the poem that came first. The Philosophy of Composition is an elaborate piece of reverse engineering, designed to conceal from the public (and perhaps, at some level, from the author himself) the unsettling truth: that Poe had no idea how he had managed to write The Raven, and no idea how to write another one.

The ultimate ancestor of all such literary howdunits is Horaces Ars Poetica. In 476 lines of dactylic hexameter, one of the great Roman poets tells us, if not how he wrote his songs, at any rate how we should go about writing ours. The advice is not all his own; an ancient commentator notes that the poet drew some of it from a third-century BC Greek critic called Neoptolemus of Parium. But it is Horaces version that has lasted. The Ars lays down literary laws observed by writers for centuries: modern editions divide Shakespeares plays into five acts, for instance, because thats how many Horace said a play should have. It canonized critical ideas, like the concept of artistic unity, that we now take as self-evident. Phrases from it have become conventional tags, some typically encountered in translation (purple patch from purpureuspannus), but others familiar in the original Latin: ut pictura poesis; norma loquendi; in medias res; laudator temporis acti; sub iudice; ab ovo.

Yet the work is full of mysteries, starting with its very title. The rhetorician Quintilian, several generations later than Horace, evidently knew it as the Ars Poetica, but we cant be sure that Horace called it that. The poem, now normally printed after the second book of Horaces Epistles, is addressed to three members of the Piso family: a father and two sons. Some critics therefore prefer to call it the Epistle to the Pisos. But which Pisos? Piso pre might be Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesars father-in-law and the target of one of Ciceros nastier invectives. Or it might be his son, consul in 15 BC. Both had literary interests, although the younger Piso is not known to have had a brother, nor can we be sure that he had two sons himself. Another candidate, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, did have two sonsbut no known interest in literature. And why is the poem addressed to any Piso? Why not to Horaces longtime friend and patron Gaius Maecenas, or to someone mentioned elsewhere in his oeuvre?

We also cant be certain where the poem falls in Horaces career. Many readers have wanted to make it a late work, or even Horaces lasta poetic testament comparable to Yeatss Under Ben Bulben or Stevenss The Planet on the Table. A late date would fit the younger Lucius and his putative sons, and some metrical features might also support it. But there is no external evidence; if we opt for Gnaeus Piso or the senior Lucius as addressee, then the poem could be considerably earlier, a product of Horaces prime.

That Horace should write a poem about writing poetry is not in itself surprising. But here too there are puzzles. The rest of his oeuvre falls into two parts. On the one hand, we have the Odes and Epodes, short lyric poems of great metrical virtuosity. On the other, the Satires and Epistles, loose, talky poems written, like the Ars, in dactylic hexameter. Yet the Ars itself is primarily about how to write drama, a form that Horace never practiced and which employs a meter (iambic trimeter) that he barely used. It includes side notes on epic, another non-Horatian genre.

Equally mysterious is the poems organization. Generations of critics have struggled to discernand some have tried by main force to restorea coherent structure in a text in which everything seems like a digression. Horace goes off on tangents, extends similes beyond their relevance, circles back to topics already covered. He includes a potted history of theater, not obviously useful to the aspiring dramatist, and answers elementary questions (like what an iamb is) that no likely reader could have had. As an actual manual, indeed, the Ars seems notably unhelpful. Much of its advice is negative (Dont put scenes that belong offstage onstage), or uselessly vague (Choose a subject appropriate to your strengths), or comes down on both sides of a question (Either take a traditional plot or invent a plausible one of your own). A much later Ars Poetica, the brief poem by Archibald MacLeish, catches this quality well when it instructs us that a poem should be palpable and mute/as a globed fruit. Its a lovely image, but perhaps not all that helpful to the aspiring author.

Some of the difficulty may stem from the works genre. The Ars is a didactic poem, a form that goes back to the beginnings of ancient literature and remained vibrant into late antiquity. The oldest surviving example is Hesiods Works and Days, a kind of versified farmers almanac. The early thinkers Parmenides and Empedocles wrote philosophical treatises in verse, and the Roman Lucretius used Latin hexameters to expound the philosophy of Epicurus. The Hellenistic Greek Nicander wrote poems about venomous snakes and cures for poisons. Aratus of Soli composed a manual of astronomy in verse, which was translated several times into Latin (once by Cicero). Later Greek poets wrote about hunting dogs and ichthyology. Ovid, predictably, wrote an Art of Love, a send-up of the whole genre, and at least started a didactic poem on cosmetology.

The didactic poet aimed both to instruct and delightat least in theory. As Horace says in the Ars, he hits the bulls eye who has mingled utility with pleasure. Of the extant poets it is perhaps Lucretius (and, ironically, Ovid) who did this most successfully. But usually utility was the junior partner. A doctor faced with a case of poisoning would have needed a scholarly commentary to understand Nicanders Alexipharmaca, and one does not envy the aspiring farmer who tried to use the Works and Days as a real guide. This is even more true of Vergils Georgics, by common consent the greatest example of the form. It offers some practical information on agriculture, but in small dosesenough to give it that textbook feel, and to make digressions a welcome respite. But then, the Georgics is only ostensibly a poem about farming. Its real subject matter is what it means to be Roman, and, at a deeper level, what it means to live as a human being in a world governed by nonhuman forces.

Human, as it happens, is the opening word of the Ars Poetica. This is unlikely to be an accident. Ancient writers gave thought to beginnings; after Platos death, his heirs supposedly found a tablet with various versions of the opening of the Republic: I went down yesterday to the Piraeus. The story is probably apocryphal, yet it reveals something about the Republic, a work in which we descend from intangible verities to their pale shadows in earthly societies. The Aeneids first two wordsarms and manlay out its subject: warfare and a man at war, as Robert Fitzgerald expanded them. Simultaneously, they establish the poems relationship to the Iliad (a poem of arms) and the Odyssey (whose own first word is man).

It might seem odd, then, that the opening word of the Ars does not point more clearly to poetrysongs, say, or lyre. But it does not seem strange to Jennifer Ferriss-Hill, a classics professor at the University of Miami; her new book argues that the Ars Poetica is not really about poetry at all. It may masquerade as a guide for would-be writers, but its real concerns are larger: human behavior, family relationships, friendship, and laughter. Rather than a new departure, the poem is in her view a continuation ofor, if it is a late work, a return tothe poetry of the Satires. In those early poems, Horace explores human weaknesses and self-deception, not least his own, as they play out in social interactions. Here he does the same.

We do not typically think of literature as a branch of ethics. When W. Som- erset Maugham said that to write simply is as difficult as to be good, he was not equating the two. But earlier readers saw closer connections: medieval commentators categorized Ovids Art of Love as a work of moral philosophy. A letter of Senecas famously makes the case, summed up in Buffons aphorism, that le style cest lhomme mme. An important predecessor of Horace in this respect is the Greek Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, parts of whose treatises have been restored to us in recent years as scholars unroll and decipher charred papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum. A poet himself (he wrote epigrams), Philodemus was known personally to Vergil and perhaps to Horace too; it may not be coincidental that his principal patron was the older Lucius Calpurnius Piso. Horace mentions him by name in the Satires, and for Ferriss-Hill his fingerprints can be discerned all over the Ars Poetica, from the passing interest evinced in anger, death, and property management to the abiding importance of friendship, teaching, and criticism.

It is striking that the things Horace values in poetry are virtues he endorses in life as well: the importance of decorum, for example, and of knowing your place. A concept that crops up at various points in the poem is pudor, a sense of modesty or propriety, a quality as relevant to writing (for Horace) as to manners. Indeed, many terms that apply to writing can also apply to ones character or actions. A poem, we are told, should be uncomplicated (simplex), but simplicity or the absence of duplicitousness is also a virtue in people.

Another example of this is rectum, a word that can mean anything between correct, by the book and morally right. Horace tells us that most of us poetsare led astray by the illusion of correctness (specie recti). Our writerly errors, that is, spring from a mistaken belief that we are following the rules, doing what we should. But is that not also true of many of our nonwriterly errors? Again, we are told that the basis and wellspring of writing properly (recte) is good taste. But good taste here is sapere, which can also mean wisdom, the quality that allows us not only to write well but to act rightly. The two words will be juxtaposed again when Horace compliments the older Piso son, who is being brought up by his father to behave properly (ad rectum) but also has good sense himself (sapis). Ferriss-Hill is attentive to such repetitions. As she notes:

Horace creates meaning by repeating specific terms, clustering them close together or layering them at intervalsoften in such a way that on the second or third recurrence of a term we feel we have met it before but cannot say so for certain or recall where exactly that might have been.

If poetry in the Ars is really a stalking-horse for ethics, that might help explain something about the structure of the poem. A little over halfway through, the Ars shifts its focus noticeably, from poetry and poetic creation to the poet himself. Horace lures us in by promising to help us with our writing, but his real goal is our character and our relations with those around us. The focus on human affairs might also explain why the Ars privileges drama among other poetic forms: drama is built on human interaction and thus provides for Horace the ideal vehicle for connecting writing with living.

Living, and also dying. For the Ars is notably concerned with transience and mortality. Its reflections on the coining of new words and their obsolescence plainly echo Homers famous comparison of the generations of men to leaves. The principle that characters in drama should be portrayed in a way appropriate to their age prompts a character sketch of an irascible old man, far longer than the context seems to require, leading to a poignant meditation: The arriving years bring many enjoyments with them/and many in their departure they take away. The presence as addressees of two generations of Pisos allows Horace to touch on related topics: youth and age, birth and death, parents and children.

The Pisos are important to Ferriss-Hills reading in other respects as well. Not their exact identity, on which she is agnostic. Indeed, she suggests that it does not really matter much which Pisos are meant. Rather the aristocratic Piso functions in the poem primarily as a symbolic name, like Rockefeller. What matters is the relationship the poem itself constructs between the author and his addressees. Yet that relationship is curiously elusive. Horace shifts unpredictably from the second person plural to a singular you (one of the Pisos? the reader?) to an all-embracing we. The Pisos undergo a similar slippage. Nominally the addressees of the poem, they gradually prove to be in some ways its subject: a wealthy amateur and his two failsons in search of a writing coachor perhaps just a cheerleader. Didactic addressees are sometimes portrayed as slow or troublesome students in need of a stern lecture. Hesiod characterizes his brother, Perses, as an idiot; Lucretius sometimes seems to show impatience with his addressee, Memmius. Ferriss-Hill reads the relationship between Horace and the Pisos as similarly fraught, his attitude to them as implicitly critical.

For she sees the Ars Poetica as also an essay on criticism (the title of Popes imitation catches something important about Horaces original)and not just literary criticism, either. Indeed, the famous vignette that opens the poem is a scene of assessment and critique. Suppose, says Horace, that a painter depicted a human head on a horses neck with feathers and a tail: If you were admitted to view it, friends, would you be able to restrain your laughter? On the surface the scene is there to illustrate an aesthetic principle: a work should possess organic unity (Be a Rothko, not a Rauschenberg!). But for Ferriss-Hill it is the final line that we should be looking at. Horace here depicts criticism as something that takes place in a social context, among friends. The image will return toward the end of the poem as the poet questions how to tell a true friend from an insincere yes-man. (Philodemus, author of the treatises On Flattery and On Frank Criticism, may be lurking here too.) The real friend, it turns out, is the one who is willing to laugh at youand not only at your bad poetrywith a view to your improvement. And this, we might suppose, is what Horace does for the Pisos. In fact, it is what the poem itself does for them.

Didactic poets sometimes close on a darker note. Lucretiuss poem, On the Nature of Things, meant to teach us inner tranquility, concludes with a description of a devastating plague. The first book of Vergils Georgics closes with the image of a chariotthe Roman staterunning out of control, its driver powerless to stop it. The late Greek writer Oppians five-book poem on fishing ends with a sponge-diver mauled to death by creatures of the deep, his colleagues grieving over his remains. And the Ars? It ends with a comic yet disturbing portrait of a mad poet, lashing out at others like a savage bear or bleeding them dry like a parasite. (Leech is the final word of the poem, as human is the first.) For the poems message is in the end a negative one: Horace does not concretely help his addresseesbecome better poets or become poets at all because he cannot; in fact, no one can. Poets need talent as well as training, and for those who want to write without the former, Horaces implicit advice is, Dont.

Ferriss-Hill has written a dense book, frustrating to the reader in the same way, and for much the same reasons, as the Ars itself. Her method is close reading in its most austere form: she worries at Horaces phrasing, teases out implications, toys with alternative interpretations, follows him down blind alleys. The book loosely follows the trajectory of the poem, but it assumes knowledge of the whole: the discussion can jump forward unexpectedly, and passages we had thought we were done with will crop up again later, now viewed from a new angle or in light of new information. Readers without Latin are likely to find it hard going. Ferriss-Hill does provide an English translation facing the Latin text at the beginning of the book, though one that egregiously disobeys the poems own injunction not to translate word for word. When Horace discusses the coining of new words, for instance, we get:

If it is perhaps necessaryto show with recent symbols the hidden ones of things,it will fall to you to craft ones not heard by the girdedCethegi and a license taken up prudently will be granted.

This painful woodenness is plainly deliberate; the rendering is meant solely as an aid in construing the facing Latin. Yet no reader new to Horace will emerge from the book with much sense of why he is a great poet.

What the book does do well is to document an intelligent readers journey through this most elusive of poems. In the process it offers us a new way of thinking about it, one in which its apparent center moves to the margins and its apparent defects become strengths. It offers a richer and more interesting Ars than most of us are used to, but one recognizably by the Horace we know from other works. Of this Horace it could be said, as Robert B. Parker wrote of Ross Macdonald, It was not just that [he] taught us how to write; he did something more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.

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Horace's How-To | by Gregory Hays - The New York Review of Books

Human Behavior

Hiking, Social Distancing and Human Behavior in the Summer of COVID-19 – Seven Days

The Jerusalem Trail in Starksboro ascends from a dirt road, climbing for 2.4 miles through hardwood forest and an expanse of maples, connected by a cat's cradle of sap lines, until it intersects with the Long Trail two miles north of the summit of Mount Ellen. A wooden post announcing the trailhead bears a laminated sign that reads, "TRAIL CLOSED."

Cecilia Elwert, 67, is one of the Green Mountain Club's roughly 1,000 volunteers. She has been maintaining the Jerusalem Trail digging drainage channels, clearing fallen branches, lopping unruly boughs for more than a decade. Her work has gotten off to an unusually late start; typically, she might begin in mid-April, when the snow has mostly melted at lower elevations. But this spring, the GMC asked its volunteers to keep off the trails until Gov. Phil Scott amended the stay-at-home order to allow outdoor crews to return to work.

On a chilly Thursday morning in mid-May, Elwert had resolved to investigate the blowdown situation on the ridge. She parked her Subaru Outback along the shoulder of the dirt road with the "GMC Volunteer" sign clearly visible in her windshield, hoping to disabuse would-be hikers of the notion that the trail was open to the public. Elwert carried a long-handled rake and a 20-pound backpack filled with various sharp implements for pruning and sawing; I followed at a six-foot distance, schlepping her garden hoe.

As we made our way up the trail, Elwert paused every 10 or 15 yards to clear debris from water bars, man-made earthen gutters that carry runoff away from the trail. "I get to come out here and play Army Corps of Engineers," she told me, her blue eyes crinkling in a smile concealed beneath her face mask. "It's fucking great."

In one of the canals, she found a forked, six-inch-long twig that had collected a novel-thick sheath of dead leaves between its prongs. "Can you believe it? Water made this!" she marveled.

Occasionally, Elwert came upon a stone in the middle of the path and nudged it with her foot to see if it was loose. "I could move that," she mused at one point, jiggling a bowling-ball-size rock beneath her KEEN boot, "or I could teach someone a goddamn lesson about paying attention."

Elwert struggles with what she perceives as the oblivious consumption of nature by she's not shy about naming culprits the Instagram generation, the people who use the outdoors as a backdrop to evince their coolness. Lately, a pandemic-induced surge in hikers has compounded her frustration, and she fears that their uncontrolled presence will ruin the summer for everyone.

"People are so ravenous to be out on the trails right now," Elwert said. "And when they post photos of themselves standing triumphantly on a summit, other people see it and think it looks authoritative like, 'Hey, the mountain is open!'"

Her concerns aren't unfounded: Across the country, the restless quarantined masses have been swarming green spaces, prompting officials and conservation groups to impose restrictions in the interest of human and environmental health.

In New Hampshire, the Appalachian Mountain Club closed all its huts in the White Mountains for the summer, citing concerns about excessive crowding. Earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service in Vermont closed backcountry campsites throughout the Green Mountain National Forest, a 400,000-acre swath of land, to preempt a run on the wilderness and reduce the risk of transmission in structures too remote to be consistently sanitized.

The Long Trail closed in late March in accordance with public health recommendations, even though the trail was already nominally "closed" for mud season. But Keegan Tierney, director of field programs for the Green Mountain Club, acknowledges that enforcing trail closures is a logistical impossibility.

Over the past few weekends, he said, some hiking spots along the Long Trail particularly the Burrows Trail in Huntington, one of the shorter routes to the summit of Camel's Hump have experienced the same number of visitors as peak foliage season. (A solar message board on the road to the Burrows Trail parking lot, flashing the words "Trail Closed," has not had the intended effect.)

Since the beginning of May, GMC volunteers like Elwert have been preparing the 272-mile Long Trail, as well as the 166 miles of side trails under the GMC's stewardship, for their official reopening on Memorial Day weekend. However, Tierney said that Long Trail facilities, including shelters and composting toilets, would likely remain closed for several more weeks, largely because of the challenge of ensuring proper sanitization in the backcountry.

Overnight tenting will still be permitted, provided that campers respect ecologically sensitive areas and social-distancing etiquette, and the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is advising hikers to wear cloth masks whenever other people are present a small price to pay for public health. "We're worried about staff and volunteer health, particularly for people who work near popular summits and backcountry ponds," said Tierney. "We don't want hikers to cluster at those sites."

In a normal spring, the GMC hires a seasonal crew of about 40 staffers. Most of them are in their twenties, noted Tierney, with the nomadish rsums of people who organize their lives around being outside. When they're not clearing trails and patrolling ridgelines, the crew shares a bunkhouse in Waterbury Center, where sickness could easily spread: "If one person got sick, everyone would get sick," he said.

This year, Tierney plans to employ just 10 staffers. They'll target the most popular trails and summits including Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump, both of which receive more than 50,000 visitors each summer and Stratton Pond in southern Vermont, the largest body of water on the Long Trail. But he emphasized that the trail crew doesn't have the capacity to act as social-distancing police.

"We're going to focus on educating people about being responsible and considerate of other hikers, and maybe ask them to avoid taking a two-hour lunch break on the summit so that other people can enjoy it," Tierney said. People should treat this summer as an opportunity to expand their hiking repertoires, he added: "If the Burrows Trail parking lot is full, you can drive a short distance and be at the Beane Trail, or go to the Jerusalem Trail in Starksboro."

Pandemic-related hiring freezes have also stalled the reopening of the state's campgrounds, which were closed to overnight visitors by the same order that shuttered hotels, inns and Airbnbs. (The parks have remained open for day use.) When Scott cleared hospitality businesses to resume operations, starting on May 22, state parks began accepting campground reservations for June 15 or later.

But that date, as it turned out, was too optimistic. Campgrounds require a significant amount of preparation in a normal season, the labor of some 400 temporary employees to accommodate visitors. Until last week, Michael Snyder, commissioner of the state Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, couldn't hire any seasonal workers, and the opening date had to be postponed, forcing the state to issue some $320,000 in reservation refund vouchers. Snyder and his staff are now working to get campgrounds up and running by June 26.

"There's an enormous amount of infrastructure that has to get opened up every year," said Snyder. "And in the time of a pandemic, we have to completely change the way we do things."

His department recently applied for a $2 million loan from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to subsidize the cost of hand sanitizer and protective gear for employees. This season, Snyder said, cabins and cottages will remain closed, but lean-tos, RV hookups and tent sites will be available, sans picnic tables. Campgrounds won't offer any bike or boat rentals, and snack bars and gift shops will stay dark. As a precaution, the state is advising people to wear masks around the park, except when swimming, eating and hanging out at their campsites.

"We're trying to figure out how we can limit campground density, how we can sanitize cabins and sites between families, and how we do all of that while making sure that visitors from out of state have self-quarantined for 14 days," Snyder said. "There's no scenario in which we don't operate at a loss."

That prediction presents a rather depressing irony: If Vermont's summer looks anything like this spring, parks and trails will be teeming with people, some of whom might have contributed to the state's dwindling coffers in exchange for the privilege of recreating on public lands.

Snyder estimates that, each year, Vermont's state campgrounds take in $7 million in direct park sales reservation fees, firewood and travel-size tubes of toothpaste from the commissary. Overnight campers, half of whom come from outside Vermont, spend roughly $90 million at local businesses in the surrounding areas. But given the pandemic's impact on restaurants and retail not to mention the unemployment rate, currently at its highest since the Great Depression it's unclear how much disposable income people will have to spend this summer, or where they'll actually be able to spend it. In other words, the economic power of the state's outdoor recreation infrastructure might not be so multiplicative this year.

Elwert, the GMC volunteer, thinks that all these uncertain roads ultimately lead us back to nature. "Hiking is free," she said. "And people don't think of nature as a place where you can transmit disease."

In a pandemic world, the woods feel like the last pure place, a respite from the sensory sameness of life under quarantine. But in Vermont, the general public's experience of nature as a pristine refuge is, in fact, the product of massive amounts of human labor labor that often goes unseen, even in normal times.

Now, out of an abundance of caution, Elwert has been avoiding the trails on the weekends, when she would be more likely to encounter large groups of people. Sometimes, she said, she leaves little traces of her handiwork behind an overturned rock, a cleanly sawed-off tree limb as a signal to passersby that someone else cleared the way for them.

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Hiking, Social Distancing and Human Behavior in the Summer of COVID-19 - Seven Days

Human Behavior

New mathematical model to study the behavior of the human heart – News-Medical.Net

Having now reached its third year, Project "iHEART" of Politecnico di Milano, winner of an ERC Advanced Grant of euro 2,350,000, has set itself the ambitious goal of creating a complete mathematical model to study the behavior of the human heart and of its pathologies, a sort of "virtual microscope."

This integrates all cardiac function processes, namely electrical impulse propagation, cellular activation, contraction and myocardial relaxation during the systolic and diastolic phase, blood fluid dynamics in both ventricles and atria, and opening-closure dynamics of the four cardiac valves.

Research carried out to date has already allowed to initiate operations of certain subproblems, which are attracting considerable interest in the medical community. Hence, from feasibility studies, focus has shifted to early field tests, in which mathematicians and doctors cooperate to optimise these new tools in the framework of delicate surgical procedures intended to solve certain very important cardiac conditions.

Some examples are given below.

Models developed by project iHeart have led to the production of quantitative indications on factors that contribute to trigger and maintain arrhythmias, such as ventricular tachycardia. Traditional surgical methods consist in performing transcatheter ablations, which allow, via radio frequencies, to deactivate the abnormal areas causing the arrhythmia.

In partnership with the Arrhythmology Unit and with the Cardiac Electrophysiology Unit of the IRCCS [scientific institute for hospitalisation and care] San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, researchers verified how cardiac mathematics can underpin and consolidate electrophysiological study in the localisation of intervention areas on the heart wall.

Increasingly rapid algorithms, which will allow to perform this type of analysis in real time, thus significantly speeding up the decisional process related to surgery, have also reached an advanced phase of development.

A model is currently being developed in partnership with the Sacco Hospital, Milan, to provide precise indications for the heart surgeon on how to perform myectomy (removal) of a portion of the interventricular septum using a very low cost, non-invasive analysis.

This treatment is the one that is most widely used to treat hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, which consists in a septal thickening which makes hard to eject blood from the left ventricle into the ascending aorta.

The mathematical simulation is inserted into the preoperative phase and was considered by medical doctors as an effective guiding tool for this surgical operation.

An additional computational tool has been developed in partnership with the Cardiology and Radiology Departments of S. Maria del Carmine Hospital, Rovereto (TN), to improve cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT), which consists in implanting a device capable of restoring correct synchronisation of the heart contraction impaired either by conduction disorders or by the presence of scars.

To this end, cardiologists have to map the left ventricle to detect its electrical activity by inserting a catheter-electrode into the blood vessels.

The currently validated mathematical instrument will allow to considerably reduce the mapping duration and, thus, the patient exposure to invasive treatment, besides guiding catheter placement in the most curative position for the patient presenting heart failure.

As shown by these examples, iHEART has opened new horizons between mathematics and translational medicine, and has established coordinated and systematic action between Universities and hospitals, creating a new professional figure at the interface between mathematics, bioengineering, medicine and data science.

As a result of all the new clinical partnerships, and the integrated activity of our young researchers (PhD students and post-doctorate graduates) with that of hospital-based researchers, we shall pave the way for a new discipline, namely Computational Medicine."

Alfio Quarteroni, Professor and Project Manager, Politecnico di Milano

Alfio Quarteroni Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy and Professor Emeritus, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland acknowledged as one of the most multi-faceted mathematicians in the world, famous for applying mathematics to the most diverse fields: aerospace industry, environmental pollution, impact of earthquakes on civilian buildings, urban planning, medicine, and even competitive sports.

Particularly, he participated in producing the Solar Impulse aircraft, and directed the team of researchers who developed the mathematical model for Alinghi, the Swiss yacht twice winner of the prestigious America's Cup, the Sailing Cup, for two consecutive editions of the race, in 2003 and 2007.

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New mathematical model to study the behavior of the human heart - News-Medical.Net

Human Behavior

Responsible human behaviour led to an increase in animal sightings: WWF – Morung Express

BY SIDDHI JAIN

New Delhi, May 19 (IANSlife) Venice, the beautiful Italian city where nature meets culture, was recently in news, when calm returned to its overtourism-affected waters with aquatic life shining through clear canals.

Closer home, monkeys, buffalos, cows and dogs have all come to be increasingly sighted on Indian streets, as human life remained under a tight lockdown from March-end. In Udaipur, one could spot fish swimming in the lake after decades.

Images from across the world has presented a very interesting picture - with people indoors, wild animals can be seen roaming the streets, birds sing on balconies, the dolphins have made a comeback in the rivers and the skies are blue and the air is clean, says WWF India on a campaign film 'Our Planet, Our Home', that visually illustrates this human-animal contrast.

The short film, that puts together visuals from across the world, is a clever satire on the idea of freedom, and how reduced human activity has led to the animal kingdom spreading its wings to territory it is kept out of.

"Any kind of development and industrial activity will have some impact on nature. What we have seen in the last few weeks, is that when human activity is decreased, and when we start behaving responsibly, we see the difference. Most of us are locked in our homes, not just because someone advised, but because we are also afraid of an infection. If this responsible behavior was demonstrated against climate change, against use of plastics, today we'd live in a different space," Dipankar Ghose, Director of the Wildlife and Habitats, WWF India told IANSlife.

Adding, Himanshu Pandey, Marketing Communication Director at WWF India says that he cannot imagine life, without wildlife. "When we talk about wildlife, it's about their habitats, their ecosystem. Without nature, no human activity - whether economic or otherwise - is possible. This contrast of us being locked up in our houses and wildlife moving about freely in urban spaces, this is a reminder of the cruciality of conservation," he said over phone.

According to WWF's Living Planet Report, we have lost 60 percent of wildlife populations in the last 44 years, globally. So when we step out of our houses after the lockdown, let's ensure we protect this biodiversity and build a sustainable world where nature and people coexist. This is a film that aims to inspire individuals, businesses and governments to strengthen positive action to help build a better world for our future generations, he added.

The campaign film, which puts forth a question of coexistence as compared to human-animal competition - "what remains to be seen is whether this will continue once life returns to normal" - has been developed by McCann Bangalore and Native Films.

"In advertising, we believe that all good ideas come from simple observations or insights. This insight came from the site of animals, who were on the streets while humans were caged inside their houses. This was like a role reversal of sorts. This irony was unmistakable in a sense. It was a big lesson for humanity because we truly understood the value of freedom, and not just ours, but that of other species too. It was a timely reminder that this place we call home, is theirs too. This is the film's message: Coexistence is the key to our survival," Sambit Mohanty, Creative Head (South), McCann told IANSlife.

Coexistence, as per Ghose, is more of a perception that something which is a practically happening. "Animals are reclaiming, I would say, urban biodiversity has always been there, we started observing them, hearing different sounds and appreciating them. If want to hear these koyel sounds, we have to change certain things in our behavior," he concludes.

(Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians.in)

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Responsible human behaviour led to an increase in animal sightings: WWF - Morung Express

Human Behavior

Dolphins bring gifts from sea in apparent response to lack of human interaction during pandemic isolation: Vi – PennLive

Its been weeks since visitors at Barnacles Cafe and Dolphin Feeding lined up to feed the animals, due to coronavirus restrictions. Now it seems the dolphins are trying to communicate something.

According to a report by 7NEWS.com.au, a pod of humpback dolphins at Tin Can Bay in Queensland, Australia has been bringing ashore gifts from the sea - "apparently because theyre missing interaction with humans.

Gifts presented by the dolphins have been sea sponges, barnacle-encrusted bottles and pieces of coral, the report said.

The humpback dolphins usually mingle with visitors at Barnacles Cafe & Dolphin Feeding at Tin Can Bay, located north of the Sunshine Coast.

A post on the cafes Facebook page said, The pod has been bringing us regular gifts, showing us how much theyre missing the public interaction and attention. They are definitely missing you all.

The 7NEWS report said a Barnacles volunteer told the ABC that although the pod has displayed the behavior in the past, it had increased since the venue has been closed.

What explanation can be given for the dolphins actions?

Barry McGovern, a UQ PhD student, and an expert in dolphin behavior, told 7NEWS it was possible, but unlikely the dolphins were giving gifts because they missed humans.

Nothing surprises me with dolphins and their behavior anymore, McGovern said. They do everything - they use tools, they have culture, they have something similar to names in signature whistles."

In all likelihood, they probably dont miss humans per se. They probably miss a free meal and the routine, McGovern told 7NEWS.

The report said McGovern also speculated it may be a play-like behavior.

They often play with bits of weed and coral and all sorts of things and just leave it on their rostrum (nose), he said.

Theyre used to getting fed now, so theyre used to humans coming in. When its not happening, maybe its just out of boredom, McGovern told 7NEWS.

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Dolphins bring gifts from sea in apparent response to lack of human interaction during pandemic isolation: Vi - PennLive

Human Behavior

Enabling highways and bridges to prevent their own damage – ScienceBlog.com

Roads always seem to need repairs. Luna Lu is giving concrete the ability to talk and even heal itself.

Herlab at Purdue Universityis developing technology that would allow concrete-paved bridges and highways to reveal more accurately when they need repairs and to come equipped with materials that respond to potential damage.

We look at how we can address problems in infrastructure using materials and sensors that harness artificial intelligence and big data, said Lu, an associate professor in PurduesLyles School of Civil Engineering. The idea is to make infrastructure adaptive, sustainable and resilient.

More than one-third of U.S. bridges need repair work, according to a2020 reportby the American Road and Transportation Builders Association.

Getting a better idea of when new concrete is ready to take on heavy traffic, for example, could prevent cracks caused by reopening roads too soon. Preventing cracks means fewer repair projects to replace the concrete, which would cut down on traffic typically held up by those projects.

In 2019, Lu collaborated with the Indiana Department of Transportation to embed into three Indiana highwayssensorsthat her lab developed. The highways include Interstate 465 near Indianapolis, I-70 near Plainfield and I-74 near Batesville.

Data from the sensors are helping to recommend the best time to open up traffic after a patching or new pavement project and continuously track concrete development. Lus team is working with the Federal Highway Administration to implement these concrete sensors in other states.

At the same time as making concrete talk, Lu and her lab are developing a way that concrete could repair itself.

Self-healing concretewould be particularly useful during harsh winters. For roads in the U.S. Midwest, winter makes concrete freeze and thaw in cycles. When temperatures drop below 32 degrees F, water molecules on a roads surface freeze and expand, cracking the concrete. These cracks lead to fissures over the course of several winters.

Lus lab is investigating different types of highly porous, sandlike materials called internal curing agents to mix into concrete. When concrete cracks, the curing agents absorb water and feed it into chemical reactions. These reactions produce solid substances that seal off the crack, healing the concrete. The healing process also prevents water from seeping into the concrete and corroding steel or rebar reinforcement.

By using these self-healing materials, we can make infrastructure adaptive to temperature change, said Lu, who is anAmerican Concrete Pavement AssociationScholar in Concrete Pavement and Materials Science.

Lu and other researchers also are thinking ahead on how intelligent infrastructure could both influence and adapt to human behavior.

Traffic is always directional. Conventional thinking is to add extra lanes, but artificial intelligence and big data could identify an underused lane and shift traffic into that direction. Were developing technology that would allow for better control of traffic without adding extra lanes, Lu said.

Intelligent infrastructure is a young field. Through partnerships with other universities, Lu is working to bring together the researchers and resources needed to enable this type of infrastructure on a large scale.

Lu directs theCenter for Intelligent Infrastructure, which unites the expertise of Purdue researchers in several different disciplines including materials, sensing and artificial intelligence. She also is helping establish the first Midwest intelligent infrastructure consortium by partnering with several state transportation departments.

Together, we can pull even more data to identify the best ways to make infrastructure more safe and resilient. We can develop algorithms that map out vulnerabilities in infrastructure going forward, Lu said.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a top public research institution developing practical solutions to todays toughest challenges. Ranked the No. 6 Most Innovative University in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery. Committed to hands-on and online, real-world learning, Purdue offers a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap atpurdue.edu.

Writer:Kayla Wiles,wiles5@purdue.edu. Working remotely, but will provide immediate response.

Source:Luna Lu,luna@purdue.edu

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Enabling highways and bridges to prevent their own damage - ScienceBlog.com