The most persuasive people use these 3 timing methods to get what they want, says human behavior expert – CNBC

November 18, 2020 medical

1. Know when you should (and shouldn't) go first.

Many persuasive encounters are "serial competitions," in which people appear before "judges" one after another. (Think: Pitching for new business or a series of candidates coming in for job interviews every hour.)

There's a lot of interesting research that tells us where we want to be in these serial sequences, and it distills down to some useful guidelines for when you want to go first and when you don't want to go first.

You're better off going first when:

You're better off going toward the end when:

"I've got some good news and I've got some bad news." We've all said these words at some point. But which should you give first the good news or the bad?

I used to always give the good news first. It seemed logical. Giving bad news is uncomfortable, so I wanted to ease into it. I also believed that if I started with the bad news, the other side might shut down and not want to hear the rest of what I had to say.

But when I looked at the research, I discovered my reasoning was upside down. According to one study, when people were asked this famous phrase, four out of five preferred to hear the bad news first.

(What's funny is that I, too, would want to hear the bad news first. But I thought I was alone in that preference.)

What's going on? Research shows that people have a strong preference for rising sequences at the end, rather than declining sequences at the end.

The bad news is that I was doing it wrong; the good news is now I know how to do it better.

When people are confronted with a decision, they often have in their back pocket a default decision. And the default decision is almost always no.

If you're asking your boss for a raise, for example, the default decision is no. If you're trying to get someone to buy something, the default decision is no.

But studies show that people are slightly more likely to overcome the default at two moments: Early in the day, and immediately after breaks.

So, if you have a tough prospect and you know the answer is no, you might have a marginally better chance if you approach that person at the top of the morning or right after that person has taken a break.

In fact, you can even say, "Let's take a walk first before we discuss this in depth."

Of course, this isn't a guarantee. Far from it. But it might give you a tiny edge. If I have a 5% chance of getting you to say yes and I pick the right time to ask, then maybe I could bump that up to a 7% chance.

That means I still have a 93% chance of no. But, over time and in repeated interactions, that small increase in my favor can be meaningful.

Daniel Pink is a human behavior expert and the bestselling author of "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing," "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" and "To Sell Is Human." He also teaches a course on MasterClass, in which he offers ascience-based approach to the art of persuading, selling and motivating yourself and others. Follow him on Twitter @DanielPink.

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The most persuasive people use these 3 timing methods to get what they want, says human behavior expert - CNBC

Human Behavior

Gov. Cuomo: Buffalo and surrounding areas going from Yellow to Orange Zone, part of Niagara County to Yellow Zone – WGRZ.com

November 18, 2020 medical

Governor Andrew Cuomo says Western New York currently has the worst COVID-19 positivity rate in the state.

ALBANY, N.Y. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo provided an update on the COVID-19 pandemic in Western New York. He says Western New York currently has the worst COVID-19 positivity rate in the state.

And because of that, Buffalo and the surrounding areas in Erie County are going from a Yellow Zone to an Orange Zone. A portion of Niagara County has also been added as a Yellow Zone.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says the new restrictions go into effect Friday for non-essential businesses and Monday for schools.

This announcement comes as positive cases of COVID-19 continue to rise in the Western New York region, specifically in Erie County, and hospitalizations have more than doubled in the past week.

In an Orange Zone the following takes place:

Cuomo said the positivity rate in Western New York is higher than anywhere else in the state. According to the latest state data, these are currently the highest rates in Western New York:

The governor said in his personal opinion Western New York, "Hasn't lived the full pain of COVID's wrath."

The governor went on to say "Western New York read about New York City, they read about Long Island, they watched it on the TV news, but the numbers were never as bad in Western New York, and you want people to change dramatically their behavior, for me to make these dramatic changes in behavior I have to believe this is real. And, it wasn't real because it wasn't real to me. You know when it becomes real? When it's real to me."

"I get it was real in New York City, but I'm in Buffalo. Buffalo is much different than New York City, and it wasn't real to me. Like South Dakota. I believe that. I believe they didn't have the same level of fear. And, what caused so many people in New York to change their behavior? It was the fear. Why do you guys wear the masks now? Oh, because you said we have to. There's a law that says, no, you wear the masks because you're afraid of COVID and because you're concerned about other people, but because you think it's real. Because it is real for you. Western New York never felt that same level of reality."

He added, also in his opinion that, after Thanksgiving he expects there will be a tremendous spike in cases.

"And you see people saying, nobody's gonna stop me from coming together," Cuomo said. "That's my family. You can't tell me don't socialize with my family. It's gonna happen. It is going to happen. And, it's gonna happen because it's human behavior."

The governor also talked about how Canada had numbers go way up after Canadian Thanksgiving and he warns that will happen here.

"This is a very serious, significant problem in Erie County," Poloncarz said on Tuesday. "There is not a single town or city in Erie County that doesn't have an infection rate under 3 percent."

Dr. Thomas Russo, one of Western New York's leading infectious disease experts, told 2 On Your Side's Kelly Dudzik Wednesday that a lot of Erie County actually qualifies for Red Zone status, but the governor just went Orange for now.

You can watch the full press conference with Governor Cuomo below:

Human Behavior

Evolutionary perspectives on human behavior during the coronavirus pandemic: Insights from game theory – DocWire News

November 18, 2020 medical

This article was originally published here

Evol Med Public Health. 2020 Sep 7;2020(1):181-186. doi: 10.1093/emph/eoaa034. eCollection 2020.

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus pandemic constitutes a global challenge to society and medicine. Here, we review evolutionary insights that are relevant for the understanding of how people respond to the pandemic and what to expect in the aftermath of the crisis. Specifically, we argue that the behavioral immune system (BIS) and sickness behavior (SB) comprise two adaptive responses to impending and actual infection, respectively, and that individuals activating their BIS differ from those showing SB in important ways that may have implications for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Moreover, we reframe some of the behavioral health issues associated with the pandemic in a game-theoretical scenario, illustrating the difficulties that arise when public health is treated as a public good. Lay summary: The coronavirus pandemic constitutes a global challenge to society and medicine. In this article, we employ evolutionary theory to improve our understanding of how people respond to the pandemic. Specifically, we argue that human behavior is guided by ancient mechanisms involving either the avoidance of infection or defense against attacks in times of enhanced vulnerability. Moreover, we reframe some of the behavioral health issues associated with the pandemic in a game-theoretical scenario. This helps understand why most people comply with rules of social distancing, while a minority fails to do so for very different reasons. The evolutionary perspective also allows making some predictions for the course of the pandemic.

PMID:33204426 | PMC:PMC7499656 | DOI:10.1093/emph/eoaa034

Human Behavior

Lessons from COVID-19 for the next pandemic: Invest in public health, earn public trust – AAMC

November 18, 2020 medical

COVID-19 has demonstrated that the United States must prepare for future pandemics by increasing investments in public health, shifting more resources to clinical trials, and getting more people to change behaviors, top federal health officials said Nov.16 at the opening plenary session of Learn Serve Lead 2020: The Virtual Experience, the annual meeting of the AAMC.

Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Anne Schuchat, MD, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the medical and scientific fields responded to COVID-19 with remarkable speed and innovation, butthe nation must apply lessons from that response in order to combat the next fast-sweeping disease.

The mathematical probability of another pandemic is essentially the same every single day, Schuchat told moderator David Skorton, MD, AAMC president and CEO. The chances that we're going to have something else horrible, imminently, are very real.

Responding effectively will require investing more money and manpower in public health systems at the federal, state, and local levels, they said.

Weve neglected public health. That has not served us well, Schuchat said.We cant take public health capacity for granted.

Collins lamented that although the nation turns its attention to public health systems during a health crisis, we tend to shift to complacencyafter the crisis a pattern that should not repeat after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.

We need to revitalize the public health system to be prepared to deal with whatever that next pandemic is, he said. That system needs resources, it needs people.

Speaking just hours after announcing one of the most uplifting scientific developments in the fight against COVID-19 preliminary data showing that a vaccine developed by Moderna was 94.5% effective in protecting clinical trial participants from the disease Collins shared observations about the nations ability to conduct such trials in an emergency.

It has been astounding to see the way the entire scientific community has pulled together to produce treatment and vaccine candidates in a fraction of the usual time, Collins said.

Yet clinical trials of therapies and vaccines for COVID-19 havesometimes been slowed by insufficient capacity, he noted. Thatsbecause some laboratory resources and personnel were already dedicated to ongoing trials that could not be stopped and also because some staff were needed to care for COVID-19 patients.

We had some difficulties, and still are, trying to rapidly activate clinical trials for the most pressing issues, he said. Some of our system is still clogged up a bit by trials for other diseases that, while important, are not as critical as a highly deadly pandemic.

While research must continue into chronic diseases, Collins explained, the NIH will take a hard look at whether our clinical trial system in the United States is really optimized to handle what might be coming next that is, a disease that requires the fast mobilization of massive scientific resources.

Because laboratory and clinical research takes a long time even under the best circumstances, Schuchat turned to the science of human behavior as another vital factor in defeating a pandemic. She said health and government leaders need to guide the public to adopt behaviors that prevent the spread of a disease while scientists research and implement medical interventions.

We can't put all of our eggs in the countermeasure basket, Schuchat said. As great as technology is were not going to have vaccines on day one. So we have to get better at the human-to-human, social behavioral kinds of changes that can slow infections.

That, she explained, requires clear and consistent communication starting at the community level and including public health leaders, and moving up through various levels of government.

When we have inconsistent messages from different jurisdictions or different voices, it's really confusing for the public, Schuchat said. The value of coordinated messaging that acknowledges uncertainty, that acknowledges transparency, is just vital.

Communicating with specific populations is also important such as marginalized communities that feel they have been poorly served and even abused by medical institutions. Companies have found it challenging to establish trust in vaccine development among Black Americans, and the challenge will continue when it comes time to administer COVID-19 vaccines, Collins said.

He recalled that early in several of the current vaccine trials, the companies were having a very difficult time recruiting African Americans. A history of mistreatment in research and medicine including the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study hasleft many Black Americans distrustful. Collins said that when companies tried to enroll Black people in their COVID-19 trials, two words that they commonly heard in response wereTuskegee and no.

You can understand the dark history hereof how medical research has not treated certain populations with justice, Collins said. We have a lot of work to do.

He said the NIH worked with Moderna to increase Black participation in its vaccine trialand is working now on ways to ensure that treatments and vaccines reach populations including Black and Latino that have been disproportionately harmed by COVID-19 and other diseases. To achieve that, the NIH will broaden its outreach among experts, Collins explained.

Were tapping into not just the most senior members of the research community, but we also want creative ideas from people who are earlier in their careers and are able to see bolder ways we can address health disparities, Collins said. So watch us.

Human Behavior

Twitter and Facebooks diverging philosophies were on display in the latest tech hearing – TechCrunch

November 18, 2020 medical

The latest tech hearing was a study in contrasts. Contrasts between lawmakers who made an effort to stay on topic in a hearing ostensibly about social media and the 2020 election and those who just talked about whatever was on their minds.

Also contrasts between then and now. Social media companies previously treated any attempt at Section 230 reform as radioactive; now, theyve come around to cooperating so theyre not cut out of the conversation altogether.

But most of all it was a study in contrasts for the two men on the virtual witness stand: Facebooks equivocating chief executive, who always manages to speak too much in the service of saying very little and Twitters laconic business mystic who came off as measurably more poised to meet the moment, wizard beard and all.

In a signal that the hearings stated purpose would not reflect the grab bag of gripes on display Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committees own chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, threw the plan out early and asked the two CEOs if they had seen any evidence that their platforms were addictive.

Zuckerberg responded with characteristic defensiveness, arguing that the research in this area was not conclusive.

We certainly do not want our products to be addictive, Zuckerberg said, contradicting behavioral scientists, Facebook defectors and common sense observations of its products. We want people to use them because they are meaningful, he added, casting aspersions on the memes and misinformation out there about what makes Facebooks business tick. The response fit neatly into a narrative a few lawmakers pushed that big tech operates out of big tobaccos playbook.

Given the same question, Dorsey was less disingenuous. I do think like anything else, these tools can be addictive and we should be aware of that and acknowledge it, Dorsey said. His statement perhaps stops short of acknowledging the degree to which social media has reshaped the course of modern human behavior, but ultimately it bodes better for Twitters health as a platform and for its users addled brains.

The two CEOs also sharply contrasted on questions about their algorithms.

When Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked if social platforms should provide more transparency around the algorithms they use to decide what users see, Dorsey proposed more transparency through user control. I think a better option is providing more choice to be able to turn off the algorithms or choose a different algorithm so that people can see how it effects ones experience, Dorsey said.

Dorsey also suggested that Twitter could expand those options through something like a third-party marketplace where users could select ranking algorithms that suited their needs.

Zuckerberg, for his part, didnt go near this idea with a 10-foot pole, instead lauding the existence of Facebooks third-party fact-checking program (never mind the too-restrained way Facebook presents those fact checks) and the companys community standards reports, which present aggregated numbers on the rule-breaking content it removes. Facebooks algorithm is a black box that users are locked inside and thats that. (Naturally, the box prints ad dollars.)

In contrast, Twitter has committed to a kind of openness thats not perfect, but its at least refreshing. The company treats its platform policy decisions as a kind of living document, tweeting updates about the most high-profile decisions in near real-time, admitting mistakes and emphasizing that its learning and changing things as it goes.

One example of Twitters experimental approach: The company universally disabled one-click retweets before the U.S. election, hoping to make user behavior less reactive while slowing down viral election misinformation. The changes were part of Twitters recent experiments with introducing more friction to the platform. Twitter also hid tweets and restricted sharing for some particularly egregious bits of misinformation some of it coming from President Trump. Facebook stuck to labels, the current bare minimum content moderation gesture.

Dorseys company is still plagued by rampant harassment, brain-melting conspiracies and, for now, a lame duck president actively seeking to destabilize American democracy, but it at least seems open to changes that could shift the dynamics of the platform in the interest of making it better.

Human Behavior

Two Guys on Your Head – KUT

November 18, 2020 medical

Each week on Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke, explore different aspects of human behavior and the brain.

In conversations hosted by producerRebecca McInroy, the two renowned psychologists cover everything from the effects of sugar on the brain, to what's happening in our minds while we sleep, and much, much more.

Listen to the Two Guys every Friday at 7:51 a.m., 1:49 and 4:51 p.m. on KUT-FM. You can always dig into the posts below or checkout and subscribe to podcasts via iTunes.

We'd love to know what you're curious about! Email us your topics and suggestions at twoguys@kut.org.And follow Two Guys on Twitter: @2GoYH

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Human Behavior

Five Online Tools for Evaluating Covid-19 Risk Ahead of the Holidays – Smithsonian Magazine

November 18, 2020 medical

In a normal year, the holiday season an opportunity for families and friends to gather and celebrate special days with food and merriment. But against a backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, many are now trying to puzzle out safe ways to celebrate.

2020s holiday season has already startedDiwali was November 14and a poll conducted by Ohio State University found that over the next few months, 38 percent of Americans plan to attend gatherings of ten or more people, Zeeshan Aleem reports for Vox. To help people figure out ways to reduce the risks of gatherings like these, researchers around the country have developed free online tools that visualize different facets of the pandemics dangers.

Experts warn that people shouldnt rely too heavily on any single risk-assessment tool because they can give a false sense of security, Allyson Chiu reports for the Washington Post. But for those who plan to gather this holiday season, the tools might help come up with creative ways to reduce risk.

Georgia Institute of Technologys Interactive Map

What this tool can tell you: This interactive map shows the likelihood of encountering someone with a coronavirus infection depending on how many people are at the event, and where the event is taking place.

The tool could be used by government officials deciding how to design public health policies, Deborah Netburn reports for the Los Angeles Times. But it could also help holiday travelers assess the risks of their origins and destinations.

Its also the only peer-reviewed tool available. Its creators published a paper about the research behind the tool in Nature Human Behavior on November 9.

What this tool cant tell you: The map doesnt show the risk of contracting the virus at an event, George Washington University professor of medicine and health policy William Borden tells the Washington Post. It doesnt take into account whether the event is held indoors or outdoors, whether people are wearing masks or attendees behavior before the event.

What this tool can tell you: This tool looks at what kind of event is being held; how many people will be there and for how long; the events location; and how many people will be wearing masks. Considering those factors, it calculates the risk estimate from low to very high. The app then walks the user through a series of suggestions to reduce risk.

What we wanted to do was help people directly visualize how their behavior can directly impact their risk of contracting the virus, Elizabeth Goldberg, an emergency physician at Brown University, tells Kelcie Pegher at the Los Angeles Times.

What this tool cant tell you: Like the Georgia Institute of Technologys interactive map, this tool doesnt take into account individuals behavior before an event. (For example: Are they eating indoors at resturants? Are they working remotely?) The app developers plan to translate the app in several languages, they tell the Los Angeles Times, but it is currently available in English.

What this tool can tell you: A team at the University of Colorado Boulder created a model to determine the risk of coronavirus transmission in different spaces, like offices, classrooms or indoor house parties, Maya Wei-Haas and Kennedy Elliot reported for National Geographic in August.

The charts published in National Geographic allow people to alter the local infection rate, the square feet per person and the effectiveness of masks that people are wearing. After taking those variables into account, the charts show how likely infection becomes over the course of three hours in the space.

What this tool cant tell you: A few factors in the model might be difficult for an average user to guess before an event, like the percent effectiveness of the masks that other people will be wearing. The model also doesnt account for how risk increases when you stand closer to an infected person, where the virus-carrying droplets would be more concentrated.

What this tool can tell you: This tool uses detailed information about the design of a room to estimate the risk of Covid-19 transmission in that space. You can input information about the rooms floor plan, ceiling height, ventilation and filtration systems. The tool also asks how many people will be in the space, and for how long, and whether or not people will wear masks.

By getting into the nitty-gritty of an event space, it addresses some of the gaps in other tools.

What this tool doesnt tell you: This tool doesnt take an events geographic location into account and how many Covid-19 cases there currently are locallu. It also doesnt attempt to estimate the likelihood of an infectious person showing up. But it does allow you to add a hypothetical infectious person to your party.

None of the tools can anticipate every possible scenario, and any event where people gather comes with some risk of Covid-19 transmission. The U.S. has recorded more than 100,000 new cases per day every day since November 4, and cases surged in Canada after their Thanksgiving in October.

Several states are putting restrictions in place for the next few months. In some places, indoor gatherings are limited to ten people or fewer. In Oregon, the limit is six people to an indoor gathering from no more than two households, AARPs Dena Bunis and Jenny Rough report. Some states also require out-of-state visitors to quarantine for two weeks.

According to the CDC's guidelines for holiday gatherings, hosts should limit the number of attendees at any event, events should take place outdoors, and guests should wear masks as much as possible. For example, holidays could be celebrated with a quick visit to see family, but without a meal, so everyone could stay masked.

Were going to look back at what happened during this holiday season and ask ourselves, Were we part of the solution or were we part of the problem? says Iahn Gonsenhauser, chief quality and patient safety officer at Ohio State Universitys Wexner Medical Center, in a statement. When youre gathered together around the table, engaged in conversation, sitting less than six feet apart with your masks down, even in a small group, thats when the spread of this virus can really happen.

Of course, the safest option would be to hold events virtually, and skip in-person, indoor gatherings, especially big groups, altogether this year. At a Mississippi State Medical Association video conference, the group's president Mark Horne had a sober message for attendees, reports Ashton Pittman for the Mississippi Free Press.

We dont really want to see Mamaw at Thanksgiving and bury her by Christmas, Horne says. Its going to happen. Youre going to say hi at Thanksgiving, its so nice to see you, and youre either going to be visiting her by Facetime in the ICU or planning a small funeral by Christmas."

Human Behavior

Vectra expands cloud services to see attacks moving between the cloud, hybrid and on-premise to drastically reduce the risk of breaches – PRNewswire

November 18, 2020 medical

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Vectra, a leader in network threat detection and response (NDR), today announced broader and deeper cloud capabilities to track and link accounts and data in hybrid environments. Current security approaches lose visibility when environments expand to the cloud where users leverage multiple different accounts and may access resources from shadow IT devices. Historically users and hosts were on-premises and tightly controlled. Vectra's enhanced capabilities mark the first, and only, NDR solution that can detect and stop threats across the entire network, tying together attacker activities and progression between cloud, hybrid, and on-premise networks.

The increasing number of remote workers, combined with the number of IoT devices accessing corporate and cloud networks, make both traditional network security solutions, including intrusion detection and endpoint protection, blind to activity and data in cloud applications. The rise of targeted credential-based attacks negate email security, multifactor authentication (MFA), cloud access security brokers (CASBs), and other threat-prevention approaches normally established to protect users because these malicious account-based attacks look like legitimate user actions.

"Private and trusted networks cannot be protected by old network security focused on malware signatures and anomaly detection alone. As workload shifts from clients, servers, and endpoints to the public cloud, this proliferation has created a network where user identity has become the new perimeter," said Oliver Tavakoli, Chief Technology Officer at Vectra. "Vectra is uniquely positioned to protect this network of hybrid on-premise and cloud connectivity with our learning behavioral models that stitch together hosts and on-premise and cloud identities to stop attacks earlier in the kill chain."

Vectra empowers security teams with continued analysis of how users are accessing, using and configuring cloud services based on logs from SaaS, and account usage from Identity Providers (IdPs) like Microsoft Azure AD. Vectra is the only solution that ties together all host and account interactions as they move between cloud and on-premise environments in one consolidated view, to drastically reduce the overall risk of a breach.

This announcement comes on the heels of Vectra's release of Cognito Detect for Office 365 earlier this year, the rapid adoption of which led to an accelerated effort to deepen and enhance this service. By seamlessly integrating with SaaS applications like Office 365, IaaS providers, IdPs and cloud virtualization platforms, Vectra is giving visibility into who and what is accessing data, regardless of how and where.

Even before the rise of the COVID-19, the Microsoft Q1 FY20 earnings call reported more than 200 millionmonthly Office 365 users. As of June, Teams reported 115 million daily active users, exceeding Zoom. The sheer growth of individuals using the service increases the chance that cyber hygiene will fall by the wayside, and knowledgeable attackers will exploit human behavior to gain high-privilege access to critical business-data.

About Vectra Vectra is a leader in network detection and response from cloud and data center workloads to user and IoT devices. Its Cognito platform accelerates threat detection and investigation using AI to enrich network metadata it collects and stores with the right context to detect, hunt and investigate known and unknown threats in real time. Vectra offers three applications on the Cognito platform to address high-priority use cases. Cognito Stream sends security-enriched metadata to data lakes and SIEMs. Cognito Recall is a cloud-based application to store and investigate threats in enriched metadata. And Cognito Detect uses AI to reveal and prioritize hidden and unknown attackers at speed. For more information, visit vectra.ai and get a free trialof Cognito Detect for Office 365.

Media contact Allison Arvanitis Lumina Communications for Vectra [emailprotected]

SOURCE Vectra

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Vectra expands cloud services to see attacks moving between the cloud, hybrid and on-premise to drastically reduce the risk of breaches - PRNewswire

Human Behavior

UM-Dearborn’s new artificial intelligence center is thriving – Dearborn Press and Guide

November 18, 2020 medical

UM-Dearborn Faculty, staff and students have had to reinvest a lot of their energy over the past nine months coping with a global pandemic. And rightly so. But its important to note that the redistribution of effort hasnt completely halted progress on other important work at the university. UM-Dearborns new artificial intelligence center is a great case in point. The Dearborn Artificial Intelligence Research (DAIR) Center was founded less than a year ago. But organizers have already made some important progress toward their goal of making AI one of the universitys topline areas for research, education and industry collaboration.

The DAIR Centers Founding Director and Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science Marouane Kessentini says one of the main reasons for creating the center was to ignite more collaboration among the many faculty and students whose work involves AI. He says thats imperative because todays most interesting and relevant AI problems are often so complex, no one researcher can tackle them alone. The deep projects require people from computer science, people who have core expertise in statistics and business, and even people who have an understanding of ethics and human behavior, Kessentini says. So the goal is to bring us all together to enable much larger-scale research than weve done before and which is required by todays industry.

Over the past year, the DAIR Center has organized a constant stream of activities to nurture that culture. One of the most productive, he says, has been weekly brainstorming sessions, which are often centered on broad funding opportunities rather than specific AI research areas that might attract some folks and not others. Through those sessions, DAIR Center teams have already brainstormed, vetted and submitted numerous proposals, including a smart cities-focused project designed to support the Urban Futures component of UM-Dearborns new strategic plan. The approach seems to be working, too: Several of the DAIR Center team projects have already won funding. And the center also recently organized a joint training with IBM on AI for smart manufacturing that attracted more than 150 participants from industry and academia.

Kessentini says this same philosophy could also reshape the student experience of AI, with a more interdisciplinary curriculum and increased opportunities to work closely with business leaders. In their conversations with industry, one of the themes they heard again and again was a huge need for talent that transcends mere technical expertise. When we talk about building real-world AI systems, it goes far beyond just knowing algorithms and the basics of computer science. Theyre looking for people who can actually understand the ethics part of AI, the biases in the data, and build systems that account for all of that. To that end, Kessentini says UM-Dearborn and the DAIR Center hope theyll soon be launching an interdisciplinary masters degree in artificial intelligence the first program of its kind in Michigan.

The mantra for building the new center is think big, start small, and scale fast, and even less than a year in, it looks like theyre starting to eye that third step. Already, the DAIR Centers ranks include more than 40 faculty from CECS, COB and CASL, 30 doctoral students, and dozens of alumni and industry partners, including big names like IBM, eBay and Sumitomo. Theyre hopeful theyll attract even more interest through a big AI symposium later this month. That will feature five days of keynotes and panels, and top execs from Google, IBM, Ford, Oracle, GM, Intel and more.

There will also be multiple activities where students and faculty can lay the ground for future collaborations. For example, to simulate the quintessential meet-and-greet in-person mixer, theyre trying out something called mystery speed networking. Basically, the platform will select two random people and connect them together for two minutes, Kessentini says. So you have time to introduce yourself, and then you can push a button to exchange business cards. At the end of two minutes, you get connected to another person. Because the process is completely random, he says its totally possible UM-Dearborn students could end up scoring some facetime with a VP at eBay, the head of analytics at Google, or the chief data officer at IBM.

Source: UM-Dearborn

Human Behavior

More than 80% of the world’s sewage is discharged into the environment untreated. We can fix this – MEAM

November 18, 2020 medical

By Stephanie Wear of The Nature Conservancy

Editors note: Stephanie Wear is a senior scientist and strategy advisor at The Nature Conservancy. She is also a visiting scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Duke University Marine Lab. She can be contacted by email at swear [at] tnc.org, on Instagram at oceansewage, and on Twitter @stephwear.

While most of us can recite the top three threats to ocean health (i.e., climate change, overfishing, and pollution), there is a notable disparity in how we allocate our precious time and resources to addressing these three threats. I have worked in marine conservation for over two decades. And what I have seen is that we are doing a lot to address overfishing and a lot to address the impacts of climate change (ranging from tried and true strategies to the novel and perhaps even a little crazy. Desperate times) However, much less is happening in the non-plastic pollution space. To see if my observations held more broadly, in 2016, I surveyed hundreds of marine resource managers (mostly focused on coral reefs) to see what their big problems are and what they are doing to address them. The results confirmed my personal observations coastal pollution is a big problem but very little attention is given to it. Survey respondents cited a lot of valid reasons given for this, none of which will surprise you. They include lack of government mandates, other priorities for funders and stakeholders, and politics. (You can read the full survey findings here.)

So we certainly have some challenges to overcome when it comes to addressing coastal pollution. But there are also opportunities in particular, around sewage pollution, one of the biggest contributors to coastal pollution. More than 80% of the worlds sewage is discharged untreated into the environment. In some places, the percentage is even higher (e.g., 85% in the Caribbean) or the ocean actually is the toilet (known as ocean defecation). And you can be pretty sure that if you have raw or partially treated sewage going into your coastal waters, it is causing problems. Many people assume the only problem is eutrophication, and this is indeed a big concern for many habitat types. But there are many other things in household sewage that are harmful to marine ecosystems, including pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and endocrine disruptors. These contaminants impact coral reproduction, growth, vulnerability to disease, and more. And sewage pollution can also mean desalination, sedimentation, shading, and the introduction of pathogens to marine ecosystems.

This is awful and gross, I know, but sewage pollution is also exciting in a way. So many of the challenges we face today are daunting because there is no clear way forward to mitigate the threat (e.g., climate change), but sewage pollution is a solvable problem. Effective sewage treatments already exist.

There are likely many reasons why sewage pollution has been ignored at a global scale. Sewage is not a sexy problem. Taboo and a flush it and forget it mentality probably play roles. In addition, sewage pollution is often invisible and hard to identify, silently seeping into coastal waters from different sources, although we are getting better at identifying it and finding the sources.

I am going to guess that some of you are thinking, Too much I am already dealing with too many threats and dont have time to think about sewage pollution. I get that. But the reality is that you cant afford to not address sewage pollution. Ignoring sewage pollution undermines marine protected areas, habitat restoration, fisheries, and anything else that depends on good water quality pretty much all our conservation and management goals.

So, if you are not already working to mitigate this threat, where do you start? There are a lot of new terms, technologies, and stakeholders to understand. The Reef Resilience Network is currently building a new course module on ocean sewage pollution to help practitioners get up to speed. While the module is still in development, the Reef Resilience team is running a monthly webinar series to help practitioners become fluent in the terminology, learn about projects that are already underway, and hear from experts in other sectors that are key partners in this work. This last aspect is critical because ocean sewage pollution will only be solved in a way that makes sense for people and the oceans through partnerships and cross-sector collaboration. You can view recordings for the webinars we have already hosted:

We have more to come. I hope you will tune in to learn and share your own experiences with this daunting but fixable threat to coastal habitats across the globe.

By Katie Velasco of Rare

Editors note: Katie Velasco is director of operations and engagement with Rares Center for Behavior & the Environment. In this role, she works to build demand for applying behavioral science to sustainability challenges worldwide, including leading the Solution Search program and managing external engagements and partnerships. She can be contacted at info [at] solutionsearch.org.

Water pollution remains a pervasive threat to our ecosystems and our own health. Every day, local waterways fill with contaminants that originate from human activity: sewage, plastics, fertilizers, toxic chemicals, and more. Less than 20 percent of the worlds watersheds remain in their nearly pristine state. Global solutions are sorely needed and fast.

Critically, these solutions must be focused on the root cause of the problem: human behavior. Infrastructure development, policy reform, and technological innovation all ultimately designed to promote sustainable water practices are important parts of the solution. Yet our efforts will fall short if we rely only on a limited set of tools and miss out on using a full range of levers for change. The large-scale transitions we need (i.e., building/updating wastewater treatment systems in every community worldwide) are not only costly and time-intensive, but they can also be ineffective if not designed in a behaviorally informed manner. In a perspective piece for Our Shared Seas, I outline how behavioral insights can play a significant role in solving the sewage pollution crisis, filling in the gaps that more traditional approaches leave behind.

Fortunately, effective behavioral solutions are out there. Communities, local nonprofits, and other organizations have found promising approaches to shift human behavior and reduce water pollution. Earlier this month, Solution Search: Water Pollution & Behavior Change was launched to find, spotlight, and accelerate the most effective of these behavioral interventions. A partnership between The Nature Conservancy, Rare, Inter-American Development Bank, Lonely Whale, Ocean Conservancy, and 11th Hour Racing, the contest is open for entries through January 10, 2021. Prizes include two $25,000 grand prizes, a $7,500 Environmental Justice Prize, and a $5,000 prize to the best early entrant. Winners also receive high-impact exposure, the opportunity to connect with other global leaders tackling water pollution challenges, and cutting-edge training in behavioral sciences. To learn more and enter, visit http://www.solutionsearch.org.

Photo Credits:Photo 1: Red sewage pipe. Image by Trey Ratcliff. Licensed under Creative Commons.Photo 2: Picture of a Honolulu city sign warning of sewage contamination, with Waikiki hotels and Diamond Head in background. Released under CC-BY-SA 2.5.

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More than 80% of the world's sewage is discharged into the environment untreated. We can fix this - MEAM