Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

In Utah, the Great Salt Lake is Shrinking and it Could Have Catastrophic Consequences – SnowBrains

Serious consequences are on the line for the Great Salt Lake. Credit: Pinterest

The modern oasis of the Great Salt Lake is being threatened. Last summer the lake recorded its lowest level on record, and it doesnt appear the trend is changing anytime soon. In the 1980s, the lakes surface area covered 3,300 square miles. Today it covers less than 1,000 square miles according to the U.S Geological Survey. That means it has shrunk by over two-thirds.

As the lake dries up, the consequences are alarming. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City would deteriorate. Lake effect snow would diminish as storms passing over the lake would absorb less moisture, meaning lower snow totals. Flies and brine shrimp will die off, hurting millions of migrating birds who feed on them every year. The air quality around the area could turn poisonous as arsenic, dust, and other minerals are exposed and carried into the air.

It seems like an easy solution to the problem could be to let more snowmelt from the mountains flow into the lake. However, it would mean less water for residents and farmers. The population keeps growing and the agriculture in the area is lucrative, so something has to give.

It is easy to blame climate change for the lakes demise, but that may not be the biggest contributor. A warmer climate will evaporate more water from the melting snow and rivers, meaning less water makes it to the lake. Still, this may be a minor cause compared to human behavior which is likely the biggest culprit.

Three-quarters of Utahs population lives in the greater Salt Lake City area. The current supply of water is barely keeping up with demand. On top of that, the area is expected to grow by 50 percent by the year 2060.

One way of slowing the rate of the shrinking would be to increase the cost of water to residents. Salt Lake has one of the lowest water costs per gallon rates in the United States. The residents also consume about 25% more water than other desert cities. Simple price and demand economics could cause consumers to use less water.

According to the New York Times, there is a potential environmental nuclear bomb that could go off if changes arent made. Lawmakers in the state will have some tough issues to tackle in the not-so-distant future.

There are many resorts close to the lake. What would happen to tourism and revenue for the state if the ski experience deteriorates? Credit: destinationutah.com

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In Utah, the Great Salt Lake is Shrinking and it Could Have Catastrophic Consequences - SnowBrains

Human Behavior

An index of access to essential infrastructure to identify where physical distancing is impossible – Nature.com

Motivation and objective

Measures of physical distancing in African countries came with immense economic costs. All countries in Africa are categorized as low-income (US$ 1025 or less per year and capita) or middle-income (US$ 1026 to US$ 12,375 per year and capita) as defined by the World Bank16. Therefore, these countries have very limited financial resources to mitigate any negative economic effects both at the macro- and the micro-level. The International Monetary Fund estimates that sub-Saharan Africas gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk by 1.9% in 202017, which will result in a sharp increase in poverty18,19 for the first time in 30 years. Estimates from the United Nations Development Programme indicate a sharp reduction in the Human Development Index in 2020 for the first time since its introduction in 199020. Large shares of the populations are employed in the informal sector, with estimates varying between 35% for South Africa and 92% for Mali, with no social security net2. If people cannot go to work, the result is an instant income loss for most of these people, leading to an immediate rise in food insecurity21,22. As a result, many African countries quickly started to lift measures of physical distancing in summer 2020. However, schools remained closed in most African countries throughout 2020 and 202123,24.

Our study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the geographic distribution of critical infrastructure patterns to respond to the current and future epidemics and pandemics, placing particular emphasis on Africa. Our study alsocontributes to measuring a countrys preparedness to prevent, detect, and cope with infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-1925,26,27,28,29,30. We argue that the effectiveness of governmental regulations in many African countries to increase physical distancing andto reduce transmission rates of infectious diseases does not only lead to poverty but is also limited given the lack of essential private infrastructure, which makes it impossible for populations to follow WHO regulations to keep sufficient distance. Although vaccinations and treatments against COVID-19 became available in 2021, international and national barriers toward high vaccination coverage in many African countries will remain and these have also been discussed as a driver of future mutations of SARS-CoV-231. Hence, to both contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and future viruses governmental measures to encourage physical distancing remain important policy responses.

Using principal component analysis, we propose a physical distancing index (PDI) composed of five indicators: households with (1) a lack of private toilet facilities; (2) lack of a private drinking water source; (3) lack of ICT infrastructure; (4) lack of private transportation means; and (5) lack of space. The indicator is weighted with population density to account for the fact that the capacity to keep physical distance is both influenced by the lack of private infrastructure and population density. We compute the PDI for 34 African countries as well as for 519 first-level subnational regions. Moreover, based onBayesian distributional regression,the PDI is computed at the pixel level (grid size of 55km) for specific countries.

The proposed index complements existing indices that have attempted to measure a countrys capacity to respond to an infectious disease outbreak. Most existing indices focus on measuring the overall capacity of the countrys health and governance system to detect and respond rather than on households capabilities to prevent the spread of an infectious disease through physical distancing. For example, one attempt to measure the preparedness of a countrys health system to deal with an infectious diseaseoutbreak is the monitoring of the International Health Regulations (IHR) by the WHO25. The aggregated index to monitor progress in a countrys health system was introduced in 2010 and is based on 13 different capacity dimensions: (1) legislation and financing; (2) IHR coordination and national IHR focal point functions; (3) zoonotic event and the human-animal interface; (4) food safety; (5) laboratory; (6) surveillance; (7) human resources; (8) national health emergency framework; (9) health service provisions; (10) risk communication; (11) points of entry; (12) chemical events; and (13) radiation emergencies. The most recent data from the year 2018 show a global improvement across all 13 IHR capacity dimensions. However, countries in Africa lag behind most other countries in the world25. A second index to analyze the vulnerability of countries with respect to infectious disease outbreaks is the Infectious Disease Vulnerability Index, developed by the RAND Corporation. The aggregated index is based on seven dimensions of factors influencing a countrys vulnerability to infectious diseases: (1) demographic; (2) health care; (3) public health; (4) disease dynamics; (5) political-domestic; (6) political-international; and (7) economic26. The estimates of the index in 2016 show that of the 25 most vulnerable countries, 22 are in Africa (the other three are Afghanistan, Haiti, and Yemen). Particular disease hotspots are identified in West Africa, and the authors of the study point to a dangerous mix of political instability and limited capacity of health systems in countries such as Somalia, Central African Republic, and South Sudan26.

The results of these two indices are limited to country-level aggregates and provide no within-country variation. Although estimates at the country level are useful for international and inter-temporal comparisons, they do not provide any information on within-country heterogeneity in preparedness to contain a disease. At the subnational level, where differences in policies and behavior within a country are less severe than across countries, a subnational PDI can be used for a more precise monitoring and targeting of outbreaks of infectious diseases. Moreover, the two indices provide no estimate on how the spread of infectious viruses, for example of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants, can be contained through physical distancing practiced by the general public. Here, Brown et al.29 provide a first attempt, but our approach differs in four fundamental dimensions. First, Brown et al. study different indicators: (1) household has access to internet, phone, TV, or radio; (2) no more than two people per sleeping room; (3) household has access to a private toilet; (4) household has a dwelling that can be closed; (5) household has access to piped water; and (6) household has a place for handwashing. We focus on indicators that are more directly linked to social interaction: for example, whether a household has a TV or a place for handwashing says little about social interaction. Second, we exploit the availability of geo-referenced information in the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to provide new insights about the capability to physical distance at the subnational level, whereas Brown et al. only aggregate at the national level. Geo-referenced data can help to identify potential diseases hotspots within a country for better policy targeting. Third, Brown et al. use a simple country average of their indicators to calculate their index. Although this is a straightforward approach, it also implies an arbitrary weighting scheme where one has to assume that, for example, access to a TV has the same informative power as sharing a room in explaining the capacities of households to protect themselves from getting infected. We employ the PCA method to avoid the equal weighting assumption, which is a commonly used approach in the empirical literature. The PCA is a more data-driven approach and combines the variation of all included variables in the index. Fourth, we take into account population density, which we argue is critical in studying the capabilities of households to physically distance, as higher population density is associated with higher infection risk when private infrastructure is lacking (see also Fig.3). As a result of all these differences, the correlation between the home environment for protection index (HEP) and our PDI is very low (=0.2, see also Fig.5), also resulting in a different ranking of countries with respect to their capability to distance physically.

While our results show some similarities to the results of existing indices that measure the functioning of a countrys health system and the vulnerability of countries with respect to infectious disease outbreaks, our results also show some interesting differences. For example, Ghana and Senegal are, relative to other African countries, ranked high in the existing indices; however, due to their high population density and limited private infrastructure, the risk of disease transmission is still high. Furthermore, some countries even show a double burden of a high PDI (very limited capability to keep physical distance) and a low capacity of the health system to deal with an outbreak of an infectious disease, such as Benin, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

Figure1 depicts the results of the geospatial estimates of the population weighted PDI at the country and regional level for all 34 countries in Africa for which we have data. A higher index value and darker color represent a lower capability to physical distance, and hence, a higher risk of disease transmission. The corresponding country average values for each indicator of the PDI as well as the normalized index value are presented in Supplementary Table2.1. Moreover, Supplementary Fig.1.2 shows the population density at the country and regional level and disaggregated at the pixel level. As expected, countries with a high population density show an increase in the index (or a decrease in the capability for physical distancing) when adjusting by population density.

Country (a) and regional (b) level PDI. The panel depicts the capabilities of households to follow social distancing measures based on a simple multidimensional measure calculated based on (1) number of households sharing toilet facilities, (2) usage of public water source, (3) persons per room, (4) no access to ICT, (5) bicycle or other vehicle is not present, based on a PCA. The estimates are normalized between zero and one. Source: DHS and Center for International Earth Science Information NetworkCIESINColumbia University52; calculations by the authors.

We find considerable heterogeneity in the PDI across Africa. High-risk areas of disease transmission are particularly concentrated in the western part of Africa, such as Ghana, The Gambia, Togo, Sierra Leone, Benin, Liberia, Senegal, and Cte dIvoire. A relatively high population density (for example Ghana, The Gambia, and Togo had population densities between 121 and 200 people per km2 in 2015), coupled with limited infrastructure for physical distancing, could make these countries highly susceptible to infectious diseases that are transmitted through droplets. Countries with lower population densities and relatively better essential private infrastructure, such as Namibia, Gabon, Mozambique, and South Africa, show (relative to other countries in Africa) a lower PDI. Figure1 also shows that countries such as Niger and Chad, despite facing a severe lack of infrastructure, might still face slower transmission rates compared to countries with an equally severe infrastructural challenge, such as Liberia or Ghana, due to lower population densities. The interpretation of the geospatial estimates need to be made in relation to other African countries. For example, although South Africa shows a much brighter color in Fig.1, this does not mean that South Africa has all the infrastructure in place for people to keep distance, in particular in socio-economically deprived and marginalized settings. Moreover, even if such infrastructure is in place, it does not mean that people necessarily follow physical distancing recommendations32.

More interestingly, Fig.1 (right panel) also reveals considerable spatial heterogeneity of high-risk areas within countries. Whereas some countries show a relatively consistent risk pattern, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ethiopia, other countries reveal hotspots within countries that are hidden in the estimates of the national average. For example, western Kenya is a very high-risk region (Kisumu, Mombasa, and Nairobi), as is southern/central Cte dIvoire (Abidjan, Bas-Sassandra, and Yamoussoukro), north-western Tanzania (Geita, Shinyanga, Simiyu, and Tabora), or north-east South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng). Hence, although country-level estimates are useful for international or inter-temporal comparison, they mask important differences in the risk of disease transmission due to lack of infrastructure at lower administrative levels. This is pivotal to prioritizing national interventions, such as increased testing efforts or vaccination campaigns in the most vulnerable regions of countries.

Figure2 shows the results of the Bayesian regression at the pixel level for Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa, four countries with some of the highest numbers of SARS-CoV-2 cases in Africa registered as of August, 2021. These countries are ranked amongst the least (South Africa), the middle (Ethiopia and Kenya) and the most (Ghana) challenging in the infrastructure-based PDI. For all countries, subnational heterogeneity is high and high-risk areas exist in all countries where people cannot protect themselves by keeping distance and are, hence, highly susceptible to the spread of infectious diseases by droplets. Moreover, in these areas lockdowns of public life will be difficult to enforce as people will have to leave the house not only to buy food and access health services, but also to access other public infrastructure.

Estimates of the PDI at pixel level (55km) for Ghana (a); Ethiopia (b); Kenya (c) and South Africa (d). Source: DHS and Center for International Earth Science Information NetworkCIESINColumbia University52; calculations by the authors.

To assess whether the PDI indeed hints to potential hotspots of disease transmission, we checked all countries in our sample to see if data on reported COVID-19 cases is available at the subnational level, and identified nine countries with subnational regional information. The countries are: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, and Togo. Figure3 illustrates the close association between the PDI and number of COVID-19 cases for South Africa. The comparisons of PDI and COVID-19 confirmed cases for the other eight countries are shown in Supplementary Figs.1.3 and 1.4. The correlation coefficient between the PDI and COVID-19 cases for all nine countries ranges from 0.4 to 0.9, pointing to an overall close association between our PDI index and the observed regional caseload. This simple ex-post comparison provides evidence about the predictive power of the PDI to identify potential disease hotspotswithin countries.

Population weighted PDI (a), and observed cumulative caseload (b) at the regional level for South Africa. Note that we used the latest available information on the aggregated regional caseload. Source: Information on the regional caseload for South Africa is publicly available data which we are happy to share upon request and DHS; calculations by the authors.

A closer analysis of the different indicators entering the PDI (see Fig.4) helps to explain the occurrence of hotspots and provides guidance to countries where infrastructure investments are most needed. Different countries face different challenges. For example, Ghana and Liberia have severe private sanitation constraints, Rwanda and Burundi face severe private water infrastructure constraints, The Gambia and Senegal show more crowded housing, and the populations of Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, do not have access to private communication or transportation. Across the African continent, 45% of households share toilets. On average, households share toilets with two other households, but the average number ranges from 1.32 households in Mozambique to 6.17 households in Ghana. To expect these households not to meet other people on a regular basis is simply unrealistic. The average number of people per room is 3.2, showing the difficulties of households and families to effectively isolate if a household member becomes sick. In Senegal and The Gambia this number goes up to five people sharing the same room for sleeping. Shared sanitation and sharing a room with many other household members are the two indicators with the highest weight in the PCA (see Supplementary Fig.1.7), meaning that regions and countries that show severe infrastructure constraints in access to a private sanitation facility and private room show the highest PDI values. For 40% of the households in our sample, the only access to water is from a public water source; these households need to leave their house to gather water, which increases the risk of infection. The share of households that do not own a mobile phone ranges from 56% in Madagascar to 3% in Senegal. Similarly, the share of households that own a bicycle, motorbike or car ranges from 5% in Ethiopia to 94% in Burkina Faso, againemphasizing the high heterogeneity between countries.

The figure shows the shares at the regional level from top left to bottom right: (a) number of households sharing sanitation facilities, (b) number of people per room, (c) share of households using open and public water sources, (d) share of households without a mobile phone, e share of households with no bike, car or motorbike, and (f) population density (people per km2) estimates for 2020. Source: DHS, and Center for International Earth Science Information NetworkCIESINColumbia University52; calculations by the authors.

Comparing the results of the PDI to other indices that measure a countrys vulnerability to a pandemic outbreak or the general ability of a health system to deal with an outbreak shows a weak correlation between the indices in general (see Fig.5). Countries such as Benin, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Togo have both weak health systems to deal with a sudden outbreak of an infectious disease, as well as a lack of essential private infrastructuresuch as access to private water, toilets, transportation, ICT, and spacethat undermine measures aimed at slowing the spread of a pandemic. Countries like Ghana face severe infrastructural constraints to slow down the spread of a pandemic such as COVID-19, but have the capacity of the national health system to respond to it. Countries like Rwanda, South Africa, and Namibia have both a functioning health system to respond, and access to essential private infrastructure to facilitate COVID-19 prevention measures. Case numbers in South Africa have still been the highest in Africa, which shows that infrastructure is not sufficient and countries heavily depend on their people to adhere to public health measures, such as physical distancing32. The high general caseload in South Africa can also be seen as a reflection of the high number of tests relative to other countries in Africa11,12, the higher importation risk of COVID-1928, and the older population33. Hence, the PDI does not, on its own, provide any predictions about outbreaks on the national level but can help to identify regions within a country where infectious diseases might spread faster once they enter these regions (see Fig.3 and Supplementary Figs.1.3 and1.4). Last, we observe only a weak negative association between the PDI and per capita GDP (Fig.5), indicating that economically more advanced countries have a lower risk of disease transmission. However, the relationship seems to be non-linear and, particularly for poorer countries, heterogeneity seems to be high. This means that despite being poor, some countries have managed to provide basic essential infrastructure, which helps to protect their populations and improves their livelihoods. This argument is further emphasized by Supplementary Fig.1.5, which plots the PDI against the regional poverty headcount rate at the first administrative level for countries with available data, indicating that simply targeting poor regionswith intensified COVID-19 prevention measures is not sufficient.

Scatter plot of the PDI (using the latest available Demographic Health Survey of a country) against the infectious disease vulnerability index (a)26; the WHO international health regulations index (b)25; the home environment for protection index (c)29; and the country's GDP (d)2. Note that a high PDI implies a lack of essential private infrastructure, and hence, high risk of disease transmission; accordingly, countries in the top of boxes have a lack of private infrastructure, and hence, lack the capacity to limit disease transmission. Moreover, note that for the infectious disease vulnerability index, the WHO international health regulations index, and the home environment for protection index, a higher value indicates a better preparedness, or protection. In addition, ISO-3 country codes are used to abbreviate the countries in this figure. See Supplementary Table2.1 for details on the ISO-3 country code. Source: DHS, Moore et al.26, Gilbert et al.28, and World Development Indicators2; calculations by the authors.

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An index of access to essential infrastructure to identify where physical distancing is impossible - Nature.com

Human Behavior

Commencement address to Class of 2022 by Reed Hastings | Stanford News – Stanford University News

Thank you and welcome to the graduates, your friends and families, and all the faculty and staff who work so hard to help you flourish.

When you invited me to be your commencement speaker, my first thought was, Why me? And then it hit me: Netflix recommendations. You want to know what to watch tonight. Two tips. Weve got a great new movie called Hustle about breaking into the NBA, and a series called Heartstopper, a British high-school romance. Most importantly, both are safe to watch with your parents this weekend.

Now that weve got the important business over with, Id like to talk for a few minutes about societal change, and where it comes from.

The changes to the world since Stanford was founded are breathtaking. The change rate over the rest of your lives will be exponentially higher, creating opportunity as well as risk for you and humanity. As the world speeds up, will our wax wings melt? Or will we bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice? To find answers, lets look to the past.

It seems to me the two most powerful drivers of human progress have been inventions and stories.

Inventions meaning broadly all of science and technology are the most obvious way society moves forward. Think about the agricultural hoe, the wheel, the printing press, electricity, the discovery of DNA, or the Internet. Positive inventions large and small have improved our lives enormously. Of course, there are also negative and dangerous inventions, like chemical weapons, but for the most part, inventions give us more light.

Ive always been drawn to inventions although in my case, the results have been mixed.

When I was a grad student here 35 years ago, everyone used desktop computers. Laptops hadnt been invented yet. The problem was that, on a desktop, your hand had to go back and forth between the keyboard and mouse, which was really inefficient. Luckily, the solution was clear, at least to me: the foot mouse.

With the foot mouse, you could type and point at the same time like playing the piano. I liked the idea so much that I almost dropped out of Stanford to build The Foot Mouse Company. Luckily, the early prototypes saved me. First, it turns out your leg cramps after 20 or 30 minutes using a foot mouse. And second, floors are pretty dirty, and the mouse gets quite gross after a few days.

So, like you, I decided to stay and graduate. I didnt give up on new ideas, and 10 years after discarding the foot mouse, we created Netflix. At first we had to mail a lot of DVDs, but eventually streaming improved to the point where we could deliver movies in seconds instead of days and our business really took off, allowing us to expand into making our own content like Stranger Things and Squid Game.

I know many of you will invent all kinds of things from personal drones to whisk you about, to robots with a sense of humor, to cures for hangovers. But I really hope many of you focus on an area that urgently needs your attention: climate change.

A lot of the conversation around climate change is around reducing emissions in the rich world, which we need to do to slow down the rate of change and buy us time. But ultimately, using less of everything only delays disaster, it doesnt prevent disaster.

Moreover, people in poverty around the world want and deserve more energy and steel and concrete to improve their lives, all of which today generates large amounts of CO2. The looming crisis can feel overwhelming, but Im confident your generation will invent our way out of the greenhouse.

We need better electricity storage and transmission for intermittent solar and wind. And safe, cost-effective nuclear energy. And green cement and steel. And carbon capture technology. And other solutions no one has dreamed of yet. Green solutions need to be better solutions than their carbon-intensive predecessors just like electric cars are now better than gasoline cars. There are thousands of inventors in this University, and the world needs you all.

Two hundred years ago Malthus predicted mass starvation as our population grew. However, we invented mechanized farming, hybrid seeds, fertilizers and more. While our current world has many problems with 10 times more people than in Malthus day, food production is not one of those problems. When faced with a galvanizing crisis like mass starvation 200 years ago, or climate change today, we humans invent our way out of the crisis.

Being in Silicon Valley you are already very aware of the power of invention. The power of story, however, may be less obvious.

You all know the many stories that have changed the way people see the world from Silent Spring to Animal Farm to perhaps Dont Look Up. But today Im talking about the broader notion of a story: creative ideas that we mostly accept as fact, and that have helped us cooperate at great scale to move humanity forward.

When eye-for-an-eye in the Old Testament gave way to turn-the-other-cheek in the New Testament, it was a moral advance and a path to reduced violence.

An old story was that government leaders derived their legitimacy by being descended from the prior king. Over time, the story became that the government derived its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. That story shift gave rise to the American, French, and countless other revolutions against monarchy. And the story has continued to evolve. For example, the civil rights movement expanded the idea that all members of society deserve to have their voices heard.

As historian Yuval Harari points out, money, corporations, countries, law, and many other aspects of modern life are actually just widely accepted stories. This dollar bill is not very useful as a piece of paper for eating or burning. Yet we accept it as having value, so it does. Humans are very adept at turning useful stories into accepted facts.

Think about human rights. The more people believe that humans have rights, the more rights humans have. We are working to expand the universe of human rights that are widely accepted as fact.

These are good stories, constructive stories. But like with inventions, the wrong stories can be incredibly destructive.

For several centuries, it was very profitable for white society to evangelize the story that Black people were subhuman and therefore could be enslaved. Nazism and the idea of the innate superiority of the Aryan people is a more recent falsehood which also led to untold human suffering. Recovering from these evil stories is a multi-generational effort.

Thats why any story we hear especially when widely accepted should trigger something else: doubt. Take time every day to examine different beliefs, and stay skeptical. Doubt is an essential counterbalance to story, and one we should keep developing as we struggle to become more independent thinkers and better human beings.

My heartbreak is two stories in particular that my generation failed to fully develop, which is why Im passing the baton to all of you. Theyre about equality and interdependence.

When Karl Marx rejected the exploitative factories of the 1800s, his story was about replacing the bosses with a dictatorship of the proletariat, power to the people! Unfortunately, we came to learn that dictatorships of any flavor stifle human flourishing. We need a new story around equality, something beyond Margaret Thatcher and Karl Marx, that bonds together the very lucky and less lucky.

By very lucky, I mean those born beautiful, healthy, athletic, intelligent, empathetic; those born in peaceful countries to caring parents and those who got bedtime stories read to them every night. Many of you, like me, have won several of these lotteries, and also have worked hard to build on that luck. So what is the duty of the more lucky to the less lucky? In the natural world, it is zero. The lion feels no obligation towards the lamb. And the human world isnt much different. In the United States, we tell ourselves a story about rugged individualism, which encourages people to work hard and to keep what they produce, without the obligation to share much with others around the world. My generation did not find a new story that provides the moral backbone to an era of common prosperity for both the very lucky and less lucky. I hope you find such a story, which changes human behavior toward each other.

Another story my generation had only partial success in is interdependence for preventing war.

For almost a thousand years, major European countries fought each other virtually nonstop. Then, after World War II, European leaders said never again. They worked to tie countries like Germany and France together economically the basic idea behind the European Union. And it worked. Today, the EU isnt perfect, but it has succeeded in avoiding war in the core of Europe for the first time in history. The story of European identity is a huge success. France and Britain may squabble in football, but its not the 100 Years War of the 1400s.

Now, on a global scale, this story fell flat. Leaders in my generation have been working to economically knit the whole world together through trade, so that war between any two countries would be unthinkable. We were this close [pinch fingers] to giving you a peaceful interdependent world, but as weve seen with Russias invasion of Ukraine, we failed, and now the world is decoupling into hostile blocks.

Our story about how globalization inhibits war wasnt good enough. Thats why its up to your generation to come up with a better story about the connection between countries one that is more powerful, and more heartfelt, than globalization a story that ends war.

Inventions and stories. One is about harnessing the natural world; the other is about harnessing the human spirit. One is about generating more power and prosperity; the other is about generating large scale human cooperation. Both are avenues for progress.

Now, at this point some of you are probably thinking, This is all well and good, but I need some downtime. Ive just spent four years working my butt off. Cant I get a little time to Netflix and chill before I have to go out and save the world?

The answer, of course, is yes which brings me to my final point.

We all know the story about the tortoise and the hare. Some of you will leave here today and be hares getting your first jobs at Bain and Google and Goldman, curing your first disease or making your first billion by the time youre 30. I hope you stay grounded with all that early success.

Others of you will be tortoises and start out slow. Maybe your path wont be clear, or youll keep starting over in different areas. Maybe youll fail at some things. Youll read the class notes five years in, and wonder about yourself for not doing as well as your classmates, and then youll chastise yourself for thinking that way. Please, if youre a tortoise, embrace it. Collect experiences and wisdom that will serve you later on. Applaud your hare friends and their successes, but dont let it bother you. When you are older, you will love each other more if you accept each others unique paths now.

I was more tortoise than hare. I didnt have my first romance until I was 20. After undergrad, I taught high school math for a few years in the kingdom of Eswatini. And when I eventually made it to grad school at Stanford, I was far behind my classmates and I wondered why I had spent so much time in Africa. In hindsight, the challenges I faced as a teacher gave me the resilience and empathy to be a better CEO.

I didnt start Netflix until I was 37.

I didnt figure out the value of real honesty until marriage counseling made me realize that I often said one thing but did another. Fortunately, I learned, and Patty and I are celebrating our 31st anniversary this summer.

My point is that if youre a tortoise emotionally, economically, intellectually, artistically, or otherwise dont despair. You have the rest of your life to create the inventions and the stories that the world needs.

Michelangelo talked about releasing a statue from a block of marble, as if the statue had its own destiny and he was simply its handmaid. I think of ideas in the same way they have their own destiny, and our job as handmaids is to help these ideas burst out of their marble block.

Graduates, carve your own marble until you release the invention or story that is yearning to breathe. I know you can do it, because you grew up on the Farm.

Thank you, Class of 2022!

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Commencement address to Class of 2022 by Reed Hastings | Stanford News - Stanford University News

Human Behavior

Five new studies shed light on the eating behaviors and diets of teens, young adults – News-Medical.Net

The developmental changes and growing independence that characterize adolescence and young adulthood can make these stages of life both exciting and challenging. New studies presented at NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE shed light on the eating behaviors and diets of teens and young adults around the world.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health found a link between food insecurity and weight loss attempts during early adolescence. The researchers analyzed data from almost 7,000 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten class of 1998-99. The study assessed food insecurity in kindergarten and third, fifth and eighth grades, revealing that 4% of the study participants had experienced food insecurity at three or more assessed timepoints. After adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, the researchers found that the children who experienced food insecurity at three or four timepoints were more likely to have attempted to lose weight compared to food secure children. Recently becoming food insecure was also associated with higher prevalence of weight loss attempts.

Mikayla Barry will present this research on-demand starting at noon on Tuesday, June 14, during NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE (abstract; presentation details).

New Mexico State University researchers surveyed 120 college students during the 2020-2021 school year to assess whether alcohol consumption was associated with eating behaviors used to avoid weight gain or deliberate attempts to control eating. They found that drinking alcohol was associated with skipping meals to make up for calories consumed from alcohol, eating less to get more drunk and exercising more to make up for calories from alcohol. There was also an association between drinking alcohol and consuming low-calorie or fat-free foods, taking laxatives, or self-induced vomiting to compensate for calories consumed while drinking alcohol. These new findings could help inform policies and program related to alcohol consumption on campus.

Shadai Martin will present this research on-demand starting at noon on Tuesday, June 14, during NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE (abstract; presentation details).

People with food addiction compulsively overeat and have frequent episodes of binge eating. An observational study from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development examined whether food addiction was associated with weight perception and certain eating behaviors in more than 2,000 young adult participants in the NEXT Generation Health Study. The analysis revealed that study participants with food addiction were more likely to perceive themselves as overweight, have attempted weight loss, or report a maladaptive eating behavior such as such as self-induced vomiting, laxative use and use of diet pills. Based on these findings, the researchers say that it may be important to consider food addiction when treating and managing young adults with multiple problematic eating behaviors.

Leah Lipsky will present this research on-demand starting at noon on Tuesday, June 14, during NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE (abstract; presentation details).

Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus report an association between drinking sugar-sweetened beverages and higher triglyceride (lipid) levels in youth. The new findings come from an analysis of data from almost 600 children assessed at ages 10 and 16 as part of the multi-ethnic EPOCH Study based in Colorado. The researchers found that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages during childhood was associated with higher triglycerides across childhood and adolescence, which may reflect sugar-induced disruptions in lipid metabolism. They also identified a panel of intermediary lipid metabolites, assessed using untargeted metabolomics, which may link the sugar sweetened beverage consumption to higher triglycerides and offer insights into potential mechanisms at work in this association.

Catherine Cioffi Cohen will present this research on-demand starting at noon on Tuesday, June 14, during NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE (abstract; presentation details).

A George Mason University study examined elevated blood pressure in primary school children between 10 and 12 years old in Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya. The researchers selected three public schools that catered to children from households of low, medium and high socio-economic status to participate in the study in each city. They found that more than 20% of the children had pre-hypertension and 14% had hypertension, meaning that more than a third of the children exhibited elevated blood pressure. Overweight and obese children were significantly more likely to have high blood pressure and hypertension compared to children whose body mass index was in the healthy range. Children who consumed high amounts of fries or potato chips were also significantly more likely to have elevated blood pressure compared to children who consumed lower amounts.

Constance A. Gewa will present this research on-demand starting at noon on Tuesday, June 14, during NUTRITION 2022 LIVE ONLINE (abstract; presentation details).

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Five new studies shed light on the eating behaviors and diets of teens, young adults - News-Medical.Net

Human Behavior

Ethereum Capitulation Imminent As ETH Follows 2018 Market Structure: Crypto Analyst Kevin Svenson – The Daily Hodl

A closely tracked crypto analyst is predicting the imminent collapse of Ethereum as he says ETH appears to be closely mirroring its 2018 market structure.

Kevin Svenson tells his 107,800 Twitter followers that Ethereum recently breached its long-term diagonal support that has kept the market bullish for about a year.

According to Svenson, the bearish move is reminiscent of Ethereums price action in 2018 when it also took out its upward trendline and lost nearly 80% of its value in just a few months.

This ETH fractal is playing out.

At time of writing, Ethereum is changing hands for $1,358, down nearly 10% in the past day.

With Ethereum now trading below its previous cycle high of $1,420, Svenson believes that ETH, Bitcoin (BTC) and the rest of the crypto markets could witness an extended bear market.

ETH, BTC and crypto, in general, could easily see another 140 days +/- of sideways bear market action.

This is standard in these conditions.

Using the 128-week simple moving average and [the] 50-week exponential moving average as a comparison from the previous cycle for a rough estimate.

Human behavior doesnt repeat but it rhymes Look how much time we spent below the (orange)128-week simple moving average in the last cycle. Even if we just did half of that means we got at least a year to spend in consolidation.

As for Bitcoin, Svenson says BTC is still in a long-term uptrend despite the bearish price action over the last few months.

Bitcoins macro trend situation still looks good. If you are looking at this from a trend/growth perspective we are making progress.

Looking at Svensons chart, BTC appears to be trading within a descending channel with a long-term support line at around $20,000.

At time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $25,813, down over 8% in the past day.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/jovan vitanovski

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Ethereum Capitulation Imminent As ETH Follows 2018 Market Structure: Crypto Analyst Kevin Svenson - The Daily Hodl

Human Behavior

How Humanlike Do We Really Want Robots to Be? – Smithsonian Magazine

A robotic finger coated with living human skin heals itself after researchers covered it with a collagen bandage. Shoji Takeuchi

From the Six Million Dollar Man to RoboCop to the Terminator, Hollywood has produced a pantheon of memorable cyborgs. These hybrids tried to destroy society, or save it, according to their own goals. But they fascinate for the same reason; they blurred the lines between humans and robots in ways that have never happened in our historybut just might be part of our future.

Fully functional cyborgs are still quite aways off, but scientists are pioneering a new way to commingle human and machine. A Japanese team has designed a robotic finger thats covered with living skin grown from actual human skin cells. The process gives the robotic appendage an extremely lifelike look, not least because the skin can move and flex naturally as the three-joint digit does. To the touch, the skin also feels far more like human skin than silicone robot skins, and can even heal when cut or split. Covering a single finger is a far cry from cloaking an entire humanoid robot in artificially produced human skin. But the groundbreaking proof of concept, detailed in a study published today in Matter, raises some incredible possibilities.

Shoji Takeuchi, an engineer specializing in biohybrid systems at the University of Tokyo, Japan, says that while some silicone-skinned robots look very human at some distance, close inspection reveals them to be artificial. Thats why his team turned to biohybrid robotics. Our goal is to develop robots that are truly human-like, he says. We think that the only way to achieve an appearance that can be mistaken for a human being is to cover it with the same material as a human beingliving skin cells.

To create the lifelike appendage, Takeuchi and colleagues crafted a kind of skin-tissue cocktail, and then molded the material around the artificial finger to produce seamless and natural looking coverage.

Application of the skin was a two-part process. The team first mixed collagen and human dermal fibroblasts, the two main ingredients in our skins connective tissues. The finger was submerged in this solution, and while culturing in an incubator for three days, this artificial dermis adhered to the digit as the tissues naturally shrank to produce a solid, close-fitting coating over the finger. This coating served as a foundation for the molding and application of a second coat, an epidermis, made up of the same human skin cells that comprise some 90 percent of our own skins outer layer. The second solution was poured on the finger multiple times, from different angles, and left to culture for two weeks to produce the finished product.

The resulting skin has a human-like texture, and when split or cut it can be healed by the application of a collagen bandage which gradually became part of the skin itselfa technique inspired by the use of hydrogel grafts to treat severe burns.

The robot skin was created with commercially available experimental human skin cells. Research on mass production is being actively conducted in other fields such as regenerative medicine and cultured meat research, Takeuchi says, adding that ongoing skin production research in those areas will help his own work on clothing robots in human skin.

Other advances in the production of skin that might be applied to robots have involved creating sheets of living human skin, which then have to be cut and tailored to the various shapes of a body. Researchers at Caltech recently unveiled a printable artificial skin, made of soft hydrogel, embedded with sensors that can detect pressure, temperature or even dangerous chemicals. But it may be difficult to conform printed skin to the unique shapes of human anatomy, like a finger or a hand. Takeuchis method creates a form fit without the need for such efforts.

The product is also still a lot weaker than our own skin, Takeuchi notes, and so far it must be constantly tended to in order to survive. To maintain it for a long period of time, it needs a system that has a vascular-like structure inside that provides a constant supply of nutrients, he explains. To solve the problem the team is mulling over how to mimic blood vessels and the equivalent of sweat glands to help deliver water to the skin.

Of course, appearance isnt everything. Humans dont just see one anothers skin, they touch it, and the living skin provides a much more natural feel than silicone.

Maria Paola Paladino, who has studied human attitudes towards robots at the University of Trento, Italy, points out that a lot of scientific literature exists on touch and its impact in building relationships and well-being. There is research suggesting for example that if someone touches you, in a way youre receptive to, you become kinder towards this person, she says. If you touch this robot skin, will you be able to feel a human touch? In terms of human experience that could be really interesting.

The robots own sense of touch is another key feature that must be developed if robots are to interact more naturally, and safely, as they become a more common part of our everyday human environment. Scientists have tried various electronic sensors and other methods to create the sense of touch in robots. For his own finger experiment, Takeuchi plans to explore reproducing a natural nerve system to instill a sense of touch in the skin.

Robots have sparked a lot of debate about the future of artificial intelligence. Just how smart do we want robots to become, some ask, and what are the implications? Similar questions are raised when it comes to the appearances of intelligent machinesjust how human do we want robots to look?

Human reactions to robots vary. A study from the Georgia Institute of Technology found that most college-aged adults preferred their robots to look like robots, while older adults preferred those with more human faces. A given robots role is also a factor. Most individuals in the study preferred housecleaning robots to look more like machines, for example, while those communicating with us and performing smart tasks like giving information, were preferred to look more like us.

Increasingly, well be interacting meaningfully with social robots in our daily lives. (Robots can already check you into a hotel, lead you through a workout, or conduct your funeral.) And some very humanlike robots are already among us, including Hanson Robotics Sofia, which boasts its own social media accounts. Founder David Hanson expounds on the benefits of making machines much like ourselves. In designing human-inspired robotics, we hold our machines to the highest standards we knowhumanlike robots being the apex of bio-inspired engineering, writes in IEEE Spectrum, a technology publication.

Neuroscience studies have delved into human feelings for robots, and found our empathy for them when they are treated harshly isnt yet on the same level as what we feel for other humans. We view robots as less than human, so making them more humanlike may strengthen our relationships. That might be useful as robots are increasingly socially tasked with things like caregiving or dispensing important information and advice.

On the other hand, there are some very good examples of humanoids, like NAO, where its clearly a machine but its cute and people really like it, says Paladino. Hollywood robots like R2-D2 and WALL-E have also engendered legions of fans without looking all that much like humans. (The Smithsonian museums are home to their own group of humanoid robots, four-foot-tall guides known as the Pepper robots, which engage visitors by dishing out information and answering questions.)

Part of the debate about robot appearance revolves around the concept of the uncanny valley, an idea floated by roboticist Masahiro Mori back in 1970 that also applies to creepy dolls. Mori suggests that as robots become more lifelike humans respond favorablyup until a point when the exact opposite becomes true. When they become too lifelike, the theory goes, the subtle but noticeable inhuman attributes become especially eerie and disturbing to humans who notice that something isnt quite right. Disagreement on how to quantify the uncanny valley, or to the extent it even exists, continues in earnest.

Paladino has studied human reactions and attitudes to social robots that look increasingly like ourselves. She describes our evolving relationship to such robots as a paradox. On one hand, humans want social robots to be human enough in appearance and behavior to fulfill our relationship needs. On the other hand, robots that are too human can threaten our sense of human identity and uniquenessa fear that might be fueled by cognitive systems that arent accustomed to confusing blurred boundaries between human and machine.

If you have machines that are too similar to us, you start to have this blurring of human identity and people can be threatened by that, she says. If they are as human as I am, then what does it mean to be human?

Another question may lie near the core of such doubts, 'can we ever really trust robots?' Right now, perhaps in part because of Hollywood creations like the Terminator and Number Six, some individuals remain very wary. Paladino believes that our relationship and attitudes towards robots will continue to evolve, for better or worse, as humans have more and more experiences with intelligent machines. In that way, the robots we produce will really shape our attitudes towards them. What social psychology teaches us, she says, is that humans can change their minds.

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How Humanlike Do We Really Want Robots to Be? - Smithsonian Magazine

Human Behavior

Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior – Next Big Idea Club Magazine

Moshe Hoffman is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and a research fellow at MITs Sloan School of Management. Erez Yoeli is a research scientist at MITs Sloan School of Management, the director of MITs Applied Cooperation Team. They both lecture in Harvards department of economics.

Below, Moshe and Erez share 5 key insights from their new book, Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior. Listen to the audio versionread by Moshe and Erez themselvesin the Next Big Idea App.

Just take our sense of aesthetics. In some places in the world, its common for men to grow long fingernails, especially long pinky nails. Now, to most of us, men with long fingernails arent so attractive, yet when we asked the men why they grow long fingernails, they said it was because they find them beautiful.

Heres another example of our strange sense of aesthetics: The complex rhyme schemes of rapper MF Doom. His intricate verses pose two puzzles. First, theres something kind of funny about the fact that an entire art form grows up around an artificial constraint like rhyming that, in fact, makes it pretty hard to communicate. Think about how much harder it would be to tell a family member or a friend how your day went if you had to rhyme almost every word with another word. Second, MF Dooms rhymes are so subtle that the average listener is likely to miss them. This begs the question: Why is art so often subtle, and prized for that subtlety?

Another thing that makes people weird is our sense of altruism. You might know that Americans are very generous, donating roughly 3 percent of GDP to charity each year. Thats as much as we devote to R&D. Yet when we give, we tend to do it in odd ways. In surveys, most people admit that they dont even check how good a charity is before giving to it. So why do we giveand why do we give so ineffectively?

Proximate explanations are explanations that rely on what we think or feel. If you ask an MF Doom fan why they like the rappers complex rhyming schemes, the fan will probably tell you, I like that beat, or I like how that sounded, or I like the way that rhyme flowed over the bar. That doesnt explain why they like those beats or rhyming schemes.

If you ask a volunteer at a charity why they wanted to support that particular organization, they may tell you, It helps me feel connected or It helps to build a global community. But again, that doesnt explain why it makes them feel connected, or why they care so much about building a global community.

To understand why people are so weird, we have to go beyond the proximateand game theory helps us do just that.

At its core, a game just has three parts. There are players who choose from some actions and they get payoffs. It really is that simple. To make this game theory, though, we have to add two more things. First, those payoffs are going to depend not just on the players choice, but also on what others are doing. Second, there needs to be some sense that the players make their choice optimally. Thats it. Thats game theory in a nutshell.

Traditionally, game theory has been used to try to understand the behavior of companies (like, say, when theyre merging, what might happen to prices), the behavior of bidders in an auction (how changing the rules might change their bids and the amount of revenue that the auctioneer receives), or for statecraft (a famous application of game theory is to nuclear brinkmanship).

Game theory can help us make sense of some counterintuitive stuff. For instance, you might have heard of the Dutch tulip mania of the 1600s. During this time, a single tulip bulb could cost as much as hundreds of pounds of cheese. Yet in some auctions, if nobody bid high enough for the bulb, then the auctioneer would just crush it. Thats nuts! Why not simply let the price drop further, or try selling it again later? Game theory teaches us that at least in certain circumstances, destroying the bulb can increase the expected revenue from the auction.

Game theory often yields weird results like this, which is what gives it its power to explain all sorts of otherwise puzzling behaviors. Thats what makes game theory so powerful.

You may have read books like Richard Dawkinss The Selfish Gene, which use game theory to explain a variety of puzzling animal behaviors and traits. Game theory has been used to address why in some species the ratio between males and females at birth is 5050. Then theres the hawk-dove model, which people use to talk about animal territoriality. Or consider the costly signaling model to talk about peacocks tailswhy would any creature evolve such an absurd tail? That was a question that Darwin said made him feel sick because he couldnt understand it.

Of course, these kinds of answers have nothing to do with rationality. All we need is for there to be some kind of optimization going on. And in these cases, biological evolution is doing that optimization.

Another way we optimize is cultural evolutionthe idea that our tastes and beliefs are shaped by learning through experience or socially from others. This kind of argument has been used to explain why people in some cultures develop a taste for spicy foods, or why Native Americans develop a taste for corn thats cooked with a bit of ash or lime, or why people start to believe in certain food taboos that keep them from ingesting dangerous toxins during pregnancy.

Game theory doesnt require rationality, just some optimization process.

Remember those men who grow long fingernails because they think long nails are beautiful? When we dug a bit deeper, we found that those with the long fingernails were secretaries, teachers, and mayorspeople with indoor jobs. These were jobs that would both allow you to grow your nails long, but also carried a bit more prestige within the community. So one explanation here for the long fingernails is that they signal something about peoples occupation. But that game was hidden.

What is the hidden game when it comes to altruism? Here, the game might have more to do with reputations. Were not saying Habitat for Humanity volunteers sign up just so they can put some photos up on Instagram. They genuinely want to do the right thing and genuinely feel good swinging those hammers. But below the surface, theres a hidden game going on that helps to shape those righteous beliefs and good feelings. And this hidden game, if we take the time to understand it, can help us understand why folks who want to do the right thing are the same folks who do it in such ineffective ways.

To listen to the audio version read by co-authors Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli, download the Next Big Idea App today:

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Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior - Next Big Idea Club Magazine

Human Behavior

Daughters of divorced fathers start reproduction earlier than daughters of dead fathers – PsyPost

New research published in Evolution and Human Behavior has found that girls whose fathers were divorced started reproduction about 9.2 months earlier than girls whose fathers were no longer living.

Researchers have been interested in investigating why and how stressful experiences in childhood affect sexual maturation, behaviors, and reproductive outcomes. Girls who grow up without a father may start reproduction earlier because the absence is a cue of environmental harshness and uncertainty in which a fast life history strategy is favored. Alternatively, the trend might be the result of genetic factors.

Researchers Markus Valge and colleagues were interested in investigating whether the absence of the father, the mother, or both was most associated with the early onset of puberty among girls. The researchers used a large dataset to study girls who were born between 1936 and 1962 in Estonia. Valge and colleagues had access to information about the girls rate of puberty (via breast development stages), when they had their first child, and their overall reproductive success (how many children they had in their lifetime). The girls either grew up in orphanages, without a mother, or without a father due to either divorce or death.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that girls whose fathers divorced started reproduction about 9.2 months earlier than girls who grew up with only their father or both parents present, and about 7.4 months earlier than girls whose fathers died. However, the difference in reproductive starting age was not significant once education was controlled for.

Girls whose mothers died had .25 less children in their lifetime on average than girls who grew up with just a mother or a father. There was no difference in the number of children girls had when their fathers died compared to girls who grew up in an orphanage.

This study indicates that stressful childhood environments do not predict faster sexual maturation for girls when controlling for education. Valge and colleagues argue this may be due to low test power and confounding variables. However, there was an association between how old the girls were when they had their first child and whether their parents were divorced. Valge and colleagues argue this could be explained by Flinns hypothesis that suggests fathers guard their daughters from predatory men, so girls with fathers in their life reproduce later in life.

However, this hypothesis is only partially supported because girls whose fathers were dead did not have children significantly earlier than girls whose fathers were present. Valge and colleagues argue that the Grandmother Hypothesis (in which mothers help promote the survival of their grandchildren) is supported, considering girls whose mothers died had .25 less children on average.

A limitation of this study is that there was no information regarding whether a step-parent was involved in the families in which mothers and fathers were absent. There was also a lack of information about the girls age when a parent died or divorced.

The study, Pubertal maturation is independent of family structure but daughters of divorced (but not dead) fathers start reproduction earlier, was authored by Markus Valge, Richard Meitern, and Peeter Hrak.

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Daughters of divorced fathers start reproduction earlier than daughters of dead fathers - PsyPost

Human Behavior

What is air quality? How can the weather and human behavior impact it? – WQAD Moline

Youll often hear the term air quality mentioned in weather forecasts, but what does that mean? Meteorologist Effrage Davis explains.

MOLINE, Ill. June 1 is the first day of meteorological summer, and throughout the upcoming summer months, youll often hear the term air quality mentioned in weather forecasts. But what does that mean?

Air is primarily made up of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases. When air contains small amounts of chemical pollutants, it is considered good air quality. When air is hazy and contains high amounts of solid particles and chemical pollutants, it is considered poor air quality.

Air quality is measured using the air quality index. The index measures the changes in the amount of pollution on a scale from 0 to 500 degrees, according to the UCAR Center for Science Education. The lower the degree, the cleaner and safer the air is to breathe. The bigger the degree, the more pullulated and dangerous it is.

Thefive pollutants measured by the AQI are ground-level ozone, particle pollution, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. Our air quality depends on the amount of pollution in the air.

The Clean Air Act, enacted in 1970, enforces national standards for each of these pollutants to help protect public health. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, decades of research have proven poor air quality can cause detrimental effects on human health and increase disease, especially among vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly and those living in areas with high levels of pollution.

Several things can affect air quality. Manmade pollutants from vehicle emissions, coal power plants and more can play a direct role in air quality, but there are also natural causes.

Weather can affect air quality as well, according to the UCAR Center. If there is a volcanic eruption or a fire that emits pollutants into the air, wind can then carry these pollutants hundreds of miles away to another location. Storms can wash pollutants out of the atmosphere or move them to another location, but high-pressure systems and heatwaves create stagnant air that can cause high concentrations of pollutants to sit over an area. Droughts can increase the chances of fires, which also add more carbon monoxide and particle pollution to the atmosphere.

But weather can also increase air quality. Humidity can help decrease ozone pollution, and afternoon thunderstorms block sunlight, therefore slowing down ozone production while moisture destroys the ozone that has formed.

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What is air quality? How can the weather and human behavior impact it? - WQAD Moline

Human Behavior

When Yellowstone Wildlife Injures Humans, We Need To Keep Own Behavior In Check – Mountain Journal

Its been one of the damndest kinds of human behavior towitnessand witness it I have for nearly five full yearsas Mountain Journalbuilt its large and engaged audience on Facebook.

Eyebrow raising, too, is how the tenor of discourse in thedigital town squarethe modern version of spectators shouting from cheap seatsin the Roman Coliseum changes abruptly if the injured person dies.

It's happened with a number of fatal grizzly bear maulings.

Rest assured the same kind of vile fulmination flows frompeople who wish ill things to happen to environmentalistsespecially todefenders of grizzlies and wolvesas it does with animal rights activists saying all hunters ought to be hunted. To share almost any story on social media is to affirm that it's often mighty hard to foster a civil discussion.

On the morning of Memorial Day 2022, a young woman from Ohio,25 years old, in the early prime of her life, was gored by a bison as shestrolled along a boardwalk in Black Sand Basin in Yellowstone National Park. Accordingto the press release offered by Yellowstone officials, she was tossed 10 feetin the air. She was evacuated and her condition remains unknown.

Initially, when news first broke of the encounter, she was roundly ridiculed for venturing too close to thelarge post-Pleistocene icon of Americas oldest national park. If you want toget a taste of the flavor of comments, go to Mountain Journals Facebookpage now and read them for yourself.

Before one judges, consider that the impetuous reactions frommost were not likelyif we are giving them the benefit of the doubtintended tobe cruel. Often it is instead a cathartic acknowledgment that the space of wildanimals needs to be respected. Rallying on behalf of wildliferecognizing animalsentience and not treating species other than ourselves merely as harvestable natural resources or propcuriositiesis actually only a fairly recent advancement in the thinking of Homo sapiens.

In its press release,Yellowstone emphasized a fact that is included in the pamphlets and fliersgiven to visitors as they pass through the park gates. Wildlife in Yellowstoneare wild and can be dangerous when approached, the press release reminded, andit repeated the legal spatial mandates that exist in both Yellowstone and GrandTeton national parks: visitors are required to maintain at least a 25-yard(75-foot) distance between themselves and bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer,moose and coyotes and at least 100 yards (300 feet) from bears and wolves.

Indeed, neither Yellowstone, nor Grand Teton nor the otherpublic wildlands in Greater Yellowstone are Disneyland. And this is precisely whyGreater Yellowstone and its unparalleled array of large mammal inhabitants stands apart.

But here, lets reflect on what that means. It means theanimals are not tame. It means they are self-willed and mostly uncontrolled. It means they are larger than people. Asa tenet of personal responsibility, it means that in order to minimize thepossibility of us getting injured or injuring them we are required to arm ourselves not with gunsbut solid information. It means that we increase our ecological literacy, whichis to say becoming aware of the natural history of other beings that are notrobots or creations of artificial intelligence or virtual reality.

This Yellowstone tourist, who moved too close to a mother grizzly and cubs, darts away after the adult bear made a bluff charge. The 25-year-old visitor from Carol Stream, Illinois, was banned from Yellowstone and required to pay more than $2,000 in fines. Photo courtesy Yellowstone Facebook page/Darcie Addington

Wild lives have the potential to wipe smugness from the faceof any arrogant, self-absorbed person who does not check their own ego at thedoor. Sometimes, even the reverent,respectful and unprepared are reminded of that with devastating consequences.

The point is not to mock others when it happens but rather morefully appreciate that such wildness still exists in the 21stcenturyeven after decades of litigious, opportunistic lawyers seeking toblame, sue and profit on misadventure, and frightened government agencies being forced to buffthe edges off of danger. In essence, thetendency has been to eviscerateor make antiseptic the very things that makewild places wild and which summon us closer with hearts in full palpitation.

Obviously, sincere sympathies are offered to the humans whoget hurt or killed. They are somebodys belovedsons and daughters, moms, dads and good personal friends. They did not come toYellowstone and Grand Teton with any notion of being mauled or gored. Enthusiastic, they made the trekbecause the allure of wild nature matters to them and, in today's world, the scarcity of such places in the Anthropocene mean most humans are out of their element.

Whats also essential to understand is that such negativeencounters are actually exceedingly rare; that maintaining awesome wildness isnot so much a matter of wildlife management but human management, and wehumans often create trouble for both wildlife and those in uniform whovirtuously look after them.

So, what about bisonhow dangerous are they? While most visitorworry is directed toward bears, bison are actually the most dangerous animal inYellowstone.

That number has risen since the analysis was made. But the researchers, when it was written, also cited the advent of a newphenomenon that, in some ways, has undermined the great educational outreachefforts made by the national parks. The popularity of smart phone photographywith its limited zoom capacity and social media sharing of selfies mightexplain why visitors disregard park regulations and approach wildlife moreclosely than when traditional camera technology was used.

Yes, revolutionaryhand-held technology that alters human behavior has actually resulted in morepeople abandoning common sense, turning their backs to wildlife which are closeby, and then posing for a selfie to get the animal in the frame.

Rangers in Yellowstone and Grand Teton have theirhands full trying to manage wildlife jams along the park highways. In JacksonHole, public excitement surrounding grizzlies, namely mother bear 399, has putthe Grand Teton Park wildlife brigade into a tough spot trying to prevent people from doingextraordinarily dumb things in their zeal to see bears and capture theexperience on camera.

However, the authors also note: Despite thesuccess of the 1970 bear management program in reducing the number ofbear-inflicted human injuries in the park, an average of 1 bear-inflicted humaninjury/year still occurs. These injuries most often involve surprise encountersbetween backcountry hikers and female grizzly bears with young. It will bedifficult to reduce the frequency of this type of injury, especially if bothbackcountry recreational activity and the grizzly bear population in YellowstoneNational Park continue to increase. Public education programs informing hikershow to avoid surprise encounters and how to react to encounters and attacksonce they occur may be the most useful tool in further decreasing the numberand severity of bear-inflicted human injuries in the park.

In 2021, a 25-year-old woman from Carol Stream, Illinois, unwittingly made national news after she was captured on video remaining too close to a Yellowstone grizzly mother with cubs and was bluff charged by the adult bear. Pleading guilty to a number of charges, Samantha Dehring spent four days in jail, was banned from Yellowstone for a year and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and make a $1,000 community service contribution to the Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund,

Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park are, indeed, wild. The park is not a zoo where animals can be viewed within the safety of a fenced enclosure. They roam freely in their natural habitat and when threatened will react accordingly, statedActing US Attorney Bob Murray in a news release issued by Yellowstone. Approaching a sow grizzly with cubs is absolutely foolish. Here, pure luck is why Dehring is a criminal defendant and not a mauled tourist.

But to show how rare such an encounter is, the park put it inperspective. Chances of being attacked by a grizzly in developed areas,roadsides, and boardwalks in Yellowstone: 1 in 59.5 million visits; chanceswhile in a roadside campground; 1 in 26.6 million overnight stays; chanceswhile camped in the backcountry: 1 in 1.7 million overnight stays; chances while hiking in the backcountry: 1 in232,613 person travel days. Put altogether, the chances of having a grizzlyencounter overall: 1 in 2.7 million visits.

The irony of potential peril is that it possesses the potential of making us feel more alive. Lucky are we to still have nature preserves we enter at our own risk. For those who come into harm's way, let us resist the temptation to debase ourselves by being unkind. Sometimes when things happen in Yellowstone, the could happen to any of us.

NOTE: Todd Wilkinson's longstanding column, "The New West," appears every Wednesday and Monday at Mountain Journal.

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When Yellowstone Wildlife Injures Humans, We Need To Keep Own Behavior In Check - Mountain Journal