Human Behavior

Martha Myers, Who Taught Dancers How to Move and More, Dies at 97 – The New York Times

Martha Myers, who influenced generations of dancers both as the founder of the noted dance department at Connecticut College and as the longtime dean of the school of the American Dance Festival, died on May 24 at her home in Manhattan. She was 97.

Her son, Curt Myers, confirmed her death.

Ms. Myers joined the college, in New London, in 1967 and founded its dance department in 1971. In 1969, she became dean of the festival, which presents performances and offers educational programs. It was then in Connecticut and is now based in Durham, N.C.

Charles L. Reinhart, the director emeritus of the festival, said in a statement that Ms. Myers, who was with the organization for more than 30 years, brought new dance ideas and techniques to the festival while respecting tradition.

She was particularly interested in dance medicine and in somatics, which, as she described it to The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., in 1998, is about how you can reorganize neuromuscular patterns so the execution of dance technique produces what you hope its going to produce, which is a wider range of movement qualities for the dancer.

A companion field, focused on things like physical awareness and stress reduction, is known as body therapy, and Ms. Myers preached that its ideas were useful to others beyond dancers.

Not everyone can jog, play tennis or golf, she told The Herald-Sun of Durham in 1981, when she was leading one of the festivals body therapy workshops at Duke University, so we need many different types of movement for people. Many of the body therapies can be done prone on the floor and at ones own speed.

Ms. Myers was diminutive the 1998 newspaper article said she described herself as 5 feet 2 inches and shrinking but impactful. Gerri Houlihan, a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher who considered Ms. Myers a mentor, summed her up succinctly in 2006 when Ms. Myers was feted at Virginia Commonwealth University, the successor institution to the Richmond Professional Institute, where she earned her undergraduate degree.

She has mentored so many young dancers, teachers, choreographers, Ms. Houlihan said at the time. Shes tiny and speaks in a very quiet voice, very poetic, but she persuades you to do things you never thought you would be able to do.

Martha Coleman was born on May 23, 1925, in Napa, Calif. Her father, Herbert Rockwood Coleman, died when she was a young girl, and her mother, Odie Marie Coleman, moved the family to Virginia to be near relatives.

When Martha was a teenager, a neighbor heard her singing in the garden, was impressed and connected her to a voice teacher.

During the rest of my teen years and beyond, she wrote in Dont Sit Down: Reflections on Life and Work, a 2020 memoir, I practiced, studied and dreamt of singing at the Met.

But when she was a sophomore at the Richmond Professional Institute, she auditioned for the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where the professor evaluating her gave her a discouraging assessment that killed that particular dream. It was an experience she carried with her when she became a teacher herself, resolving to have empathy when it came to young peoples aspirations.

I have counseled and encouraged, she wrote in her memoir, reluctant ever to tell a hopeful candidate that their dream is impossible.

The challenge, she continued, is to find ways to open students minds to other possibilities, encourage them to find and shape for themselves the limits of their persistence, passion and abilities.

She herself found another possibility after that disheartening singing audition: dance. She also started spending time in New York City whenever she could.

In 1948, she enrolled in a two-year graduate program in physical education with a concentration in dance at Smith College in Massachusetts. There, she first became interested in somatics. She also taught for about 18 hours each week, which she thought was excessive but, she wrote in the book, the administration argued that in physical education, and dance, there was no preparation.

After earning her masters degree, she stayed at Smith to teach. In 1959, though, she took a leave of absence to create A Time to Dance, a television program produced by WGBH in Boston featuring live performances. Its nine episodes aired in 1960 and are now viewed as a sort of precursor to Dance in America, the long-running PBS series.

Soon, she added another television credit to her rsum. She had married Gerald E. Myers, who, when he took a job at Kenyon College in Ohio, suggested that she write to several Ohio television stations pitching a health-and-exercise show. To her surprise, WBNS in Columbus invited her to audition.

I demonstrated some of the stretching and strengthening exercises that might be appropriate for an 8 a.m. viewership, assumed to be largely housewives, she recalled in her memoir. I laced explanatory, cautionary and encouraging comments into stretches and quad sets, and ladled it out in inoffensive little patties with an icing of info on nutrition, weight control and health news.

She was hired. And then, not long after, she was offered a chance to be a news anchor, a rarity for a woman in the early 1960s.

She participated in some memorable feature segments, including by joining window washers 20 stories up and by riding on the shoulders of Meadowlark Lemon, the Harlem Globetrotter, to dunk a basketball.

After a few years, her husband took a job at C.W. Post College on Long Island, and before long Ms. Myers was working at Connecticut College, where she taught for the next 25 years. Late in her memoir she talked about her approach.

Movement is hard-wired in the body, resistant to change, learned from infancy in the context of family and society, she wrote. When I urge freshness, newness and investigation, I am aware that I am asking for one of the more difficult feats of human behavior. In my teaching career I have compiled strategies which invite my dance students to find new possibilities.

Her husband, who eventually held the unusual title of philosopher in residence of the dance festival, died in 2009. In addition to her son, Ms. Myers is survived by three grandsons.

She often took her expertise to other countries as part of the festivals international outreach, trips that were challenging but also yielded humorous moments, some resulting from language barriers.

I have been surprised when a direction in a somatics class, such as imagine your bones sinking into the floor, produced a perplexed look on some students faces, and giggles from those who knew English, Ms. Myers wrote in an essay she contributed to East Meets West in Dance: Voices in the Cross-Cultural Dialogue, published in 1995. I was told later the translation was imagine your bones disintegrating or decaying on the floor.

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Martha Myers, Who Taught Dancers How to Move and More, Dies at 97 - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Bitcoin And The Great Filter – Bitcoin Magazine

This article originally appeared in Bitcoin Magazine's "Moon Issue." To get a copy, visit our store.

Energy money is the catalyst and tip of the spear for an intelligent sentient species transition from a Type 0 into a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale, which measures the energy and technological mastery of a society.

ALL intelligent sentient species are on this path, whether consciously or unconsciously, and must reach this point before they are eliminated by:

This is known as the Great Filter. Energy money initiates a step change in how organic intelligence can operate and forms a critical step on the journey beyond the Great Filter.

Enrico Fermi was a mid-20th century physicist and Nobel laureate who, upon reflecting on the vastness of the cosmos, famously asked, Where are they?

With the practically infinite number of stars and planets in the universe, it seemed like there should be other intelligent species or civilizations capable of developing radio astronomy or interstellar travel, yet to this day, no evidence actually exists.

The Fermi paradox is the term used to describe this lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life in the face of a universe that should be, by the numbers, bursting with it.

While many have proposed solutions as to why this paradox exists, in the 1990s, Robin Hanson postulated a theory that has become known as the Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory suggests that intelligent sentient lifeforms must realize a series of critical steps on their way to becoming an interstellar race and at least one of them must be highly improbable, or their interrelated, path-dependent nature means that they must occur in a particular order and must all happen before a major cataclysm.

Hanson suggested some basic hurdles (or steps) paraphrased below:

But I believe that he was missing crucial elements. I believe that the discovery of energy money is the prerequisite for this grand goal. Energy money initiates a step change in how organic intelligence can operate, because the map truly represents the territory, in high fidelity.

Bitcoin is our energy money. It is our zero-to-one moment. An incorruptible scorecard in the grand game of life. A time and energy superconductor enhancing economic (human action) and behavioral feedback loops, enabling coordination across time and space in a way never before achieved.

It is our tool to get through the Great Filter and we need to remember that so we dont get lost in the minutia.

Ive taken the liberty of adapting Hansons work into what I believe is more accurate, with an emphasis on what Ive added to his general list.

I am convinced step 12 is not only the one most missing from any analysis by physicists all throughout history, but it is the most important and difficult to achieve in light of the technological advancements of an intelligent species and its propensity to want to control the uncontrollable.

Physicists have mastered the empirical study of matter and, through that success, have forgotten to account for the very real and very significant complex, random process of life; humanity perhaps being at the tip of this process.

As a result, they blindly believe that we can just fit reality into a series of models or equations, and as such, engineer our way through the Great Filter without accounting for the complex nature of human consciousness and intersubjective reality. Along this path, they sanitize the very life out of life.

In our dimension and in our timeline, weve had warnings from both sides of the academic spectrum, from Newton to Einstein, Huxley to Orwell, Nietzsche to Rand and Schopenhauer to Oppenheimer. Theyve all reminded us that false actions, arrogance and flying with wax wings can only lead to disaster.

Unfortunately, modernitys vanity and desire for comfort and control, all which stem from its collective fear, have conspired to drown out those voices of reason and replace them with a never-ending stream of meaningless noise designed to conform its constituents by numbing them into submission.

In a bid to control everything, fearful humans and the institutions they make up seek to sterilize the variance and randomness out of life so they can reduce it to a set of repeatable empirical processes. They abstract everything to the point that things are neither physical nor metaphysical, and everything is relative. Only then can they feel empty enough to be comfortable. Huxley explores this phenomenon in Brave New World Revisited, a series of essays written 27 years after his seminal novel by the same name.

The blind pursuit of sterile empirical ends at the expense of life, at the hands of collectivist megalomaniacs, is humanitys greatest threat and the only way to fix that is to reintroduce consequence to human action. To fix this, the map must accurately represent the territory so were all playing the same game, by the same rules.

When you finally become powerful enough to enslave, obsolete or blow yourself up, perhaps an asteroid is the universes way of pressing the cosmic reset button.

The discovery of energy money marks the point at which the science of matter is able to speak to the study of what matters. In this way, it enables, if not a unification, at least a direct relationship between physics and metaphysics.

I call it energy money not because its some literal battery thats storing energy in containers full of miners. I call it energy money because its the only form of scorecard (money) whose validity is priced in actual energy expenditure. The feedback loops between the cost of validation, the risk of fraud, and the demand in the market by humans seeking to cooperate on a functional standard all tie into work.

When resources, energy expenditure and the input of time are tethered to something that cannot be faked, co-opted or cheated, intersubjective value can be accurately measured and market signals, that is, prices become real. We begin to discover once again what things actually cost, and as such we as individuals and societies can make more accurate value judgements.

The behavior at the level of individual realigns toward natural order (arguably the definition of morality) and, at scale, results in functional, useful coordination among members of a society.

Without something like Bitcoin, intelligent sentient species cannot utilize their resources effectively or efficiently enough to become a meaningfully spacefaring species before wiping themselves out!

They cannot reach the point of energy mastery required to actually reach for the stars because 99% of what they do is wasted.

Reconciling physics and metaphysics means an intelligent, sentient species can make accurate value judgments and thus precisely measure and use the scarce resources it has toward maximizing energy output and minimizing time wastage.

Without such a high-fidelity transmission mechanism, the quantum wastage is not only too high but completely unknown. As a result, the road to serfdom via the incessant fear of loss and the knee-jerk reaction to control it all will prevail.

Bitcoin fixes this.

Many, including myself, have called Bitcoin the second Renaissance. As I wrote in a previous article for Bitcoin Magazine, "Bitcoin, Chaos and Order":

By tying the physical to the metaphysical, Bitcoin reunites matter to what matters. As such, it has the capacity to heal the world in the most deep and meaningful of ways.

This is both right and wrong.

Rightbecause Bitcoin will do this, and we will experience a renaissance of thinking, creativity, science, art, exploration, philosophy and more.

Wrongbecause it diminishes the magnitude of this discovery. It implies that it is another cyclical event similar to the Renaissance of yore. The reality is far more grandiose.

I would venture to say that every major enlightenment event along our timechain of human history was a pre-echo of sorts, culminating in Bitcoin.

Whether its the legends of Atlantis, the philosophy of the ancients, the gods of Egypt, the rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, they all represent life reaching for this point of Aufklrung, through the vessel of humanity.

This may be the first or millionth attempt at crossing the Great Filter and I cannot but find myself in awe of the sheer gravity of this moment.

An incorruptible, fixed supply of money is as close to perfect not because of the number of transactions per second it enables, but because of how closely it resembles or embodies the physical laws of nature and the universe.

By enabling humans to effectively measure, manage and transact the product of their labor, it means value can be created, transformed and transmitted with minimal distortion, and it trends toward the elimination of waste and falsehoods.

One cannot celebrate fake facts in the face of an economic reality tied to the physical laws of thermodynamics.

Bitcoin permits maximum fidelity in human action to permeate society,and as a result, feedback loops are shortened so that trade-offs are more evident, consequences are inescapable, and risk can no longer be hidden and subsequent losses socialized (moral hazard). Everyones skin is now in the game, and we all play by the same rules.

This framework unifies matter and what matters because the lies necessary to separate the two can no longer exist.

The study of what matters, the pursuit of truth, of principles and of meaning can once again be anchored to reality, and vice versa. The study and evolution of matter can operate within the framework and toward the ends that matter.

This will have profound implications for humanity and marks what may be the most important fork in the road since Homo sapiens separated from other hominids.

Bitcoin fixes this means we fix the money, to fix human behavior, to fix the world in time to progress beyond the Great Filter.

On a sound foundation, we can know what things truly cost and we can make accurate value judgments in order to engineer and innovate our way forward.

With Bitcoin, the next chapter in humanitys timeline can truly commence.

As Scarface wouldve said, had he been a Bitcoiner: First we fix the money. Then we fix the world. Then we get the galaxy.

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Bitcoin And The Great Filter - Bitcoin Magazine

Human Behavior

When politics is local in the Middle East – MIT News

As the old adage has it, all politics is local. That might seem a quaint idea in an age of social media and global connectivity. And yet, as a study co-led by an MIT political scientist finds, it may describe Middle East politics more accurately than many people realize.

More specifically, sectarian identity in the Muslim world especially the split between the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam is often described as a transnational matter, in which people understand themselves as being part of a large divide spanning the Middle East and North Africa regions.

But an on-the-ground survey of Shiite Muslims (those who are Shia) engaged in a massive annual pilgrimage to the Iraqi city of Karbala reveals something different: Sectarian identity is often intertwined with domestic politics and shaped in connection with local social interactions.

We found a different type of sectarian identity that definitely was not focused as much on the transnational dimension, says Professor Fotini Christia, who directed the study.

Among other things, Muslim sectarian identity for participants in the study is not a doctrinal matter, emerging from religious study. Moreover, it also appears that men and women often develop sectarian identities in differing ways.

It seems that its actually local politics seeping into an interpretation of the faith or of sectarian identity, rather than the other way around, with religion affecting peoples engagement, Christia says. There is also a gender dimension to this that has been overlooked.

The paper, Evidence on the Nature of Sectarian Animosity: The Shia Case, is published today in Nature Human Behavior. The authors are Christia, who directs the MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center; Elizabeth Dekeyser PhD 19, a postdoc at the Institute for Adanced Study in Toulouse, France; and Dean Knox PhD 17, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Research on the road to Karbala

To conduct the study, the scholars designed a survey of Shiite pilgrims walking to Karbala for the holy day of Arbaeen a collective mourning ritual at the shrine of Imam Husayn, one of the prophet Muhammads grandsons. This annual pilgrimage, banned under Saddam Hussein, is now one of the largest such annual events in the world, attracting Shia from many places.

Indeed, the structure of the pilgrimage helped the researchers conduct the study. The road from Najaf to Karbala, a 50-mile stretch that is the most heavily traveled part of the pilgrimage, features service tents organized around the areas people are from. That structure allowed Christia, working on the ground in Iraq with a local research team, to develop a sophisticated survey of a geographically diverse group of over 4,000 people in the Shia sect. About 60 percent of the participants were from Iraq, and 40 percent were from Iran; the survey was split roughly evenly by gender.

Overall, the Shia represent only about 20 percent of Muslims globally; they are predominant in Iran, but a minority in almost every other largely Muslim country and have received relatively less attention from social scientists and other scholars.

When we think about the Muslim world there is a lot more focus on the Sunni side, Christia says. It felt like a big missing piece to have not engaged the Shia population in this kind of research.

Due to the complexities of conducting research in Iran, she adds, This is really a chance to engage a religious population from Iran that we could never access in Iran.

All told, as the scholars state in the paper, the survey results show that sectarian animosity is linked to economic deprivation, political disillusionment, lack of out-group contact, and a sect-based view of domestic politics. Rather than representing a transnational, pan-Muslim view of social solidarity, sectarianism seems to operate a bit more like ethno-nationalism, derived from local experiences and bringing itself to bear on national political issues.

The survey data show, for instance, that an increase of household wealth leads to a modest decline in sectarian animosity, while greater disillusionment with democratic government leads to an increase in sectarian animosity. And women in Shia-dominated areas, with less across-sect social contact, have more sectarian animosity. In each case, domestic economic and political factors influence variation in sectarianism more than transnational matters do.

One reason that its so hard to study the origins and correlates of animosity is because the concepts involved are intrinsically hard to quantify, Knox says. We take these issues seriously and validate our measures in numerous ways. For example, we quantify animosity through multiple approaches, including experiments, and we measure out-group contact with everything from self-reported information to smartphone-based location tracking. Ultimately, were able to use a variety of data sources to test the observable implications of existing theories about how and why individuals hold this animosity.

The gender split and lived experience

At the same time, the survey results also yield some distinctive gender differences. Among Iraqi women, for instance, individuals who are more religious tend to be more sectarian, but men who are more religious tend to be less sectarian. Why? The scholars suggest that while Shiite doctrine discourages sectarianism, the social activities of religious practice abet it, by bringing people from only one sect together. For men who already work outside the home and have other means of socialization, this may have little impact on their world views. But for women for whom sectarian religious gatherings are a primary form of socialization, practicing religion more actively can thus increase sectarian views.

Similarly, the connection between democratic disillusion and sectarianism in the survey is primarily driven by women (in contrast to the public image of young Muslim men driving sectarian conflict). The researchers hypothesize that this, too, comes from the greater opportunities for men to absorb varying views in the public sphere, while the more limited socialization opportunities for women reinforce sectarian views.

Providing a full, nuanced analysis of the divergent ways that men and women understand sectarianism is critical, Dekeyser says. For behaviors and beliefs that are heavily influenced by socialization, like intergroup relations, ignoring the entirely different lived experiences across genders can both fail to examine critical variation in beliefs, and lead to incorrect social and political conclusions.

And the fact that lived experience itself is largely localized, for most people, in turn means their views are grounded in those concerns. After all, Christia observes, consider that even people engaged in the Karbala pilgrimage, an international event, organize themselves according to their places of origin.

Even at this event which is transnational, because there are Shia from all over the place, even there, its in a way a celebration of their local identity, Christia says.

All told, the close study of sectarian animosity, rather than a reliance on received notions about it, is necessary for fully understanding the views of people around the Muslim world.

So many other places where politics are problematic and we [the U.S.] have been engaged in the Middle East, like Iraq or Syria or Lebanon or Yemen, have this sectarian dimension, Christia says. We need to think about religion and politics, and how this really manifests itself. The fact that there is this [political] dimension to it, more than this transnational religious dimension, is an important takeaway.

Support for the study was provided, in part, by MIT and Princeton University.

Link:
When politics is local in the Middle East - MIT News

Human Behavior

Monkeypox outbreak: What to know about symptoms, threat – Medical News Today

This is a developing story. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.

On the heels of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a zoonotic virus seems to be spreading across the globe.

Since early May, Monkeypox has been making headway across at least 30 countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Australia, and the United States. The number of cases has increased to more than 550 worldwide as of June 1, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the U.K., nearly 200 monkeypox cases have been confirmed since May 7. During a press conference on May 17, WHO officials said that these are mostly separate occurrences except for a family cluster with two confirmed cases and one probable case[].

Recently, Canada and the U.S. joined these nations in tracking and tracing the virus.

As of May 19, Canada confirmed two monkeypox cases and said it was investigating more than a dozen suspected cases. The Massachusetts Department of Health also announced a single case in an individual who had recently been in Canada. Several Canadian cases have been linked to this person.

On May 18, Scott Pauley, press officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Medical News Today:

The U.K. notified the U.S. of 8 people in the U.S. who might have been seated near the U.K. traveler when they flew from Nigeria to London [on May 3-4, 2022]. Of these, one is no longer in the U.S., and one was not a contact. The remaining six are being monitored by their respective state health departments. None of these six travel contacts have monkeypox symptoms and their risk of infection is very low.

The WHO officials have been tracking monkeypoxs path through Europe and North America for several weeks. However, with the data available so far, they do not know long the virus has been spreading.

On May 30, the agency said during a public webinar that while it cannot rule out the risk, it is unlikely the outbreak will turn into a global pandemic.

Monkeypox is a zoonotic virus, which transmits disease from animals to humans. Cases typically occur near tropical rainforests, where animals that carry the virus live.

The monkeypox virus is a member of the orthopoxvirus family. It also has two distinct genetic strains or clades: the Central African (Congo Basin) clade and the West African clade. The Congo Basin clade is known to spread more easily and cause more severe symptoms.

Monkeypox naturally occurs in Africa, especially in west and central African nations. Cases in the U.S. are rare and associated with international travel from places where the disease is more common.

Monkeypox symptoms and signs include headache, skin rash, fever, body aches, chills, swollen lymph nodes, and exhaustion. It produces symptoms similar to smallpox, but milder.

The time from infection to the onset of symptoms, which is referred to as the incubation period, can range from five to 21 days. The illness typically resolves within two to four weeks.

Severe cases are more common among people with underlying immune deficiencies and young children. In recent times, the case fatality ratio of monkeypox is around 3-6%.

Transmission of the monkeypox virus among humans is limited, but it can happen through close skin contact, air droplets, bodily fluids, and virus-contaminated objects.

Most of the recent cases of monkeypox in the U.K. and Canada have been reported among attendees of sexual health services at health clinics in men who have sex with men.

Regarding this trend, Dr. I. Soc Fall, the regional emergencies director for the WHOs Health Emergencies Program, cautioned:

This is new information we need to investigate properly to understand better the dynamic of local transmission in the U.K. and some other countries.

During a press conference on May 17, Dr. Fall acknowledged that public health officials still have much to learn about the monkeypox virus.

But the most important thing is we really need to invest in understanding the development of monkeypox because we have so many unknowns in terms of the dynamics of transmission, the clinical features, the epidemiology. In terms of therapeutics and diagnostics also, we still have important gaps, he said.

WHO experts believe that solutions for monkeypox calls must go beyond addressing the disease.

During the press conference, Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHOs Health Emergencies Program, said: [G]etting answers isnt just about getting answers about the virus. Weve got to get answers about the hosts, weve got to get answers about human behavior and practice, and weve got to operate at all levels to try and ensure that human populations are protected.

For more insight, Medical News Today spoke with Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, clinical associate professor in infectious diseases and director of the Global Medicine and Antimicrobial Management Program at the University of Florida.

Being aware of the rash of monkeypox which presents as vesicles is very important. Additional measures include vigilance in those who have traveled in the past 30 days to countries that have reported cases of monkeypox [and] who have contact with a person who is confirmed or suspected of monkeypox. Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi

Dr. Cherabuddi mentioned that smallpox vaccinations offer some protection against monkeypox. He said the Democratic Republic of Congo is currently employing ring vaccination for close contacts of confirmed cases.

The U.K. is also using ring vaccination, in addition to contact and source tracing, case searching, and local rash-illness surveillance, he added.

Dr. Cherabuddi believes that more cases will arise in the U.S., but its difficult to predict how many.

He said he was concerned that with fewer people in the U.S. having had smallpox vaccinations, this could be putting a majority of the population below the age of 40-50 years at risk for infection[]

Dr. Ryan also noted that preventing the disease may not entirely rest on vaccines. He pointed out that the protection offered by previous smallpox vaccination also has reduced[]

He said there might be a need to change agricultural, social, and food storage practices to prevent further outbreaks. Officials hope to help communities understand how the virus spreads so they can address it at its sources.

Dr. Cherabuddi told MNT that vaccines for monkeypox have also been approved for limited circulation.

An approved vaccine for monkeypoxMVA-BNis not widely available. Tecovirimat (TPOXX), as both oral and IV medication is approved in the U.S. for treating smallpox and oral form in Europe to treat cowpox, monkeypox, and smallpox. The FDA also approved brincidofovir (Tembexa) in 2021 to treat smallpox. These medications are not widely available, he said.

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Monkeypox outbreak: What to know about symptoms, threat - Medical News Today

Human Behavior

Making room for wildlife: 4 essential reads – The Conversation

Millions of Americans enjoy observing and photographing wildlife near their homes or on trips. But when people get too close to wild animals, they risk serious injury or even death. It happens regularly, despite the threat of jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.

These four articles from The Conversations archive offer insights into how wild animals view humans and how our presence affects nearby animals and birds plus a scientists perspective on whats wrong with wildlife selfies.

In some parts of North America, wild animals that once were hunted to near-extinction have rebounded in recent decades. Wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, beavers and black bears are examples of wild species that have returned to large swaths of their pre-settlement ranges. As human development expands, people and animals are finding themselves in close quarters.

How do the animals react? Conservation researcher Kathy Zeller and her colleagues radio-collared black bears in central and western Massachusetts and found that the bears avoided populated areas, except when their natural food sources were less abundant in spring and fall. During those lean seasons, the bears would visit food sources in developed areas, such as bird feeders and garbage cans but they foraged at night, contrary to their usual habits, to avoid contact with humans.

Wild animals are increasing their nocturnal activity in response to development and other human activities, such as hiking, biking and farming, Zeller reports. And people who are scared of bears may be comforted to know that most of the time, black bears are just as scared of them.

Read more: Black bears adapt to life near humans by burning the midnight oil

When a recovering species shows up on its old turf or in its former waters, humans arent always happy to make room for it. Ecologist Veronica Frans studied sea lions in New Zealand, a formerly endangered species that moves inland from the coast to breed, often showing up on local roads or in backyards.

Frans and her colleagues created a database that they used to find and map potential breeding grounds for sea lions all over the New Zealand mainland. They also identified potential challenges for the animals, such as roads and fences that could block their inland movement.

When wild species enter new areas, they inevitably will have to adapt, and often will have new kinds of interactions with humans, Frans writes. I believe that when communities understand the changes and are involved in planning for them, they can prepare for the unexpected, with coexistence in mind.

Read more: When endangered species recover, humans may need to make room for them and it's not always easy

How close to wildlife is too close? Guidelines vary, but as a starting point, the U.S. National Park Service recommends staying at least 25 yards (23 meters) away from wild animals, and 100 yards (91 meters) from predators such as bears or wolves.

In a review of hundreds of studies, conservation scholars Jeremy Dertien, Courtney Larson and Sarah Reed found that human presence may affect many wild species behavior at much longer distances.

Animals may flee from nearby people, decrease the time they feed and abandon nests or dens, they report. Other effects are harder to see, but can have serious consequences for animals health and survival. Wild animals that detect humans can experience physiological changes, such as increased heart rates and elevated levels of stress hormones.

The scholars review found that the distance at which human presence starts to affect wildlife varies by species, although large animals generally need more distance. Small mammals and birds may change their behavior when people come within 300 feet (91 meters), while large mammals like elk and moose can be affected by humans up to 3,300 feet (1,006 meters) away more than half a mile.

Read more: Don't hike so close to me: How the presence of humans can disturb wildlife up to half a mile away

There are stories from around the world of people dying in the act of taking selfies. Some involve wildlife, such as a traveler in India who was mauled by an injured bear in 2018 when he stopped to photograph himself with the animal.

Tourists are often the culprits, but theyre not alone. As ocean scientist Christine Ward-Paige explains, scientists who have special permission to handle wild animals as part of their field research sometimes use this opportunity to take personal photos with their subjects.

I have witnessed the making of many researcher-animal selfies, including photos with restrained animals during scientific study, Ward-Paige recounts. In most cases, the animal was only held for an extra fraction of a second while vigilant researchers simply glanced up and smiled for the camera already pointing in their direction.

But some incidents have been more intrusive. In one instance, researchers had tied a large shark to a boat with ropes across its tail and gills so that they could measure, biopsy and tag it. Then they kept it restrained for an extra 10 minutes while the scientists took turns hugging it for photos.

In Ward-Paiges view, legitimizing wildlife selfies in this way encourages people who dont have scientific training or understand animal behavior to think that taking them is OK. That undercuts warnings from agencies like the National Park Service and puts both people and animals in danger.

Instead, she urges fellow scientists to work to show the vulnerability of our animal subjects more clearly and help guide the public to observe wildlife safely and responsibly.

Read more: Even scientists take selfies with wild animals. Here's why they shouldn't.

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Making room for wildlife: 4 essential reads - The Conversation

Human Behavior

NOAA warns of ‘aggressive’ dolphin causing ‘concerns for human safety’ off Texas coast – Yahoo! Voices

AUSTIN, Texas Stay away from the too-friendly dolphin.

Officials have identified ananimal thathas gotten a bit pushy in the water off of North Padre Island,theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a press release.

North Padre Island is about 20 miles east of Corpus Christi.

"Biologists report the animal is showing more aggressive behavior, separating children from their parents in the water, and isolating swimming pets from their owners," said the latest release issued on Thursday.

The problem is that people have been feeding, swimming and playingwith the dolphin for more than a year despite warnings from biologists, law enforcement and residents to stay away from it, according to the release.

Officials are warning that a dolphin has gotten too aggressive on North Padre Island and is separating adults from children in the water.

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It saidthat the dolphin "has become so used to humans that it now seeks out people, boats, and any form of interaction."

The mammal also has wounds caused by boats and there are concerns about its safety, officials said.

People are being asked to leave the dolphin alone. Boaters are asked to avoid stopping if the dolphin comes to close and to slowly move away.

Swimmers are being asked to leave the water if they see the dolphin, the release said.

"While the dolphin may seem friendly, this is a wild animal with unpredictable behavior," according to NOAA. It is showing behaviors similar to other lone, sociable dolphins worldwide, officials said.

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Those behaviors, according to the release, include following boats and people, losing its natural wariness and starting to play with and swim with people,

The dolphin in now in thelast stage of these behaviors which include showing dominant and aggressive behavior toward people, according to NOAA.

Story continues

NOAA and biologists are working to determine how to protect the dolphin.

Any interaction with the dolphin that may injure or change its behaviors is considered to be harassment and is illegal under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Feeding or attempting to feed wild dolphins is also illegal.

Violations can be reportedto NOAAs Enforcement Hotline at (800) 853-1964. Violationsare punishable by a fine up to $100,000up to 1 year in jail.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: NOAA warns of 'aggressive' dolphin looking for people off Texas coast

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NOAA warns of 'aggressive' dolphin causing 'concerns for human safety' off Texas coast - Yahoo! Voices

Human Behavior

PAU Launches the Technology and Mental Health Concentration within its MS in Psychology Degree – PR Web

PALO ALTO, Calif. (PRWEB) June 03, 2022

Starting in the fall of 2022, the Master of Science in Psychology program at Palo Alto University (PAU) will offer a Technology and Mental Health Concentration. This concentration will explore the important role technology plays in todays society, the negative and positive effects of technology on mental health, and the complexity of the interaction between technology and human behavior.

Utilizing technology to enhance mental health is an emerging area of study, and PAU is at the forefront of this burgeoning field. Students will learn to identify the impact of technology on human psychology, which digital tools contribute to mental health, and how to develop these digital tools.

Students in this concentration will pair traditional training in graduate psychological science with cutting-edge courses about how technology affects mental health and how we can use technology to develop new treatments and improve mental health in the future.

Tech and Mental Health Coursework

The Technology and Mental Health Concentration covers current trends in mental health and wellness and includes these courses:

1) Technology and Mental Health for Children and Adolescents: Screen Time, Digital Interventions, and Teletherapy. This course explores the effects of technology on children and adolescents.

2) Evidence-based Digital Internet Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities. This course discusses the development and efficacy of technological innovations in healthcare.

3) Using Evidence-based Principles of Multimedia Learning for Product Design. Students will learn how people learn and process information and apply this framework to multimedia content design.

4) Mental Health and Design in the Digital World (User Experience). Students will learn how the development of technology has positively affected our wellness, learn the skills and strategies for UX product design, and become leaders of these future trends in mental health.

Careers in Technology and Mental Health

Students who graduate with this concentration become experts in the application of technologysuch as smartphone apps, virtual reality, and video gamesto enhance mental health in various industries. This concentration prepares students for technology-related employment in the fields of:

Graduates will understand the changing demands of mental health and tech in the workforce, the expansion of mental health and technology in the corporate sector, and the ways in which an understanding of psychology can benefit those who want to work in technology.

Click here to apply or learn more about PAUs MS in Psychology program, Technology and Mental Health Concentration. Applications are due August 5, 2022.

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Immunology

AbbVie is Enabling Students Diagnosed with Immunological Diseases to Shine – BioSpace

From left: Nia Phipps andLavery Hughes, recipients of the AbbVie Immunology Scholarship/Courtesy of AbbVie.

People with immunological disorders face multiple challenges in their lives related to their medical condition.

Since she was two years old, 20-year-old Baltimore native and current economics student at Spelman College in Atlanta Nia Phipps has dealt with the challenges of uveitis, an inflammation of the eye that can cause vision loss in patients if left untreated. Alongside the uveitis, she also had cataracts in both eyes, which compounded the vision challenges she has faced most of her life.

From an early age, Phipps' life was markedly different from other little girls. She spent significant time traveling back and forth from Baltimore to Boston to consult with her physician. She also spent time undergoing surgical procedures on her eyes.

My early life was doctors offices and multiple surgeries. That gives you such a different perspective on life, Phipps told BioSpace. Ive been living a completely different life from my friends. I can pull off a normal life but its not normal behind the scenes.

Despite these challenges, throughout her life Phipps, who dreams of addressing housing shortages at historic Black colleges like Spelman, has remained steadfast in a belief in herself, that she can overcome the obstacles from her chronic conditions. Although she wears eyeglasses that have lenses thick enough they make her eyes appear larger than normal, she has maintained a positive attitude and believes there are no limits to what she can do.

The same is true for incoming University of Kentucky freshman Lavery Hughes who recently graduated from Barren County High School in Kentucky. This past year, prior to her 18th birthday, Hughes fell drastically ill. She spent hours in the bathroom and lost approximately 30 pounds in a few months time. She was sent to Vanderbilt Childrens Hospital in Tennessee where she was diagnosed with and treated for Crohns disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disorder.

Much like Phipps, Hughes was active in multiple academic and extracurricular programs, particularly those that offered insight into her passion, veterinary medicine. And, much like Phipps, her chronic condition is largely controlled by drugs such as those developed by Illinois-based AbbVie that allow her to continue to chase her dreams.

Ive now reached remission and I realized that all of my dreams are still within reach, Hughes said.

Not only will continued treatment with medications allow both young women to achieve the lofty goals they have set for themselves, so too will the $15,000 scholarships they both won from AbbVie. Phipps and Hughes are among 45 students who have received the AbbVie Immunology Scholarship, which provides financial support to students living with chronic, immune-mediated diseases who are pursuing higher education inthe United States. The scholarship aims to empower students as they pursue a degree and a life not defined by their diseases.

Patrick Horber, president of AbbVies U.S. immunology programs, noted that people who face chronic, immune-mediated diseases can sometimes find their symptoms difficult to manage, which impacts their quality of life. The scholarships support students who are making an impact in their communities and who have exemplified determination to overcome challenges.

As a trusted leader in immunology, AbbVie is proud to help support these students' academic journeys as they continue to take on inspiring challenges and pursue their ambitions to make a difference in their communities, Horber said in a statement.

Its that reputation with immune-mediated diseases that sparked Phipps decision to apply for the scholarship, something she did three times before winning it this year.

When people choose to understand whats going on with you, you reach out to them. Especially with eye disorders. For AbbVie to not only acknowledge it but also offer support to help you further shows me they want to see me go farther in life, she said.

College-age students who have diseases across dermatology, gastroenterology and rheumatology and are seeking an associates, bachelor's, master's or doctorate degree are eligible to apply for the AbbVie scholarship. There were more than 1,000 applicants for the AbbVie Immunology Scholarship this year. Although the scholarship is supported by AbbVie, the company notes on its application form that there is no requirement for applicants to have been prescribed a medication developed by the company for their inflammatory disease. To receive the scholarship, applicants are required to submit an essay describing how they have overcome any limitations of their disease.

Phipps wrote about her 18-year saga with uveitis and the multiple surgeries she has undergone. She also addressed the expense of treatment alongside the expense of higher education. Phipps also wrote about the need for greater advocacy for patients with inflammatory diseases and letting people know theyre not by themselves.

Hughes, who has not dealt with her inflammatory disease as long as Phipps has, found out about the scholarship from her doctors, who encouraged her to apply. In her essay, she shared that although people living with chronic diseases can have a type of disability, its an invisible one that can sometimes be dismissed. But, Hughes said that disability doesnt mean that people arent capable and it shouldnt stop anyone from achieving their dreams.

Both Phipps and Hughes described their lifes journey that, for both, remains unchanged by their disease. With a positive, can-do attitude, Phipps wont let her uveitis keep her down. She remains optimistic and determined to achieve her goals.

You have to smile in the face of adversity, she said.

Thats a sentiment she and Hughes both share.

Living with Crohns disease will not stop me from achieving all I want to achieve, Hughes said.

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Immunology

Princess of Belgium visits new US headquarters for company in Smyrna – 11Alive.com WXIA

SMYRNA, Ga. A royal princess came to Smyrna to visit the new U.S. headquarters of global biopharmaceutical company UCB Monday.

Princess Astrid of Belgium was joined by Belgian business leaders and Smyrna Mayor Derek Norton to inaugurate the new facility and discuss its impact on patients locally and globally, along with plans for long-term sustainable growth. Leadership from Morehouse College and Georgia State University were also in attendance to help give her the royal treatment.

Her royal highness honored LaKeisha Parnell, an epilepsy patient and advocate, with a bouquet of flowers. The princess was seen smiling while being pictured with Parnell and UCB Executive Vice President Immunology and U.S. Solutions in the photo below.

According to itswebsite, UCB focuses on "creating value for people living with severe diseases and immunology and neurology now and into the future." The company was founded in Brussels in the 1920s and maintains its global headquarters there.

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Princess of Belgium visits new US headquarters for company in Smyrna - 11Alive.com WXIA

Immunology

Robert Schreiber: I think we are on the verge of seeing cancer as a chronic disease – EL PAS USA

This is a good time to be an immunologist, says Robert Schreiber, 76, a leading researcher in the interaction between the immune system and cancer who teaches at the Washington University School of Medicine. It is an exciting time: we are in the golden age of immunology and for immunotherapy against cancer, he says with a smile from the imposing Ramn y Cajal lecture hall of the University of Barcelona, where he is about to be awarded an honorary degree for his scientific contribution to the demonstration that the immune system can be a therapeutic tool against cancer.

These are good times for immunology research, but it wasnt always that way. When young people say to me, But wasnt this [that the immune system can help fight cancer] already known? I say, Let me tell you a story..., Schreiber laughs.

It was not easy putting the immune system at the center of the fight against cancer. Its potential role in combating tumors was an old idea dating back to the beginning of the 20th century that did not quite take hold; and it remained there, as a mere hypothesis, in the minds of a few researchers who didnt have the experimental momentum to really be able to nail what was going on, admits Schreiber. But years later, he and his team took up the idea again, which, based on small findings, culminated in the demonstration, in the early 2000s, of the rules of the game between the immune system and cancer: Schreiber postulated the theory of cancer immunoediting, the paradox that, although the immune system protects against tumor cells, it can also promote their development.

Their findings helped open the door to immunotherapy against tumors, the great therapeutic revolution of the last decade.

Question. If the immune system can protect against cancer, but can also favor its development, is it our ally or our enemy?

Answer. Were still trying to figure that out, actually. Its a process, and the first part of the process is if the immune system recognizes a tumor thats formed because there are abnormal proteins in the tumor, and every tumor has abnormal proteins, then theres a potential for the immune system to destroy those cells, leaving the normal cells behind. We call that elimination, and thats the first step in this process. But then what happens is if the tumor is heterogeneous, and many tumors are, then there are cells that dont express that same mutation and the immune system doesnt recognize it. And so by clearing out the ones that can be easily recognized, the immune system basically now makes a troop of really bad tumor cells, and they now grow.

Q. New cancer treatments emerge, they work, but then tumors always emerge that generate resistance. It is like an eternal race between cat and mouse.

A. Thats why very few of us will ever use the word cure when were talking about immune responses to cancer or cure with respect to any response to cancer. And so it is a cat and mouse game, and it starts naturally just as cancers arise: the immune system that we all have, and its very personalized to each of us, can see some of those cells and get rid of them. Whats left over if they now start to grow? What happens if you use immunotherapy instead of just using the natural immune response? There are big drugs now that are showing remarkable effects on maybe 20% of the patients. If its melanoma, its 80% of the patients, but many of these cancers are only 20% responsive. So now you come in with another treatment, maybe even radiation. Radiation can make new mutations in a tumor and give the immune system another opportunity to kill. So they get rid of those. But now you have other ones coming up. And so we dont know if this is going to be years and years and years of treatment with different combinations of therapies. Many feel that what is attainable for us now is to make cancer a chronic disease like diabetes.

Q. What happens in tumors such as breast or pancreatic cancer, where immunotherapy does not work, and what differentiates these neoplasms from lung cancer or melanoma, where it does work better?

A. Were trying to figure this question out. Some people felt that it was simply the number of mutations that a particular cancer has. And so melanoma, because its caused by UV light, gives many mutations. And so youll often see melanomas with 1000 mutations, pancreatic cancer is much lower. Its about 24 to 30 mutations. But we consider that these tumors are little universes in themselves and they not only contain the tumor cells, but they contain many other cells. And one of the things about pancreatic cancer is they have a very high level of myeloid cells in them and they make a desmoplastic. Theyre like little rocks and so the T cells that would be doing the effector function and killing off the pancreatic cancer have a very difficult time getting into there. And once they get in there, they meet up with these immunosuppressive myeloid cells, and that makes them even worse.

Q. Will immunotherapy eventually take the place of other treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy?

A. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, things like that work very differently than immunotherapy, although theres a feeling that even in those kinds of nonimmunologic therapies, theres an immune component. So you treat with radiation, you make new antigens. The immune system now sees those and they can facilitate destruction. We think that ultimately having the ability of making different combinations is going to be necessary and we need the guidelines to figure out what the criteria are to use radiation therapy plus immunotherapy or just immunotherapy alone, and so on.

Q. What more needs to be discovered about the immune system?

A. Compared to where we were 20 years ago, we know so much more now than we did then. We still need to learn many things about how the immune system works and how we can target certain things in the immune system to either get them to work better or to block something that is inhibiting. The big question right now is this idea of having strong, focused research in immune tumor interactions and ultimately immunotherapy and then translating those findings that we often get from experimental animals and then into humans and seeing how they work and how do we logically pick the kinds of therapy that we would treat a patient with. Were in a revolution. We have now several things that are working somewhat. But we need to figure out how to make them work consistently in all patients.

Q. How is cancer vaccine research doing?

A. We were one of the first laboratories to show that if you sequence a tumor and you identify the mutations and you predict which of those mutations are good antigens for T cells, that you could make a vaccine and vaccinate a tumor-bearing animal and have them reject their tumor. And that has been taken into the clinic. And there are several groups now all over the world that are trying to do this. But we showed this with vaccines that were made with peptides that included the mutation that we were targeting. There were ten to 20 in the patient. The problem was that these were highly personalized vaccines. So the only person in the world that would benefit from this vaccine was that one person that we sequenced.

Big Pharma hates this idea because they dont like personalized. They want off the shelf. So one argument that gets around us a little bit is, as were now many groups doing more and more sequencing, what were finding is that suddenly were coming up with mutations that are seen in more than one patient. Steve Rosenbergs group, for example, has found that the KRAS gene, which is in 20% of human tumors, mutated, can be an antigen that could be used in a vaccine for many people. I think the only kind of vaccine that drug companies will be most excited about will be the vaccines that target common mutations in tumors.

Q. Realistically, will we see cancer disappear or rather see it become a chronic disease?

A. I think we are on the verge of seeing cancer as a chronic disease, although we lump everything into one big term of cancer, and there are so many differences...But I would say certainly for some kinds of cancer, were getting closer to making it a chronic disease. Every once in a while, you see these patients whose cancers never return. And its fantastic. But whether or not that is going to be the I think we have much more to learn before we can actually say we can cure it.

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