This week, two of Donald Trumps top advisers, H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, wrote the following passage in The Wall Street Journal: The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the world is not a global community but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.

That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project. It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs. It grows out of a worldview that life is a competitive struggle for gain. It implies that cooperative communities are hypocritical covers for the selfish jockeying underneath.

The essay explains why the Trump people are suspicious of any cooperative global arrangement, like NATO and the various trade agreements. It helps explain why Trump pulled out of the Paris global-warming accord. This essay explains why Trump gravitates toward leaders like Vladimir Putin, the Saudi princes and various global strongmen: They share his core worldview that life is nakedly a selfish struggle for money and dominance.

It explains why people in the Trump White House are so savage to one another. Far from being a band of brothers, their world is a vicious arena where staffers compete for advantage.

In the essay, McMaster and Cohn make explicit the great act of moral decoupling woven through this presidency. In this worldview, morality has nothing to do with anything. Altruism, trust, cooperation and virtue are unaffordable luxuries in the struggle of all against all. Everything is about self-interest.

Weve seen this philosophy before, of course. Powerful, selfish people have always adopted this dirty-minded realism to justify their own selfishness. The problem is that this philosophy is based on an error about human beings and it leads to self-destructive behavior in all cases.

The error is that it misunderstands what drives human action. Of course people are driven by selfish motivations for individual status, wealth and power.

But they are also motivated by another set of drives for solidarity, love and moral fulfillment that are equally and sometimes more powerful.

People are wired to cooperate. Far from being a flimsy thing, the desire for cooperation is the primary human evolutionary advantage we have over the other animals.

People have a moral sense. They have a set of universal intuitions that help establish harmony between peoples. From their first moments, children are wired to feel each others pain. You dont have to teach a child about what fairness is; they already know.

People have moral emotions. They feel rage at injustice, disgust toward greed, reverence for excellence, awe before the sacred and elevation in the face of goodness.

People are attracted by goodness and repelled by selfishness. Good leaders like Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt and Reagan understand the selfish elements that drive human behavior, but they have another foot in the realm of the moral motivations. They seek to inspire faithfulness by showing good character. They try to motivate action by pointing toward great ideals.

Realist leaders like Trump, McMaster and Cohn seek to dismiss this whole moral realm. By behaving with naked selfishness toward others, they poison the common realm and they force others to behave with naked selfishness toward them.

By treating the world simply as an arena for competitive advantage, Trump, McMaster and Cohn sever relationships, destroy reciprocity, erode trust and eviscerate the sense of sympathy, friendship and loyalty that all nations need when times get tough.

By looking at nothing but immediate material interest, Trump, McMaster and Cohn turn America into a nation that affronts everybody elses moral emotions. They make our country seem disgusting in the eyes of the world.

George Marshall was no idealistic patsy. He understood that America extends its power when it offers a cooperative hand and volunteers for common service toward a great ideal. Realists reverse that formula. They assume strife and so arouse a volley of strife against themselves.

I wish H.R. McMaster was a better student of Thucydides. Hed know that the Athenians adopted the same amoral tone he embraces: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

The Athenians ended up making endless enemies and destroying their own empire.

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times. Reach him c/o The New York Times, Editorial Department, 620 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018. 2017 New York Times News Service

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Brooks: Selfishness makes enemies and destroys empires - The Durango Herald

June 7, 2017

The mouse lemurthe world's smallest primatehas the potential to transform the field of genetics and serve as an ideal model for a wide range of primate biology, behavior and medicine, including cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say.

For decades, scientists have relied on mice, fruit flies and worms as genetic models, but despite all their success, these organisms routinely fail to mimic many aspects of primate biology, including many human diseases, said Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD, professor of biochemistry.

Frustrated by the lack of a good study model, Krasnow and his colleagues turned to the mouse lemur and began conducting detailed physiologic and genetic studies on hundreds of these petite, docile creatures in the rainforests of Madagascar.

Working in a Stanford-funded lab on the island country, the scientists report that they already have identified more than 20 individual lemurs with unique genetic traits, including obesity, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, cardiac arrhythmias, progressive eye disease and motor and personality disorders. Their hope is that continued study of these abundant primates could lead to a better understanding, and possibly better treatments, of these and other conditions in lemurs and humans.

'Huge potential'

"I think mouse lemurs have great potential for our understanding of primate biology, behavior and conservation, in the same way that fruit flies and mice over the last 30 or 40 years have transformed our understanding of developmental biology and many other areas of biology and medicine," Krasnow said. "Some of the most fascinating and important questions that need to be answered are primate-specific. For those, we really need something besides humans to complement the work that has been done in fruit flies and mice."

A paper describing the researchers' findings will be published online June 9 in Genetics. Krasnow is the senior author. Lead authorship is shared by graduate student Camille Ezran and postdoctoral scholar Caitlin Karanewsky.

The project began in 2009 when Krasnow, frustrated by the lack of a good animal model for lung diseasehis area of expertisecommissioned three high school interns to search the animal world for something better. By the end of the summer, the interns had come up with the mouse lemur, which fits all the necessary criteria: Like mice, these animals are small (about twice the size of a mouse), develop quickly, reproduce rapidly, produce many offspring, and are inexpensive and easy to maintain and manage. In genetic terms, the mouse lemur is about midway between humans and mice, Krasnow said.

"When I talk to scientists, their faces light up when I tell them about mouse lemurs because they are about the size of a mouse but they are primates, so that makes a huge difference," said Ezran, who was one of the high school interns. "I think they really do present such great potential for biological, behavioral and medical research in general."

Early on in the project, Krasnow sought out the perspective of Stanford veterinarians, ultimately recruiting Megan Albertelli, DVM, PhD, assistant professor of comparative medicine. A geneticist and primate specialist, Albertelli said she was initially skeptical of the idea of lemurs as animal models, but soon became enthusiastic after realizing their enormous potential for contributions in understanding neurologic problems, eye disease and other conditions where mouse models have fallen short.

Trip to France

She accompanied the group on a trip to France to visit with scientists who had been studying lemurs in the laboratory for years. A French team had found that some aging lemurs develop a form of dementia and accumulate plaques in the brain that resemble those of Alzheimer's patients.

"I saw that they were promising models for Alzheimer's disease," Albertelli said. "Alzheimer's is a condition that is hard to model in other animal species, so that was very exciting."

Mouse lemurs live exclusively on Madagascar, where they are found in great abundance. Tens of millions of them populate the island. While lemurs generally are endangered due to habitat destruction, mouse lemurs are not under threat and freely roam the island, said Ezran, who calls them the "rodents of Madagascar."

The Stanford researchers began to develop collaborations with other scientists studying lemurs, including those at the Centre ValBio near the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar, who have been examining lemur ecology, family structure and behavior for decades.

During periodic visits to the island, Krasnow and his colleagues learned how to catch brown mouse lemurs in the rainforest just outside the research station, using a tiny banana slice inside a trap as a lure. The scientists then tagged and photographed each animal, gave them a thorough physical examination, analyzed them for behavioral issues and abnormalities and removed a drop of blood for detailed genetic and serum studies. The animals then were released back into the wild so the researchers could follow them over time to see how their environments may influence their progress and health. In 2013, Stanford built a sophisticated molecular biology and genetics lab within the ValBio complex, where these studies could be carried out.

'Distinctive personalities'

Lemurs have distinctive personalities, Krasnow said, and the researchers gave each one a name, based on his or her looks or behavior. For instance, one was named Feisty for his unusually aggressive nature; most lemurs are docile.

The work has led to a whole new way of doing genetic studies, said Krasnow, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Instead of using the traditional method of introducing genetic mutations into mice to create "knockout" miceor animals with customized genesthey found they were able to find naturally occurring variants among animals in the wild. Moreover, in working with lemurs in their native habitats, the researchers could better understand how the animals interact with their surroundings and the relationship between genes and the environment.

"Instead of introducing mutations in mice or fruit flies, we are doing something much more similar to what is done in humans," he said. "We are looking at all the wonderful genetic variation already existing in nature, since there are so many millions of mouse lemurs out there. We calculate that most 'knockout' mutations are already present in nature, and all we have to do is find them. And because the cost of sequencing a genome is rapidly dropping, it's now possible to sequence the genomes of thousands of mouse lemurs to see what mutations they are carrying."

In doing so, the researchers could accomplish in a few years for a tiny fraction of the cost what the International Knockout Mouse Consortium will accomplish in 10 years, at a cost of nearly $1 billion, he said.

But the project could use some additional staff, as the process of capturing the animals and screening them in the laboratory is labor-intensive, he said. He and his colleagues have come up with a multipurpose solution that will contribute to the local educational system while helping preserve the lemur populations in Madagascar, whose habitats are threatened by farming, mining and logging interests, he said.

Help from students

The group is developing a science curriculum for use in Malagasy high schools in which students learn about biology by exploring the rich environment right outside their school houses. Among the instructors is Manu Prakash, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford and a pioneer in the field of "frugal science," who has brought his powerful $1 paper microscopes to Madagascar and taught students how to explore the microscopic world in which they live, including the lice in their hair, the pathogens in their water and the disease-causing parasites in their environment. The curriculum was first introduced among university students, some of whom now are screening lemurs at the Stanford lab in Madagascar.

"We saw this as an opportunity because we are going over there to study the unique animals and biology and ecology of Madagascar, which is unsurpassed in the world," Krasnow said. "It is the No. 1 hotspot for biodiversity, but most of the students don't realize what they have in their backyards because they are being taught from textbooks and from teachers who have learned from Europeans."

He said the researchers hope to expand scientific curricula at all levels of education, helping train the Malagasy scientists of the future and build scientific capacity in the country, all the while creating an appreciation among the local population of the need to understand and preserve lemurs and other species for the future.

"We are trying to do this in a way that is respectful and will help the lemurs and the people of Madagascar, while enlightening many aspects of primate biology and human disease," he said.

The researchers plan to make the genetic sequencing and phenotyping information they obtain from the lemurs publicly available so that researchers around the world can take advantage of this trove of knowledge, Albertelli said.

Explore further: Three new primate species discovered in Madagascar

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Mouse lemur could serve as ideal model for primate biology and human disease - Phys.Org

This story originally appeared in GARAGE Magazine No. 11. GARAGE's life-changing, mind-altering launch is coming soon. Until then, we're publishing some of our old favorites, plus a few original stories, essays, videos, and more to give you a taste of what's to come.

Ian Cheng was born in 1984 in Los Angeles. Now based in New York City, he creates virtual ecosystems he calls "simulations." The simulations are unscripted: they function like video games that play themselves, and Cheng doesn't know exactly how they will turn out. Each is an examination of the dynamics of human behavior, an interrogation of narrative, and an exploration of rationality and motive.

After shows at the Migros Museum in Zrich, the Smithsonian's Hirschhorn in Washington, D.C., Pilar Corrias in London, and an installation in the Whitney Museum's recent exhibition Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016, Cheng currently has on view his first U.S. museum solo presentation at MoMA PS1, entitled Emissaries, through September 25.

Exclusively for GARAGE, Cheng and Haley Mellin discuss the connection between mind and body, the effects of software on culture, and the tension between deterministic narrative and abysmal base reality.

(This introduction was revised to update the artist's exhibition history.)

Haley Mellin: I just played the digital commission you did for the Serpentine and loved it. What brought you to cognitive science? Ian Cheng: It was a gut feeling. I've always been interested in how human behavior is shaped. What is Mom thinking? What is Dad thinking? What is the cat thinking? What is their misunderstanding? What is my role between them? Things an only child thinks about. Cognitive science seemed to offer a tool set. At the time, at UC Berkeley, that was a combination of neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, and psychology, with an aim of developing a general understanding of cognition that could inform approaches to artificial intelligence.

HM: What was happening with artificial intelligence in the mid-2000s? IC: At the time, artificial intelligence was in the dark ages. Most research was based on a kind of objectivity fallacythe perspective that to make a computer intelligent you had to feed it a million factslike creating a Jeopardy champion. You soon realize that a computer with a million facts quickly exhausts itself. You ask it a question like, "What do you see?" It has no idea. The current paradigm of artificial intelligence is closer to nature. It begins from a position of subjective stupidityyou endow a computer with the ability to sense and develop patterns from its senses. Humans act as its trainer. Like the way a small child or dog learns. Once an AI can learn, regardless of what it learns, it can develop a subjective understanding of the world from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. It can have agency.

HM: What was it that brought you into working with moving digital images? IC: After Berkeley, I worked at Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas's postproduction visual-effects studio. It was exciting, though, over time, I started to feel like one cog in a very, very big machine. There were hundreds of artisans and technicians working on Optimus Prime punching a skyscraper.

HM: The visual effects in those films are a fascinating force of collaboration. What happened after? IC: I then went to grad school at Columbia's MFA program. My peers were very talented and prolific. But I felt lost. I couldn't bring myself to do anything. I felt art isn't worth doing unless I can find some kind of leverage, some technology that could render the familiar into something alien. When you use a technology that has not been over-exhausted by other people, you have a stake in defining the language, the compositional principles, and a perspective toward that technology. I felt that I needed to do that, in order to feel like I wasn't just polishing territory that many other artists have explored already. I have a constant curiosity for technologies in the loosest sense, whether an actual tool or a soft thing, like a perspective. This leveraging has been an operating principle I have had as an artist since the beginning.

HM: I saw your work first in 2012, at West Street, the apartment gallery that Alex Gartenfeld and Matt Moravec created in New York. The piece was an animation on an iPhone, which I think was placed near a window, with the Hudson River beyond it. The figure in the video was stripped of detailjust essentialswhich came across to me as both primitive and advanced. IC: The video you're talking about is called This Papaya Tastes Perfect. It looks like an animation and it is animated, in fact, but it was done using motion capturea process in which you place markers on a real performer's body, so their movements can be translated onto a digital avatar. Three-dimensional animation has a reputation for being smooth, frictionless, plastic. But I wanted to see if something as artificial as 3D animation could capture human behavior that had the friction, or visceralness, that we find in life itself. This desire to get closer to nature and aliveness led to making what I call "simulations"I think of them as video games that play themselves. They are open-ended software systems that simulate an ecology. It's a form that can contain an ever-evolving relationship between agents and environment.

HM: Your earlier simulations were like chaotic systems. But the recent ones have an element of narrative in them. IC: I found myself thinking about how you and I are creatures of narrative. We eat and breathe narrative. I wanted to use narrativewhich I see as a deterministic, scripted forceto counterbalance the entropy and chaos in the simulations. I begin with open-ended ecosystems, which contain various agents with A.I.s that are very reactive to the environment. Then I introduce one agent who has a very different intelligence a set of narrative goals that it doggedly tries to achieve. It's like giving an actor a script and telling her she has to get through her lines no matter what obstacles get in her way. It's like Shakespeare in the Park, but it's a really disturbing, chaotic park, where everything's going wrong, but the agent still tries.

HM: I like that your content is unpretentious and direct. You're working with sculpting the soft material of human behavior. IC: I feel that having a narrative script, or having a life script, is an incredibly useful tool for orienting oneself, especially in times of uncertainty. It allows you at least to give yourself a direction, and a sense of place within the timeline of the imagined script. It is a self-made fiction, but it gives you courage. In two recent simulations, Emissary in the Squat of Gods and Emissary Forks at Perfection, I've started to program a character that has an orienting script in spite of all the chaos around him or her. What you see as a viewer is a battle between an open-ended ecological system that is amoralthere is no good or bad, things just happen as they do in natureand a highly scripted character who is trying to negotiate this world with a sense of purpose, with a sense of morality. The two forces sculpt each other.

HM: Are the digital materials you're using refined enough to communicate what you're intending, or is there work you want to make that you cannot? IC: I never fully arrive. I keep moving the goalposts. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out a model of intelligence that is located in the relationship between thingsthe idea of intelligence not located entirely in an organism's head, but instead distributed between the organism and the other objects in its environment. Like how the intelligence required to ride a bike is cued by the presence of the bike, but fades away when there is no bike available.

HM: To me, you are a documentarian of what is ahead. Your artwork gives me a feeling of being in a new body. IC: I've realized, in making these simulations, that having a body really matters. More and more, I can't imagine artificial intelligence without some kind of prosthetic body to ground itself in. The A.I. of a self-driving car needs the Umwelt of a car. I've had to find a level of representation that not only we as viewers can relate to, but that the simulated creatures need to achieve agency. That is something I am working on nowhow does the body morphology of a virtual creature influence the intelligence of the creature?

HM: It would be something if you could collaborate with an artificial-intelligence machine and have the artificial intelligence make the body of your character. It would be inventing something that it doesn't know, but inherently must be wired into. IC: I want to make art for children. I want to make work that is engaging to a five-year-old, and to do that, the work has to be alive. Children are the toughest critics.

HM: I played video games, such as Pong, Super Mario Bros., and World of Warcraft as a kid. Did you? IC: Yes. But now I play games to learn from them. In some ways I still feel like a child. Being an artist is like being the most adult-adult and being the most child-child. The reason we're talking now, at 11am, is because I need 7am to 10:59am to be a child. That's when my child brain is on and ideas flow like a tap. It's the opposite of that adult voice of doubt"This is an awful idea. You should be more worried. You haven't answered your email in 10 days." For me, that authority voice is completely absent in the morning, and I can dwell in a childlike state. I talk to myself without embarrassment. By noon, the other side of being an artist kicks in. I have to be more adult than someone with steady employment, because there's no boss. There's no scaffolding, no safety net. Nobody else has the burden of decision-making. It's a total head-trip, because no one tells you in art school that you have to become schizophrenic.

HM: I agree. We've talked about that before. I get emails from you at certain times of the day, not at all hours. I became patient for them. IC: I often want to give the authority to someone else, so they can make the decisions for me in moments of stress. Directors have producers. Start-ups have cofounders. But for artists and writers, no one cares about your work as much as you do. I work with a producer now, which has been a game changer for me.

HM: Sometimes I step back, time goes by, and it allows me to connect in a new way. Hesitation can be a tool. This brings me to think of the team working on the Microsoft HoloLens. It has taken them a long time to develop the technology, they have worked slowly, one foot in front of the other. It will combine digital holograms and reality into a new landscape. It will be like a more advanced state of what we play with Pokmon Go. IC: The best story I heard so far was that this fabulous pink Pokmon was sited inside the Westboro Baptist Church headquarters, and all these kids were rushing in, totally agnostic to the meaning of that place. Just eagerly trying to find the Pokmon inside. It's beautiful. It's a mainstream breakthrough of the idea that the social realities you live in are not strictly rooted in the physical world. A physical place is simply an address to hold multiple social realities, which are often mutually exclusive. It's a refactoring of the familiar by software. Pokmon Go is effectively a work of software in the same way that Uber is a work of software. It fundamentally re-factors the way in which material things are organized, their meaning, status, and value.

HM: Software has changed many of our basic actions. Look at Uber. IC: You couldn't trust getting in a stranger's car five years ago.

HM: Uber shows how an app can reprogram our motion. IC: I don't think a child would go into the Westboro Baptist Church if not for the overriding motivation of getting that amazing Pokmon. It transforms what's meaningful and what's meaningless. We get a clear feeling of the relativity of meaning through this compression of what's valuable and what's sacred versus what's vulgar and what's profane. We see now that software has this collapsing effect.

HM: So what if the battery on your phone dies and there's no amazing Pokmon? IC: You crash like Neo. Or like an Amish person visiting Times Square. You crash back into the shitty base reality that preceded your worldview.

HM: It makes me think of the Philip K. Dick quote you mentioned last year, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." I love that. It makes things clear and simple. If I stop believing in something, but it remains, then maybe it is real. Is the Pokmon digital character actually there? IC: It's there as much as, if you're a Christian, God is there. It's there in the sense that it organizes your life and is operative in how you act within the world. Whether it's physically real or not is irrelevant. Most of us, except for perhaps enlightened Buddhas, cannot withstand living in direct relationship to raw reality. Raw reality is meaningless and disorienting and almost impossible for any human to accept on a full-time basis. We need games to overlay onto raw reality to orient our lives, whether it's the game of Pokmon or the game of being a Christian or the game of college. Those games crash all the time, creating moments of social unrest and existential angst.

HM: Those are healthy moments, too, and we evolve into yet another game. IC: I've been reading a lot about Buddhism and Hinduism recently. Achieving enlightenment is actually very difficult, because when you're enlightened you're not in a more comfortable place. It's not like you get enlightened and then you're at peace because everything makes sense. Apparently, when you're enlightenedif you can ever be thatyou're actually in a much more abysmal, uncertain, and ambiguous place, but you're simply okay with that. You accept that abyss. This is radical. I think most humans can't withstand this. We're evolved to see faces in clouds. Find meaning. Make up a busy thing to do. There's a reason why monks and enlightened people are secluded in difficult-to-reach low-sensory places, high in the mountains, without too much complex human or ecological drama. It's a zone of minimum viable abyss.

HM: When the underlying structure of how you live and why and what you do breaks apart, finding a new orchestration can be slow, since you are building from the ground up. IC: It's often seen in our culture as a shameful process, like you fell off the wagon.

HM: Or a mental breakdown. IC: When someone falls off the script, there's a lot of shame attached to it, because everyone else in one's local ecology likes to feel secure in the script that's working for them. You can psychologically die in those momentsthat's when you become really depressedbut that's also where there's the most potential for clarity about where you are, and the most potential for reinvention.

HM: Oftentimes, things have to end for a new structure to begin, to start living from a new philosophy. When the system fails you, you create your own system. Often you've invested a lot of energy in a direction that you've taken seriously, and you can see how quickly the structures you relied on unravel. I learned recently how breaking things up is a kind of restructuring. IC: Yes. It forces a restructuring.

HM: There's a difference between what we conserve and what we change. I spend half my time working to preserve wilderness. IC: What parts of the world?

HM: Currently I'm working on an animal-migration corridor joining two national parks in Namibia. I have a different mind space when I'm in stretches of wildernessit's an area that has never had any sort of static structure or use imposed upon it. The body feels that it's not a national park, with all sorts of rules and boundaries. Animals are both very primitive and very advanced. They don't need all the objects and tools we use to live. IC: Yes.

HM: It's healthy for anyone who works in a creative capacity to spend time outside. My brain takes on an ease and rapidity of thought, because there is a lack of social structure. Things become black and whiteanything I am on the fence about becomes clear. IC: We've spoken about transforming things, and I think the things that need to be transformed are modelsculture, ingrained habits, our stories. On the flip side, the things that need to be preserved are the things that have no culture in them. Stretches of wilderness, where nature has built up so much embedded complexity and intelligence, even if it's inherently meaningless to us now. Later, we'll have all that richness and biologic history to learn from.

HM: I want to preserve a space without culture. Those spaces help us to understand what culture is. IC: It's an exercise in being in base reality.

HM: Now we're going in a different direction. IC: That's a good way to end, actually.

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'Shakespeare in the Really Disturbing, Chaotic Park' - VICE

In previous articles, I've mentioned that we can say nothing about what an animal's behavior means unless we know the context in which is occurs. In the case of companion animals, a key contextual element is the owners' and others' emotional perception of those animals.

However, when it comes to behaviors displayed by companion animals, it's not uncommon for human perceptions of the context to vary even within the same household. The same display from the family dog that one person considers loving, her partner may perceive as obnoxious, while their kids think it's funny. Meanwhile, their visiting relatives hate the dog because "she looks weird."

Those different human responses, in turn, may affect the animal's subsequent behavior in general or only with those specific individuals. Although multiple factors contribute to this mixed perceptual bag within the companion animal household, this month I'd like to consider one factor that practitioners also may experience directly or indirectly.

In a research paper entitled "Tail Docking and Ear Cropping Dogs: Public Awareness and Perception" published in PLOS ONE, Katelyn E. Mills, Jesse Robbins and Marina von Keyserlingk wanted to fill a gap in the literature regarding how surgical alteration of canine body parts affected human perception. Although previous studies explored the perceptions of veterinarians and breeders relative to these surgeries when performed for strictly cosmetic reasons, no one had addressed those of the public.

To provide insight into this segment of the population, the researchers conducted three experiments using American residents as subjects. Data for each experiment included the number of participants, mean age and range, sex and percentage of the total who functioned as the primary canine caregiver in the household.

In the first experiment, researchers showed each participant one professional photo of a dog belonging to one of four breeds in which tail docking and ear cropping commonly occurs: Doberman pinscher, miniature schnauzer, boxer or Brussels griffon. Participants then rated the dog using a list of 10 traits they considered of genetic or environmental origin using seven-point scale.

During the second part of this experiment, the participants received two photographs of the same breed of dog, one with surgically modified ears and tail and one without. The history accompanying these photos stated that the dogs were purebred siblings. Participants then had to choose one of three options to describe what the dogs' different appearances meant:

Although this may come as a surprise to some veterinarians, 42 percent of the 810 participants believed that the short ears and tail were of genetic origin in these breeds.

In the second experiment, the researchers explored if and how the appearance of natural and modified dogs influenced people's perception of the dog's temperament. To determine this, they had a professional artist restore the ears and tails on the photographs of the surgically modified dogs.

When completed, the researchers had two photos of each of the original four dogs: the original photo of the dog with cropped ears and docked tail, and one of the same dog with his or her natural ears and tail restored by the artist. They then asked participants to rate a collection of either all surgically modified or all (artificially restored) natural dog pictures using a canine personality questionnaire.

In general, participants perceived the modified dogs as more human- and canine-aggressive as well as "dominant." Those who received the natural dog photos perceived those animals as more playful and attractive.

Keep in mind that the experiment wasn't designed to determine whether any of these dogs truly possessed those qualities. It was designed to determine if and how cropped ears and docked tails could influence people's perception of dogs so modified.

The third experiment examined how others' perception of the people with these dogs changed depending on the absence of presence of canine ears or tails. In this case, identical full-body pictures of the same man or woman were paired with images of the surgically modified or natural Doberman.

Each participant received images of one man and a modified or natural dog and a second set of a woman paired with either a modified or natural dog. Subjects then had to answer questions regarding their perceptions of the supposed owner as well as the dog.

Given the differences in participants' perception of the modified and natural dogs, again it probably comes as little surprise that the participants' perceptions of the dogs' respective owners also differed. Traits assigned to the presumed owners of modified dogs included more aggressive, more narcissistic, less playful, less talkative and warm than the owners of natural dogs.

Additionally, participants perceived the female owner the of modified dog as more dominant, aggressive and competent than the female owner of the natural dog. Interestingly, the participants perceived the male owner of the modified dog as more narcissistic, less warm and less competent than that same man when paired with the natural version of the same dog.

But if these results will surprise few clinicians, why bother writing about them at all? Like all studies, this one has its flaws.

However, it does further support the notion that some people will make snap judgments of a dog's temperament and the person with the dog based solely on the dog's looks. And because dogs and their people routinely may congregate in veterinary practice waiting rooms, this may directly or indirectly affect how other clients interact with those animals and their people. And that, in turn, may affect the dog's behavior in the examination room as well as the waiting room.

Hopefully and regardless of their personal views, practitioners and their staff members know that cringing in response to every cropped-eared, docked-tailed dog that enters the veterinary clinic won't enhance the dog's behavior. And although it superficially might appear that more positive responses to naturally eared and tailed canines and their owners would be a win-win for everyone, that approach also can backfire.

Just as modified dogs and their owners may dwell anywhere on the spectrum of temperaments and personalities, so may natural dog-owner pairs. And some of these may be nicer and better behaved than others.

Original post:
Ethology and veterinary practice: Animal behavior and human perception - MultiBriefs Exclusive (blog)

Like many Millennials, I was told I could become whatever I wanted to be when I grew up. Before the age of ten I cycled through dreams of acting, singing, and becoming a veterinary pharmacist (true story).

Trying to find my passion was a near-obsession that followed me into adulthood. Ironically, all along I ignored what was naturally good at, including my knack for empathy, my love for writing, and an incurable curiosity about human behavior.

They say hindsight is 20/20, so today I clearly see how these strengths shaped my career. But for a long time, I searched for my passion as if it was a lost treasure chest that I simply needed a map to find.

Despite what we're told, passion is something that unfolds over time. It's discovered through life experiences. Your "dream job" isn't an exact destination, either. It's constantly evolving. The ideal career when you're in your early 30s may eventually become a poor fit, even by the time you turn 40.

So what do you do if you have no idea what your passion or life calling is?

First, don't panic. Finding your purpose doesn't happen overnight. It's a messy, iterative undertaking that takes time, patience, and a healthy dose of self-reflection. You'll get there, but you have to start by taking small steps.

That starts by asking yourself some key questions about how your past experiences, struggles, and triumphs have shaped you.

For each of the prompts below, write for a minimum of five minutes. Don't censor yourself. Write freely. Jot down whatever comes to mind, no matter how silly it seems.

These powerful questions can help you strip away limiting beliefs to find your true calling--work you find deeply meaningful. That doesn't mean it'll be easy, but it will be rewarding.

At the end of the day, introspection isn't enough. You have to take consistent action to make your dreams a reality. But when you take the time to look inward, you may be surprised by what you find. Your passion might have been waiting there all along, just waiting for you to light the spark.

More here:
The Secret to Finding Your Passion Is the Opposite of What You've Been Told - Inc.com

WILMINGTON, Vt. (AP) A local game warden named the annual Vermont Game Warden of the Year says the award has made him feel like he has "succeeded in the profession."

"I was really pleased," said Vermont State Game Warden Richard Watkin, who's based out of Wilmington. "You're essentially going up against other wardens and I think my colleagues are an extremely talented group of individuals with different skills. It's a really great bunch of folks to work with."

Gov. Phil Scott presented Watkin with the award in Montpelier on May 24. Watkin also received a certificate from the private wildlife conservation group Shikar-Safari Club International acknowledging the award. The group sponsors these awards in each state of the United States as a way to promote enforcement of laws protecting wildlife.

Watkin wasn't a hunter but had done some inland fishing in the English Channel growing up so he said he had a lot to learn when taking on the role of game warden.

"I had to put a lot of time in and do my own research, so to speak, to try and understand these cultural past times such as hunting," he said. "So in order to get from being essentially somewhat naive in some areas to end up getting not only nominated to actually winning the award was a great feeling. I felt like I had succeeded in the profession."

Watkin's supervisor Lt. Greg Eckhard called Watkin "knowledgeable in all aspects of the job."

"He understands the intricacies of fish and wildlife law and has an excellent working knowledge of the wildlife and habitats common to his patrol district," Eckhardt said in a press release. "Rich is professional, polite, hardworking, dependable, honest and always willing to help others whenever asked. He is highly regarded by his peers and is a great asset to both the Fish and Wildlife Department and the State of Vermont."

The third time is a charm for Watkin, who had been nominated for the award two other times. He has been with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department since 2006. That was the year Watkin spent four months at the Vermont Police Academy and eight months in field training. He was assigned to the Wilmington area in January 2007.

"I pretty much laid down my routes thereafter," he said. "I have a young family here."

Watkin, who has two kids and a wife who works in the Deerfield Valley, said he can see himself completing his career where he is now. Originally, Watkin is from England.

In 2000, he completed his doctorate as a research scientist and held two post-doctoral tenures at the University of Vermont. He worked there for six years.

"I got to a point where the position I was in was getting stressful," he said. "I was more or less looking at needing to get my own grant money."

Watkin wanted to stay in New England but he no longer wanted to be a research scientist. Driving along Interstate 91 one day, he noticed a game warden truck. That piqued his interest and eventually he applied for a position.

When offered a job, Watkin was surprised. But his experience with researching molecular changes in human skin cells made him an attractive candidate. The thought was that those skills would be helpful with big game forensics.

Watkin has seen the department switch who handles samples. UVM now gets them.

"Formerly, we used to send samples out of state to be tested," Watkin said while acknowledging that the current way is cheaper but it also keeps the work in Vermont,.

Of particular enjoyment to Watkin are search and rescue calls.

"It's one of those things that occurs so randomly but there's an element of it, where to try and locate somebody who is either missing or compromised due to injury, can be a very gratifying feeling," he said. "It's not just the game wardens that called on search and rescue. There's the state police, and local fire and rescue. But it can be quite an experience to have all these agencies get together with a common goal, with the understanding that they don't always have a happy ending."

It's also the community aspect of the job that keeps Watkin engaged.

"We cover a lot of rural territory that doesn't tend to see a lot of law enforcement on a regular basis," he said. "There's a presence that comes with us patrolling around these rural areas and you get to know your constituents. And whether it's just conversations, just civility in passing or it's questions, we get flagged down frequently by people that want to talk for one reason or another. I think it's important for the work we do that we have this relationship with our communities, because there are so few wardens in the state so we rely on the public to help us do our jobs."

With promotions and retirements, it can take a year or more to replace a warden who's left his position. Training takes a year and advertising the job takes some time. Then there's the interviews and hiring process.

Wardens' territories tend to expand when a vacancy pops up. Watkin, at the time of the interview, was covering about nine communities including Dover, Readsboro, Searsburg, Stratton, Somerset, Stamford, Whitingham and Wilmington. Two wardens will soon be added to the state's roster, in Poultney and Springfield.

"One way or another, we cover the calls regardless," Watkin said, noting that judgement is used on how to respond as some calls are emergencies and others can wait. "Sometimes it involves traveling a number of towns over."

Watkin's responsibilities change with the seasons. In the fall, he'll tend to work shifts later into the evenings. He might finish up in the early hours of the morning or go in late and work until daybreak. Much of this time is spent on trying to combat wildlife crime, he said.

"Deer jacking" or illegal hunting is the main concern. Watkin said he doesn't see these crimes as often as other districts might.

In the winter, he literally shifts gears via snowmobile enforcement. He also puts in time patrolling ice fishing.

Before the summer, the Department of Fish and Wildlife stocks waters across the state with fish. For now, Watkin will be on the lookout for fishing and boating violations until big game season comes along.

Some jobs can have a certain repetition to them regardless of the time of year, he said. That's not the case for Watkin.

"I really appreciate the way things change," he said. "That's probably one of my favorite parts of having the job."

In a press release, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Commission Louis Porter said Watkin "represents so many of the things that makes our warden force the professional and well-respected institution that it is... (and he) goes out of his way to serve his community, from teaching kids at the local elementary school about wildlife to giving free snowmobile rides to disabled children."

Watkin recently took on an additional task as a canine handler, something he said he really wanted to do. An 18-month-old yellow lab went through tracking school last year with Watkin to study "human scent trailing." Now the pair's training in "gunpowder detection" and "human evidence recovery."

Watkin called his job "one of the more rewarding careers I can imagine doing."

"You see so much stuff goes on in the outdoors whether through wildlife behavior or human behavior," he said. "You start your day out not sure what's going to happen and a lot of the times it's the same stuff checking licenses or driving around patrolling your district. But there's so many times over the 11 years I've been on where stuff just happens, where we either pull up to something or you circumstantially encounter something."

Watkin said the abnormal events keep him interested and to be issued a snowmobile, boat and kayak "is pretty neat." But not everything is "rosy," he admitted.

"We get deployed to any hunter-related shooting that goes on in this state," he said. "We get deployed to do reconstructions and you can imagine some of these scenes are far from pleasant."

Sometimes, Watkin said, a search ends in recovery rather than rescue. But those events he accepts as part of his professional duties.

___

Online:

http://bit.ly/2rXJBT7

___

Information from: Brattleboro Reformer, http://www.reformer.com/

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Research professor finds new life as game warden - San Francisco Chronicle

While the origin of the recent WannaCry exploit is still under investigation, there is no doubt that humans remain the weakest link in the chain of defense against cyberattacks.

According to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, human factors play a major role in various types of attacks. While its easy to blame users, many overlook the fact that these individuals can be turned into a valuable asset for an organizations defense capabilities. A well-aligned, orchestrated security awareness program can unlock this potential, but its success depends on practices beyond the typical security domain namely, psychology, communication and culture.

The traditional approach is to define an acceptable use policy and require users to sign it. This may help to transfer some responsibility to the users, but it does not make an organization more secure at the end of the day. Making users part of your defense requires more than a warning finger; its about changing behavior.

While the elements of a security awareness program depend on an organizations structure, business and culture, human behavior change is based on fundamental principles. The first tenet urges security leaders to include users in the mission instead of treating them as a risk. To be part of the mission, individuals need to understand it, recognize risky situations and react in a proper manner.

Furthermore, successful awareness programs involve other such as human resources, legal, marketing and physical security that often have mutual interests. These departments can collaborate to make security awareness efforts mandatory and contribute valuable resources such as funding and distribution tools. Human resources can build security awareness into onboarding and performance management processes, for example.

Human factors contribute in many ways to security risks, from dealing with phishing emails to handling sensitive data and interacting with other company assets. It is simply impossible to address all these issues at once. Instead, security leaders should focus on the most severe behaviors from a risk management perspective.

This approach will help to keep messages clear and prevent users from viewing security as an annoyance. Users are confronted with many daily obligations and simply dont have time to wait for another set of tasks. Therefore, you should split your messages into small portions, assign tasks that take no longer than 15 minutes and distribute the content over a period of time. This approach also makes it easier to keep software up to date.

People consume information in different ways depending on their background, profession and generation. Successful programs incorporate a variety of channels to make the message stick, including newsletters, posters, games, news feeds, blogs, simulated phishing attacks and more. In general, the most participatory efforts appear to have the most success.

If you invest time and money to strengthen your security program, you should be able to report its effectiveness to management and stakeholders. The only way to do this is to collect metrics in advance of awareness efforts. Without this baseline, it is hard to demonstrate success.

Security awareness metrics can include surveys to gauge attitudes and more statistical values such as results from simulated phishing attacks before and after awareness training. It might also be helpful to examine the number of security-related incidents. Measurable improvements, in any aspect of security, will help justify the program and, eventually, obtain additional funding and support.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar: Orchestrate Your Security Defenses

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Security Awareness: How to Make Your Weakest Link Part of Your Defense - Security Intelligence (blog)

This is the ninth article in a series about similarities and differences between men and women.

Q: How do the differences between men and women complicate male/female relationships?

A: In a study by psychologist Dario Maestripieri and his colleagues, the study concluded men and women belong to different species. The following information, in an article by Agustin Fuentes, refutes that conclusion. Fuentes has a bachelors degree in zoology and advanced degrees in anthropology. He is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

In his critique of the study, Fuentes elucidates three main problems. First, gender and sex are used interchangeably and they are not interchangeable. Second, the evolved differences in women and men are not measured. Third, relevant anthropological and biological datasets are disregarded.

Fuentes points out sex and gender are different. Sex is the biological state measured by the content of chromosomes in addition to various physiological and developmental measurements. Gender, on the other hand, consists of the roles, perceptions and expectations that society has for the sexes.

The majority of societies have two genders on the masculinity-femininity spectrum. Some societies do have more. The two concepts are interrelated but not the same. People are born with a sex but acquire gender. Within societies, there is great diversity between individuals and sexes regarding how sex and gender interact in personality and behavior. Although there is a lot of literature about that subject, many researchers, whose only interest is definitive distinctions between women and men, choose to ignore that literature.

Measuring evolutionary differences in behavior within a species is difficult. There are at least two methodological approaches that are necessary to do that. First, the assessments have to be comparative with more than one population of the species of interest. Secondly, the traits for measurement have to be linked some way with the heritable elements of human physiology or behavior that have an effect on overall fitness. These traits must be assessed by measures that are both accessible and replicable among different populations in the species.

In their study, Del Giudici and associates used a large sample of questionnaires from mostly white, educated Americans. In relation to the global diversity present in culture structure, this sample from Del Giudici and associates is limited and is not a comparative, evolutionary sample of the species.

The data from the Del Giudici and associates assessments of 15 personality variables are laden with cultural meanings and contexts that are not easily transferable across societies in time and space. Moreover, these personality variables are difficult, or impossible, to connect quantitatively to all aspects of human physiology, neurology or other structured, identifiable targets for natural selection. Furthermore, their personality traits are not static traits, but are dynamic traits that are fluid over a persons lifetime.

When discussing evolved differences in behavior between females and males, no one can make a statement like, When it comes to personality, men and women belong to two different species, without stating the biological reality that men and women are the same species. There are not consistent differences in brains between the sexes.

There is considerable overlap in physiological function. Both sexes engage in sexual behavior in essentially the same patterns. The sexes also overlap extensively in most other behaviors. There are interesting re-occurring differences, especially in patterns of aggression and some physiological correlates of reproduction, body size and muscle density. Anthropological and biological studies consistently demonstrate dynamic flexibility and a complex biocultural context for human behavior. These studies are especially true for gender.

Del Giudici and associates and Maestripieri are countering Janet Shibley-Hydes gender similarities hypothesis because they believe men and women are more different than similar. There are many valid points of disagreement regarding Shibley-Hydes paper. Del Giudici and associates name a significant methodological point of contention, but fail to provide an assessment and analysis of the overall data and meta-analysis used by Shibley-Hyde.

Something about trying to prove men and women are different, or the same, makes people somewhat irrational. There are no clear or easy answers about why people do what they do. There also are no clear answers about why men and women have problems getting along sometimes. Those researchers who ignore that data about how men and women are similar and different and approach sex and gender from a one-dimensional approach are practicing poor science.

Augustin Fuentes is the scientist upon whom this article is based. He contends there is an enormous dataset about how men and women are similar and different that responsible scientists cannot ignore.

Next weeks article will discuss the aging process in men and women.

Judy Caprez is professor emeritus at Fort Hays State University.

Original post:
Men, women show similarities, differences - Hays Daily News

Believe it or not, I work really hard at self-regulation. I realize that sometimes I people at less than an optimal level, so I have a list of daily reminders I use to keep it between the ditches of acceptable human behavior.

Each day, I go through a checklist of dozens of behaviors I should not engage in, some learned by trial and error, others by observational guess work. Some of these include:

It is not okay to offer to bat clean-up if a couple who you are friends with tells you about their struggles with infertility.

When you see couples getting wedding photos shot at Wadlington Park or Porter Park, it is not okay to shout things like, Pull them bangs down, youve got a five-head going on, Put a little tongue in that kiss, its classy! or Olympus? Real photogs shoot Canon.

It is not okay to put on a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, go to a restaurant, and pretend to be the manager, walking from table to table asking guests about their meals and saying Well, thats servers fired! if they complain about anything.

It is not okay to greet your elders at the gym by saying, What up, Centrum Silver? They are all in better shape than you and could break you like fettuccine.

It is not okay to say, Sucker, you could totally get a new cat for $50 when someone tells you about spending hundreds on a vet bill.

When you see old acquaintances posting wedding anniversary photos online, it is not okay to comment, Jeez, if I knew your standards were that low, I would have asked you out.

When the movie theatre plays the turn off your cellphones and devices message before the film, it is not okay to jump to your feet and point to the other audience members and shout, That means you!

When someone compliments you on being a good listener, its not okay to say, Its because Im not really paying attention.

Carelessness is not an acceptable answer if a child asks you where babies come from.

While helpful, it is not socially acceptable to announce Youve got 10 seconds to get out of here, after that I make no promises, upon walking into a stall in the mens room.

Were all a little crazy. Its just how you manage it thats important.

Suggestions for further corrections to Jim Cooks behavior may be relayed to jcook@dothaneagle.com, where they will be given thoughtful consideration.

The rest is here:
Anti-affirmations, when needed - Dothan Eagle

A new study identifies which factors put young people with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at high risk of being hospitalized for inpatient psychiatric careincluding factors both related and unrelated to ASD itself.

Children or teens with autism spectrum disorders often come to hospitals when behavioral episodes overwhelm the support that caregivers can provide at homebut resources at hospitals are sometimes limited, too, says Giulia Righi.

The demand is far greater than the number of clinicians, the number of programs, and the number of beds we have, says Righi, a research assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, who treats acute care patients with autism spectrum disorders.

The strongest risk factors are not necessarily associated with ASD.

One of the biggest issues is the availability of acute care services such as day hospital programs and inpatient units to support families when their childrens behaviors have escalated to the point of making a situation unsafe at home, at school, or sometimes both, she adds.

Identifying and addressing the factors that make hospitalization more likely, she says, could reduce such instances. Notably, only two of the risk factors identified in the study of patients with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)their severity of autism symptoms and the degree of their adaptive daily life functioningwere specific consequences of the disorder.

The strongest risk factorsdisrupted sleep, having a mood disorder, and living in a home with a single caregiverare not necessarily associated with ASD.

Our results underscore the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with ASD that addresses behavioral, psychological and psychiatric, adaptive, sleep, and medical functioning in order to decrease behavioral crises and the utilization of inpatient psychiatric services, Righi and coauthors write in the study published in theJournal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

The study made unique use of two large datasets with unusually rich information about patients, Righi says: the Autism Inpatient Collection (AIC), which includes data from childrens psychiatric hospitals in six states, and the Rhode Island Consortium for Autism Research and Treatment (RI-CART). Founded in 2013 by a coalition of local institutions including Brown, Bradley Hospital, and Women & Infants Hospital, RI-CART has grown to become a community of about 1,500 patients and their families.

In the research, Righi and her coauthors looked at the AIC records of 218 patients age 4 to 20 who were hospitalized and compared them with 255 age- and gender-matched members of RI-CART who were not hospitalized. By employing statistical analysis techniques, the researchers were able to isolate risk factors that were independently and significantly associated with the risk of hospitalization.

The strongest predictor was the presence of a mood disorder, which was associated with a seven-fold increase in the odds of hospitalization. The presence of sleep problems was the second strongest risk, more than doubling the odds. A high score on a standardized scale of autism symptom severity raised the odds a little bit, though still significantly.

Meanwhile, having a high score on a standardized scale of adaptive functioning, or basic life and coping skills, slightly but significantly lowered the odds of hospitalization. Finally, children and teens in households with married caregivers had only 0.4 times the odds of needing hospital care compared with comparable patients living with only one adult caregiver.

That last result, Righi says, is likely not about family structure or stability per se, but rather about resources available to cope with the care for a child with high needs. The hospitalization risk associated with mood and sleep disorders, meanwhile, points to the need to engage in a broad based and careful psychiatric evaluation of autism patients.

Our findings emphasize the utility of thorough assessment and treatment of mood and sleep conditions to decrease the likelihood of requiring psychiatric hospitalization, Righi and her coauthors write.

Righi notes that some factors she might have hypothesized would be independently significant were not, including the degree of intellectual disability or gastrointestinal problems.

Righi acknowledges that while research examined many factors, others that it didnt measure might also be important. Also, the study measured associations of risk factors with hospitalization but doesnt prove they were the cause of hospital visits.

But the study authors write that the risk factors they identified may be worth addressing before young autism patients reach the point where hospitalization becomes necessary.

In spite of its limitations, the study authors conclude, the present findings reveal indicators that may be useful for identifying children and adolescents at greater risk of psychiatric hospitalization as well as other potential targets for individual and family intervention.

The Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University helped to fund the study along with the Simons Foundation, the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Brown University

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5 factors raise hospitalization risk for kids with autism - Futurity: Research News