Biochemistry

Predicting the path of COVID-19 from Wuhan to Buffalo – University at Buffalo Reporter

Jennifer Surtees is a biochemist at UB. For more than two decades, her research has focused on genome stability and how mutations threaten that stability and sometimes lead to cancer.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic caused the temporary shutdown of UB research laboratories last March, Surtees, like many of her colleagues, couldnt help but consider how her expertise might be applied to the novel coronavirus.

When the pandemic started, there was a huge surge of interest research-wise into the pandemic and trying to understand how the virus moved around, says Surtees, associate professor of biochemistry in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB and director of UBs Genome, Environment and Microbiome Community of Excellence.

I had watched the early genome sequencing coming out of Seattle and California, and I thought we could totally do this here, she says.

Surtees contacted UBs Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development to ask if anyone at UB was doing genome sequencing of the SARS-COV2 virus isolated from Western New York patients. No one was.

So she contacted Teresa Quattrin, senior associate dean for research integration in the Jacobs School and Special Populations Core director in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute; Gale Burstein, Erie County health commissioner and a Jacobs School faculty member; and Carleen Pope, administrative coordinator of the Erie County Public Health Laboratory. All were enthusiastic about Surtees idea.

Its an interesting epidemiological question to get a sense of where the virus is circulating in our community, Surtees says. Are there versions that are more pathogenic or infectious? I wanted to see what we could learn about the accumulation of mutations in Western New York patients.

Surtees explains that rapid genomic sequencing could be used alongside contact tracing to understand transmission of the virus through communities, with the goal of understanding how mutations affect clinical outcomes.

The goal with this project is to get a sense of the evolution of the virus, and where it came from, to find out its genomic epidemiology, to try and understand the biology of this virus, she says.

To do that, she worked with researchers in the sequencing core headed by Norma J. Nowak, executive director of UBs New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. Donald Yergeau, associate director of genomic technologies in the Genomics and Bioinformatics Core, established a wet lab pipeline to convert the viral (SARS-CoV-2) RNA genomes derived from patients to DNA through reverse-transcription. The DNA version of the entire genome for each sample was amplified in small fragments and subjected to next-generation sequencing.

Jonathan Bard, a senior bioinformatician, then established a bioinformatics pipeline to compare the sequenced Erie County genomes with the reference genome, the original virus that circulated in Wuhan, China, to identify any changes or mutations in the genome.These genome sequences were uploaded into the nextstrain.org platform to assess phylogeny, a kind of family tree for the viral strains in Erie County, Surtees explains. This predicts the path the virus may have taken to get from Wuhan to Buffalo.

By July, Surtees had received Institutional Review Board approval to study the first batch of 50 deidentified (anonymous) samples isolated from nasal swabs from Western New York patients with COVID-19. They retrieved reliable sequence data from 32 of the samples. Now that that pipeline is in place, Surtees and her team can crank through new samples much more quickly.

Over time, mutations accumulate; thats just life, Surtees says, It happens in all organisms that replicate their genomes. Studying mutations provides us with an evolutionary path. It tells us which genomes are more closely related, the same way we can tell how closely people are related by looking at changes in their DNA sequences. The more mutations that two genomes have in common, the more closely related they are. Genomic sequencing also allows us to see how quickly the virus is mutating.

The question is to find out how mutations may affect infectivity of the virus, to find out which, if any, mutations are functional and which are just being carried along, she continues.

In the first batch of samples from patients who were sick with COVID-19 in early April, the majority, approximately two thirds, of virus samples from Western New Yorkers seemed to be of European origin, primarily Italy, France and Spain. The remaining third appears to have come through China and Singapore.

Surtees says the data from the samples will prove more valuable if it is possible to gather more information, such as gender, age and travel history, from the patients from whom the samples were taken. Since the samples were deidentified, that will require permission from Erie County and from each individual patient, as well as approval by UBs IRB.

Recently, the UB researchers received another 200 samples from the Erie County Public Health Laboratory, which they are running through the pipeline as well.

Surtees has received a small grant from the SUNY Research Foundation to pursue this work, as well as some funding from UBs Genome, Environment and Microbiome Community of Excellence.

She also has begun collaborating on the COVID-19 research with Amy Jacobs, a virologist and research associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Jacobs School, and with Omer Gokcumen, an evolutionary biologist and associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.

They have applied for external funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the National Institutes of Health.

Originally posted here:
Predicting the path of COVID-19 from Wuhan to Buffalo - University at Buffalo Reporter

Biochemistry

Keeping an Open Mind: The Opportunities of Remote Learning – Southern Newsroom

When you think about the phrase online learning, what pops into your head? Snore-inducing webinars with no opportunity to interact or even submit questions? A recorded lecture that keeps disconnecting midsentence (buffering buffering )? A narrated PowerPoint in which the slides are filled with far too much text in creative fonts against eye-straining background colors and a voiceover whose pace is way too fast or slow? A course that prevents you from proceeding past any single page until the snail-like timer runs down and then baffles you with a poorly written reading-comprehension question?

Many of us have experienced such frustratingly poor examples of remote courses. And most liberal-arts colleges, including Southwestern, have long resisted the sway of distance learning because they pride themselves on close bonds between professors and undergraduates, the residential experience, and immersive education. So when the COVID-19 pandemic forced universities large and small, public and private to transition rapidly to remote teaching and learning this past March, many faculty and students understandably balked.

Still, distance education, whether you love it or hate it, has existed for decades, and online learning has made significant strides forward since the Internet became public in 1991and even greater leaps in just the past 10 years. Well beyond stilted webinars and passively viewed presentations, the field has grown to encompass game-based courses, multimedia archives, interactive storytelling and branching scenarios (think Choose Your Own Adventure), virtual labs and studios, and robust real-time and asynchronous chat forums. For many populations, distance learning is their education format of choice: its often self-paced, it enables study from any location that has Internet access, it better accommodates the schedules of adult learners with families and/or jobs, it can broaden students technological skills, it prepares students for remote jobs (a growing trend even before COVID-19), and it can virtually connect students and faculty from across the globe.

Online learning offers an additional benefit: it opens up an experimental space for innovating their pedagogy.

And for many teachers and professors, including faculty at SU, online learning offers an additional benefit: it opens up an experimental space for innovating their pedagogy.

Theres a negative perception of online learning for multiple reasons: in the spring, we made the switch really quickly, and not everyone did a good job. [Students and faculty] had negative experiences at other universities and at larger schools where they dont connect with students as well, says Professor and Garey Endowed Chair in Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote. Hybrid and online courses this fall at SU, however, will rise above expectations, she believes, in large part because of the close mentoring relationships faculty and students enjoy. At Southwestern, the in-person experience is who we are. But we can take what were good at and are able to transition that to the remote environment . I like the creativity. Im excited because its an opportunity!

Most Southwestern professors expressed deep skepticism of online learning back in March and April, but the mood for many has changed to cautious optimism six months later thanks to a summer filled with conversations and training workshops to improve their remote-teaching practices. By collaborating with the staff at the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship and working independently, faculty have worked diligently to improve on the remote courses they were forced to create in only two weeks time last spring: they have revised their syllabi to prepare for all teaching formats, enhanced their online course development, and become more comfortable with learning technologies so that students will have even greater access to their instructors this fall, whether they are learning on campus or remotely. Their experiences mirror that of writing students who learn more about the conventions of different genres and the field of literature more broadly by being asked to re-present the same topic or theme in different forms, such as a short story, a poem, and a play. Similarly, professors are reassessing their approaches to teaching and enhancing student learning overall by translating their courses into the new context of online education.

But Zewail-Foote is one of the faculty members who approached even her spring classes with the enthusiastic spirit of taking on a challenge and adapting to new circumstances. While teaching Advanced Biochemistry Lab and The Biochemistry of Nucleic Acids last semester, she made it her goal to develop online assignments that still achieved the original learning objectives of her classes. She also used digital resourcessuch as whiteboards, videos, video conferencing, real-time collaboration tools, and chat roomsto continue cultivating the sense of community that characterizes her in-person classes. Although mediated by screens rather than interacting face-to-face, she remarks, I was still able to connect with them, and it was still fun, she remarks. Her students, she says proudly, remained engaged, active, and motivated.

In July, the chemistry professor published a paper describing her positive experiences, Pivoting an Upper-Level, Project-Based Biochemistry Laboratory Class to Online Learning during COVID-19: Enhancing Research Skills and Using Community Outreach to Engage Undergraduate Students. The publication appears in a recent issue of Journal of Chemical Education that focuses on online teaching.

Zewail-Foote, who is also a visiting scholar at the Dell Pediatric Research Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, reveals that the online environment can afford certain opportunities that she could not take advantage of in her brick-and-mortar classrooms, such as introducing her students to instruments or procedures that are not available on campus. There are limitations of the hands-on activities she would normally facilitate in a lab class, of course. But regardless of the venue, her focus remains on students learning how to think like scientists. I cant do in-person experiments, but I can help students learn about science and think about how to solve problems, report and describe the data, and present their findings, she says. And there are multiple ways to solve a problem, so they still get to learn through inquiry, creativity, and curiosity.

The online environment affords certain opportunities that [professors] could not take advantage of in [their] brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Zewail-Footes article also includes her insights on developing a community outreach project, Making a Difference, for the class. In the midst of the pandemic, the chemistry professor and her students switched gears by asking themselves, How can we help people? They then channeled what they had already learned into serving their local neighborhoods. The students could work alone or in groups and choose small or large projects; the primary requirement was that it had to relate to science. Because they were designing their projects remotely, Zewail-Foote notes, Everyone could do what they wanted to do. They could pursue their individual passions. And because they were studying remotely, the students could extend their volunteer engagement to the various communities they were living inacross Texas and across the nation.

While reflecting on her experiences with remote teaching and conversations with colleagues, Zewail-Foote praises her fellow STEM faculty especially, crediting their ability to move their classes online because of the interactive approach they take to teaching even during a traditional semester. In K12 and higher-ed circles, this is known as a flipped classroom, in which students explore introductory material on their own and class time is reserved for working through more challenging applications and problem-solving. Long lectures with professor-led demonstrations and limited discussion are no longer the norm. Chemistry and biology class is not the same as 20 years ago! she laughs.

Zewail-Foote herself has been using this more inquiry-based and active-learning approach for years: she creates short videos, five to eight minutes long apiece, for her students to view at home. She also assigns introductory readings and worksheets with questions. Then, in class, instead of monologuing while her students sit, listen, and take notes, Zewail-Footes students ask questions, work through problems together, and synthesize ideas so that they are prepared to engage in more challenging homework the next evening. Its a teaching model that trains students to be scientists by doing science the way that STEM scholars research and experimentand one that earned her recognition in a Chronicle of Higher Education article in 2013.

Zewail-Foote asserts that the implementation of flipped classrooms made the switch to hybrid or all-online learning more seamless. People picture webinars, but a remote class at Southwestern is good, Zewail-Foote asserts. The lab part is challenging because they dont do hands-on work, but SU does it well. The students preview [what theyre learning], they practice it, and they master it. The Southwestern Experience is engaging, and even when the students are online, theyre going to be creative, theyre going to be inquisitive, and theyre going to reach out to the community. None of that is taken away.

The Southwestern Experience is engaging, and even when the students are online, theyre going to be creative, theyre going to be inquisitive, and theyre going to reach out to the community.

That dedication to curiosity, inquiry, and public service will remain crucial as COVID-19 continues to make its rounds throughout the country and across the world. Cursory glances at social media, for example, underscore how learning science and scientific literacy (as well as information and media literacy) is more important than ever, not just as an intellectual passion among researchers but also for the health and safety of the public. Tackling the coronavirus is going to depend on science, and so we need sciencewe need to learn science, Zewail-Foote observes. Ive been teaching a long time, and I finished school many years ago, but does that mean Im done learning? No! Science is changing. The world is changing. While teaching last spring, she was able to model the very outcomes of a scientific education in the midst of a global health crisis, such as knowing how to evaluate the validity and quality of sources, read and understand scientific articles, develop questions, and find the right people or resources to consult. Those skills are learned and emulated by her undergraduates. Students dont always realize that Im trying to teach them how to learn so that they can learn forever, but that is what they are going to learn here, she says, and we can merge that Southwestern Experience with remote learning in a positive way.

For Zewail-Foote, its important to remind ourselves that not all educational experiences are held equal: the student (and faculty) experience can differ wildly between K12 and higher education, between community colleges and four-year universities, between large state schools and private colleges, and even within individual institutions. Indeed, as those of us who have studied and taught in a variety of educational settings can say from experience, the quality of instruction and learning varies regardless of whether it takes place in a classroom, through distance learning, or in a hybrid format. Any classs success instead depends on such factors as careful course design, the instructors depth and breadth of knowledge, their ability to engage students, the students level of motivation and participation, the assignment of meaningful activities, and mutual respect among students and between students and their teacher.

Luckily, students can rely on their SU professors to fulfill their commitment to providing meaningful and memorable educational experiences regardless of whether classes take place in person, online, or both. Southwestern is now in its second week of offering mostly in-person courses, but more than 30% of courses are currently remote only, with many students having specifically requested the online option. Fortunately, Southwestern faculty have prepared for all formats. And, as Zewail-Footes publication and experience illustrate, those classes, even if online, will continue to be as dynamic, engaging, and interactive as the in-person courses the university is known for.

Continued here:
Keeping an Open Mind: The Opportunities of Remote Learning - Southern Newsroom

Biochemistry

Ineffective immune responses may be responsible for COVID-19 mortality rates in men and the elderly – News-Medical.Net

In this interview, News-Medical speaks to Dr. Nicole Lieberman about the latest research from Dr. Alex Greninger's lab that discovered incompleteimmune responses to COVID-19 in patient populations with increased mortality.

Upon the emergence of the virus in China in December 2019, the University of Washington Virology Laboratory began preparing to perform both clinical testing of patient samples as well as sequencing of the virus itself to evaluate the way it spreads in the population and mutates over time.

When the outbreak in Washington state was first discovered in late February, the entire Division of Virology, including my lab, immediately mobilized to direct efforts to studying SARS-CoV-2.

I had previously studied the immune system, so right away I started looking at how COVID-19 affects the host immune response.

Image Credit: iunewind/Shutterstock.com

Much of our understanding of how viruses affect different populations comes from controlled experiments on isolated cells or animals it is really difficult to make causal conclusions from the observations of the virus in the wild.

I think that our data showing that there are differences in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in older adults and males is compelling, but the direct causal relationship between immune system differences and poorer outcomes in these groups will need to be confirmed in controlled laboratory experiments. These experiments just take some time.

We used a technique called RNA sequencing, or RNAseq. When a diagnostic nasopharyngeal (NP) swab is taken, it collects both viral RNA and human RNA. In humans, RNA is transcribed from DNA genes and provides the instructions to a cell to make proteins, including the proteins used by the immune system to respond to and alert neighboring cells to a viral infection.

We isolated RNA from nasopharyngeal swabs and compared the relative levels of each RNA between SARS-CoV-2 infected and uninfected individuals. We found RNAs encoding many genes to be increased or decreased in virus-infected individuals relative to controls. In this way, we were able to get a global picture of how the immune system responds to the virus.

We found that classical antiviral pathways were activated in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, in people aged 60 and over, the genes that help to recruit immune effector cells the immune cells that can actually eliminate infected cells were much less activated than in their younger counterparts. This suggests that older individuals may not be as able to clear the viral infection.

Additionally, males had increased levels of genes that tell the immune system to dial back the antiviral response. We cannot say with certainty that these observations are responsible for the increased morbidity and mortality in elderly and male SARS-CoV-2 patients, but they could certainly be important contributing factors.

Image Credit: Diego Cervo/Shutterstock.com

We found that viral load was correlated with the degree to which the antiviral response was turned on patients with a larger amount of virus also had a larger amount of antiviral immune response genes.

We did not have access to the data on the clinical outcomes of the patients included in our study, but other investigators have demonstrated that larger amounts of the virus are correlated with more severe infection.

I think our study shows that some of the clinical trials of different types of interferons the bodys most potent antiviral mediators might be on the right track. I am looking forward to seeing those results.

I think at this stage of the pandemic, any carefully conducted, peer-reviewed research is helpful there is still so much to understand about this virus and how it affects its human hosts.

I am very hopeful that our study provides important information to other scientists and clinicians working more directly on treatments.

The same things the rest of us can wear a mask, keep plenty of distance during social interactions, and regular handwashing. And although that is difficult, I hope they can take heart in the fact that there is a massive collaborative effort by tens of thousands of scientists across the world to understand this virus and develop treatments.

Image Credit: Volurol/Shutterstock.com

I think that at this point, the data from clinical studies of patient outcomes is extremely clear that older age and male sex are important risk factors for more severe COVID-19. Understanding the mechanisms behind these differences in outcomes will require studies in a wide array of animal models, efforts that are already underway.

Additionally, more studies the patient immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection combined with detailed demographic and clinical outcome data will likely also be an important piece of the puzzle.

Swabs from the nasopharynx are fantastic. In many ways, they are still the gold standard for sampling. SARS-CoV-2 can infect the lungs and it is hard to get samples from the lower respiratory tract, so nasopharyngeal swabs may not capture those cases, but there is not necessarily a better alternative.

Saliva has shown some promise though sample-to-sample variability can be quite high. And then nasal swabs generally work well as well.

Image Credit: zstock/Shutterstock.com

I am looking forward to studying the interplay between SARS-CoV-2 infection, the immune response, and how those factors may influence the development of secondary bacterial infections such as pneumonia, complications that are responsible for a large percentage of SARS-CoV-2-related deaths.

Nicole Lieberman completed her BSc in biochemistry at the University of Calgary, an MS in structural biology at North Carolina State University, and a Ph.D. in molecular biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Following her Ph.D., she joined Seattle Childrens Research Institute as a postdoctoral fellow, studying the anti-tumor immune response in pediatric and adult brain tumors, and developed a novel macrophage-based immunotherapy for solid tumors, on which she holds a US patent.

In December 2019, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Alex Greninger at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where she studies the host response to viral infection, as well as genomic determinants of Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum (syphilis) pathogenesis.

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Ineffective immune responses may be responsible for COVID-19 mortality rates in men and the elderly - News-Medical.Net

Human Behavior

The Rise of Covidnomics by Kaushik Basu – Project Syndicate

The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing medical professionals and economists alike to grapple with issues that cross the normal boundaries of their respective disciplines. Recognizing this creates scope for policy interventions that can contain the pandemic without crushing the economy.

ITHACA Boundaries between academic disciplines are always artificial creations intended to facilitate analysis, given our limitations. But as the economist Albert Hirschman once argued, there are times when it is incumbent on us to trespass them. The ongoing battle against COVID-19 and its economic fallout is such a time.

The pandemic has cast a shadow over the global economy. So far, the two worst-performing economies in the second quarter of 2020 (April-June) were Peru and India, where GDP shrank by 30.2% and 23.9%, respectively, in year-on-year terms. These record declines were caused by the pandemic, but also by how we are dealing with it.

In Peru, for example, the crude mortality rate (CMR) the number of COVID-19 deaths per million people is 939. The plunge in its GDP is clearly related to this.

Several European countries with high CMRs, such as Spain (647) and the United Kingdom (613), also have reported some of the deepest economic slumps. But Indias CMR is only 60, which, though one of the highest in Asia and Africa, makes its sharp second-quarter contraction (bigger than almost any country in the world) difficult to explain especially given that the Indian economy was among the worlds three or four fastest-growing until five years ago.

How can we understand such anomalies? To understand such matters, we need to recognize the interaction between medicine and human behavior.

Consider the conventional wisdom that COVID-19 is more likely to be transmitted in closed spaces than in open areas. So, you are safer being close to someone in a park than in a restaurant.

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We assume that this insight comes from medicine and physics, which tell us, respectively, that COVID-19 is highly infectious, and that aerosols carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virus (which causes the disease) are likely to be blown away and miss your nostrils in outdoor parks. But that is not necessarily so, because aerosols are relatively heavy and tend to drop quickly in still air. Conversely, a breeze in an open space makes it likely that the aerosol will remain airborne for longer and thus pose a risk that does not exist indoors.

The claim that closed spaces are more dangerous may nonetheless be true not because of what we know about the coronavirus and the aerodynamics of aerosols, but because of human behavior.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the probability of the virus being transmitted by an infected person nearby is 50% in both a restaurant and a park. Assume further that half of the population is infected. So, if you are near a random person in a park or a restaurant, the probability that you will contract COVID-19 is 25%.

Suppose, however, that a trusted authority announces that the risk of contracting COVID-19 is greater in a restaurant than in a park. If people believe this, it can turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Restaurants will be less attractive to risk-averse people (say, those who dont go to places where the infection risk is higher than 25%). Thus, only more risk-tolerant people will go to restaurants.

It is reasonable to suppose that the restaurant patrons are therefore more likely to be infected, because they would have been taking more risk. Assume, for simplicity, that 75% of risk-tolerant people are infected, while only 25% of risk-averse people are. The probability that an infected person will transmit the virus is still 50%, as before. Then, if people believe that restaurants are riskier (and only the risk-tolerant enter them), the probability of contracting the virus in a restaurant is 37.5%, whereas the probability of contracting it in a park is less than 25%.

These probabilities will be borne out by the epidemiological data, and most people will believe that the pattern has something to do with the nature of the virus, rather than being driven entirely by human behavior. By this argument, if the authorities had announced that restaurants were safer than parks, then parks would in time have become the riskier place. Even if parks were safer than restaurants for reasons of epidemiology and the physics of aerosol movement, you could face a bigger risk in a park than in a restaurant if it were widely believed that parks were more risky than restaurants.

Recognizing these kinds of connections creates scope for policy interventions that can contain the virus without crushing the economy. Indias mistake was to impose a lockdown a misnomer, because it forced tens of millions of migrant workers to spread out across the country, often on foot, after their jobs and wages in urban centers vanished overnight.

Once we pinpoint the links between medicine and economics, fascinating policy ideas begin to emerge, as the Georgia Institute of Technologys Joshua Weitz reported in a recent Stockholm School of Economics webinar.

Countries like India or Peru must design rules of behavior that allow the economy to function, at least partly, while containing the virus. Here is an idea. As increased testing gives us a better sense of who has had COVID-19 and has SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, we can offer these people a very high wage to do COVID-19-risky jobs including in hospitals, and in business sectors involving face-to-face interaction. By using them as links between vulnerable people, we can keep supply chains intact while disrupting virus transmission chains.

Under normal circumstances, the market would do this on its own: demand for people with antibodies would rise, and so would their wages. But markets do not function well during a pandemic, when many externalities are at work. Governments therefore need to intervene with intelligent, well-designed policies, which would enable us to keep the virus under control without bringing the economy to a halt.

Excerpt from:
The Rise of Covidnomics by Kaushik Basu - Project Syndicate

Human Behavior

Escalent Launches Brand Authenticity Index to Explore Which Brands Are Walking the Talk – Business Wire

LIVONIA, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Escalent, a top human behavior and analytics firm, today introduced Brand Authenticity Index, a new tool that defines what it means to be an authentic brand, how household name brands measure up to one another and steps companies can take to improve their perceived authenticity. This first-of-its-kind offering provides a data-driven, composite index of what it takes to win over consumers and engender strong brand loyalty through genuine messaging and action in alignment with intrinsic brand values.

From the products consumers buy to the places they work, brand authenticity is becoming a key ingredient to a companys success, said Jill Miller, vice president of Escalents Consumer & Retail practice. Consumers are incredibly savvy when it comes to their loyalty, and they hold brands accountable to act on stated values, including corporate citizenship, diversity and inclusion, social justice, and sustainability. What a company stands for matters now more than ever, which is why we wanted to determine how to measure authenticity.

Escalent evaluated 32 top brands from the consumer and retail, financial services, technology and telecom industries, measuring each brand on five dimensions that accurately predict and diagnose a brands authenticity: thoughtful, transparent, reliable, committed and socially aware.

Based on these dimensions, five brands stood out from the rest in consumers eyes:

Despite the wide range of products and services offered by these top five brands, two core commonalities emerged: They know who they are, and their values are intrinsic to what they do and how they do it.

The companies that performed well in our initial surveys go beyond the talk - they live and breathe their values, added Miller. An authentic brand image is more important today than ever, particularly as our nation grapples with the COVID-19 and social justice crises. These five companies have won consumers over with their words and actions.

To learn more about what brand authenticity means and how we evaluated 32 top household brands, Escalent will be hosting a 30-minute informational webinar on Thursday, Oct. 8 at 12:30 p.m. EST. The session will cover the importance of authenticity to a brands identity, how the five dimensions of authenticity were reached and how strategists can turn the intelligence gleaned from consumers into action.

Register today for A Data-Driven Blueprint for Brand Authenticity.

About Brand Authenticity Index

Escalent interviewed a national sample of 1,000 consumers aged 18 and older from May 5 to 7, 2020. Respondents were recruited from the Full Circle opt-in online panel of US adults and were interviewed online. The data were weighted by age, gender, and census region to match the demographics of the US population. The sample for this research comes from an opt-in, online panel. As such, any reported margins of error or significance tests are estimated, and rely on the same statistical assumptions as data collected from a random probability sample. Escalent will supply the exact wording of any survey question upon request. Special thanks to Full Circle for providing the consumer sample.

About Escalent

Escalent is a top human behavior and analytics firm specializing in industries facing disruption and business transformation. As catalysts of progress for more than 40 years, we tell stories that transform data and insight into a profound understanding of what drives human beings. And we help businesses turn those drivers into actions that build brands, enhance customer experiences and inspire product innovation. Visit escalent.co to see how we are helping shape the brands that are reshaping the world.

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Escalent Launches Brand Authenticity Index to Explore Which Brands Are Walking the Talk - Business Wire

Human Behavior

American society teaches everyone to be racist but you can rewrite subconscious stereotypes – The Conversation US

Progress toward a more just and equitable society may be on the horizon. Since the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in May, around the United States, millions of people have taken to the streets, statues have been felled, leaders have been fired and pressured to resign, and activists-turned-politicians have gained traction in prominent political races.

But until people recognize that racism is wired into the American mind, we believe that few of these efforts are likely to actually reduce racist behavior.

Our work provides a way to understand how race and society influence the brain. One of us (Waddell) is a sociologist who researches social inequality; the other (Pipitone) is a psychologist who examines the biological implications of human behavior.

Our respective work reveals a difficult fact regarding recent efforts to eradicate racism from U.S. society: If youre American regardless of the color of your skin racism likely structures how you think.

A great deal of attention has been paid to the rates at which police officers kill minorities. In the U.S., police shoot and kill Black people at two and a half times the rate at which they kill white people, and the disparity between Latinos and whites is nearly as high, about 1.8 times more frequent.

But its not only white officers who kill minorities at higher rates. Researchers who compiled a database of officer-involved shootings found that minority police officers are just as likely as their white counterparts to shoot Blacks and Latinos more frequently. This work is supported by additional research, which concludes that The killing of black suspects is a police problem, not a white police problem.

Does that mean that racism isnt at play? Not at all. Rather, these facts reflect the depth to which race affects everyone in U.S. society. The aforementioned findings are echoed by the anti-racism movement advanced by historian Ibram Kendi, who recently said:

You can be someone who has no intention to be racist, but because youre conditioned in a world that is racist and a country that is structured in anti-Black racism, you yourself can perpetuate those ideas.

Racism is so deeply interwoven into the nations culture that it is embedded in the neural processors inside our skulls. This is true for minorities and nonminorities alike. Racism subconsciously affects the way we view other humans and perniciously affects people of color.

One important feature of the human mind is its ability to consolidate and organize massive amounts of information into categories. Categorization allows you to create mental shortcuts what psychologists call schemas which speed up decision-making in the future. In doing so, youre able to make quicker decisions without reconsidering streams of information again and again.

Schemas allow you to reduce the amount of energy you expend on decision-making by categorizing your world into simplified, transferable forms better known as stereotypes.

This categorical behavior has been largely adaptive throughout human history. Living in small bands under ancestral conditions, detecting allies or potential enemies would have been paramount to survival. In the modern world, however, these mental shortcuts come with a dark side.

Schemas are grounded in cultural teachings. Theyre nurtured by your upbringing, your educators, your mentors, the movies and shows you watch, and your physical surroundings. And when it comes to race and ethnicity, schemas embody both the positive and negative associations that society teaches about different racial and ethnic groups. Over time, everyone, regardless of their own race and ethnicity, can develop implicit biases that feed into stereotypes, prejudiced behavior and discrimination.

Psychologists have examined implicit attitude biases within the context of race and ethnicity. The Implicit Association Test measures the way in which peoples ideas and beliefs relate to their subconscious attitudes about viewing Black or white faces, or names that are typically associated with a particular racial or ethnic group. You can take the test here.

Researchers ask participants to pair concepts associated with being Black or white with attributes such as pleasant or unpleasant. They then measure the time that participants take to process information. Fast times imply the association makes sense to participants, whereas slow times indicate the opposite.

The results show that white Americans hold more positive associations for other white Americans than they do for Black individuals. Research by psychologist Brian Nosek and colleagues shows that Black Americans report conscious, or explicit, attitudes that are more positive toward other Black individuals than toward whites. However, the same Black participants show more positive implicit associations, or subconscious attitudes, toward white individuals than they do toward Blacks, thus demonstrating how implicit racial biases affect members of the majority and minority groups alike.

Psychologist B. Keith Payne studied how implicit biases can have deadly consequences. He and his colleagues asked volunteers to play a computer simulation in which they shoot people holding weapons while refraining from shooting people holding harmless objects, such as a hand tool.

Across multiple studies, participants are significantly more likely in the simulation to shoot Black men holding harmless objects than white men holding the same things. In these studies, Black participants make the same deadly errors as their white counterparts.

The mental shortcuts in peoples minds are structured mainly by society. And if you are American, your mind observes from a very early age, whether consciously or not, that opportunity is tilted in favor of white people.

Your brain notices details like white individuals having more access to quality education, good health care and high-paying jobs. And every day, from the news, entertainment and social media, your mind absorbs images of minorities being portrayed as criminals, gang members and freeloaders. Over time, your mind begins to subconsciously categorize minorities as inferior.

As depressing as this process might sound, not all is lost. Along with a natural proclivity to take mental shortcuts and be more suspect of individuals from groups different from your own, human beings have an innate ability to critically think and reason. Your frontal cortex, the area of the brain that allows for the most complex cognitive abilities and behavioral inhibition, is unmatched in the animal kingdom. So, while your brain may jump to conclusions, you have the ability to reconfigure your subconscious inclinations.

How can you do this?

At the individual level, you can begin breaking down dangerous stereotypes by introducing your mind to more accurate depictions of our highly unequal social reality.

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Individual awareness is necessary, but not sufficient to bring about societal-level change. The only way to permanently shift a mental construct such as racism is by fundamentally reorganizing the physical world that informs our minds.

In the United States, this would require desegregating Americas schools, which, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, remain unequal. It would also require desegregating American neighborhoods, which are deeply divided along racial and ethnic lines. This shift would also depend on equal access to health care, which did improve a bit for minorities following the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Finally, a true shift in mental constructs regarding race and ethnicity will rest upon equal representation in political offices, where minorities continue to be severely underrepresented.

In time, more equal opportunities for minorities will rewrite the implicit biases that guide each of us. Until then, Americans subconscious minds, as well as our decisions, will continue to reflect the divisions we see in our physical world.

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American society teaches everyone to be racist but you can rewrite subconscious stereotypes - The Conversation US

Human Behavior

Climate 2020: The good, the bad and the OMG – Street Roots News

We continue to break record temperatures and hurtle toward disaster, but there have been some notable victories, too

The water that runs through the canals of Venice is clear, clearer than it has been in decades.

It apparently just needed a vacation from everyone elses vacations. Without a constant stream of pollution from tourism boats, the water started looking like water again after a couple of months into the pandemic.

That would be good news for Venices 50,000 residents, except that clear canal water will do them little good when most of their city is underwater by the end of the century.

Cheery tales of a healing planet during a pandemic thats pumping the brakes on human activity are often exaggerated expressions of wishful thinking, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told Street Roots.

Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center. She is also the CEO of the consulting firm ATMOS Research and Consulting.

Q&A: Katharine Hayhoe is on a mission to change minds of faith-based climate-change deniers

News about the climate crisis, often overshadowed by the pandemic the past seven months, has been a mixture of good and bad, Hayhoe said. Given the magnitude of the crisis, she said, its mostly bad.

The long-term upward trend in CO2 (carbon dioxide) is the result of cumulative, not annual, emissions every single brick weve been putting on the pile every month since the dawn of the Industrial Era, Hayhoe said. Today, adding a brick 25% smaller for one to two months isnt going to make a big difference.

In some ways, the pandemic has been a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis. Human beings throughout the world have been called upon to embrace science, change their lifestyles and make sacrifices for the common good.

The United States with 4% of the worlds population and 25% of its COVID-19 cases shows little promise. Even the wearing of face masks has become a polarizing, and at times violent, political controversy.

The pandemic has shown us that, even when imminent risk stares us in the face, political ideology will still prevent many from recognizing that threat, Hayhoe said.

Yet many Americans care about the climate crisis. Concern about the crisis rose from 44% in 2009 to 60% this year, according to new polling from the Pew Research Center.

However, such concern comes largely from Democrats. Opinions among Republicans remain largely unchanged, according to the research.

When it all comes down to it, many more of us will recognize the threat. And putting aside questions of culture, language, identity and political ideology, we will work together for the health and safety of our families, our communities, our countries and the world.

Meanwhile, humanity is running out of time. Carbon Tracker, a London-based financial think tank, uses publicly available oil company data to measure the industrys carbon footprint today and by 2040.

According to a study Carbon Tracker released Nov. 1, major oil companies must cut their combined production by a third in the next 20 years to keep emissions within international climate targets.

Mike Coffin, an oil and gas analyst at Carbon Tracker and the author of the report, said in a press release that none of the major oil companies emissions targets align with the 2015 Paris Agreement on emissions.

If companies and governments attempt to develop all their oil and gas reserves, either the world will miss its climate targets or assets will become stranded in the energy transition or both, Coffin said.

The industry is trying to have its cake and eat it reassuring shareholders and appearing supportive of Paris, while still producing more fossil fuels, he said. This (Carbon Tracker) analysis shows that if companies really want to both mitigate financial risk and be part of the climate solution, they must shrink production.

While major oil companies need to cut their combined production by 34%, the Carbon Tracker study warns that other fossil fuel producers may need to make much deeper cuts.

According to the study, ConocoPhillips faces the biggest production cuts of 85%, while ExxonMobil, the biggest oil major, needs to cut its production by 55%.

Cuts will have to be made across industry, Mark Fulton, the chair of Carbon Trackers Research Council, said in the press release accompanying the study.

After all, the majors alone represent a minority of global production, Fulton said. For investors, however, the focus will be on efforts to mitigate risks and maximize returns at their own investee companies rather than other potential asset stranding elsewhere.

Investors and environmental activists continue to press companies to be transparent about their spending plans and drop projects that are not climate-friendly, he added.

Activists, however, scored some victories this summer on other fronts.

A federal judge ruled July 6 that the Dakota Access Pipeline, approved by President Donald Trump during his first month in office, be shut down in August because federal officials failed to adequately analyze the projects environmental impact.

The decision came the day after two energy companies behind the controversial 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline abandoned the six-year project.

Company executives said the projected $8 billion pipeline was too expensive and faced uncertain environmental regulations.

In April, a federal judge in Montana halted construction on the United States portion of the 1,179-mile Keystone XL pipeline citing, among other factors, concerns about insufficient environmental impact studies.

Work cant resume until the U.S. Circuit Court and the Supreme Court deliver their final rulings on the case.

Internationally, six young Portuguese people filed a lawsuit this month with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, demanding that 33 countries be held accountable for fueling the climate crisis. The case was filed just as Portugal recorded its hottest July in 90 years.

It terrifies me to know that the record-breaking heat waves we have endured are only just the beginning, said one of the plaintiffs, Catarina Mota, in a formal statement.

With so little time left to stop this, we must do everything we can to force governments to properly protect us, she said. This is why Im bringing this case.

The plaintiffs in the case are Mota, 20; Cludia Agostinho, 21; Martim Agostinho, 17; Sofia Oliveira, 15; Andr Oliveira, 12; and Mariana Agostinho, 8. They receive legal support from the Global Legal Action Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in the United Kingdom.

This case is being filed at a time when European governments are planning to spend billions to restore economies hit by COVID-19, said Gerry Liston, legal officer with GLAN, in the press release.

If they are serious about their legal obligations to prevent climate catastrophe, they will use this money to ensure a radical and rapid transition away from fossil fuels, he said.

IN OREGON:Paradise lost? State faces a natural and political climate crisis

Portugal wasnt the only hot spot this summer.Los Angeles County recorded 121 degrees, its highest-ever temperature, on Sept. 7. Baghdad hit a record-breaking 125 degrees on July 28 and 29.

Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which keeps the agencys temperature records, blames human activities that emit greenhouse gases for what could be one of the hottest summers in history.

Until we stop doing that, were going to see this over and over again, Schmidt said in a press statement.

However, along with international lawsuit and victories against the pipelines, Hayhoe sees other rays of hope.

When it all comes down to it, many more of us will recognize the threat, she told Street Roots. And putting aside questions of culture, language, identity and political ideology, we will work together for the health and safety of our families, our communities, our countries and the world.

The first step, Hayhoe said, is looking scientific reality squarely in the face. An ailing human race offers a planet in even more critical condition barely any time to recover, she said.

As the pandemic passes, carbon emissions will most likely bounce right back up again, and possibly then some, as industry does its best to make up for lost productivity, income and wages, she said. So any slowdown is temporary at best.

She acknowledged the situation sounds grim.

If even such extreme, draconian measures to alter human behavior as weve seen the last few months arent enough to impact climate change, how do we even have an ice cubes chance of fixing it long-term? she said.

Yet Hayhoe insisted the outlook is far from hopeless.

The reason why the pandemic isnt likely to reduce carbon emissions long term is because those emissions werent reduced by sustainable changes in human behavior by increasing efficiency, replacing fossil fuels with clean energy and drawing carbon down into the soil, she said.

If humans take those actions, she said, they stand a much better chance of survival.

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Climate 2020: The good, the bad and the OMG - Street Roots News

Human Behavior

Birding: Loon behaviors fill human hearts with happiness – Chinook Observer

It has been a few weeks now since my loon-atic adventure, but the experience is still with me, and I think it will always be a memory that I wont forget. Arriving at the lake where the mist was hanging low and rising slowly into the air was exhilarating, especially knowing that this early morning mist, and the one dark cloud overhead would ultimately give way to the warm and brilliant, golden sun. The light was just right. Armed with my camera and telephoto lens I was prepared to enjoy the day. And enjoy, I did!

I learned much about loon behavior that early morning. The common loon adults spent a long time at it when they preened. Their chick not so much. After preening the parent loon engaged in wing flapping, wing stretching and even a penguin pose. The chick followed suit. It had learned. Then there was leg waggling. The chick had learned this too. All of this behavior was indicative of territorial display. This was its familys lake!

Even though the chick was able to feed itself much of the time, it was still begging to be fed. It was relentless at times, but the parent ignored the young birds pleas most of the time. The chick would then make an effort to get a protein snack on its own. I knew it was on the hunt for goodies as soon as it put its head underwater. It was on the lookout for a tasty morsel. I knew it was successful when it quietly slipped down into the water with hardly a ripple. Common loons are agile swimmers but are not so on land. Their feet are positioned far back on their bodies which allows for excellence and power in swimming but only awkwardness on land.

I had occasion to visit a northern Alberta Lake in Jasper National Park for few days last week. An adult common loon flew in one day. I am sure it is one of the birds destined for Washington and our Long Beach Peninsulas coast where it will stay for two years before it flies north and back to Alberta. It was alone. It was feeding, resting and preening. It didnt allow me to get as close as the first family did, but it did swim close to shore at times. I was lucky enough to capture a few interesting shots of furious wing flapping and the penguin pose.

The adult common loon is still in its breeding plumage. Its flight feathers will not begin to molt until it reaches our coastal waters. It takes longer for a common loon to raise a chick than other water birds, so they molt much later, usually in midwinter.

The boldly patterned common loon, with its white necklace decorating its greenish neck and its broad black head, is a sight to behold. You can still observe them in their breeding plumage, but when fall begins to turn into winter the common loon will wear plain grey above and white below. This majestic bird will fill your heart with happiness!

"Common Birds of the Long Beach Peninsula," by Kalbach and Stauffer, is available from Bay Avenue Gallery, Time Enough Books and the Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureau.

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Birding: Loon behaviors fill human hearts with happiness - Chinook Observer

Human Behavior

A very brave hero saves the day | Opinion | auburnvillager.com – Auburn Villager

Sydney Sims news article in last weeks Villager about the heroic actions of Kounte Threadgill during a tragic home fire touched me in many ways.

Im sure you felt the same, too.

The kind of mature bravery 13-year-old Kounte showed as he saved the lives of his four younger siblings, aged 6 to 3 months, would have won him a Medal of Honor on the battlefield.

Heroes, like Kounte, rise to the occasion regardless of the danger it presents to their own lives.

With clear thinking and determination as the house fire grew larger, Kounte swung into action, showing that love and courage, when combined together, are always stronger than fear and paralysis.

Kounte ran through the flames with one thought in mind: getting everyone out at all costs.

Rescue stories like Kountes help restore our faith in humanity. And his actions demonstrate that personal responsibility to care for and to look after one other, regardless of circumstances, are powerful examples of good human behavior.

I am convinced this brave young boy would have shown the same courage in rescuing you or me strangers he doesnt even know.

If Auburn hasnt done so yet, I hope the community will honor Kounte in some very meaningful way to show appreciation, respect and awe for his bravery. I would love to shake his hand and give him a big pat on the back one day.

Its heart-warming and wonderful how the Auburn community reached out to help the Threadgill family after the fire. Local residents and organizations showed the true spirit of caring by assisting this family in their most urgent and critical hour of need.

Kounte represents the very best of humankind all of us. Auburn should be very thankful and proud this brave lad is one of them.

As I typed the word handshake a light flashed in my head. Why a handshake for Kounte and not a big hug? First off, theres something very peaceful and personal in a handshake.

Covid-19s traveling road show of fear and isolation chased away one of our most human joys: our ability to be together, shake hands and socialize.

This gesture demonstrates friendliness and respect. Its not something we are conscious of. Our hands just pop out.

To me, the handshake and the hug are genuine signs of peace and contentment in our lives. Just about all arguments, disagreements or even fights usually end with a handshake.

A ceremony to honor someone of courage like Kounte would conclude with handshakes and hugs all around, putting to work these very human symbols of friendship and respect.

Me being me, I dug a little deeper into the background of the handshake, I learned the custom seems to have started in the 5th century in Greece as a symbol of peace.

Like today, just about all arguments and fights back then ended in a handshake.

Other researchers, though, trace the handshake to Medieval Europe, where knights in armor shook hands with opponents to shake lose any hidden weapons. Perhaps that is where our word shakedown comes from.

Whatever the history of the handshake, I would very much like to shake Kountes hand and tell him hes a hero of the first order and an exceptional lad, truly someone special whose courage and devotion we all greatly admire.

I look forward to saying, Heres my hand, Kounte.

Ralph Morris is a retired newspaperman who lives near Auburn. His email is r.morris@ctvea.net.

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A very brave hero saves the day | Opinion | auburnvillager.com - Auburn Villager

Human Behavior

Southwest region’s daily COVID-19 cases are higher than elsewhere in Virginia – Roanoke Times

Every one of the outbreaks comes down to human behavior, and some pause or breach in infection prevention, ODell said.

Routine preventive testing required now in long-term care facilities is picking up cases in people who have the virus but dont have symptoms, she said.

But she said people in the community arent always heeding orders to wear face coverings.

Well, today, I popped in to get my car inspected, and when I walked in, the person who greeted me to take my keys didnt have a mask on, ODell said. I asked him was he aware he was supposed to, and he said, No. I didnt know it was required.

ODell introduced herself, then gave him an education.

Do these people not read the newspaper or listen to the radio or watch TV? I dont know. Im dumbfounded, she said.

Northam, too, said behavior is key to lowering the spread of the coronavirus.

We are doing all the right things with PPE, with testing, with tracing. But its the behavior thats the challenge, and thats up to Virginians, he said.

Northam said Virginias numbers would go down if people would wear face coverings, stay clear of large gatherings and practice social distancing.

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Southwest region's daily COVID-19 cases are higher than elsewhere in Virginia - Roanoke Times