Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Warm Summer Weather Will Worsen Coronavirus, Singapore and Australia Suggest – Interesting Engineering

When the deadly coronavirus started to sweep around the world this year, a common skeptical retort to emergency worry rested in the comparison of the COVID-19 outbreak to the ordinary flu which is also dangerous to some populations, but also not a real threat to the general public.

Some experts, however, still maintain hope the virus will behave like influenza by fading in the Spring. But cases in countries presently in warm climates suggest otherwise, reports CNN.

RELATED: LATEST UPDATES ON WUHAN'S DEADLY CORONAVIRUS

We know now the comparison of coronavirus to the common flu is, quite literally, dead wrong. Based on current data, the lowest estimated fatality rate for coronavirus is thought to be 1% to 2%, compared to the 0.1% of fatalities for winter influenza. Coronavirus also seems roughly just as infectious as the flu, and perhaps more so, especially since there is no specific treatment, seasonal vaccine, let alone a cure.

But the virus may taper off with the coming of Spring.

"This is a respiratory virus and they always give us trouble during cold weather, for obvious reasons," said Nelson Michael, a top U.S. military medical researcher, of the deadly virus last week, reports CNN. "We're all inside, the windows are closed, etcetera, so we typically call that the influenza or the flu season."

Influenza is at home in cold and dry conditions, which is why most of the northern hemisphere experiences flu season during winter. Differences in human behavior during winter may also affect the spread of viruses. According to Michael, the coronavirus could behave like the flu, giving the public "less trouble as the weather warms up," however, he warned, the virus might return when the temperature drops again.

The general hope is for new radical government and public action to decrease the currently soaring total of new cases, reducing the spread during more temperate weather and giving health systems a chance to play catch-up with the first wave of coronavirus patients, while also buying precious time to develop a crucial vaccine.

"This is why it's really important to understand that a lot of what we're doing now is getting ourselves ready for what we're calling the second wave of this," warned Michael.

However, the coronavirus might not behave like influenza. Instead, it could spread unrestrained despite warm weather, through all of 2020. More than 100 cases were confirmed in Singapore as of writing, where it's almost always hot and muggy. Likewise, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina are all in the middle of summer and have so far reported dozens of cases.

Whatever the future holds for the coronavirus crisis, there are known unknowns that could still prove to turn in our favor and help us collectively curb the rapid growth of the coronavirus outbreak. But, since this pandemic is new, the unknowns we don't know could outweigh the unknowns we do.

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Warm Summer Weather Will Worsen Coronavirus, Singapore and Australia Suggest - Interesting Engineering

Human Behavior

Tracking the pandemic means finding the ‘canaries in the coalmine’ – Yale News

Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale, has devoted years to investigating how social networks affect our health and behavior. His work offers insight into how to track and address epidemics like the current coronavirus crisis.

Christakis a physician and social scientist who directs Yales Human Nature Lab and co-directs the Yale Institute for Network Science also studies human nature, a subject he examines in his latest bestselling book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (Little, Brown Spark).

Christakis spoke with YaleNews about how, amid a pandemic, human nature can hurt us and how it could help. Interview edited and condensed.

Why is it useful to consider the effect of social networks on epidemics?

The networks we study in the Human Nature Lab are face-to-face networks theyre composed of the interactions we have with our family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Of course, people also have interactions with strangers on the street and in shops. You might shake hands with a delivery person, that sort of thing. These are the kinds of connections one can understand through social network analysis. And these networks form the highways along which viruses spread, from person to person to person.

Understanding the structure of these networks, and the virus behavior as it moves through them, gives us insight into how to interrupt the spread and defend ourselves. It also gives us opportunities to predict how the virus will spread.

How are social networks structured?

Imagine strings of Christmas tree lights. Every light represents a person and the wires are the connections between people within the network. Imagine the strings are knotted at the center with tendrils emanating out to the periphery. Thats sort of what a network looks like.

The people at the center of the network are the most likely to catch whatever is spreading, whether its the latest gossip or a dangerous virus. Theyll be the first to hear the gossip or catch the virus. The people on the edges of the network, those with few friends and contacts, are the least likely to hear the gossip or get sick. They might never catch the virus, but if they do, itll happen late in the course of the epidemic.

How can we use this insight to predict the spread of a virus?

We have developed what we call the network sensor method, which seeks to identify the individuals at the networks center, those with lot of friends and contacts, and passively monitor them. They could function as canaries in the coalmine because the virus will strike them before it reaches the wider population. This could provide an early warning system for epidemics and be useful in proactive planning for outbreaks.

Our research has proven that this method can work, during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. My lab is now in the midst of updating these tools for the current environment, working with some Yale undergraduate and graduate students. Were developing a mobile app that uses the network sensor method to help people track flu cases in their cities.

What should individuals be doing to slow the virus spread?

We need to avoid social mixing both individually and collectively. Besides washing their hands, individuals need to keep a certain physical distance from others (about four feet) and avoid touching each other. People should work from home if they can, and avoid non-essential meetings and travel. These are prudent steps anyone can take on their own. This kind of social distancing can help flatten the curve, meaning it will lead to a more gradual rate of infection and thus prevent our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed.

How does human nature affect our ability to pull off social distancing?

Its in our nature to be social. It is very unnatural for us to avoid assembling in groups, to avoid seeing our friends, to stop shaking hands, or hugging each other. Doing all this doesnt feel normal to human beings. Yet, our natural social behavior is what the pathogen is exploiting.

There is a misconception among some people that the kind and brave thing to do is to shake peoples hands and behave as if things were normal. They want to demonstrate that theyre not afraid of the virus by interacting with others. In reality, the kind and altruistic thing to do is precisely the opposite of this. When you avoid unnecessary social contact right now, you are preventing the virus from using your body as a transmission vector. The virus is spreading and the more paths we can stop, the better off everyone will be.

Do people have innate tendencies that can help us fight the virus?

Absolutely. They include our natural tendency to cooperate, which the current situation certainly requires. Even as were encouraged to distance ourselves from one another, we need to band together to fight this pandemic. We also have an innate capacity for teaching. We are very unusual as animals in that we dont just learn from each other, we teach each other things. That affirmative ability to share knowledge is exactly the kind of thing we need right now.

What advice would you give to policymakers as they address the crisis?

Policymakers face challenging decisions about closing schools or cancelling large events. They also have to decide how to best allocate resources to support the public health. These arent easy decisions because they involve a mix of demands that implicate public health, the economy, and our freedom to move about and gather as we please. Policymakers should be considering the thresholds for closing schools and banning large gatherings.

The most critical need as the epidemic crashes upon us will be the availability of hospital beds and ventilators for our ICUs. We need to do our best to plan for this.

Policymakers dont need to reinvent the wheel. There is accumulated knowledge on how to respond to pandemics. We dont know for sure how severe this pandemic will be, but it looks like it could be very significant, so we should act as though it will be very significant.

Are you addressing the coronavirus crisis in any new research?

I have a project with a Chinese team in which were using big-data methods to develop what is, to my mind, an innovative idea that will allow us to forecast the pandemic in real time, in a useful way. That paper is under review right now.

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Tracking the pandemic means finding the 'canaries in the coalmine' - Yale News

Human Behavior

NIH researchers discover tooth-enamel protein in eyes with dry AMD – National Institutes of Health

News Release

Friday, March 13, 2020

Finding may lead to novel therapeutic target for blinding disease.

A protein that normally deposits mineralized calcium in tooth enamel may also be responsible for calcium deposits in the back of the eye in people with dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to a study from researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI). This protein, amelotin, may turn out to be a therapeutic target for the blinding disease. The findings were published in the journal Translational Research. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Using a simple cell culture model of retinal pigment epithelial cells, we were able to show that amelotin gets turned on by a certain kind of stress and causes formation of a particular kind of calcium deposit also seen in bones and teeth. When we looked in human donor eyes with dry AMD, we saw the same thing, said Graeme Wistow, Ph.D., chief of the NEI Section on Molecular Structure and Functional Genomics, and senior author of the study.

There are two forms of AMD wet and dry. While there are treatments that can slow the progression of wet AMD, there are currently no treatments for dry AMD, also called geographic atrophy. In dry AMD, deposits of cholesterol, lipids, proteins, and minerals accumulate at the back of the eye. Some of these deposits are called soft drusen and have a specific composition, different from deposits found in wet AMD. Drusen form under the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a layer of cells that transports nutrients from the blood vessels below to support the light-sensing photoreceptors of the retina above them. As the drusen develop, the RPE and eventually the photoreceptors die, leading to blindness. The photoreceptors cannot grow back, so the blindness is permanent.

Recently, researchers found a calcium-containing mineral compound called hydroxyapatite (HAP) in dry AMD deposits. HAP is a key component of tooth enamel and bone. Small balls of HAP filled with cholesterol, called spherules, were found only in drusen from people with dry AMD, and not in those with wet AMD or without AMD.

In this study, Wistows team discovered that if they starved RPE cells grown in transwells, a type of cell culture system, for nine days, the cells began to deposit HAP. They determined that the protein amelotin, encoded by the gene AMTN, is strongly upregulated after extended starvation and is responsible for the mineralization of HAP in their cell culture model. Blocking this pathway in their RPE cell line also blocked the production of these drusen-like deposits.

To verify that their cell culture model was accurately representing dry AMD, the researchers examined human cadaver eyes with dry AMD, wet AMD, or without AMD. They found HAP and amelotin only in the eyes with dry AMD, and not in the other eyes. While amelotin was found sometimes in areas of dry AMD without drusen, it was primarily present in soft drusen areas with large deposits of HAP.

Prior to this study, nobody really knew how the hydroxyapatite was accumulating in the dry AMD drusen, said Dinusha Rajapakse, Ph.D., the first author of the study. Finding this tooth-specific protein in the eye, this protein thats linked to hydroxyapatite deposition that was really unexpected.

Why RPE cells in dry AMD begin depositing these HAP spherules is unclear, but Wistow thinks it may be a protective mechanism gone awry. Its possible, he says, that these protein, lipid and mineral deposits may help damaged RPE cells block blood vessels from growing into the retina, a problem that is one of the key features of wet AMD. But when the mineral deposits get too extensive, they may also block nutrient flow to the RPE and photoreceptors, leading to retinal cell death.

Mechanistically, amelotin looks like a key player for the formation of these very specific hydroxyapatite spherules. Thats what it does in the teeth, and here it is in the back of the eye. Conceptually, you could see coming up with drugs that specifically block the function of amelotin in eye, and this might delay the progression of the disease. But we wont know until we try it, said Wistow.

Good animal models for testing dry AMD therapeutics are urgently needed. Based on the findings from this study, Wistow and his team are creating a new mouse model for the disease. Additionally, Wistow believes his cell culture model, which mimics features of dry AMD, could potentially be useful for high throughput drug screening to find molecules that slow or prevent the development of soft drusen.

RThis press release describes a basic research finding. Basic research increases our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Science is an unpredictable and incremental process each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible without the knowledge of fundamental basic research.

NEI leads the federal governments research on the visual system and eye diseases. NEI supports basic and clinical science programs to develop sight-saving treatments and address special needs of people with vision loss. For more information, visit https://www.nei.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

Rajapakse D, Peterson K, Mishra S, Fan J, Lerner J, Campos M, and Wistow G. Amelotin is expressed in retinal pigment epithelium and localizes to hydroxyapatite deposits in dry age-related macular degeneration. Translational Research. 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.trsl.2020.02.007

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NIH researchers discover tooth-enamel protein in eyes with dry AMD - National Institutes of Health

Human Behavior

Amidst COVID-19, new Shapiro+Raj survey shows news media and government have a big impact on our collective vigilance – PRNewswire

CHICAGO, March 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --News, advice and trends around Covid-19 are shifting by the day. The media and government, not always the most trusted institutions, are trying to keep us informed and encouraging us to take responsible precautions. While their shortcomings have limited effects on daily life, a new survey shows the negative impact this trust gap can breed when challenges like these arise.

Shapiro+Raj surveyed 577 people, practically all of whom were aware of coronavirus. About 58% said they are concerned about its potential impact on them and their family, while 24% showed little to no concern. Roughly 51% said they have changed their lifestyle because of Covid-19, most in basic ways like being more hygienic (70% washing hands longer, using more hand sanitizer) and socially distancing themselves (55% staying home, avoiding crowded places).

In terms of the media's handling of Covid-19, about 39% think they are doing a very good job (media-positives) while 37% think they are doing a fair/poor job (media-negatives). Among people who term as media-positive, 63% have changed their lifestyle. But that figure drops to 38% among the media-negative. We also see far higher hygiene and social distancing rates in the media-positive group, who are also 400% more likely to feel an intense perceived risk compared to media-negatives.

The survey also found differences based on government performance ratings (federal, state and local). About 34% feel they're doing a good job while 30% say the opposite. Among government-positives, 57% made a lifestyle change compared to 51% of the government-negative folks. Also, 21% of government positive people feel at definite risk of exposure versus 12% of government negative folks. The good news is that both groups have similar incidence of taking both hygienic and social precautions.

"This like many other national challenges requires us to come together as a community," said Zain Raj, Chairman and CEO of Shapiro+Raj. "All institutions need to build trust, which is about deeds and not words, so we feel empowered to act as one and solve big problems as soon as possible."

About Shapiro+Raj

Shapiro+Raj is a research and strategy firm that uses social and behavioral sciences to solve the toughest business and marketing challenges. Our next-gen methods dig deep to unlock market-ready insights. Then our brand planners turn these into strategic marketplace actions that create brand evolution and innovation; customer experiences and loyalty; and new platforms for growth.

We have added future-first strategy and expansive analytic capabilities, powered by the latest technology stack and inspired by human behavior. This has created an integrated research, insights, and strategy consultancy with a mission to help our clients find new pathways to grow in this constantly changing landscape. Today we are recognized as one of the Top-25 Most Innovative Research Companies in the world.For more information, visit http://www.shapiroraj.com.

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Amidst COVID-19, new Shapiro+Raj survey shows news media and government have a big impact on our collective vigilance - PRNewswire

Human Behavior

How Does COVID-19 Compare with the Flu? – Tufts Now

The new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in many ways is exactly the type of situation that has motivated Jonathan Runstadler, a professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Global Health at Cummings School, and his research team in their efforts to keep the world ahead of the next influenza pandemic.

Runstadler leads a team of Tufts researchers who sample animals in the wild and return to the lab to analyze the samples for influenza viruses. Their mission is to better understand the ecology and lifecycle of the fluas well as what strains are circulating in natureto help predict and prevent deadly, wholly new strains that arise every decade or so.

Given the many purported similarities between the novel coronavirus and influenza, Tufts Now asked Runstadler about how what we know about regular and pandemic flu might apply to this quickly evolving situation.

>>> For the latest Tufts University guidance on COVID-19, please visit coronavirus.tufts.edu.

Tufts Now: How do you expect this COVID-19 epidemic to unfold in the United States and across the globe?

Jonathan Runstadler: This situation is still very unpredictable. We dont know enough about the virus itself or how it spreads. The confirmed cases are slowly climbing in the U.S., and they seem to be pretty widely distributed. But they still represent a fairly low number on the scale of this epidemic.

So the majority of the data we have on this virus and disease is still that from China, and its difficult to know or to understand how reliable that data is and how representative it is of what may occur in other parts of the world, such as in the U.S. Its too early to predict the course of this outbreak with any certainty, butgiven that it has already been detected in more than 100 locations internationally, including in the United States, where several states have declared a state of emergency and the virus does appear to be spreadingI wouldnt be surprised if were dealing with this virus for quite a while.

Do you feel the spread of the new coronavirus has taken the U.S. by surprise?

The U.S. seems to be behind in terms of available tests, protective equipment and other readiness measures. Ironically, I think that this delayed response may have been driven by what has previously happened with avian influenza, where there were local outbreaks or minor epidemics of different flu strains in parts of Asia that didnt ultimately blow up into a pandemic.

I wonder if that set a pattern that many people expected this new coronavirus to follow after its initial emergence in China. And now were seeing that its not following that recent experience at all and that were in a different situation altogether. This is a different virus that were much less familiar withand that may be all the difference.

Theres typically a somewhat regular flu season. Do we know at this point if COVID-19 likely will have some sort of seasonal aspect to itperhaps a spike before it burns out?

We dont know. COVID-19 is a very similar disease to influenza. This new coronavirus seems to cause similar symptoms and to progress in a similar way to flu. And, as a respiratory disease, COVID-19 likely is transmitted in a similar fashion to the flu, via direct contact with respiratory droplets.

So you might hypothesize that it would behave similarly to the influenza virus in other ways as well, and for flu, we know that it typically has a seasonality. There are things that can knock that timing out of whack, and there are some seasons that are exceptions to the norm, depending on how transmissible and how severe the circulating strains of seasonal flu are. In general, though, the seasonality of the flu is driven by the propensity of influenza viruses to like low humidity and moderate temperatures.

The coronavirus is from an entirely different family of viruses, so it very well could behave differently. And, to my knowledge, we have not done experiments to verify why flu viruses seem to do better in those conditions, so we cant know how differentand similarthese two viral families would be in that regard. Much of the seasonality to flu is also driven by human behavior in winter versus summer, but I think the idea that there will be a seasonal aspect to COVID-19 is more of a hope than an expectation at this point.

How sick does this new coronavirus tend to make people?

From the information that we have at this point, in some ways, COVID-19 has behaved similar to the flu, though perhaps its a bit more contagious in the right conditions. The caveat is that this assumption is based mostly on information from cases seen in the Chinese population. But from that data, it appears that for most people, COVID-19 is a mild diseaseprobably a little flu-like, but maybe even milder and more like a cold.

There are other coronaviruses that regularly infect people and cause a common cold. And for the most part, people never bother to seek medical attention for these more common coronaviruses because they do not make people as ill as the flu.

Thats why people in the scientific community are a little wary about interpreting the data coming out of China. Its likely that there many more cases of COVID-19 that have not been accounted for. Many people probably have been ill with a much milder disease for which no clinical help was sought and no diagnostics doneand recovered without ever being diagnosed with COVID-19.

However, we can expect immunocompromised people to be more susceptible to contracting the disease and to have more severe disease or worse clinical signs than the average person. The disease seems to much more severely affect both the elderly and people who have other diseases or general health conditions that make them immunocompromised.

These groups of people may typically represent only a relatively small percentage of the total population. But if COVID-19 becomes widespread in the U.S. and other parts of the world, that will still add up to many people getting exposed to the virus and a large number of people developing severe disease. And the same holds true for an expectation of a large number of people dying from infection.

Whats interesting is thataccording to the Chinese data and most of the other recorded infections around the worldthe new coronavirus doesnt appear to affect younger kids in the same way the flu does. The flu tends to have a severity profile that peaks in very young children as well as in the elderly, but we are not seeing this with coronavirus in kids under age five, which is great. So hopefully this disease may not be such a worry for younger kids, although they could still be spreaders of the virus.

If other coronaviruses are common and usually mild in humans, what makes this one so different or dangerous? Are there any parallels to flu?

Coronaviruses indeed infect lots of animals, including humans. The coronaviruses routinely circulating in any species tend to be well adapted to that host and dont usually spill over into new species. For example, human coronaviruses that cause the common cold to the best of our knowledge dont infect the dogs and cats that people live with. And vice versathe coronaviruses that infect dogs and cats typically dont infect their owners.

But this new coronavirus causing COVID-19 in people hasnt been in humans before. It appears to have recently spilled over from wildlife. We dont fully understand where it came from yet and what host it was in prior to spilling into humans, but our lack of prior exposure to this virus means none of us have had the chance to develop an immune response to protect against COVID-19. Thats the kind of situation we worry about as well with pandemic flus, which typically occur when one of the strains circulating in birds or in other animals makes the jump into people.

Once a virus spills over into a new species, it has to do several things in order to successfully replicate itself and be transmitted by the host that its infecting. The ability to keep reproducing and spreading is gained through small changes in the viruss genomeand that may take a long or a relatively short time. Viruses like coronavirus and flu, which are both RNA viruses, tend to be able to mutateor changemore rapidly than some other viruses and certainly some other pathogens.

Do you have a sense of how close we are to a vaccine? Is it easier to create a vaccine for this new coronavirus than for the flu, which seems to be a hit or miss endeavor every year?

There is some scientific debate that there could be multiple lineages of the new coronavirus, some of which cause perhaps more severe disease and some which are milder, but there isnt convincing evidence of that yet. Further epidemiology and analysis of the virus will come out the more things progress. For now, it appears the epidemic was started in a single spillover event, which emphasizes the importance of improving our understanding of the ecology of infectious pathogens in animal hosts and the human-animal interactions that result in spillover.

In terms of creating a vaccine for COVID-19, the immediate goal would be to create a vaccine against what appears to be for the most part a single strain or type of coronavirus. That target might be a little easier than creating a vaccination for the flu, a virus that is endemic and has different strains and different subtypes that can dominate and appear in different yearsmaking it very difficult to predict which will be the emerging flu viruses and costly to develop vaccines, which is why researchers are trying to develop one universal flu vaccine against all of them.

However, the process to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 is still potentially a difficult one. In general, its easy to create a vaccine, but harder to create an effective one, and maybe even harder still to create a vaccine that you can get to enough people in the right amount of time.

A vaccine is probably months away at a minimum, if some of the newest technologies and approaches prove successful. If we are using standard technology for developing a vaccine, we probably shouldnt expect a coronavirus vaccine until next year. And those timelines are just for the development of the vaccine itself. Its the rest of the process that really takes timemaking sure a vaccine is safe and effective, doing the human clinical trials, and then being able to produce it.

What are the best things people can do to keep both themselves personally safe from COVID-19 and to protect the most vulnerable people around us from this new coronavirus?

This coronavirus, to the best of our knowledge right now, does behave like most respiratory diseases. And so, the same advice that applies to illnesses such as influenza or the common cold applies here.

Pay attention to personal hygiene and follow all that advice youve been hearing about how frequently and thoroughly to wash your hands. Dont touch your face with your hands. Try to keep an advisable social distanceat least six feet, if possiblebetween you and anyone with symptoms of a respiratory illness. Avoid situations where you may likely encounter groups of people who could be sick.

If you or someone in your family is diagnosed with COVID-19, take all the precautions recommended by the CDC and your health provider to keep yourselves and others safe, including avoiding close contact with other people and pets. And if youre ill with flu-like or respiratory symptoms, contact your doctor for guidance if necessary and stay home until youre well so you dont pass this illness on to a senior or anyone else.

Genevieve Rajewski can be reached at genevieve.rajewski@tufts.edu.

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How Does COVID-19 Compare with the Flu? - Tufts Now

Human Behavior

‘Devs’: Every Question (and Theory) We Have for Alex Garland’s Sci-Fi Series – Collider.com

Spoilers ahead through Episode 3

Devs, the new sci-fi series from up-and-coming paragon on the genre on the big and small screen Alex Garland, is poised to be the next big water-cooler drama in an era of post-water-cooler television. Episodes of the heady show are available to stream now thanks to the newly launched FX on Hulu streaming channel, but weve already got a ton of questions that we hope Devs will answer. Stay tuned to this post because well be updating it with answers, more questions, and a validity check on our theories along the way.

Devs follows the story of a young software engineer, Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), who investigates the secretive development division of her employer which she believes is behind the murder of her boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman). Devs also stars Nick Offerman, Jin Ha, Zach Grenier, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny and Alison Pill. The new limited series, produced by FX Productions, will attempt to do all this in just eight episodes. But first

*Spoilers ahead*

Image via Miya Mizuno/FX

Our entry point into the world of Devs is Sergei, a gifted programmer who finds himself in way over his head as he gains access to the highly secure and secretive Devs program within the company he works for, Amaya. Sergeis exemplary work had to do with mapping the behavior of a simple nematode into a computer program, to the point that the A.I. was able to predict the creatures behavior to nearly 100% without any direct connections between the two to give feedback. The impressive feat was only hampered by the limitation of a 30-second predictive window, but that was good enough for Forest to invite Sergei into Devs.

However, that wasnt good enough for security chief, Kenton (Grenier). His xenophobic paranoia proved to be correct since Sergei turned out to be a Russian spy tasked with recording whatever was going on in the Devs program. And what exactly that was, well, we still dont know, but Sergeis watch and phone captured enough footage of the code streaming across the Devs monitors to not only entice the Russians but to sign Sergeis death warrant. Its not long at all before Sergei is suffocated to death on the companys campus by Kenton, with Forest and Katie (Pill) complicit in the murder. But why?

Image via Raymond Liu/FX

While waiting for Sergei to come home, Lily can be seen reading a copy of D.F. Jones 1966 sci-fi novel Colossus. And that should be a big, big clue for just whats going on beneath the surface here. The novel tells of the titular super-computer that is given oversight and control of the American nuclear missile armament. Colossus soon links up with a similar super-computer in the Soviet Union, but its using increasingly devious manipulations of human behavior to do so. In the end, Colossus and the super-computers rein supreme even as the humans attempt to subvert them in a multi-year plan, but it seems certain that the computers will out-last them. In the end, the computers final message suggests the futility of humankinds efforts from here on out: In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love. Is the point of the Devs program actually a cold war arms race of sorts between humans and super-advanced A.I.? The Devs facility itself resembles a super-sized version of a computer processing unit, so the visuals and the narrative clues certainly point towards this possibility.

My colleague Adam Chitwood has his own theory on this one; it is as follows:

Another possible theory is that the Devs program has discovered that life on Earth is actually a simulation. When Sergei first reads the code, he is tremendously upset. Like, try-to-rip-your-eyes-out-of-your-skull-and-vomit upset. After Forest has Sergei killed, theres a scene in which he and Katie are sitting outside Devs having a conversation. At first it seems like theyre just upset about having to kill Sergei, but the conversation is laced with something deeper. Even more troubling.

What are we supposed to do? Unravel a lifetime of moral experience? Unlearn what has always seemed true? Katie says to Forest. These things, they run deep. Its like whatever we know, the things we feel are still locked inside us. She goes on to draw a parallel to an atheist whose child gets hurt and starts praying, which we learn later relates to Forest having lost his daughter. But could she be talking about how theyre finding it difficult to unlearn this lifetime of moral experience now that they know nothing matters because theyre in a simulation? Did they really kill Sergei if Sergei didnt actually exist to begin with?

Image via Raymond Liu/FX

This thread continues when Forest is talking to Kenton about how he doesnt care about money or the environment anymore. Again, if he knows theyre in a simulation, that would explain why these things dont matter to him right now.

As this theory relates to the end of Episode 2, the backward projection project, are they trying to basically pull up a screengrab from an earlier experience from the simulation? We see them conjure a fuzzy image of Jesus of Nazareth being crucified. What if this isnt a painting or a time travel device? What if its literally like the highlights section on a video game? Adam Chitwood

But theres another possibility. At one point, before Sergeis demise, Forest asks him why he thinks his predictive program falls apart after 30 seconds. Sergei supposes that perhaps the calculations are just too great, that the numbers literally go insane after a certain point; Forest is on board with this theory. When Sergei suggests a separate hypothesis, that this might be a multi-verse problem in which the predicted behavior and the observed behavior actually line up perfectly, just not in this universe, Forest is more skeptical. However, this might be a misdirection. Garland talked about just what scientific concepts interested him in developing the Devs story:

In this case, it was about determinism, but it was specifically about quantum physics. It was about some elements and some implications of quantum physics, to do with interpretations of some strange things, like particles having super positions and one of those interpretations relating to many worlds. To me, those ideas are not dry scientific ideas. Theyre rather poetic, philosophical ideas. As soon as you can get that, then suddenly, the story feels naturally a part of it.

So the whole thing might just be about quantum states after all. Forest comes clean to a senator in the third episode, saying theyre using their quantum system to develop a prediction algorithm of sorts, predicting the weather and things like that. Clearly theres more going on than meets the eye here. And yet, the question remains

Image via FX

The problem with the people who run tech companies they become fanatics and end up thinking theyre messiahs. ~ Lily

Forest is the CEO of Amaya and the lead for the Devs program, but he often feels as if hes resigned to being led along his own invisible tram line rather than fighting against it. For all his quirky charm, he seems very human, vulnerably so. Hes got a visual style that shares much more in common with Pete, the homeless man who lives on Lily and Sergeis apartment steps, than any of his employees or colleagues. He drives an outdated, ecologically insulting car; he lives in a rather pedestrian home that belies just how much hes worth; and he holds onto his traumatic past despite his protests to the contrary. He seems constantly unsure of himself, of what to do next, of what to say, for fear of giving away too much or revealing that, perhaps, he doesnt really know whats going on himself.

Theres a scene between Forest and Katie, after the murder of Sergei, in which he tells her that shes not just smarter than he is, shes wiser, too. (It may be worth mentioning that Katie is often reflected in one of the gold columns in this scene while Forest is seen in the real world.) Later, security chief Kenton checks in on Forest and updates him on the cover-up of Sergeis murder. Kenton shows concern for his own health as he smokes a cigarette and says he should quit, while also showing concern for Forest and his mental state. Forest, however, seems cynically apathetic about both of these things, saying that they simply arent worthy of concern anymore. That lends some more credence to Adams theory. These interactions also paint Forest as an emotional, somewhat irrational, and irreducible man, while Katie and Kenton are, by comparison, rather cold, distant, and calculating, as if theyre trying to understand Forests motivations or control them. For what purpose? Forests own well-being or the success of the Devs program, whatever that may be?

In the backward projections, we get glimpses of Forests daughter Amaya blowing bubbles, the crucifixion of Jesus, the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake, a primitive person leaving a handprint on a cave wall, a shot of the pyramids under construction, a medieval army on the march, a sexual dalliance between Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, and even Lilys latest act of rebellion against those who are watching her. But what does it all mean? And whats the purpose of it all?

Image via Raymond Liu/FX

Heres where we get a little more Westworld with the whole thing.

The somewhat bloody and quietly brutal fight between Kenton and his Russian counterpart Anton ends with the latters spine-crunching death. The scene itself also puts a wrinkle in our theory that perhaps Kenton is an artificial human in synthetic flesh, so to speak, since he appeared to be wounded and vulnerable in a very human sense. Perhaps, owing to Adams theory, Kenton is actually a security program who is responsible for the integrity of the system and will occasionally have to clash with either rogue programs or invading threats like Anton. Put more simply, perhaps Kenton is the systems anti-virus software.

Katie feels like something different entirely. Or at least she did, up until the third episode. If shes a program, shes a rather human one. Dont break the rules? Coming from her? asks Stewart, incredulously, after Katie catches them watching a very expensive version of nostalgia porn. But Katie is a no-nonsense, by-the-book exec, willing to accept and allow the murder of a spy if it means preserving the integrity of their project. The question remains, however: Is Katie a solid right-hand woman to Forest, just as Kenton is his right-hand man? Or is she actually in charge of more than were being led to believe?

Image via Raymond Liu/FX

Garlands feature debut Ex Machina explored a number of interesting sci-fi themes: Artificial intelligence and whether or not its detectably different from human intelligence at the highest levels, the possibilities and dangers of said A.I., and what a civilization of humans living alongside android A.I. might just look like. Its a showcase of Garlands interests and curiosity at its core; Devs is the evolution of that exploration.

The end of Ex Machina was open-ended: The advanced A.I. unit known as Ava manages to disguise herself convincingly as a human and merges into an unknown city. In our timeline, that was back in 2014, but neither Ex Machina nor Devs has a hard date for its storyline. Could Ava be not just the scaffolding that Amaya was based on but the literal entity behind the scenes of the whole thing?

Were thrown into Devs in the midst of Amayas cutting-edge research without much backstory on just how they got to be where they are. Weve already posited that Katie, Kenton, and the like might be more than meets the eye. Its entirely possible that Garlands Ava will be the Eve to this next generation of synthetic humans. It just remains to be seen whether or not Garland and FX want to go that route and tie the two titles into a shared universe. After three episodes, were not holding our breath for this one, but we are hoping for a brain-twisting reveal that the people we see and the world they live in is much more than it appears so far.

Well be updating this article as the season rolls on, but feel free to share your theories and questions below!

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'Devs': Every Question (and Theory) We Have for Alex Garland's Sci-Fi Series - Collider.com

Human Behavior

NYT: In times of global shock people help each other, while the elite panic – Boing Boing

This lengthy New York Times piece by Jon Mooallem is subtitled, "The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 surprised everyone by showing that natural disasters can bring out more kindness than selfishness." The piece is worth reading just for the stunning photos of the devastation that occurred in Anchorage on the evening of March 27, 1964 when the state was struck by "the most powerful earthquake in American history, and the second most powerful ever measured in the world."

Mooallem's piece packs a powerful punch, too. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Alaskans were sharing and cooperative, and it turns out that unselfish behavior during a disaster is the rule rather than the exception:

In the 56 years since the Great Alaska Earthquake, an entire field of sociology, disaster studies, blossomed around the Disaster Research Center, with sociologists parachuting into scores of other communities after natural disasters around the world, and its stunning to look back and recognize how much of the resilience, levelheadedness, kindness and cooperation those sociologists saw in Anchorage turned out to be characteristic of disasters everywhere.

The one thing that interferes with the tendency towards altruism in a disaster is something scholars call "elite panic."

Many of our ugliest assumptions about human behavior have been refuted by their observations of how actual humans behave though we seem tragically slow to shed those old myths. (In some cases, disaster studies teaches us, those in power are so overcome with worry about mass panic and looting that they overreact and clamp down on a public that isnt actually panicked at all. Disaster scholars refer to this phenomenon as elite panic.)

When Yale research psyhcologist Irving Janis coined the term "groupthink" in 1972, he identified eight symptoms of the pathology: the "illusion of invulnerability"; a "belief in the inherent morality of the group"; "collective rationalization"; "out-group stereotypes"; "self-censorship"; the "illusion of unanimity"; "direct pressure on dissenters" and "self-appointed mindguards."

President Richard Nixon had the honor of welcoming Earthlings to the moon, but speechwriter William Safire had prepared an alternative for use in the event of a moon-landing disaster. A team at MIT deepfaked the dead president into this alternative timeline. In Event of Moon Disaster will premiere at IDFA DocLab on November 22, 2019 []

How much untreated sewage spilled from Tijuana to California as the result of a human body clogging a screen? The International Boundary Water Commission was quite specific: 14,497,873 gallons. The body was discovered by a cleanup crew at a pump station. An investigation is underway to identify the body and find out how it ended []

Creative writing can be a nerve-racking endeavor. Its just you, your thoughts and that very, very blank page or word doc. You might have an idea for the story you want to tell, but what form does that story take? A novel? A short story? An article? Maybe even a blog post? Writing your story []

If you shoot videos for your business or just for fun, its practically inevitable that youll eventually start wanting to up the production values. For most vlog style videos, its not like you need Star Wars-level special effects or anything. But even trying to change out your background digitally with a simple green-screen effect requires []

Ever since their debut in 2016, the audio world has been chasing Apples AirPods. Launched with all the cache of a major Apple product along with its obvious integration with iPhones and iPads and these earbuds were essentially the tech equivalent of a rich kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But the []

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NYT: In times of global shock people help each other, while the elite panic - Boing Boing

Human Behavior

The invisible enemy: An unseen virus and sexual abuse The Manila Times – The Manila Times

Think about it. It is amazing that one tiny, invisible smart virus, a product of evolutionary processes, still mutating and changing its profile, can avoid detection and spread itself far and wide with impunity. It is able to bring the human species to its knees, overpower nations, halt economies, crash the stock market, stop the flow of products and goods, paralyze communities, empty malls, groundairlines, close schools and cancel all sport gatherings.

It has the power to confine millions of people to their homes, rooms and apartments, and in cruise ships. Thousands are in hospitals, and many have died. Its power can motivate governments around the globe to take action and stop overnight the once free movements of people. Its almost more powerful than a nuclear war, and we cant even see it. We have to believe that this unseen enemy of the human race is out there, lurking and waiting to infect. It has killed a reported 5,000 people already worldwide (as of Saturday). Is its danger overestimated? I will get to that later.

No new complicated laws are needed to control the right and freedom of citizens to travel and enjoy complete freedom of movement. But this sacred freedom is now curtailed by instant decree. The coronavirus disease 2019, or Covid-19, is king. The innocent suspects of being carriers, without medical proof, are locked up and quarantined, and, in some countries, are fined large sums of money if they do not obey. So, now banning convicted pedophiles from traveling to poor countries should be easy to do. This is aproposed law I suggested and that was filed by Maureen OSullivan TD before the Irish Parliament.

Twoyears has passed, and yet it is still to be acted upon. But now,even without alaw, anyone with the new coronaviruscan be stopped from traveling.

It is something people everywhere are very sensitive to and acutely aware of this darkand dangerous threat to health that can cause death to the most vulnerable. It is Covid-19.

There is nothing much we can do other than be quarantined, avoid groups of people, wash our hands frequently and stand back 6 feet from people that might be infected to curtail its spread. It can change human behavior, drastically alter social contact, and bring about new attitudes and understanding among people. We face a common threat. Many are worried. It has struck and is striking fear and anxiety around the world; many are afraid of the single, tiny unseen enemy, more powerful than all the armies in the world.

Yet, there is a greater threat and actual evil that has infected the whole world and especially male sexual abusers. Until very recently, people did not care much about child and women abuse until the #MeToo and anti-child abuse movement began. Yet, it merely touches the tip of a great iceberg of abuse. It is the abuse of, violence against and oppression of women and children that were highlighted in this recent International Womens Day (March 8). This violence causes more lifelong pain, suffering, sickness and death than the Covid-19 will ever do. The new coronavirus will soon die out, but the lifelong suffering and pain endured by the silent, downtrodden victims of sexual violence will not.

In Mexico, a reported 10 women a day are killed, but hundreds more unreported murdersgo unnoticed. It has been reported by the Center for Womens Resources recently that at least one woman or child is abused every 10 minutes in the Philippines. The figures of reported cases are 6,315 women and 6,054 children. Only 6 percent of victims, however, report the abuse to the authorities. Rape and abuse are like the pandemic worldwide.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur and expert Maud de Boer-Buquicchio briefed the Special UN Human Rights Council last March 2, declaring that child sexual abuse and prostitution of children is in every part of the world. The sexual abuse of children over the internet are perhaps the very worst form of child sexual abuse, she said. Children continue to be sold and trafficked within their own countries and across borders for the purposes of sexual exploitation. She also said, [C]hildren are coerced into participation in pornographic performances online. Young girls and boys are lured with false promises and coerced into sex trade, domestic servitude, forced labor, begging and forced marriage. She reported that 28 percent of the child victims were younger than 10 years old.

Such violence and the government and public apathy, and lack of concern of society in general, are more destructive and hurtful to human lives than a dose of the coronavirus from which most people would recover with treatment and go on to lead normal lives. Victims of abuse do not.

There is no known medication yet that will cure a person of Covid-19, but everything is being tried and a vaccine is in the works. There is talk about the seasonal influenza killing more than the estimated 5,000 deaths from Covid-19 worldwide. In the United States alone, as many as 18,000 people have died from seasonal influenza since September last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the International Federations of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, as many as 290,000 to 650,000 die from seasonal influenza yearly worldwide. This is about .14 percent in contrast to Covid-19, which has a potentially higher fatality rate of approximately 0.2 percent.

We have to take everything in perspective and do all that can be done to contain the spread of Covid-19 and save lives. But so much more has to be done as the world slowly awakens to the horrific prevalence and frequency of the sexual abuse of women and children. The same energy and government action to control Covid-19 should also be spent to stop and contain child and woman abuse.

http://www.preda.org

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The invisible enemy: An unseen virus and sexual abuse The Manila Times - The Manila Times

Human Behavior

3 Ways The CDC Problem Was Evident Long Before 2020 – Science 2.0

In 2015 I began to wonder when CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had lost its way. Since I am neither Republican or Democrat, I had to wonder if the Obama administration was the problem, the same way Democrats insist Trump is the problem now.

But where does that end? Did the CDC that mishandled H1N1 in 2009 do so because of Obama? Was SARS 2003 botched because of Bush? Of course not, the issue is bureaucracy creep due to career government employees inside CDC itself, not temporary political appointees like Dr. Robert Redfield, who has become a political pincushion for Democrats despite three decades of HIV research. Meanwhile, Republicans are claiming liberal media is exaggerating coronavirus to hurt Trump this fall.

Credit: CDC

Which side is right? They both are, they just highlight which aspects of the problem helps advance their agenda.

Here are three ways the CDC showed us they were ill-equipped to handle pandemics long before coronavirus:

Food Safety

In January of 2017, CDC warned America that lettuce contained E. coli. Yes, that is important, the problem was that the lettuce they warned us about had been sold in November of 2016. Who kept lettuce in their refrigerator for two months? Just before Thanksgiving in 2018, they scared us again, this time about all Romaine lettuce, but it was based on results from October 8th. Long after the lettuce was eaten or thrown away.

Given such moribund government culture, is it any surprise that when concerns about the 2019 version of coronavirus emerged they sent out test kits with faulty reagents? Or that both CDC and FDA keep independent labs from being able to create these tests and roll them out?

Pre-diabetes

In early 2016 I criticized CDC for spending millions and millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to convince 86 million Americans already reeling from gigantic increases in health insurance costs that they might have a condition that no one but America recognizes - prediabetes. Basically, CDC picked an arbitrary hemoglobin A1c blood sugar level and put a new name on it. What they ignored is that if their number was valid, not only would 86 million Americans suddenly have a disease, so would 500,000,000 Chinese people. The World Health Organisation refused to recognize CDC's arbitrary number, as did the International Diabetes Federation, because only 5 percent of people with the CDC's a1c number would ever become diabetic in their entire lifetimes. That's clinically irrelevant.

CDC insisted it would spur people to exercise more and eat less, but human behavior says that is not true. The people at risk of type 2 diabetes most often want medicine, not to change behavior. It was just a huge subsidy for drug companies, if we think of it generously, and an effort by CDC employees to grab more funding by "medicalizing" everything if we are more skeptical.

Vaping

In 2015, before Juul was even a brand known by most in the US, CDC began using surveys to claim their was a vaping epidemic in kids. The evidence did not show it, all surveys showed was that at some point a tiny percentage of teens had experimented with vaping pens at some point in the previous year. But CDC chose to frame it as though dose did not matter, any use was the same as an addiction, so they began sounding the alarm.

I noted back then that kids do experiment, and they do rebel, but smoking (the actual killer) was plummeting, including among kids, and nicotine has never killed anyone, so since there were no cases of kids going from vaping to smoking, this was creating perception of a problem that might lead to a real one. I worried that by stodgy government manufacturing a crisis, kids would find it cool and begin to do it to wind up old people. Sure enough, the curve in teen vaping, and revenue for Juul, went way up after that. What had been a smoking cessation, or at least harm reduction, tool for smokers and former smokers became a teen fad. CDC created a prophecy then self-fulfilled it.

Now they say only more CDC websites will fix it. I limited myself to 3 instances but if you are a legitimate pain patient who got lumped in with recreational junkies hooked on fentanyl and now have to be treated like a criminal to not suffer, you can also thank CDC for opioid hysteria.

How to really fix CDC

Some are arguing that CDC needs to be dismantled and rebuilt but that is not realistic. When they added "and Prevention" onto the end of CDC they had unlimited ways to gain more authority and they are not letting it go.

What will help is to have CDC stop being the middleman for everything. CDC does very little original work beyond collating statistics they get from states. But in order for states to send coronavirus data to CDC, CDC's process said states had to wait until CDC sent them tests CDC had re-validated. Why? Even worse, CDC sent tainted ones.

Tests are a simple calibration issue, not a new medical device, coronavirus was categorized before I was even born, so tests from 2019 are going to work. Why did independent labs that wanted to help have to be blocked by government bureaucracy? Government lets shoddy groups like HRI Labs make nonsense claims that they can "detect" glyphosate in breast milk but when it comes to something important, government gets in the way.

Create a protocol and get out of the way

New York State finally told FDA and CDC they were going to let local labs test whether bureaucrats in D.C. liked it or not, so FDA rushed to rubber stamp approval so they could stay highly paid middlemen. But when public health crises erupt, that is just obstructing health strategy. The last thing government wants people to realize is how unimportant middlemen become so it is smarter to create a protocol and any lab that matches it with data can do tests.

No more nonsense where CDC has to block each step of the process to maintain an illusion of importance.

If I want to know data on all 50 states regarding raw milk illnesses, it's fine for CDC to collate that at their leisure. But their slow pace is dinosaur-like in the 21st century. They can't even tell us lettuce is bad within 6 weeks of people vomiting. We are fortunate that COVID-19 is actually quite hard to get. But we are not going to be so fortunate the next time a pandemic hits.

So while the problem is evident and political will is there, it is time to make changes at FDA and CDC. There are scientists inside who want this to happen, they are just not allowed to say anything. Let's find them and put them on the committee.

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3 Ways The CDC Problem Was Evident Long Before 2020 - Science 2.0

Human Behavior

Rats May Be Genetically Adapted to New York Living – Smithsonian.com

In 2015, a viral video emerged of a rat bouncing down the stairs of a New York City subway station, dragging an entire slice of pizza in its mouth. Pizza rat, as the critter was dubbed, was quickly trumpeted as an emblem of the city. It was determined, it loved pizza, and it was seemingly inured to the grimy depths of the citys transit system. No, there was no doubt about it: This rodent was a New Yorker.

Now, as Robin McKie reports for the Guardian, a new study suggests that the Big Apples rats have in fact undergone genetic changes that make them well-suited to life in the concrete jungleand susceptible to some of the same challenges that are facing humans.

The paper, which has not yet undergone peer review, was published recently on the preprint server bioRxiv. An estimated two million rats scurry about the city, so the researchers behind the study certainly had plenty of subjects to choose from. They just needed to catch the critterswhich they did by luring them into traps filled with bacon, peanut butter and oats.

In total, the team sequenced the genomes of 29 NYC brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) and compared them to DNA samples from brown rats in rural northeast China, which is believed to be the ancestral range of the species. In particular, explains Ewen Callaway of Nature, the scientists were looking for signs of selective sweeps, or the evolutionary process that sees beneficial mutations become prevalent in a given population.

The analysis revealed dozens of genes that showed signs of selective sweeps among the New York rodents, some associated with things like mobility, behavior and diet. These sweeps appeared to be recent mutations that occurred after a split from the ancestral population, which was followed by the rats migration from Asia to Europe and then to America.

While it is difficult, at this point, to draw definitive conclusions about how these genetic quirks have helped rats adapt to city life, the researchers put forth some interesting theories. Some genes, for instance, may be associated with resistance to rodenticide. Another gene that was a plausible target for selection, as the study authors put it, was CACNA1C, which has been linked to psychiatric disorders in humans. Perhaps stresses associated with local predators or other novel stimuli are tweaking the rats DNA, the researchers theorize. Still other genes highlighted by the researchers may impact locomotion in rodents.

This could reflect the fact that urban rats have to move through highly artificial environments that are very different from natural habitats, Arbel Harpak, a population geneticist at Columbia University and the studys lead author, tells the Guardian. So you could argue these gene changes might have evolved to help them move more easily through sewers and pipes.

Another interesting find lay in changes to genes associated with the metabolization of carbohydrates and sugars. Scavenging off the scraps of their human counterparts, urban-dwelling rats are eating increasingly large portions of processed sugars and fats. But like humans, the study authors note, it is possible that rats unhealthy diet makes them susceptible to health issues.

This paper is not the first study to suggest that NYC living has an impact on rats DNA. In 2017, a paper found genetic distinctions among rats in uptown and downtown Manhattan, likely because the rodents tend to stick within a limited home range. Now, the researchers behind the new report want to study rats from other cities, to see if their genomes evolved in similar ways to the NYC rodent population.

It certainly seems possible that rats have been profoundly impacted by life in close proximity to humansas much as humans might not want them around.

We know rats have changed in incredible ways in their behaviour and in their diet, Harpak tells the Guardian, just as human communities have changed.

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Rats May Be Genetically Adapted to New York Living - Smithsonian.com