Human Behavior

COLUMN: Securing the future is our job – Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

They are asking why racism and sexism even exist. And they are expressing grave uncertainty about their future.

They are also demonstrating how to fix it.

One of my sons wanted to talk about all of this. To offer perspective I told him about 1968 and the assassination of Martin Luther King, then Robert Kennedy. About riots and Vietnam. We didnt know how long that war would last, and I told him how I wondered if Id have a future past 18.

It wasnt to say the current situation is canceled out by past struggles, but rather to suggest that the future will be determined by his equal fortitude.

As adults were not doing our jobs. Weve defiled their environment and codes of civility. We mock justice, and weve allowed the scourge of racism to expand into power. We cannot simply brush this mess into their dustpan and hope for the best; it is incumbent upon us to own our part.

Recently I got into a Facebook argument with some (mostly) young people who were correcting my interpretation of a meme. My intention was different from what they perceived, and I was called some horrible things. My impulse was to defend myself and I fired back, calling them virtue-signalers, sanctimonious and mewling antagonists.

And I was wrong. Not because self-defense was wrong, but because I counter-attacked. All I did was alienate young people who are trying to make that necessary difference. Defensiveness is within the arsenal of human behavior, but it belies experience and wisdom.

See the article here:
COLUMN: Securing the future is our job - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Human Behavior

The Curse of racism Part 1 of 2 – Daily Times

The color of the skin is determined by the pigmentation just underneath it. More pigmentation means darker complexion. Hence the analogy color is only skin deep. Yet color determines race. Racism is one of the three leading causes of conflicts and wars in human history. Other two being religion and territorial grab.

Tracking the evolution of racism is a challenge for those who study human behavior. It creates prejudice, discrimination and antagonism against those who look different. It is based on the faulty belief that lighter skin is superior to those who look darker. This belief gave birth to slavery.

Racism is a virus that consumes multiple societies, even our own. It can be traced back to the Greek and Roman Empires. Extremely intolerant, they treated all non Greeks as slaves. Their brutality knew no bounds. Hollywood classic cinema captured some of it.

The modern cycle of racism and enslavement started in the late 15th century. Fair skinned Europeans, the whites started it. Portugal and Spain emerged at that time as maritime powers dominating the seas. They set sail to enrich themselves by looting the wealth from the Old world to the East. They accidently discovered the New world. Rather than fighting amongst themselves they created the earliest World Order in 1494 by signing the Treaty of Tordesillas between themselves.

The modern cycle of racism and enslavement started in the late 15th century

They carved up the world for exploitation and plunder. The dividing line was drawn west of Brazil. Both countries burst onto the scene of insulated societies living simple lives with bows and arrows as their weapons. Throughout the 16th century all the plundered wealth was shipped back to king and country.

It was the start of the colonization era of the Americas. Armed with cannons, gunpowder and muskets they occupied large swaths of rich and fertile land. The Natives were overrun by superior firepower. Europeans caused environmental damage through deforestation to till and harvest crops not grown at home. A tragedy that continues till today, endangering our earth. With limited populations back home, there was a severe shortage of labor.

Seeing the affluence in Portugal and Spain, England, Holland, and France jumped into the fray. They developed their maritime capabilities to grab their share of the new found wealth. British East India Company was founded in 1600 followed by Dutch East India Company in 1602. Supported by their royalties they set out to colonize, grab power and exploit resources and wealth.

Their domination of the world scene gave birth to extreme arrogance and racial superiority. They all sought labor and found a bonanza in Africas west coast. Steeped in the ways of intrigue and bribery, these colonial powers formed unholy alliances with local chiefs and greedy kings. The warlords would go out on a hunt. Instead of hunting animals they captured innocent citizens. They caged and shackled them and sold them to slave traders operating out of Slave Coast in West Africa. Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana being the main harvesting areas.

During the next century 10 to 15 million Africans were shipped to North and South America, Caribbean and some to Europe as slaves. 6 million were shipped to North America; 2 million on ships under the British flag, starting 1619. These innocent victims were sold to work on sugar cane plantations and cotton fields.

European slave owners in the Americas had a sense of entitlement. Owning other humans was a birthright as a superior race. These dark skinned savages were meant for menial work. The first President of United States, George Washington was a proud owner of 123 slaves!

The cruel treatment meted out to these slaves is unimaginable. It is captured in books and films. A must read or watch to be sensitized to their sufferings. They included lynching, burning as human torches, whipping to death, rape, starvation and hair raising abuse. This continued for two hundred years. Finally in the mid 1800s it began to jar the conscience of white Americans in the Northeast.

The institution of slavery was challenged and finally defeated in the American Civil War in 1865. The same year it was abolished by President Abraham Lincoln. Blacks were set free but they were dehumanized, made to live in ghettos without education or opportunities. Their lynching and burning on the cross continued. It took black people another hundred years of struggle against discrimination and depravation of basic rights. They finally got a reprieve under the leadership of Martin Luther King.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King met a violent end. In the last seven decades racism may have receded but it never went away. It kept lurking in the shadows to raise its ugly head whenever stoked by forces of negativity. It remains ingrained in the criminal justice system. Black people are assumed guilty because of the color of their skin leading to multiple killings on a regular basis.

The recent murder of George Floyd was caught on camera. Violent death is gruesome to watch but this incident of killing in slow motion is chilling. He was suffocated with a knee on his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds by a white officer showing no emotions, while being held down by two other white officers. It is revolting; the cruelty towards black people can no longer be ignored. It is fast becoming the tipping point for the blacks and whites in USA. It happened under President Trumps watch. Since 2016 as the President he has sowed the seed of division. He never became the president for all Americans, only for his voter base. He is consumed by his desire for re-election. I will write on the emerging social revolution in the USA in part II of this article.

The writer is the director of CERF, a non-profit, charitable organisation in Canada

Go here to read the rest:
The Curse of racism Part 1 of 2 - Daily Times

Human Behavior

The Problem of Racial ProfilingWhy it Matters and What Can be Done About it – Reason

The killing of African-American George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the resulting protests have called new attention to a longstanding issue with American law enforcement: widespread racial profiling. In this post, I would like to consider why racial profiling is a serious problem, why it's so hard to end, and what nonetheless can be done to reduce it.

As I use the term, racial profiling denotes a situation where law enforcement officers treat members of one racial group worse than they would be treated in the same situation if they belonged to another group. If a police officer stops, searches, or arrests a black person when a white person in the same situation would be left alone, that's a case of racial profiling. By no means all cases of abusive police behavior qualify as racial profiling. As Jason Brennan and Chris Surprenant describe in a recent book, American police too often use excessive force in cases involving white officers and white suspects, where race, presumably, is not an issue. Even abuses involving minority civilians are not always a result of racial profiling. The wrongdoing officers may sometimes be "equal-opportunity" practitioners of police brutality, who would have done what they did regardless of the suspects' race.

Ending racial profiling would not end all abusive law enforcement behavior. It wouldn't even end all abuses where minorities are victims. But racial profiling is a serious problem nonetheless. It causes real suffering, it's unconstitutional, and it poisons relations between law enforcement and minority communities.

I. Why Racial Profiling Matters

Though racial profiling is far from the only flaw in American law enforcement, it is nonetheless widespread. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that 59% of black men and 31% of black women say they have been unfairly stopped by police because of their race. Their perceptions are backed by numerous studies including many that control for other variables, including underlying crime ratesshowing that police often treat blacks and Hispanics more harshly than similarly situated whites.

Almost every black male I know can recount experiences of racial profiling. I readily admit they are not a representative sample. But as a law professor, my African-American acquaintances are disproportionately affluent and highly educated. Working-class blacks likely experience racial profiling even more often.

If you don't trust studies or survey data, consider the testimony of conservative Republican African-American Senator Tim Scott, who has movingly recounted multiple incidents in which he was racially profiled by Capitol police. Even being a powerful GOP politician is not enough for a black man to avoid profiling. Or consider the the experiences of right-of-center Notre Dame Law School Dean Marcus Cole. Scott and Cole are not easily dismissed as politically correct "snowflakes" who constantly see racism where none exists.

Most cases of racial profiling do not result in anyone being killed, injured, or even arrested. The police unfairly stop, question, or otherwise harass a minority-group member. But they then let him go, perhaps with a traffic ticket (if it was a vehicle stop). Conservatives are not wrong to point out that the average black person is far more likely to be killed or injured by an ordinary criminal than by a police officer.

But that doesn't mean that racial profiling is trivial or insignificant. Even if one isolated incident might qualify as such, it is painful and degrading if the people who are supposed to "protect and serve" you routinely treat you as a second-class citizen merely based on the color of your skin. And it gets worse if it isn't just about you, because your friends and family get the same treatment.

It is also painful and scary to know that, while racial profiling usually doesn't lead to injury or death, there is always a chance that such an incident could horrifically escalate. When a black man encounters a cop, he often has to worry that the officer might kill or injure him even if he did nothing wrong. Such fear is far less common for whites.

Widespread racial profiling also poisons relationships between police and minority communities. If you (with good reason) believe that cops routinely discriminate against your racial or ethnic group, you are less likely to cooperate with them, report crimes or otherwise presume they are acting in good faith. That creates obvious difficulties for both police and civilians.

Curbing racial profiling should be a priority for anyoneincluding many conservatives and libertarianswho believe government should be color-blind. I have long argued that anyone who holds such viewsas I do myselfcannot tolerate ad hoc exceptions for law enforcement.

If you truly believe that it is wrong for government to discriminate on the basis of race, you cannot ignore that principle when it comes to those government officials who carry badges and guns and have the power to kill and injure people. Otherwise, your position is blatantly inconsistent. Cynics will understandably suspect that your supposed opposition to discrimination only arise when whites are the victims, as in the case of affirmative action preferences in education.

Finally, you have special reason to condemn racial profiling if you are a constitutional originalist (as many conservatives are). Today, most cases under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment involve challenges to the constitutionality laws and regulations that discriminate on the basis of race, or are motivated by such discrimination. But the original meaning of the Clause was centrally focused on unequal enforcement of laws by state and local governments, including the police. That happens when authorities enforce laws against some racial or ethnic groups differently than others, treating some more harshly and others more leniently based on their group identity.

Racial profiling is a paradigmatic example of exactly that problem. Where it occurs, victims are denied equal protection because the very officials who are supposed to provide that protection instead treat them more harshly than members of other groups.

II. Why Racial Profiling is Hard to Combat

While racial profiling is a serious problem, it's also a very difficult one to curtail. One reason why is that it's often hard to detect. With many types of illegal discrimination, the perpetrators leave a record of their decision-making process that can then be assessed by investigators or used as the basis for a lawsuit. In many, perhaps most, racial profiling cases, the relevant decision was made on the fly by a single person, or a small group. There is no record to refer to, and the officer can easily offer a benign explanation for his or her actions. Indeed, sometimes the officer himself won't know for sure whether he would have done the same thing if the race of the civilian involved was different. That makes racial profiling hard to address by using many of the traditional tools of anti-discriminitaion law, including lawsuits targeting specific discriminatory actions.

An additional problem is that racial profiling isn't always the result of bigotry, defined as hatred of a given minority group. Some officers really are awful bigots. But many, probably most, who engage in racial profiling are not. They are instead acting on the basis of what economists call "rational stereotyping." Police know that members of some racial or ethnic groups, particularly young black males, have relatively high crime rates compared to members of most other groups. In situations where they have little other information to go on, police therefore view members of these groups with heightened suspicion, and as a result are more likely to stop them, search them, arrest them, or otherwise take aggressive action.

If the officers who profiled Senator Tim Scott had known he was a senator, they would likely have left him alone. But all they knew just from seeing him was that he was a black male, and that led them to believe he was statistically more likely to be a threat than a woman or a member of some other racial group might be.

Racial disparities in crime rates have a variety of causes, including a long history of racism, and flawed government policies of many types. But there is little the average cop on the beat can do to alleviate these causes. He or she instead may focus primarily on the resulting differences in crime rates.

The fact that such behavior is "rational" in the sense used by economists does not make it right. Rather, this is just one of a number of situations where rational decision-making by individuals can lead to a harmful systemic outcome. Racial profiling resulting (in part) from rational stereotyping may be efficient from the standpoint of individual officers trying to cope with uncertainty under pressure. But it harms innocent people, and poisons police-community relations in the long run.

But the fact that racial profiling may often be rational makes it more difficult to root out. Police, after all, are far from the only people who use rational stereotyping as a way to cope with limited information. People of all races and walks of life routinely do so in a wide range of contexts. If you come to a party where you don't know anyone, there is a good chance you will make snap judgments about who to try to talk to, and that those judgments may be influenced by stereotyping based on appearance, including race and gender.

Jesse Jackson, the first prominent African-American presidential candidate, once said "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then (I) look around and see someone white and feel relieved." Jackson was relying on rational stereotyping: a white person (at least on that particular street) was statistically less likely to be a robber than an African-American.

The point here is not that rational stereotyping by Jackson or by a party-goer is the moral equivalent of racial profiling by police. Very far from it. The latter is far, far worse, because it causes vastly greater harm and injustice. Rather, these examples help us recognize that rational stereotyping is not confined to bigots, that it is very common human behavior, and that it is therefore very hard to avoid.

When we ask police officers to suppress their instincts and avoid racial profilingas we should!we are also asking them to exhibit a level of self-control that most of us often fall short of. The demand here goes well beyond simply asking them to avoid being bigoted thugs. It's asking them to refrain from using a decision-making heuristic that even otherwise well-intentioned people may often resort to.

III. What Can be Done.

While curbing racial profiling is difficult, it is not impossible. Many of the policy reforms that can curtail police abuses more generally will also indirectly reduce racial profiling. Abolishing or limiting qualified immunity can incentivize police to reduce abusive behavior of many kinds, including that which stems from profiling. Police who know they can be sued for wrongdoing are likely to be more careful about racial discrimination. Curtailing the War on Drugs and other laws criminalizing victimless offenses can eliminate many of those confrontations between police and civilians that are especially prone to racial bias. The same goes for curbing the power of police unions, which protect abusive officers of all types, including those who engage in racial discrimination.

If racial profiling is hard to detect, we can at least impose serious punishment in cases where it does get detected. If officers know that racial discrimination is likely to land them in hot water, they may try harder to avoid it, even if the chance of getting caught in any one incident is relatively low.

Perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit is getting rid of the policy under which the federal government explicitly permits the use of racial and ethnic profiling in the enforcement of immigration law in "border" areas (which are defined broadly enough to include locations where some two-thirds of the American population lives). This is by far the most extensive example of openly permitted racial discrimination in federal government policy. The Obama administration decided to let it continue, and Trump has perpetuated it as well. If we are serious about ending racial discrimination in law enforcement, it needs to go.

Laws and incentives are important. But ending racial profilinglike other forms of invidious discriminationalso requires cultural change. Survey data indicate that most white police officers believe current law enforcement practices treat blacks fairly (though the same polls show most minority officers disagree). Many of these officers probably believe racial profiling is justified, or at least defensible under the circumstances police face on the job. That needs to change.

History shows that progress against prejudice and discrimination often depends on changing social norms, as much as on laws. When I was growing up in the 1980s, it wasin most placessocially acceptable to display open bigotry against gays and lesbians. People routinely used words such as "fag" and "homo" as insultseven in liberal Massachusetts (where I lived at the time). People who behave that way today would be socially stigmatized in most settings, even though such expressions remain legal. The stigma is one reason why such behavior is a lot less ubiquitous than it used to be.

Police work is one of the relatively few settings in which widespread racial discriminationof a certain typeis still considered socially acceptable. If that changes, the behavior itself is likely to change, even if it remains difficult to challenge through formal legal processes. Consider what might happen if police officers known to engage in racial profiling were stigmatized by their peers or by respected authority figures in their communities. In that world, racial profiling would probably still exist; but it would likely be a good deal less common.

I don't have any brilliant suggestions for bringing about such a change in social norms. But history shows it can be done, and the issue is one that deserves more consideration by those with relevant expertise.

In sum, racial profiling is genuine problem that deserves to be taken seriously. There is no simple solution to it. We probably can't get rid of it entirely. But much can be done to make it less widespread than it is today.

Link:
The Problem of Racial ProfilingWhy it Matters and What Can be Done About it - Reason

Human Behavior

From education to telemedicine, Agora.io is disrupting consumer behaviour and how people collaborate – YourStory

The current scenario has brought with it a new set of challenges for organisations across all sectors. From providing individuals with the necessary healthcare, to ensuring that education continues undisrupted, organisations have adopted remote working tools to maintain the continuity of operations, and to meet necessary social distancing regulations.

A major facilitator of this much-needed continuity are platforms that provide voice, video and live interactive streaming. Agora.io is one such platform that has stepped up to meet this demand. Its voice, video, and messaging SDKs are embedded into mobile, web and desktop applications across more than 1.7 billion devices globally. The platform has seen a 300 percent growth in developer sign-ups from last quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020, and the space is expected to bring the markets compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to more than 19 percent.

Agora is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and backed by venture capital firms Morningside, SIG, GGV Capital, ShunWei, and IDG.

To understand how such tools and platforms will influence consumer behaviour, their role in ensuring continuity and normalcy in these times, and the future of the industry, YourStory spoke to Tony Wang, Co-Founder at Agora.io and Ranga Jagannath, Director Growth, India for Agora.io

YourStory [YS]: Could you tell us how the growth trajectory of the real-time video, audio and live streaming has changed since the pandemic?

Tony Wang [TW]: The pandemic has brought about a profound shift in human behavior. I wont say that this shift will be to a purely virtual platform, as it is not possible nor is it healthy. Earlier, people would take up to three or four video calls. Now, they make a lot more of these calls, and they get tired, mainly due to the latency. Face-to-face conversations are more fluid as the brain does need to process the latency, missed out words or even background noise.

Which is why for the first time, low latency, real-time (video calling) is on peoples agenda. Earlier, people were happy with good enough. But now, the real-time aspect is important as people are living in it. That is a fundamental shift in the expectations in the space, and Agoras SDKs will help platforms in building this ability.

YS: Globally, what new use cases has Agora.io seen emerging for the companys products and solutions?

TW: While people realize that video calling is great, it may not currently fit all use cases. The future may see more such platforms embedded inside workflows. Say you are working on a Google Doc. You are not going to get out the document and launch a stand-alone video call application. Instead, you use the embedded feature in those documents, like Google Hangouts to collaborate over the document.

We are also seeing more acceptance on remote teams. I believe that since we have been forced to do remote working for six months, people will actually innovate and adjust a customer to a remote team. Remote teams have some new requirements and I think you will see a lot of collaboration, and platforms such as Airmeet, or Remote HQ coming out.

In that vein, the face of education will also be forever changed. Overall, we will see the trend moving towards online. Take K-12 for example: You want to protect the kids from the virus, but at the same time, you cannot give them, one-way, pre-recorded videos as students need to constantly be engaged, and that comes from two-way real time communication. Currently, only few can afford to access quality education. So, to truly change the landscape of Indian education, affordability is a must, which is what we believe we are doing.

The other thing that could be interesting is live shopping. This is already popular in China for certain categories like gadgets, cosmetics, light jewellery, and fashion. Because of Agoras technology, the audience can participate as it is bi-directional and in real-time. I expect to see some breakthrough post the pandemic for one reason: the traffic is terrible. Rather than spend one hour on each way, just stay at home, save that trip and buy these things that will be delivered to your doorstep at a cheaper price.

I think all those things are very positive as they address the lack of physical infrastructure like roads, clean water, power, etc. We all have cellphones, and I think that is going to power the next generations progress.

YS: Could you tell us, from an Indian perspective, how various businesses and platforms are bringing much-needed continuity to the lives of people with voice, video and live interactive streaming?

Ranga Jagannath [RJ]: Education is definitely one sector where we saw platforms like Vedantu and upGrad as being able to reach out to the far-flung areas like the Northeast, which meant a lot of these states were able to continue education. There is a customer that is using our services to aggregate tuition centres across the country that were hit by the virus. And our platform enabled teachers to offer live, interactive classes.

A lot of Indian companies have started using our services for telemedicine. Currently the medical system is stretched, and priority is given to providing urgent care in hospitals and other care centres. But doctors are carrying out one-on-one consulting and diagnosing patients on our platform.

YS: Could you give us an example of new requirements that emerged in the pandemic and how Agoras capabilities have met them?

TW: We have always held the belief that people will eventually go virtual. Our roadmaps are well planned and the pandemic has accelerated our customers adaptation of the technology. We have deployed more servers and bandwidth to accommodate the spikes in usage as the number of customers has exploded with different use cases that are coming up.

More emphasis is being placed on AI. Take education for example. You are a teacher who is teaching 7- to 9-year-olds that rarely pay attention. AI will tell you exactly which student is absent-minded. Because in a real classroom, it is hard to keep an eye on all 50 to 60 of them. With AI, you get specific feedback including who is frustrated and if so, at what point is the class frustrated? When that feedback comes in, the online experience is going to be more efficient.

The other would be noise cancellation. AI is playing a role by making a lot of things possible and providing a better virtual experience.

YS: What should be the priorities for someone looking to build a platform that requires integrated video/audio communication capabilities to provide maximum impact?

TW: I would be looking at the sustainability of the enterprise, and not just roll out something for these COVID-19 times, and pretend the world is going to stop meeting face-to-face. The move to virtual will happen at a slower pace.

The other thing is looking at the monetisation model: Is this a vitamin, or a painkiller? I can make do without a vitamin, but I need painkillers at times. Having a painkiller mindset allows you to focus on the needs of a very small, narrow niche. If you categorise video tools: they are based around work, and off-work situations like entertainment and dating. And if you are doing something around work, you are competing with the likes of Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc., that have infinite funding and teams that are ready to bring out developments on the go. So you have to define your niche, and know how to defend it.

I believe there will be more Indian voices addressing Indian needs. There is time for Indian people after the pandemic abates to start thinking about this, and figure out how startups can do something that will address Made in India, built for India and address Indian concerns.

YS: How do you see the future of the voice, video and live interactive streaming space evolving in the future?

TW: We see apps and platforms are promoting each other. New apps demand more features like real-time capabilities, more people in one room, global coverage, and adult filtering. Such features are heavily based on AI, and those requests trickle down to the network leaders. We at Agora are improving those, and providing more abilities. We released a feature that provides beautification of your voice so that audiences will be attentive. And so this demand and supply influence each other to keep things pushing forward, which makes it very healthy and very exciting as you can then see technology evolve very fast. And at the end of the day, it is going to benefit all cultures as Agoras network is global, and that is going to be faster after the pandemic.

Want to make your startup journey smooth? YS Education brings a comprehensive Funding and Startup Course. Learn from India's top investors and entrepreneurs. Click here to know more.

Read more:
From education to telemedicine, Agora.io is disrupting consumer behaviour and how people collaborate - YourStory

Human Behavior

Four Ways to Overcome Bots on the Websites – The Boca Raton Tribune

There are lots of ways how bots may cause trouble to your website: the distortion of statistics, problems with security, search results, and, of course, users experience. Therefore, it is important to know how to prevent bots from damaging your website. We have at least four suggestions for you in this regard.

Perhaps the most common problem that page owners face is bots traffic. Unless the website is protected by cleantalk anti-spam plugin that can be obtained from the cleantalk platform or the similar software, a resource can be attacked for various purposes:

Moreover, it often happens that the owner may not know about serious problems with the web service. For example, if the page is infected with a virus that replaces content, new visitors will not know that they are being deceived. There are also smart bots that simulate user behavior in a given scenario. To detect them, invisible pixels are used: people will not click on a link that they do not see physically, and the bot will not distinguish it from the real one.

If weird traffic appears in your Google Analytics (GA) reports, you should figure out where it comes from. The difficulty is that some bots can imitate human behavior. However, they can still be identified and blocked. Therefore, we recommend you take the following actions:

To separate the natural traffic from the malicious one, GA data is compared by the sources of visits domains, geolocation, browsers, and IPs. If traffic from any source somehow differs from another, you should pay attention to it.

It must be remembered that blocking will not solve the security problems of the page. Therefore, to prevent new attacks, you should use reliable anti-spam services.

Webmasters know the lists of domains from which spam is sent, and you can use them to check for sources that have been found.

There are several ways to prevent bots from accessing the site. For example, you can try to block the domain, IP address, or remove the bots manually.

It is impossible to completely eliminate the possibility of bot attacks on the site. On the other hand, reducing risks is a possible task. You only need to take care of the protection against common attacks and regularly monitor the state of the traffic. In this and many other cases, preventive measures are much more effective than delayed treatment.

See more here:
Four Ways to Overcome Bots on the Websites - The Boca Raton Tribune

Cell Biology

IIT-M researchers show role of microRNA in growth and spread of tongue cancer cells – The Hindu

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have identified a specific microRNA (miRNAs) called miR-155 that is over-expressed in tongue cancer. The research team has shown that knocking out miR-155 causes death of cancer cells, arrests the cell cycle and regresses tumour size in animal models and reduces cell viability and colony formation in bench top assays.

The finding could help develop molecular strategies to manipulate miR-155 expression to develop therapeutics for tongue cancer.

The miRNAs affect cancer growth through inhibiting or enhancing the functions of certain proteins.

The research team of Devarajan Karunagaran, head of the Biotechnology department and his research scholar Shabir Zargar, collaborated with researchers from the Adyar Cancer Institute and the Sree Balaji Dental College and Hospital in the city and the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

Their research paper was published in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Mr. Karunagaran said: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short noncoding RNAs containing 2024 nucleotides that participate in virtually all biological pathways in animals. They have been found to play important roles in many cancers, in carcinogenesis (start of cancer), malignant transformation and metastasis the development of secondary cancer. The miRNAs associated with cancer are called Oncomirs.

Many of the Oncomirs affect cancer by suppressing the performance of tumour-suppressing agents. Some of them can prevent the growth and spread of cancer cells and yet others prevent tumour growth itself, he said.

miRNA manipulation is being combined with conventional cancer treatment methods such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

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IIT-M researchers show role of microRNA in growth and spread of tongue cancer cells - The Hindu

Cell Biology

Covid-19: What’s the most infectious place in school? – TES News

After the screaming headlines and point-scoring in the political battle over the full reopening of schools, theres a quiet, serious new reality for teachers and teaching assistants: spending every day in a workplace where they may be worried or scared about the risks of infection.

Plenty of teachers will be turning over questions throughout the day: is that trip beyond your bubble to the loo a bit dicey? Could the novel coronavirus be lurking in a pupils well-thumbed Dickens novel?

Read more

The science of school closures:An overview for schools

Should teachers wear face masks?A professor of public health gives her view

Coronavirus:Can childrensocially distance?

One of the big unknowns about the coronavirus, where research is yet to reach a consensus, is whether children have a significant role in transmission or a minimal one. But scientists do agree on other aspects of how the virus is transmitted, shedding light on which areas of a school might present the highest risks and on how schools might mitigate those risks.

When we speak, cough, sneeze and breath, we produce droplets that are of respirable/inhalable size, small droplets known as aerosol, and also much larger dropletsthat are even larger than the diameter of a human hair, explains Jonathan Reid, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Bristol and an expert on aerosols.

The larger droplets fall quickly to the ground in a few seconds and could contaminate surfaces, offering an indirect, but important way viruses are transmitted, he adds.

Then theres the risk of being directly exposed to larger droplets when someone sneezes or coughs if they are standing nearby, hence physical distancing guidance.

But theres also a question over whether infection can take place via those small aerosol particles, which can remain suspended in the air for many minutes or even hours. Given the difficulties in persuading primary school children, in particular, to distance from each other or from staff perhaps more like impossibilities the question could be a pressing one for schools.

One study, led by researchers from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and published in a brief summary in the New England Journal of Medicine, says its results suggest that novel coronavirus transmission via aerosol and surfaces is plausible. Researchersfound that the virus can remain viable and infectious in aerosols for hours and on surfaces up to days.

However, that research took place in lab rather than real-life conditions; plenty of scientists think that the evidence on aerosol transmission is inconclusive at present. Reid is attempting to offer more definitive answers in a study.

Which areas of a school does Reid think might present the highest risk of infection? I would say anywhere that is unventilated or poorly ventilated, has a high throughput of people or where there can be contaminated surfaces or poor hygiene so, for example, toilets, he replies.

Lawrence Young, a virologist and a professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick, agrees: Any indoor environment where there is poor ventilation is a risk for transmission. This would be exacerbated by having many individuals walking through an area like a corridor or communal area. Social distancing in these areas is essential.

Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital and a professor at the Australian National University, says that in a school the key means of potential virus transmission are teachers and parents, making staffrooms and indoor meetings with parents the riskiest areas.

He suggests limiting staffroom numbers to allow for social distancing and trying to be outdoors more than indoors in general.

Many schools are utilising outdoor spaces whenever they can. But rainy spells and winter will bring the need to manage increased use of corridors and communal areas.

When it comes to viruses survival on surfaces, one authority is Bill Keevil, professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton. His research has found that the coronavirus that causes the common cold, which he describes as structurally almost identical to the new virus, survived at least five days on stainless steel, glass, plastics, ceramics.

Similarly, the New England Journal of Medicine study found the novel coronavirus was detected on plastic after 72 hours but could not be found on cardboard after 24 hours.

So perhaps plastic desktops should be a focus for cleaning, with book covers less of a concern for long-lasting infection risk.

Should school staff be worried if they touch a door handle and forget to wash their hands afterwards?

I would be, because Im a microbiologist, Professor Keevil replies, none too reassuringly. Humans, were very tactile. We continually touch our faces, eyes, nose and mouth anything from 15 to 30 times an hour.

The highest-risk surfaces would be the obvious touch ones, he adds: door handles and push plates, stair rails and toilet areas, particularly for younger children.

However, other researchers point to reasons not to cower in fear before every surface.

Dont panic, says Collignon of the risks of touching a door handle. Being close to someone inside with a cough for over 15 minutes is very much higher risk. But use hand sanitisers before touching your face or eating.

In response to the 72-hour figure for the virus survival on plastic found by the New England Journal of Medicine study, Johns Hopkins University professor of cell biology Carolyn Machamer has noted that just 0.1 per cent of the virus material remains after that time, making infection unlikely.

She has told the Johns Hopkins website that people are more likely to catch the infection through the air if you are next to someone infected than off of a surface. Cleaning surfaces with disinfectant or soap is very effective because once the oily surface coat of the virus is disabled, there is no way the virus can infect a host cell.

And perhaps there is another solution for schools on surfaces. Keevil has been studying the antimicrobial effects of copper for 20 years, with his research on other coronaviruses finding that they were inactivated in minutes when they came into contact with such surfaces.

If you enjoy the idea of the coronavirus taking a beating, then savour Keevils description of how macho-sounding copper ions can punch holes in the cell membrane of a bacterium or virus, allowing the ions to flood into the cell, inhibit the respiration of bacteria then destroy DNA and RNA in both bacteria and viruses, which means there is no chance of mutation and resistance.

He highlights a Greek study that found reduced rates of respiratory infections in schools where copper alloys were used to cover or replace surfaces such as stair rails.

Surfaces can be coated in copper, Keevil says, so rather than have to completely rekit schools in solid copper alloysas an interim, you can go in and cover them.

Aside from such potential innovations, the best options for schools at present seem to lie in ventilation, physical distancing (or attempts at it)and, of course, routine and frequent cleaning.

But theres plenty above for school staff to consider while weighing up a trip to the socially distanced staffroom. Just make sure you dont touch your face while youre thinking about it.

John Morgan is a freelance journalist

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Covid-19: What's the most infectious place in school? - TES News

Cell Biology

Add ear gene therapy company Akouos to the ever-growing list of IPOs amid Covid-19 – Endpoints News

For investors looking to cash in on a burgeoning ear therapy space, the latest biotech angling for a public debut could be music to their ears.

Fresh off a $105 million raise in March, ear gene therapy company Akouos is looking for another $100 million for a chance to dance on the Nasdaq well before its lead product enters the clinic.

Hearing aids and cochlear implants do address ear damage caused by genetics, noise, aging, or drugs, but nothing quite cures or indeed targets the biological underpinnings of hearing loss this is the gap Akouos and a handful of others in the space want to bridge.

I think some of the early efforts in the hearing space have been drawn to the largest affected populations where there happens to be less clarity on the underlying biology mechanism, chief Manny Simons said in a previous interview with Endpoints News. So were focusing our attention on forms of hearing loss that we feel are well-understood, well-characterized, where we can potentially address the underlying cause.

The companys lead experimental therapy AK-OTOF is engineered to treat hearing loss due to mutations in the gene that encodes otoferlin, a protein that enables the sensory cells to activate auditory neurons that carry electronically encoded acoustic information to the brain, which allows us to hear.Akouos plans to submit an application to take the drug into human studies next year, and generate early-stage data in 2022.

Simons, who founded the company in 2016, initially flirted with the idea of becoming a musician, growing up playing the piano and the trumpet. He met his wife at a glee club at Harvard. For his bachelors degree, he had the opportunity to essentially create his own course of study: to understand how the brain processes music, on the basis of imaging studies. That path led to the ear to decipher how sound is encoded into a neural impulse that can extend deep into the brain.

After getting his first taste of entrepreneurship in the prolific lab of drug delivery researcher Bob Langer, he got his biopharma training wheels off with stints at Third Rock backed-Warp Drive Bio and Voyager Therapeutics (neither of which were ear focused). But when he learned that AAV vectors with potential applications for the ear were being developed in a laboratory at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Simons seized the opportunity to get a hearing-focused gene therapy company off the ground.

After securing a sweet $7.5 million in seed funding in 2018, Akouos scored $50 million in a Series A round in 2018, led by 5AM and New Enterprise Associates.

Akouos, akin to some others in the gene and cell therapy space, is investing heavily in manufacturing infrastructure having taken note that the complex manufacturing process for these kinds of therapies has become something of an Achilles heel in the field when it comes to adoption if the production apparatus is not up to scratch. For instance, the uptake of CAR-T therapies Novartis Kymriah and Gileads Yescarta underwhelmed initial expectations, despite their abundant promise. The uptake of Kymriah was plagued by manufacturing problems, and despite Novartis attempt to expand its capacity, sales have disappointed commercially, giving Yescarta an edge in the market.

Akouos is building its own infrastructure to manufacture vectors for its slate of experimental therapies, which also include genetic medicines for the most common forms of hearing loss, such as age-related and noise-induced hearing loss. The company is also planning on building a plant to process gene therapy batches to support activities through Phase I/II clinical trials for product candidates beyond AK-OTOF partner Lonza will help manufacture AK-OTOF while it is shepherded through clinical development.

The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol AKUS amid a broader rush of biopharma companies that are making their way to the public markets despite the disruption of Covid-19. Indeed, investor appetites have appeared seemingly insatiable given the raft of splashy IPOs in recent weeks, including a $424 million debut for a J&J-partnered Chinese biotech Legend Biotech, marking one of the largest public raises in biotech history.

Meanwhile, there are a host of rivals in the broader ear-focused space. Also in Boston, Akouos home, is Decibel Therapeutics, working on regeneration by targeting tiny hairs that grow in the inner ear to address congenital hearing loss or age-related balance disorders. Frequency Therapeutics has a mid-stage hair cell regeneration program using progenitor cells.

Across the Atlantic, UK-based Rinri Therapeutics is working on treating hearing loss by transplanting otic neural progenitor cells into the inner ear. Amsterdam-based Audion Therapeutics has a compound in-licensed from Eli Lilly, which is designed toturn on a chemical switch to produce new sensory hair cells from other cells in the inner ear to improve hearing.

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Add ear gene therapy company Akouos to the ever-growing list of IPOs amid Covid-19 - Endpoints News

Cell Biology

Preventing pancreatic cancer metastasis by keeping cells sheltered in place – Newswise

Newswise Scientists atSanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institutehave shown that pancreatic cancer metastasiswhen tumor cells gain the deadly ability to migrate to new parts of the bodycan be suppressed by inhibiting a protein called Slug that regulates cell movement. The study, published in theJournal of Experimental Medicine, also revealed two druggable targets that interact with Slug and hold promise as treatments that may stop the spread of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer cells are notorious for their ability to escape from a tumor. Even when pancreatic cancer is caught early, tumor cells are already found circulating throughout the body, saysCosimo Commisso, Ph.D., an associate professor in Sanford BurnhamPrebysNCI-designated Cancer Centerand senior study author. Our study suggests that we may be able to create treatments that stop pancreatic cancer cells from untethering in the first place, which could reduce metastasis and help more people survive this deadly cancer.

Stopping the migration of hungry cancer cells

Pancreatic cancer cells, like all cancer cells, grow rapidly and quickly deplete the nutrients in their surrounding environment. To meet their energy needs, tumor cells boost metabolic pathways that normal cells dont use.Commissois working to understand how pancreatic cancer cells respond to nutrient deprivationfocusing on themost commonly depletednutrient, glutaminewith the goal of finding treatments that stop the growth of cancer cells without harming healthy cells.

In the study, the scientists used a mouse model of pancreatic cancer to show that, in response to glutamine deficiency, a protein called Slug drives metastasis by activating the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, or EMTthe process cells use to free themselves from tightly packed tissue. Inhibiting Slug reduced the cancers ability to spreaddemonstrated by a reduction in the number and size of secondary lung tumors. The scientists also established that patient samples with higher levels of Slug were linked to a poor prognosisfurther indicating that blocking the protein may be beneficial.

The field of pancreatic cancer research is still working to understand the role of EMT in metastasis. Our study shows that glutamine deficiency indeed activates EMT, through Slug, to allow pancreatic cancer cells to escape and look for nutrient-rich grounds, says Maria VictoriaRecouvreux, Ph.D., a staff scientist in theCommissolab at Sanford BurnhamPrebysand the first author of the study. In addition to revealing new therapeutic avenues that may halt pancreatic cancer metastasis, these findings might also apply to other tumors that rapidly consume glutamine, including lung and colon cancers.

Because Slug is considered undruggable due to inherent biological properties, the scientists continued to search for proteins that interact with Slug and could be targeted with a drug. Their research identified two promising targets: ERK and eIF2 alpha. ERK inhibitors are currently under evaluation in clinical trials for pancreatic and other cancers; and an eIF2 alpha inhibitor has completed animal testing.

New hope for a deadly cancer

Once pancreatic cancer metastasizes, the number of people who are alive five years later drops from 37% to only 3%. Of the57,000 Americansexpected to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020, about10% are diagnosed at an early stageand may benefit from a drug that prevents metastasis. For unknown reasons, pancreatic cancer is on the rise and predicted to become the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S.

Now that the researchers have established the important role of Slug in driving metastatic pancreatic cancer, they plan to expand their research to determine Slugs role in pancreatic cancer overall, including impact on disease aggressiveness and survival.

To make progress in the fight against pancreatic cancer, it is critical that we have a strong scientific understanding of what is driving the tumors growth and metastasis, says LynnMatrisian, Ph.D., chief science officer at thePancreatic Cancer Action Network(PanCAN), who wasnt involved in the study. Todays findings reveal new insights into how pancreatic cancer metastasizes, providing both hope and important new directions for research that might be able to help more people survive the worlds toughest cancer.

The studys DOI is 10.1084/jem.20200388.

Research reported in this press release was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R01CA207189 and P30CA030199).

Additional study authors include Matthew Moldenhauer, Koen M.O.Galenkamp, Michael Jung, Brian James,YijuanZhang and AnindyaBagchiof Sanford BurnhamPrebys; and Andrew Lowy of UC San Diego.

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About Sanford BurnhamPrebysMedical Research Institute

Sanford BurnhamPrebysis a preeminent, independent biomedical research institute dedicated to understanding human biology and disease and advancing scientific discoveries to profoundly impact human health. For more than 40 years, our research has produced breakthroughs in cancer, neuroscience, immunology and childrens diseases, and is anchored by our NCI-designated Cancer Center and advanced drug discovery capabilities. For more information, visit us atSBPdiscovery.orgor on Facebook atfacebook.com/SBPdiscoveryand on Twitter@SBPdiscovery.

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Preventing pancreatic cancer metastasis by keeping cells sheltered in place - Newswise

Cell Biology

Potential biomarker identified to screen quality of donor’s stem cells before harvesting – 7thSpace Interactive

Potential biomarker identified to screen quality of donor's stem cells before harvesting

Durham, NC - A new study released today in STEM CELLS addresses a significant problem that has been confronting human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) therapy. While hundreds of clinical trials involving thousands of patients are under way to test hMSCs' ability to treat everything from heart disease to brain injury, there has been no way to determine prior to the donor undergoing a painful and expensive surgical harvesting of bone marrow whether or not it would be worth the effort. However, this new study, conducted by scientists at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, identifies a potential biomarker for prescreening donors for their MSCs' growth capacity and potency.

"With the global stem cell market predicted to reach over US$270 billion by 2025 (according to a report published by Transparency Market Research), there is a pressing need for effective biomarkers to be used in the screening of stem cells from prospective donors. This need is boosted by the rapid growth of regenerative medicine, with its pallet of cells, genes and engineered tissues," said Dr. Simon Cool, of A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology and co-corresponding author of the study. That is what sparked this new investigation.

In an earlier study, this same laboratory had classified hMSCs from age and sex-matched human donors into high- and low-growth capacity groups and established criteria for identifying stem cells with enhanced potency. "These hMSCs showed increased proliferative potential that correlated with enhanced clonogenicity, a higher proportion of smaller-sized cells with longer telomeres, elevated expression of certain cell surface markers, and most importantly, improved ability to mediate ectopic bone formation," said the study's co-corresponding author, Lawrence Stanton, Ph.D., who at the time of the study was a member of A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (and is now with Qatar Biomedical Research Institute).

The team's latest investigation sought to build upon that information by performing molecular analyses of these cells to better understand what accounted for their improved utility. Microarray analysis revealed that hMSCs with a genomic deletion of glutathione S-transferase theta (GSTT1) -- part of a superfamily of genes that bring together glutathione and toxins to safely remove them from the body -- show high-growth capacity. The GSTT1-null hMSCs also exhibit an enhanced ability to clone themselves and grow into full colonies, and they have longer telomeres. Both of these factors are important determinants of MSC potency.

"We believe our study highlights the utility of GSTT1 as a potential biomarker for MSC scalability and may prove useful in selecting potential donors for the creation of high quality hMSC cell banks to improve stem cell therapies," Dr. Cool said.

"The ability to pre-screen donors for a marker that corresponds to better growth of MSCs in vitro is truly important", said Dr. Jan Nolta, Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS. "Many teams have sought screening tools like this, which could prevent lot failure for clinical batches of MSCs that don't expand robustly. Until now, there has been no way to evaluate that prior to marrow harvest."

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The full article, "A Genomic Biomarker that Identifies Human Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells with High Scalability," can be accessed at https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/stem.3203.

About the Journal: STEM CELLS, a peer reviewed journal published monthly, provides a forum for prompt publication of original investigative papers and concise reviews. The journal covers all aspects of stem cells: embryonic stem cells/induced pluripotent stem cells; tissue-specific stem cells; cancer stem cells; the stem cell niche; stem cell epigenetics, genomics and proteomics; and translational and clinical research. STEM CELLS is co-published by AlphaMed Press and Wiley.

About AlphaMed Press: Established in 1983, AlphaMed Press with offices in Durham, NC, San Francisco, CA, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, publishes three internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals with globally recognized editorial boards dedicated to advancing knowledge and education in their focused disciplines. STEM CELLS is the world's first journal devoted to this fast paced field of research. THE ONCOLOGIST is devoted to community and hospital-based oncologists and physicians entrusted with cancer patient care. STEM CELLS TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE is dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices.

About Wiley: Wiley, a global company, helps people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Our online scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journals, combined with our digital learning, assessment and certification solutions, help universities, learned societies, businesses, governments and individuals increase the academic and professional impact of their work. For more than 200 years, we have delivered consistent performance to our stakeholders. The company's website can be accessed at http://www.wiley.com.

This story has been published on: 2020-06-08. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.

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Potential biomarker identified to screen quality of donor's stem cells before harvesting - 7thSpace Interactive