Scientists find similar visionary perception in flies and humans with optical illusion – Republic World – Republic World

August 27, 2020 medical

Scientists have found that the flies get deceived with optical illusion as easily as humans. Theresearch was published on August 24, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal by the team of researchers at Yale University. The research was focused around theories that people perceived motion in some static imagesand neuroscientists attempted to explain the phenomenon from a flies eye view. Scientists found that flies visioned the illusions exactly like humans.

"It was exciting to find that flies perceive motion in static images the same way we do," said Damon Clark, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and of physics and of neuroscience at Yale.

The visual system in the flies eyes tricked it as researchers observed the activity of neurons. Clark lab member, Margarida Agrochao and Ryosuke Tanaka documented the research in a visual format as they studied the flies behaviour and motion when presented with the optical illusions. Flies instinctively turn their bodies toward any perceived motion; when presented with the optical illusion, the flies turned in the same direction as the motion that humans perceive in the pattern, the neuroscientists wrote in the research.

"The last common ancestor of flies and humans lived a half billion years ago, but the two species have evolved similar strategies for perceiving motion," Damon Clark, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and of physics and of neuroscience at Yale release. "Understanding these shared strategies can help us more fully understand the human visual system, he added.

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In the study, authors backed the neuron activity, saying, flies' perception of illusory motion altered using an on-off type of mechanism of its motion-detecting neurons. Small brains of flies made it easier to track the activity of neurons in their visual system. Scientists then documented the data in files with a detailed analysis of its perceived illusory motion. They compared the data of flies visual processing with humans in further experiments. Observation of as many as 11 participants suggested a similar mechanism as seen in flies, although in some the visionary perception was somewhat more complicated but similar.

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Scientists find similar visionary perception in flies and humans with optical illusion - Republic World - Republic World

Neuroscience

Monash University Malaysia: Evolve into a real-world researcher – Study International News

August 27, 2020 medical

Where do aspiring researchers go if they want to evolve their critical thinking skills and tackle real-world challenges? They join the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences (JCSMHS) at Monash University Malaysia.

To study at JCSMHS is to become an integral part of an internationally-recognised research university. On two of the most respected sources in global college rankings, Monash ranks in the top 80 globally 75th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 and 55th in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2021. In the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020, the university was ranked at joint 31st in the world for Medicine and in the 51st-100th division for Psychology.

A member of the Group of Eight (Go8), an alliance of leading Australian universities recognised for their excellence in teaching and research, Monash has over the years earned a reputation of excellence at home and abroad.

Source: Monash University Malaysia, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences (JCSMHS) prides itself for being part of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences of Monash University, one of the leading research-intensive universities in Australia and worldwide. This means youll have the opportunity to experience both campuses and gain knowledge from industry experts in both Malaysia and Australia.

The cutting-edge research infrastructure here at JCSMHS includes various biomedical labs, the Monash-Agilent Microarray Service Centre, Clinical School Johor Bahru (CSJB), and the LC-MS/MS Laboratory. The school is also home to the renowned Brain Research Institute at Monash Sunway (BRIMS) and South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO). BRIMS is an internationally-recognised platform for neuroscience research with a team of outstanding neuroscientists and extensive neuroscience facilities. SEACO is a health and demographic surveillance system (DHSS) that enabled the collaboration between researchers at Monash University with prestigious universities such as Harvard University and the University of Amsterdam.

The research activities happening at JCSMHS are building a vibrant and enterprising culture on campus, which enhances teaching and learning, benefits the community, and enriches the creativity and innovation of its staff. The five research priority areas of high impact at JCSMHS are:

Source: Monash University Malaysia, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Various research opportunities for potential PhD/Masters (research) students are available within JCSMHS and school-associated research platforms.

Monash graduates worldwide exemplify the finest of what the Group of Eight (Go8) universities have to offer. They find full-time employment sooner, command higher salaries, and are more likely to move onto postgraduate studies than graduates from other universities.

Monash is an absolutely remarkable place to study its a home where I grew as a sound researcher and as an individual, said Master of Biomedical Science graduate Sultana Mehbuba Hossain who hails from Bangladesh. She has published several manuscripts on oncology and nanoparticles in indexed journals during her studies.

Source: Monash University Malaysia, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences

I chose Monash because of its reputation for producing quality students and for the opportunity to obtain an Australian education without having to leave my home country, said Brandon Choo Kar Meng, a Malaysian who graduated from JCSMHS with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

Brandon was part of a team that was awarded a silver medal at the International, Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX 2019) for their research on Lanctos 75TM, a potent herbal supplement that helps to prevent neurodegenerative diseases and improve memory. He also co-authored six journal articles on epilepsy research and is currently working with zebrafish to evaluate the potential of novel curcumin compounds for the treatment of epilepsy and the effects of those compounds on learning and memory.

Brandon represents the calibre and success stories typical of JCSMHS graduates.The ideal collaborative learning environment offered by JCSMHS enables its students to build upon their problem-solving capabilities and produce groundbreaking research. At the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, you can get the best of both worlds: a Monash degree in the heart of Asia Pacific. Get in touch today email JCSMHS at mum-jcsmhs.grdegrees@monash.edu.

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Neuroscience

U of A researchers develop tool to help build better prosthetic limbs – Folio – University of Alberta

August 27, 2020 medical

Prosthetic users have to look longer at the object they are interacting with than their able-bodied counterparts, according to University of Alberta research that illustrates just one of the intricacies involved in devising the next generation of prosthetic limbs.

There are prosthetic devices becoming available that are almost indistinguishable from real limbs, but the real problem is, if you think about how many different ways you can move your hand, each one of those would need a separate channel of information, said Craig Chapman, a U of A movement neuroscientist in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation.

They've engineered these beautiful hands, but it's very difficult to control them.

Chapman and his team, which includes Jacqueline Hebert, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry working to bring osseointegration surgerythe permanent anchorage of artificial limbs to the human skeletonto the U of A, are interested in the kinds of movement decisions and the numerous computations we don't think about when we reach out to do something as simple as grabbing a doorknob to open the door.

To help dissect the processes behind each movement, Chapman mainly uses motion and eye tracking to gather data needed to understand what's going on inside the brain.

We thought, Hey, if we return a sense of touch to people, maybe that's the first thing that will be freed upmaybe they won't necessarily move differently, but maybe their eyes will tell us a story about how much extra information they can process, said Chapman, who is also a member of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute. That's really the hypothesis we've been chasing for about five years now.

Chapman and his team devised a tool called Gaze and Movement Assessment, or GaMA, as a way to track both body and eye movements, and put it all into a meaningful three-dimensional space.

Users are fitted with a head-mounted eye tracker that fits like a pair of glasses. At the same time, motion capture markers are placed on the upper limb being tracked, as well as on any other body parts of interest, like the head or torso.

They are then asked to perform two simple tasks that mimic chores prosthetic limb users would encounter in the real world. One is grabbing a box of Kraft Dinner and then moving it to three different shelf positions. A second has subjects moving around a cup filled with beads.

And while they sound like simple tasks, because they were designed with a clinician and occupational therapist, they challenge prosthetic users in unique ways, said Chapman.

Getting them to do the movement consistently is what allows us to look at averages and determine what part of a particular movement is so difficult.

Measures of hand movement, angular joint kinematics and eye gaze were compared with those from a different sampling of non-disabled adults who had previously performed the same protocol with different technology.

The research showed that the prosthetic limb user will continue to look at the device and the object, whereas able-bodied individuals look ahead to where they're going to put it down.

Their eyes are free to go to the next place and start planning a successful movement, he said.

Chapman said his studies show that participants will often overcompensate to complete the task. For example, users of a body-powered prosthetica cable-driven device that allows the user to open or close the device using different body motionsput extra strain on their shoulder and trunk because they have limited degrees of freedom at the wrist.

They will adapt their body to finish the movement, but maybe they're doing it in a way that might eventually cause some sort of fatigue injury.

He added, If they've been able to successfully navigate their world and do the things they want to do for everyday living, it's possible that an advanced prosthetic limb will actually interfere with that, and you just don't know.

Chapman noted that the broader impact outside of prosthetic limbs for GaMA is that it could help fill knowledge gaps in any number of sensory motor impairments.

If you imagine someone who's developing a tremor because they have Parkinson's, had a stroke or are aging, and is learning to recover their motor function we think we can actually tap into some underlying mechanisms to find out what precisely it is that theyre having an impairment with.

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U of A researchers develop tool to help build better prosthetic limbs - Folio - University of Alberta

Human Behavior

Decision-making and anxiety in the time of COVID-19 | Penn Today – Penn Today

August 27, 2020 medical

While more than half of Americans surveyed say that they are somewhat or very concerned about the novel coronavirus, viral stories of pandemic parties and unsocially-distanced concerts highlight the wide-ranging perspectives about the ongoing pandemic. As society grapples with what a new normal should look like, at the same time that the U.S. is still reeling from a summer surge in cases, how do people decide which activities are safe, and why do some peoples choices look vastly different than others?

Penn Today spoke with three experts in behavioral science to learn more about the cognitive basis of decision-making, how anxiety and stress impacts behavior, and what strategies people can use for making informed decisions on how to safely and comfortably reengage with society.

Psychologist Sudeep Bhatia and his Computational Behavioral Science Lab study the cognitive basis of human judgement and decision-making. One of his groups areas of interest is risky decision-making, or how people make choices between options that have varying probabilities of payoff and risk.

While Bhatia says that economists and statisticians are interested in how these decisions can be made rationally, psychologists are interested in why the decisions that people make are not always rational. We try to observe human behavior in terms of the operations of the mind to explain why people are being irrational, to figure out how a cognitive system thats otherwise adapted to making good decisions still makes irrational decisions in certain cases, he says.

To make a good decision, Bhatia says, one needs to know the probabilities for each outcome as well as some measure of the payoff. While its often straightforward to do the math and come up with a strategy that maximizes reward in the long-run, this isnt what happens when, say, someone finds themselvesdeciding to bet all of their money on red fiveon a roulette table. Instead, people tend to overweigh small probabilities when assessing the probability of certain outcomes. If theres a 1% chance of something happening, be it winning a lottery or getting COVID, you are actually using a number than is bigger than it actually should be. This causes you to overestimate the probability of that low probability event, he says.

But theres an important caveat: When you learn about probabilities by experiencing things in the world, you tend not to overestimate small probabilities but can also even sometimes underestimate small probabilities, says Bhatia.

Bhatia says that while there are likely numerous and complex factors that influence how people perceive the pandemic, from partisanship to misinformation on social media, the psychology of decision-making, especially how experience informs risk perception, can help explain some of the discrepancies seen in peoples behaviors.

At the start of the pandemic, there was less personal experience with COVID-19 but lots of statistics about new cases and death rates, which then became over-weighted in peoples minds. It means that the risk of COVID looms larger than it should, he says. But then, over time, people get experience, and when you get experience you start using your own behavior to inform what the risks are.

As people gained more personal experience living with the pandemic, activities that have a small probability of risk can also perpetuate peoples varying perceptions of what activities are risky or not. For example, say a person engages in an activity with a 5% risk of contracting COVID-19. This means that the majority, 95% of people who participated, wont get sick. For small probability events, such as getting sick with a 5% chance, it takes quite a lot of experiences for you to actually get sick, says Bhatia. It means theres a large number of people who have engaged in these activities who have not gotten sick and subsequently believe that the gamble is good. The remaining people, however, have gotten sick, they might think this is a pretty bad deal, and that can lead to a polarization.

Thea Gallagher, clinic director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety (CTSA) clinic at Penns Perelman School of Medicine, says that after the initial shock of shifting into crisis mode, many who might not have experienced symptoms of anxiety might now find themselves feeling more worried than before. The core of anxiety is the intolerance of uncertainty and fear of the unknown, and I think nothing more exemplifies this time than those two phrases, says Gallagher.

Along with an inability to plan for the future, legitimate fears about safety, health, and job security and abrupt changes to peoples support systems and coping strategies, its also a time when people are increasingly on edge, which can make anxiety even worse. Everything is adding to peoples baseline level of stress and emotional reactivity, and the threshold for people to become emotionally upset is lower, says CTSA Director Lily Brown. Things that ordinarily might not affect them are much more impactful because everyone is at their wits end.

For patients with anxiety, Gallagher says, the tendency is often to try to eliminate all risks, which can lead some patients to be fearful of leaving their homes at all. The goal, she says, is helping patients find ways to reengage with society while making sure they are basing their decisions in facts over fear. We challenge our patients to do something, but we also to lean into the fact that that this virus is contagious, says Gallagher. I use the example of driving: We get in our cars, but we dont white knuckle it to the office. Instead, we live with that uncertainty, and we do our best.

Seeing people at the extremes of anxiety, from being too afraid to do anything to engaging in very risky behaviors, is something thats been observed in patients with PTSD, says Brown. Were seeing a lot of people bouncing back and forth, between excessive amount of concerns and then also somewhat unexpected risk-taking behavior, she says, adding that this phenomenon could also explain why some people rush out to crowded places as soon as restrictions are lifted. The goal here is to find that middle ground where you can be appropriately anxious where theres legitimate threat but not so anxious that its making you not function. We think both of those are almost equally problematic.

While its impossible to eliminate all risks of COVID without becoming completely isolated, Gallagher and Brown recommend that people experiencing any level of anxiety start figuring out what activities they are comfortable with based on guidance provided by public health organizations. For activities that people do decide to engage with, they also recommend creating a decision tree that includes considerations known to reduce coronavirus risk, such as being outside, wearing masks, and staying six feet apart from others.

They both caution against getting stuck in worry spirals, a common struggle for those with anxiety, where people try to make endless predictions about all of the hypothetical ways that something will happen and how they will deal with it. Often, when people are stuck in this worry spiral, they think that they are problem solving and being productive, but they are actually engaging in strategies which not only dont help them make effective decisions, it also worsens their anxiety in the long run, says Brown.

To avoid getting stuck in a worry spiral, Gallagher recommends anyone whos anxious to focus on controlling what they can in the moment without getting too far ahead. Im encouraging people to really hold loosely because outcomes are very unpredictable right now, she says. If theres anything that this pandemic has taught us, its that we really need to be radically present. Its really not worth trying to get out in front of it, people think that will bring them comfort and actually it just stresses them out.

While the pandemic will certainly be a source of stress in the months to come, living with uncertainty and risk is not in of itself a new phenomenon. Its about using your best judgement, making a decision and committing to it, and leaning into the fact that theres going to be risk everywhere, says Gallagher. Weve lived with a lot of uncertainty and risk leading up to this point, and we cant live our lives consumed by that fear and worry.

Sudeep Bhatia is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lily Brown is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thea Gallagher is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of the outpatient clinic at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Additional information and resources on COVID-19 is available at https://coronavirus.upenn.edu/.

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Decision-making and anxiety in the time of COVID-19 | Penn Today - Penn Today

Human Behavior

Can a robot guess what you’re thinking? – Big Think

August 27, 2020 medical

What on earth are you thinking? Other people think they know, and many could make a pretty decent guess, simply from observing your behavior for a short while.

We do this almost automatically, following convoluted cognitive trails with relative ease, like understanding that Zoe is convinced Yvonne believes Xavier ate the last avocado, although he didn't. Or how Wendy is pretending to ignore Victoria because she thinks Ursula intends to tell Terry about their affair.

Thinking about what other people are thinkingalso known as "mentalizing," "theory of mind," or "folk psychology"allows us to navigate complex social worlds and conceive of others' feelings, desires, beliefs, motivations, and knowledge.

It's a very human behaviorarguably one of the fundamentals that makes us us. But could a robot do it? Could C-3PO or HAL or your smartphone watch your expressions and intuit that you ate the avocado or had an affair?

A recent artificial intelligence study claims to have developed a neural networka computer program modeled on the brain and its connectionsthat can make decisions based not just on what it sees but on what another entity within the computer can or cannot see.

In other words, they created AI that can see things from another's perspective. And they were inspired by another species that may have theory of mind: chimps.

Chimpanzees live in troops with strict hierarchies of power, entitling the dominant male (and it always seems to be a male) to the best food and mates. But it's not easy being top dogor chimp. The dominant male must act tactically to maintain his position by jostling and hooting, forming alliances, grooming others, and sharing the best scraps of colobus monkey meat.

Implicit in all this politicking is a certain amount of cognitive perspective-taking, perhaps even a form of mentalizing. And subordinate chimps might use this ability to their advantage.

In 2000, primatologist Brian Hare and colleagues garnered experimental evidence suggesting that subordinate chimps know when a dominant male is not looking at a food source and when they can sneak in for a cheeky bite.

Now computer scientists at the University of Tartu in Estonia and the Humboldt University of Berlin claim to have developed an artificially intelligent chimpanzee-like computer program that behaves in the same way.

The sneaky subordinate chimp setup involved an arena containing one banana and two chimps. The dominant chimp didn't do much beyond sit around, and the subordinate had a neural network that tried to learn to make the best decisions (eat the food while avoiding a beating from the dominant chimp). The subordinate knew only three things: where the dominant was, where the food was, and in which direction the dominant was facing.

In addition, the subordinate chimp could perceive the world in one of two ways: egocentrically or allocentrically. Allocentric chimps had a bird's-eye view of proceedings, seeing everything at a remove, including themselves. Egocentric chimps, on the other hand, saw the world relative to their own position.

In the simplest experimental worldwhere the dominant chimp and the food always stayed in the same placesubordinate chimps behaved optimally, regardless of whether they were allocentric or egocentric. That is, they ate the food when the dominant wasn't looking and avoided a beating when it was.

When things became a little more complicated and the food and/or dominant chimp turned up in random places, the allocentric chimps edged closer to behaving optimally, while the egocentric chimps always performed suboptimallylanguishing away, hungry or bruised.

But the way the AI simulation was set up meant the egocentric chimp had to process 37 percent more information than the allocentric one and, at the same time, was constrained by its egocentric position to perceive less about the world. Perhaps the lesson is: Omniscience makes life easier.

The computer scientists admit that their computer experiment "is a very simplified version of perspective-taking." How the AI-chimp perceives and processes information from its simplified digital world doesn't come close to capturing the complexity of real chimps eyeing up real bananas in the real world.

It's also unlikely that the AI-chimp's abilities would generalize beyond pilfering food to other situations requiring perspective-taking, such as building alliances or knowing when it's safe to sneak off into the virtual bushes for romantic escapades.

So, might artificially intelligent computers and robots one day develop theory of mind? The clue is in the term: They'd surely need minds of their own first. But then, what kind of mind?

Across the animal kingdom, a variety of minds have evolved to solve a swath of social problems. Chimpanzees are savvy in an aggressively political and competitive way. Crows are clever in their ability to fashion twig tools, attend funerals to figure out what killed a compatriot, and team up to bully cats.

Octopuses are intelligent in their skill at escaping from closed jars and armoring themselves with shells. Dogs are brainy in their knack for understanding human social gestures like pointing and acting so slavishly cute we'd do anything for them. Humans are smart in a landing-on-the-moon-but-occasionally-electing-fascists way.

When it comes to theory of mind, some evidence suggests that chimps, bonobos, and orangutans can guess what humans are thinking, that elephants feel empathy, and that ravens can predict the mental states of other birds.

Minds that have evolved very separately from our own, in wildly different bodies, have much to teach us about the nature of intelligence. Maybe we're missing a trick by assuming artificial intelligences with a theory of mind must be humanlike (or at least primate-like), as appears to be the case in much of the work to date.

Yet developers are certainly modeling artificial intelligence after human minds. This raises an unsettling question: If artificial, digital, sociable minds were to exist one day, would they be enough like a human mind for us to understand them and for them to understand us?

Humans readily anthropomorphize, projecting our emotions and intentions onto other creatures and even onto robots. (Just watch these poor machines and see how you feel.) So perhaps this wouldn't be much of an issue on our side. But there's no guarantee the AIs would be able to feel the same way.

This might not be so bad. Our relationship with AIs could end up mirroring our relationship with another famously antisocial creature. We shout at our cats to stop scratching the sofa when there's a perfectly good catnip-infused post nearby, as the baffled beasts vaingloriously meow back at us. We are servile to them and have delusions of our own dominance, while they remain objects of mysterious fascination to us. We look at them and wonder: What on earth are you thinking?

Reprinted with permission of Sapiens. Read the original article.

From Your Site Articles

Why Your Teams Culture Is The Lengthened Shadow Of You – Forbes

August 27, 2020 medical

getty

If you lead a team, listen up. In physics, we teach laws. In leadership, we teach patterns. Heres a pattern: Teams dont outperform their leaders. They reflect them. Sure, you can find brilliant performers on a poorly performing team or pockets of high performance in a failing organization. But show me a team that consistently outperforms its leader, and Ill show you a leader with an expiration date.

You set the tone, you create the vibe, and you shape the prevailing norms. By virtue of your position, you either lead the way or get in the way. Punctual leaders create punctual cultures. Put-down leaders create put-down cultures. Respectful leaders create respectful cultures.

But what if you dont want to be the architect of the culture? Well, thats not a choice you get to make. You cant abdicate that part of your role unless you abdicate all of your role. Its embedded in your stewardship; your positional power amplifies every word you speak and every move you make. You radiate influence and theres no switch to turn off that radiation. Its always on.

Your choice is to create culture by design or by default. Approach it intentionally or ignore it and see what happens.

The Two Levers of Influence

The single best synonym for leadership in the English language is the word influence. In its purest sense, leadership is influence directed toward worthy and meaningful goals. But how? There are many sources of influence, and yet two of those matter more than all the restmodeling and coaching. Everything else?strategy, structure, systems, roles, responsibilities, resources, policies, procedures, incentives, technology. Scaffolding. All of it.

The Two Levers of Influence

The First Lever: Modeling

The most important factor in the formation of team culture is the modeling behavior of the leader. This is Newtonian physics applied to organizational behavior. Its always true. The psychologist Albert Bandura said, Most human behavior is learned observationally through modelingfrom observing others.

Make no mistake: You are your teams clinical material. Youre the case study. Your modeling behavior is the curriculum. When the chief resident consistently washes her hands to prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infection, the other doctors do it too. No words. Just action.

The Second Lever: Coaching

The second most important factor in culture formation is your coaching behavior. Coaching is the way you guide your team members, give them feedback, and hold them accountable.

One manager I know touches base with her people only when theres a problem. She doesnt connect before she coaches and she has a didactic and intimidating style. Consequently, her people avoid her and shes bleeding out top talent.

A second manager I know checks in with each of her people several times a day. Her touch points are frequent and brief, her energy is contagious, and she has cultivated a habit of asking questions and listening with empathy and focus. Her people feel validated and listened to. They release their discretionary efforts.

Now What?

To assess the culture of your team and inform your modeling and coaching behavior, let me suggest one best practice that works across cultures and demographics: Stop conducting your own meetings and take on the role of cultural anthropologist. Hand the wheel to one of your team members and keep rotating the responsibility. This will give you the best possible opportunity to dual monitor the content and group dynamics of your team. Take notes on what you see. Monitor verbal and non-verbal cues. Pay close attention to the way team members respond to you versus the way they respond to each other. Pull out the patterns and then ponder the adjustments you need to makeand then make them. Remember, your teams culture is the lengthened shadow of you.

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Why Your Teams Culture Is The Lengthened Shadow Of You - Forbes

Human Behavior

Victim of Shark Attack Saved after Husband Punches Shark Repeatedly – The Great Courses Daily News

August 27, 2020 medical

By Jonny Lupsha, News Writer

Mike Tyson may have some boxing competition in Australia. According to ABC News, Mark Rapley and his wife Chantelle Doyle were spending the day at Shelly Beach at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, when the shark, which was described as being between six and 10 feet, attacked Doyle and threw her off her surfboard, the article said.

Rapley [] paddled to his wifes board as she tried to climb back up while the shark grabbed her right calf. Rapley grabbed onto his wifes surfboard and began punching the shark until it let her go.

Survival instincts tell our bodies to do things we would think were crazy under normal circumstances. But sometimes they can save our lives.

There are a lot of ways that we get in the way of our own instincts: We shut out our sensory input, we lull ourselves into a false sense of security, we make assumptions about human behavior, or we resign ourselves to what we think is inevitable, said Dr. Nancy Zarse, Professor of Forensic Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

But even when we are aware and do acknowledge our instincts, we can go astray in our assessment of the situation. This can happen in a few ways.

Among the ways listed, Dr. Zarse first mentioned that we worry about the social consequences of how we act. For example, we may sense that someone is dangerous, but just in case they arent, we worry that well appear rude if we treat them as though theyre a dangerous person. Alternatively, we may worry about getting in trouble or seeming insubordinate if we speak up about what our instincts tell us.

We train for things on purpose and protocol is sometimes necessary to ensure the safety of many people, but we need to balance that with a healthy respect for what our instinct is telling us.

Instincts are our impulses encoded into our bodies evolutionarily to help us or our species to survive, Dr. Zarse said. They often manifest as strong, almost overwhelming urges or drives. A baby crying is instinctive behavior; a mothers physical urge to comfort the crying baby is instinct.

Dr. Zarse said that sexual desires can be traced back to instinct as can desires to retaliate against injustice. She said although we can choose how we act on those instincts, we can rarely choose how they make us feel.

Some of these instincts are emotions, and we call these primary emotions, she said. The most common ones are fear, sadness, happiness, and anger. These happen as direct responses to an external experience.

Whether or not we are punching a shark to save a loved one, instincts can kick in and drive us to actions we never knew were possible for us.

Dr. Nancy Zarse contributed to this article. Dr. Zarse is a Professor of Forensic Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where she also received her PsyD.

Human Behavior

The Secret to AI Is People – Harvard Business Review

August 27, 2020 medical

Executive Summary

In a five year multistage study the authors learned how leaders can get the most out of AI. The secret to making this work, they found, is the business model itself, where machines and humans are integrated to complement each other. Machines do repetitive and automated tasks and will always be more precise and faster. However, those uniquely human skills of creativity, care, intuition, adaptability, and innovation are increasingly imperative to success.From their research they developed a framework of intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication (the Four I model) that creates environments for humans and machines to make the most of one another. They conclude that competing in the age of AI is not about being technology-driven per se; but, rather, is about human talent and new organizational structures that use technology to bring out the best in people.

Too many business leaders still believe that AI is just another plug and play incremental technological investment. In reality, gaining a competitive advantage through AI requires organizational transformation of the kind exemplified by companies leading in this era: Google, Haier, Apple, Zappos, and Siemens. These companies dont just have better technology they have transformed the way they do business so that human resources can be augmented with machine powers.

How do they do it? To find out, we conducted a multistage study over five years, beginning with a survey of senior managers and executives, followed by interviews and surveys across a wide range of industries to identify technology implementation strategies and barriers, and in-depth studies of five leading organizations. Our key takeaway is counterintuitive. Competing in the age of AI is not about being technology-driven per se its a question of new organizational structures that use technology to bring out the best in people. The secret to making this work, we learned, is the business model itself, where machines and humans are integrated to complement each other. Machines do repetitive and automated tasks and will always be more precise and faster. However, those uniquely human skills of creativity, care, intuition, adaptability, and innovation are increasingly imperative to success. These human skills cannot be botsourced, a term we use to characterize when a business process traditionally carried out by humans is delegated to an automated process like a robot or an algorithm.

From our research we have developed a four-layer framework that shows organizational leaders how they can create a human-centric organization with super-human intelligence. The four layers are not steps, which would imply a sequential progression. The four layers of intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication (the Four I model) must be stacked all together, or else the use of AI will fail to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage. Heres how it works.

The first layer of the Four I model is intentionality of purpose, beyond the mere pursuit of profits. An intentional organization knows why it matters to the world, not just its shareholders. A good example of intentionality in the use of AI comes from Siemens, which evolved from a shareholder-profit-maximizing power generation and transmission company into a leading provider of electrification, automation, and digitalization solutions with energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies driven by AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) in service to society. This cultural shift toward a higher human-centric purpose impacted not just marketing and product design but also the strategic decision to, as Scott D. Anthony, Alasdair Trotter, and Evan I. Schwartz wrote for HBR, divest its core oil and gas business and redeploy the capital to its Digital Industries unit and Smart Infrastructure business focused on energy efficiency, renewable power storage, distributed power, and electric vehicle mobility. While financial performance and shareholder value will always be important, creating human-centered, technology-powered organizations will actually drive financial performance in the age of AI.

To that end, Siemens is launching a combination of hardware and software that enables AI throughout its Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) architecture, an approach that aligns Siemens mission with its AI strategy. The TIA architecture uses AI as a bridge that spans from corporate headquarters out to industrial end users. Siemens proprietary MindSphere is a cloud-based IoT operating platform that reaches into Siemens industrial user-operated controller and field device products. The MindSpheres neural processing unit module allows human users to benefit from Siemens in-house AI capabilities, while also enabling human users to impart their own experience to train the machines. According to Siemens Factory Automation specialist Colm Gavin, With artificial intelligence we are able to train, recognize, and adjust to allow more flexible machinery. Because, do we want 10 machines to package 10 different types of products, or a tool that accommodates different packages and different sizes and automatically adjusts to the new format? Smarter machinery with TIA architecture leverages AI to advance the companys intentionality, while increasing flexibility, quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for its end users.

Alternatively, a negative example of the relationship between intentionality and AI is illustrated by recent issues confronting Facebook. Facebooks mission, to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together, sounds noble. Yet recent use of its AI has raised concerns from advertisers and civil rights groups alike.The social media giant has struggled to align its mission with its use of AI that seems to have the opposite effect: Facebooks content feed is driven by algorithms that prioritize inflammatory, misleading, and socially divisive content. Facebooks use of AI seems to drive social division, which is antithetical to its purpose as a social media company, and is having financial consequences. Because its algorithms have promoted disinformation, violence, and incendiary content, major advertisers are now cutting ties with Facebook, dealing a strong blow to the company that derives 98% of its income from ad revenue. Some of the largest brands in the world, including Coca-Cola and Unilever, pulled advertisements from Facebook for promoting content antithetical to their brands values, resulting in a one-day drop of 8.3% in market value, or $56 billion.

The second layer of the Four I model is integration of human and AI resources across the organization. To lead in the technology era, companies must shift away from silos to organizational structures with flexible teams that integrate people horizontally and vertically, from product creation to strategic decision making. As one executive we spoke with explained, before the AI shift, it was necessary for workers to have deep knowledge of a narrow area. Today, deep analytical content can come from AI. What is needed is the ability of workers to synthesize information, which means collaborating across functions and working in cross-functional teams. To foster innovation and adaptability, organizations need to transition from rigid hierarchies to flexible, agile, and flatter structures. Google, Haier, and Zappos may have differences in their organizational structures, but the common elements are flatness and fluidity. The recommended structure is more like a playground for smart, talented people to generate customer-centric products. Employees have fluid roles in cross-functional teams around problems as opposed to individual roles and responsibilities. These teams spontaneously form when problems arise, then dissolve when the work is done, reallocating human resources as needed.

The other side of this which can easily be forgotten is that human and AI teams should also be structured in an integrated manner. This allows humans to transcend their ordinary cognitive limitations, without placing unreasonable reliance on a robot to perform human tasks that require high degrees of care and skill. An example comes from the medical context, where AI offers tremendous potential not as a substitute for, but as a supplement to, physician-driven care. Recent research in the journal Nature found that, good quality AI-based support of clinical decision-making improves diagnostic accuracy over that of either AI or physicians alone. This means high-stakes, highly-skilled human decision-making can benefit from AI so long as it is integrated properly within the human decision-making context.

The third layer of the Four I model is implementation. Implementation requires engaging human talent, tolerating risk, and incentivizing cross-functional coordination. An executive at a large pharmaceutical we spoke with said, you have to get people to believe in the technology. We saw this in another of the companies we spoke with when we learned that despite having integrated AI, managers were modifying the output values from the algorithm to fit their own expectations. Others in the same company would simply follow the old decision-making routine, altogether ignoring the data provided by algorithms. Therefore, human behavior is central to implementing AI.

Top performing companies spent significant time communicating with employees and educating them, so that the human talent understood how machines made their jobs easier, not obsolete. To build trust in AI, it is imperative for leaders to communicate their vision transparently, explaining the goal, the changes needed, how it will be rolled out, and over what timeline. Beyond communication, leaders can inoculate their workforce against fear of AI by arranging for visits to other companies that have undergone similar transformations, providing a model for workers to see with their own eyes how the technology is used.

We saw many approaches to this in our research. Pilot projects where technology is rolled out in a limited scope give workers some ownership over the adoption process. Giving workers an opportunity to tinker with the technology before a final adoption decision is made eases the transition. Financial services firm Capital One even created an internal training institute called Capital One University that offers professional training programs to promote a broader understanding of analytics throughout the organizations culture.

The fourth layer of the model is indication or performance measurement. Ultimately, success and progress need to be measured, and leading companies have moved from traditional productivity measures to aspirational metrics. Using the right indicators can drive improvements and help a business focus on what they deem important. Aspirational metrics that incentivize innovation and creativity encourage employees to exercise those uniquely human traits. The lesson is to be careful what you measure. Monitoring the wrong performance indicator has a strong tendency to lead to the proverbial tail wagging the dog. Humans are clever, and if incentives are not properly aligned with intelligently designed performance metrics, human workers will resort to lazy, clever, and cynical hacks to game the system, maximizing the appearance of performance under one measure while actually failing to deliver the output that management was actually hoping for when they implemented that measure.

Most companies use KPIs, but in our research we saw that successful companies more often used Objectives and Key Indicators (OKRs). What we learned was that KPIs by themselves dont encompass strategic and ambitious goals needed in the age of AI and they dont motivate to reach for the sky. The goal of OKRs is to precisely define how to achieve ambitious objectives where failure is imminently possible, through concrete, measurable specifications. They encourage creative, novel, and aspirational performance by showing progress toward a goal even if the goal itself is unattained. Google famously started using OKRs in 1999; a change some even credit as a critical element of Googles success. At Google, OKRs have helped develop transparency. Everybody knows the companys goals, what everyone is doing, how they have done in the past, the trajectory they are on, and how they are getting to where they want to go.

Our research shows that AI is so much more than just the latest incremental improvement in existing technology, however deploying it effectively takes leadership and coordination across all sectors of a company. Unlocking the full potential of an organizations human resources by adopting AI strategically requires revisiting the very structure of the company and how it measures its progress toward fulfilling its mission. These issues are core issues to the identity of a company and modifications here are fraught with insecurity and risk, but this is a risk needed to compete in the age of AI. Intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication must be layered in order to create a human-centric enterprise governed by super-human intelligence. Achieving this requires talent at all levels to have systems-thinking, understand how the work being done meshes with that of others elsewhere in the organization, how it meets customer needs, and how it impacts the companys strategy and financial picture. By following the Four I model, companies can unlock super-human intelligence without losing the human touch.

We were surprised to discover how few organizations have unlocked this secret. But we were encouraged by the progress of the ones that had. With this model, we hope, more companies can create the conditions for realizing super-human intelligence and performance, delivering sustainable competitive advantages in the age of AI.

Originally posted here:
The Secret to AI Is People - Harvard Business Review

Human Behavior

Latino Theater Company Streams Archival Recording of Fully-Staged Production of LA OLLA – Broadway World

August 27, 2020 medical

View LA OLLA on demand for 10 days: Sept. 1-Sept. 10.

Tune in to La Olla - an archival video presentation of the Latino Theater Company's 2016 production. A bit player in a shady 1950s L.A. nightclub finds a pot full of cash in this adaptation, by Evelina Fernndez, of the Roman comedy, The Pot of Gold by Plautus. Inspired by the Rumberas films of the golden age of Mexican Cinema, the LTC incorporates its distinctive style of comedy, music, dance and imagery to explore one of the most basic aspects of human behavior: greed.

Written by Evelina Fernndez Directed by Jos Luis Valenzuela Starring Esperanza America, Evelina Fernndez, Fidel Gomez, Castulo Guerra, Sal Lopez, Xavi Moreno, Geoffrey Rivas, Lucy Rodriguez Choreography by Urbanie Lucero Scenic Design by Yee Eun Nam Lighting Design by Pablo Santiago Sound Design by John Zalewski Projection Design by Yee Eun Nam and Pablo Santiago Presented by The Latino Theater Company

ON DEMAND: Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. PT / 10 p.m. ET thru Thursday, Sept. 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. A follow-up, online conversation with the artists will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 2 at 7 p.m. PT / 10 p.m. ET, and remain available on demand for 10 days.

Streaming at http://www.thelatc.org/

FREE

Performed in English with Spanish subtitles

Photo credit: Grettel Cortes

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Latino Theater Company Streams Archival Recording of Fully-Staged Production of LA OLLA - Broadway World

Human Behavior

Emerging Consumer Behavior Shifts: Six Ways Food & Beverage Innovation Is Evolving in the Face of COVID-19 – Business Wire

August 27, 2020 medical

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ADM has identified six emerging behavioral changes that will power innovation and growth in the months ahead.

Consumers attitudes, priorities and behaviors are shifting significantly, said Ana Ferrell, VP of Marketing, ADM. This evolution is providing a unique opportunity for forward-looking food and beverage companies to bring a suite of trailblazing new products to market.

Recent ADM OutsideVoice research shows that 77% of consumers intend to make more attempts to stay healthy in the future. Food and beverage manufacturers who successfully balance consumer health concerns with affordability are most likely to win with consumers.

ADM has identified six behavioral shifts that will create opportunities for food and beverage manufacturers to gain market share in an increasingly uncertain business environment.

Food and beverages designed to elevate mood, sustain energy and reduce stress will grow in popularity in the months and years to come. ADM also projects new opportunities for comfort foods, snacks and baked goods offering nutrient-rich ingredients and functional health benefits.

These behavioral shifts are likely to persist well after the pandemic crisis peaks. ADM has responded by developing tailored solutions aimed at giving brands an edge in an ever-changing marketplace.

About ADM

At ADM, we unlock the power of nature to provide access to nutrition worldwide. With industry-advancing innovations, a complete portfolio of ingredients and solutions to meet any taste, and a commitment to sustainability, we give customers an edge in solving the nutritional challenges of today and tomorrow. Were a global leader in human and animal nutrition and the worlds premier agricultural origination and processing company. Our breadth, depth, insights, facilities and logistical expertise give us unparalleled capabilities to meet needs for food, beverages, health and wellness, and more. From the seed of the idea to the outcome of the solution, we enrich the quality of life the world over. Learn more at http://www.adm.com.

1 FMCG GURUS: Twelve Step Guide for Addressing COVID-19 in 2020 and Beyond, April 2020

2 ADM OutsideVoice

Source: Corporate release

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Emerging Consumer Behavior Shifts: Six Ways Food & Beverage Innovation Is Evolving in the Face of COVID-19 - Business Wire