Tag Archives: environment

Human Behavior

Demystifying feline behavior – Penn: Office of University Communications

One study of cat behavior showed that cats recognize their names, and another showed they can bond securely to their owners. Overall, however, there seem to be a lot more studies of dog behavior. Why is that?

Siracusa: Even though I consider myself a cat person, most of the work that Ive done is on dogs because thats where the funding is. In our behavior clinics we see many fewer cats than dogs, Im talking like 95% dogs and 5% cats. I think this is related in part to the fact that there is much less expectation for cat behaviors. If you have a dog growl and bark at everyone who comes to your apartment, thats a major problem, but if your cat hisses and then runs and hides, nobody cares.

Serpell: Studies show that people are on average less attached to their cats and spend less money on their cats. Cats are numerically more common than dogs in the United States, but there are fewer cat-owning households than dog-owning households, which means that people may be owning more than one cat and thus have less to spend on each one.

But recently the Morris Animal Foundation sent a survey to veterinarians around the country and asked what they consider to be areas of primary importance that they needed help with. Almost at the top of the list was cat behavior problems.

So, I think people are getting on board slowly with the idea that pet owners are becoming more attached to their cats and that they are becoming much more significant members of peoples social groups.

Is there something intrinsic to cats that explains this lack of attention to behavioral science compared to dogs?

Siracusa: Dogs evolved from a social species, whereas cats come from an ancestor that was solitary. I dont think theyve evolved a social behavior as complex as dogs social behavior. And maybe as a result its harder for people to understand cats social behavior since its mostly based on distance and nonprolonged contact. Thats why when you put cats in a small environment, like an urban apartment, especially with other cats, you may run into problems.

Serpell: But cats have lived with humans now for about 9,500 years. Thats a long time, and theyve evolved to be more tolerant of living in close proximity with people and with other cats.

Theres all this evidence now coming out about dogs having a gene mutation equivalent to Williams syndrome in humans, which causes hypersociality. I suspect that we might find some of that in domestic cats. These animals are much more sociable than their wild ancestors.

You have a wealth of data about cat behavior from Fe-BARQ [the Feline Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire, developed by Serpell]. What are some of the things that the data tell you about cats and their relationship with people?

Serpell: From our Fe-BARQ data we see that a surprising number of owners are reporting moderate to severe behavioral problems in a cat when separated from its owner. So much for the theory that cats dont really care about their owners, that theyre only there for their food; these cats really do seem to be distressed from being away from their human buddies.

Siracusa: We see this in clinics. For example, cats may eliminate or vomit if theyre left alone for more hours than usual. So, I think they are definitely attached to people. But the way theyre showing theyre attached is very different from dogs. Dogs make a lot of prolonged physical contact, whereas cats may stay close to the person they like, but they dont necessarily engage. Some cats may engage a littleone of my cats plays fetch with mebut only for a short time, and then shes like, Oh, Ive had enough of this.

Do you think that cats are more varied in their sociability than dogs?

Serpell: I do. Some cats, as soon as you sit down, theyll be on your lap, and theyll monopolize you, but others wont at all. One of my cats loves people; when you arrive at the door, she rushes to the door, and she rubs against you. But she hates being picked up, and she does not want to sit on you ever. Whereas her brother is much more physically affectionate. He wants to be held; he wants to sit on people.

There are very few dogs I've met that are standoffish the way a cat is often.

Cat behavior can be puzzling. Is the problem that people just arent good at interpreting their cats behavior?

Siracusa: People really do need help understanding their cats behavior, and they dont know where to go or who to ask about these problems. In a recent survey, somewhere between 50 and 60% of cat owners said, I have problems bringing my cat to the vet, or My vet doesnt understand the problems of my cat, or I will only bring my cat to the vet when its strictly necessary. For many cat owners, just picking a cat up and putting it in the crate is a major drama.

Serpell: Of course, many dogs also dont like to go to the vet, but dogs are more biddable; theyll just go along with it. But cats, boy. I had to bring both of my cats in a week ago, and it was an ordeal.

Siracusa: I do think cats are very sensitive to changes in their environment.

Serpell: Some of it may relate to the fact that cats are a prey species as well as being a predator. Being in an unfamiliar environment is potentially very unsafe for them, so its natural for them to go, Oh, crikey, where am I, and whats going to come at me next?

What are some of the big myths or misperceptions about cat behavior?

Siracusa: Many people want a cat to be a surrogate for a dog, like a low-maintenance dog, and its not.

Another misperception is that because cats are so fluffy and soft, people like to touch them a lot, but cats dont necessarily like this. Some dosome that Ive had were always on top of mebut others were like, Ok, were friends, but you stay there, and I stay here. So, its a matter of respecting their desire for distance in those cases.

Also, people often fail to provide cats with enough stimulation. Its important to give them opportunities to show their natural feeding behavior, for instance. So instead of simply putting their food in a bowl, give them a chance to stalk it, to toss it in the air and pounce, and reproduce the whole sequence of events that they would do when they hunt.

How do you try to correct clients misguided impressions about cats?

Siracusa: [Laughing] This is the reason our behavior appointments are very long. We try to set realistic expectations, and we provide them with alternative strategies. For example, if you want a nice interaction with your cat, use something cats like. Teach them to do a trick to get a treat. Use a stick-and-feather toy.

Serpell: Some cats will play for hours. My cats, they exhaust me. Theyll run all around the house for hours with a piece of string.

Siracusa: Sometimes I say, If you need to hug something, get a stuffed toy. Dont do that to your cat if she doesnt like it.

The one recent study about cats showed the same or an even greater degree of attachment to their owners as dogs have. You seem skeptical about those findings.

Serpell: Carlo is more than I am.

Siracusa: I think the methodology is rigorous. But Im skeptical because the study assumed that the vocalization of the cats indicated separation distress. I think its very likely to be distress from being in an unfamiliar environment, but Im not convinced that its separation distress.

Serpell: Speaking on behalf of the article, I would say that there is a perception out there another one of these myths, if you likethat cats arent really attached to their owners, that theyre only there to get fed. I think this study is a demonstration that cats respond similarly to this experimental paradigm as do dogs and for that matter as do human infants, and that's interesting, just in itself.

What about the study suggesting cats recognize their name?

Siracusa: I think this study is similar; the experiments seem rigorously done, but the results are prone to overgeneralization. For cats its not, Oh, my name is Jack. Its, Usually when I hear this word something is about to happen.

Serpell: Its a demonstration that the cat has some kind of association with this sound. I think thats right; my cats respond to their names. But its different from what weve seen in dogs, some of which have amazing vocabularies and can discriminate between more than a thousand different words.

Have you seen the cat whisperer quiz thats going around, based on a recent publication about cat facial expressions?

Serpell: It sounds dubious. Cats lack the facial muscles that dogs have so theyre limited in the expressions they can make.

Siracusa: Because cats in general were solitary animals evolutionarily, staying at a distance from one another, the facial expressions wouldnt have been so important in communicating. If I want to communicate with someone who is far away, I wouldnt show it on my face but in my body, my posture.

Serpell: The sense of smell.

Siracusa: Smell, definitely. Pheromones are very important. Also, they leave visual signs. The scratching of a cat is a visual sign to leave a message for someone who didnt find them but will find the scratch.

It sounds like the book you have coming out soon might also help pet owners interpret their cats.

Siracusa: Yes, Decoding Your Cat is coming out in June. Its a project of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, and all the chapters are written by diplomates of the College and edited by myself and two of my colleagues. Our goal was to make sure as much as possible was science-based, and the information that hasnt been studied was based on our clinical experience.

What is on the horizon in terms of cat behavior research?

Siracusa: Cat cognition studies will be the next big thing.

Serpell: Yes, there are some groups now that are starting to get interested in cat cognition, but its still way behind dogs. There are so many dog cognition groups now around the world its almost funny.

How might studies of cat cognition be helpful?

Serpell: Well, it would be interesting to see whether the process of domestication has shifted the cat cognitively in the way that people say its shifted the dog.

Siracusa: It may help with the animals welfare, too, because if we understand them better, we can make sure we create an environment for them that will make them happier in their homes.

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Demystifying feline behavior - Penn: Office of University Communications

Human Behavior

Grok combines Machine Learning and the Human Brain to build smarter AIOps – Diginomica

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece here about Moogsoft which has been making waves in the service assurance space by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to the arcane task of keeping on keeping critical IT up and running and lessening the business impact of service interruptions. Its a hot area for startups and Ive since gotten article pitches from several other AIops firms at varying levels of development.

The most intriguing of these is a company called Grok which was formed by a partnership between Numenta, a pioneering AI research firm co-founded by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, who are famous for having started two classic mobile computing companies, Palm and Handspring, and Avik Partners. Avik is a company formed by brothers Casey and Josh Kindiger, two veteran entrepreneurs who have successfully started and grown multiple technology companies in service assurance and automation over the past two decadesmost recently Resolve Systems.

Josh Kindiger told me in a telephone interview how the partnership came about:

Numenta is primarily a research entity started by Jeff and Donna about 15 years ago to support Jeffs ideas about the intersection of neuroscience and data science. About five years ago, they developed an algorithm called HTM and a product called Grok for AWS which monitors servers on a network for anomalies. They werent interested in developing a company around it but we came along and saw a way to link our deep domain experience in the service management and automation areas with their technology. So, we licensed the name and the technology and built part of our Grok AIOps platform around it.

Jeff Hawkins has spent most of his post-Palm and Handspring years trying to figure out how the human brain works and then reverse engineering that knowledge into structures that machines can replicate. His model or theory, called hierarchical temporal memory (HTM), was originally described in his 2004 book On Intelligence written with Sandra Blakeslee. HTM is based on neuroscience and the physiology and interaction of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex of the mammalian (in particular, human) brain. For a little light reading, I recommend a peer-reviewed paper called A Framework for Intelligence and Cortical Function Based on Grid Cells in the Neocortex.

Grok AIOps also uses traditional machine learning, alongside HTM. Said Kindiger:

When I came in, the focus was purely on anomaly detection and I immediately engaged with a lot of my old customers--large fortune 500 companies, very large service providers and quickly found out that while anomaly detection was extremely important, that first signal wasn't going to be enough. So, we transformed Grok into a platform. And essentially what we do is we apply the correct algorithm, whether it's HTM or something else, to the proper stream events, logs and performance metrics. Grok can enable predictive, self-healing operations within minutes.

The Grok AIOps platform uses multiple layers of intelligence to identify issues and support their resolution:

Anomaly detection

The HTM algorithm has proven exceptionally good at detecting and predicting anomalies and reducing noise, often up to 90%, by providing the critical context needed to identify incidents before they happen. It can detect anomalies in signals beyond low and high thresholds, such as signal frequency changes that reflect changes in the behavior of the underlying systems. Said Kindiger:

We believe HTM is the leading anomaly detection engine in the market. In fact, it has consistently been the best performing anomaly detection algorithm in the industry resulting in less noise, less false positives and more accurate detection. It is not only best at detecting an anomaly with the smallest amount of noise but it also scales, which is the biggest challenge.

Anomaly clustering

To help reduce noise, Grok clusters anomalies that belong together through the same event or cause.

Event and log clustering

Grok ingests all the events and logs from the integrated monitors and then applies to it to event and log clustering algorithms, including pattern recognition and dynamic time warping which also reduce noise.

IT operations have become almost impossible for humans alone to manage. Many companies struggle to meet the high demand due to increased cloud complexity. Distributed apps make it difficult to track where problems occur during an IT incident. Every minute of downtime directly impacts the bottom line.

In this environment, the relatively new solution to reduce this burden of IT management, dubbed AIOps, looks like a much needed lifeline to stay afloat. AIOps translates to "Algorithmic IT Operations" and its premise is that algorithms, not humans or traditional statistics, will help to make smarter IT decisions and help ensure application efficiency. AIOps platforms reduce the need for human intervention by using ML to set alerts and automation to resolve issues. Over time, AIOps platforms can learn patterns of behavior within distributed cloud systems and predict disasters before they happen.

Grok detects latent issues with cloud apps and services and triggers automations to troubleshoot these problems before requiring further human intervention. Its technology is solid, its owners have lots of experience in the service assurance and automation spaces, and who can resist the story of the first commercial use of an algorithm modeled on the human brain.

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Grok combines Machine Learning and the Human Brain to build smarter AIOps - Diginomica

Cell Biology

Protein maintaining balance between protrusive and contractile machineries of cell identified – Mirage News

Tropomodulin maintains the fine balance between the protein machineries responsible for cell movement and morphogenesis. Disturbances in this balance are common in many diseases, for example, invasive cancers.

In a healthy cell, there is a fine balance between the protrusive structures that make the cell more migratory and the contractile structures that maintain the cells shape and its association with the environment. A disturbance in this balance leads to several diseases, such as invasive cancers.

The most important component of both protrusive and contractile machineries is a protein called actin. This means that the proper distribution of actin between these structures is essential for the normal function of the cell. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that ensure that actin is distributed correctly between the protrusive and contractile machineries have remained elusive.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, have now identified a protein called tropomodulin as a key player that maintains the balance between the protrusive and contractile actin-filament machineries within a cell.

The function of tropomodulin has previously been studied mainly in the context of muscles, where it maintains the architecture of actin filaments within the contractile fibers of muscle cells.

We have now revealed that tropomodulins stabilise the actin filaments of the contractile structures in non-muscle cells through interacting with specific proteins within these actin filament bundles. The depletion of tropomodulins led to a loss of contractile structures, accompanied by an excess of protrusive structures, and thus to severe problems in a cells shape and force production, says Academy Professor Pekka Lappalainen from the HiLiFE Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki.

Researchers were surprised to see that the depletion of one protein can have such drastic effects on the balance of the actin machinery.

Another exciting and unexpected finding of this study was the notion that the same protein can have a different function depending on the tissue or cell type. Our study also sheds light on why abnormal levels of tropomodulin are linked to the progression of various cancers, says PhD student Reena Kumari.

Kumari R, Jiu Y, Carman PJ, Tojkander S. Kogan K, Varjosalo M, Gunning PW, Dominguez R, Lappalainen P. Tropomodulins control the balance between protrusive and contractile structures by stabilizing actin-tropomyosin filaments. Current Biology (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.12.049

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Protein maintaining balance between protrusive and contractile machineries of cell identified - Mirage News

Human Behavior

SFU celebrates International Day of Women and Girls in Science – SFU News – Simon Fraser University News

To celebrate women in science, SFU showcases some of our researchers and their reasons for choosing a career in science and technology.

A professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Alissa Antle isan innovator and scholar whose research pushes the boundaries of computation to augment the ways we think and learn.

A designer and builder of interactive technologies, she explores how these innovations can improve, augment and support childrens cognitive and emotional development.

Many of her projects involve tangible technology. For example, Phonoblocks is a set of 3D letters and a tablet interface that work together to help dyslexic children learn to read. Youtopia helps children learn about sustainability as they work together using a digital tabletop to design their own land-use plan. And with Mind-Full, a tablet app, children learn to self-regulate anxiety.

Her interactive systems have been used for collaborative learning about Aboriginal heritage, sustainability and social justice; for improving learning outcomes for dyslexic children; and for teaching self-regulation to disadvantaged children.

In 2015, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canadas College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, acknowledging her as one of Canadas intellectual leaders.

Antle didnt start out to become a university professor.

Growing up, I was always interested in how things work, understanding people and creatively solving problems, she says. I didnt know I would be an engineer, and later a scientist and a professor. I just kept making choices that aligned with my curiosity and values. I never had a vision of my end-game; it emerged as a result of choices I made over time.

Antles unique perspective gives her an advantage in her field, but her accomplishments havent always come easily.

In research and technology development I think as a woman, a parent, and a gay person, I may focus on different problems and have a different perspective on solutions than normative societal views. I think this is my superpower, but it hasnt always been easy.

Read full story here.

After three summers camping in torrential rain in Clayoquot Sound, B.C., Ruth Joy wondered if there was a better way to conduct her research.

Recently named one of The Tyees big thinkers of 2019, Joy, a statistical ecologist and lecturer in SFUs new School of Environmental Science, studies seabirds and marine mammals. She started her career as a biologist, camping in a rusty van in the Chilcotin grasslands to collect data that could help conserve species and their habitats. After braving the elements for years, she decided to get out of the rain, follow the data and build evidence-based models. She returned to school, earning a PhD in statistics so that she could provide numerical arguments for protecting marine and terrestrial species.

Numbers dont lie, says Joy. Statistics is a really useful tool, especially when working with oceanographic systems. In order to gain a deeper understanding, we need quantitative skills.

Last summer, Joy and her research team received $1 million to support a marine-science initiative in coastal waters.

She credits great SFU mentors, a little good fortune, and flexibility for her success. She recommends taking the time to explore different careers, because environmental science is more than you think. Like Joy, whose jobs ranged from surveying birds by snowmobile to drug testing, to studying porpoises, pinnipeds, and pelagic cormorants, you never know where your path may lead.

SFU computing science professor Parmit Chilana, a founding member of Women in Computing Science (WiCS) at SFU during her undergraduate degree, now serves as a faculty mentor to the group.

WiCS continues to run outreach events that encourage female students to join computer science. The group also gives students support and an enhanced sense of belonging.

Chilana, who says she always planned to become a professor, researches human-computer interaction (HCI), which puts the end-user in the spotlight to ensure new technologies are human-centered and useful.

As an HCI researcher, Im excited about how we can build new tools that help people learn or improve their work in some way, says Chilana. And, more importantly, how we can get these tools in the hands of end-users, and have real-world impact.

Chilanas work has attracted several international awards and honors, and she has recently seen one of her research projects become the basis for a start-up.

I think this is the best time to pursue a career in computer science, perhaps more than ever before. The field can really benefit from different perspectives, especially those of women and minorities who have been underrepresented in computer science for a very long time.

Read the full story here.

As a child, Esther Verheyen was interested in insects and other aspects of the natural world. Today, as a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Verheyen spends much of her day in the lab studying the fruit fly, Drosophila.

Fruit flies share many common genes with humans and provide an excellent example of how cells grow to form organs and tissues. Verheyen is particularly intrigued by mutations that hijack the developmental process and result in diseases like cancer.

She credits her academic parents for supporting her interest in science and encouraging her to dream big. And now, as a parent, she gives her son and daughter the same advice: Find something you feel passionate about, no matter how long it takes.

She also tells them they may have several different careers in the course of their lives, which is an exciting prospect for those with diverse interests.

Verheyen, who had strong role models throughout her career, now mentors female trainees in her lab.

A career as a professor can be stressful, but we are fortunate to be able to pursue our passions and have flexibility in our work schedules, which can allow us to accommodate family needs.

Verheyen is active on social media, eager to disseminate science to a lay audience and to add to the voice of female scientists.

I think it is critical that scientists communicate their research to a wide audience, she says. I enjoy giving public talks that give a broad group of people insight into what we can learn from research and how it might affect them.

You can follow Verheyen on Twitter at @EstherVerheyen.

Nadine Provenal, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, is interested in understanding the biological foundations of stress-related disorders.

Stress exposure early in life is an important risk factor for behavioural and psychiatric diseases, but little is known about how an individuals health can be affected years after the initial exposure. Provenals research examines how social stress gets under the skin and can change children's brain and behaviour development.

In her latest study, she found that prenatal stress not only impacted a mothers health, but also her developing fetus. Excessive stress experienced by a mother during pregnancy can be passed on to her child via marks on their genes, which could explain why some children are more vulnerable to stress later in their development.

Understanding how our cells are capable of doing so many different things with only one set of genes fascinated me, she says, crediting her passion for science to an undergraduate course in molecular biology.

I was also interested in human behavior and child psychology, she recalls. So I decided to merge my interests to study how our environment could alter our genes and be responsible for changes in childrens behaviour and mental health.

For young women interested in science and research, Provenal emphasizes the importance of perseverance and having a great mentor.

Never give up. Push your ideas even if they might, at first, not be well-received by your peers, she advises. It is with dedication that most great discoveries emerge.

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SFU celebrates International Day of Women and Girls in Science - SFU News - Simon Fraser University News

Anatomy

Anatomy of a Panel: John Jennings, Damian Duffy, and PARABLE OF THE SOWER – Comicosity

Extraordinary comics creators in their own right, when joining forces the inestimable John Jennings (artist) and Damian Duffy (writer/letterer) pull of the superheroic. For over a decade, this virtuoso dynamic duo have channeled their co-creative talents into radical revolutionizing of the comics scene.

Already in 2008, they pushed the art of comic book storytelling beyond any and all boundaries with their Glyph Award winning, The Hole: Consumer Culture Vol. 1. In this sci-fi horror narrative, Jennings and Duffy richly texture how capitalism, consumerism, and racism intertwine in ways that destroy AfricanAmerican communities. Its been hailed as The Waste Landof the 21st century and as seminal to todays graphic novel renaissance.

Their inexhaustible work to upturn a dominant straight and white the comics industry continued in the founding of expos and curating of exhibits across the country. For instance, in their 2009 exhibit Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics they threw the spotlight on women of color, LGBTQ comics creators as well as the vital comics work coming out of small press, independent, web, and self-published spaces.

In 2014, Jennings and Duffy joined forces with Stacey Robinson, creating Kid Code: Channel Zero a time-traveling adventure story that follows the protagonist, Kid Code, and his compadres as they take down The Power. The creative trios geometrizing of the story turns hip-hop from something we typically hear to something vitally and visually seen.

In 2018, Jennings and Duffys Black Comix Returns(Lion Forge) introduced and celebrated nearly a hundred independent, cutting-edge, new gen. African American comics creators working across all the genres, shouting from rooftops that this is where the epicenter and life force to comics resides.

This same year, Jennings and Duffy published their recreation of Octavio Butlers Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Abrams)and to great critical and popular acclaim, including a Bram Stoker and Eisner award.

Cover art by John Jennings

Jennings and Duffy are some of the most skilled and hardest working comics creators doing the work to radically transform and diversify the comics scene. In between their creating, workshopping and teaching as profs (Riverside and Urbana-Champaign), parenting, and jet-setting, I had the great fortune and pleasure of catching up with Jennings and Duffy to talk about Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation that just dropped with Abrams.

Frederick Luis Aldama: Damian, why dont you launch us by talking about the process of working with a source text Octavia Butlers original sci-fi novel, Parable of the Sower and how this differs from co-creating a wholly original comic like The Hole: Consumer Culture Vol. 1 (2008).

Damian Duffy: Its different in a couple of ways. With both our 2017 graphic novel adaptation of Butlers Kindred and this adaptation of Parable of the Sower, I know we felt a tremendous amount of pressure to do justice to the Octavia Butlers original work, her legacy, her estate and, the fandom of her novels.

Whereas, in 2008, I dont think we cognizant of an audience in the same way. We did make The Hole to be taught in college classrooms, and eventually it was, but I think we primarily created that book to address some of our own interests and obsession. Also, more practically, the process was just different because with Kindred and Sower we worked with an editor, and the Butler estate had to sign off on our work during a few different stages of production.

FLA: Damian, can you walk us through the prep process for Parable. I know that you spend a lot of time distilling the original novel and reconstructing it in a mock-up with rough text and sketch layouts. This is then submitted to Abrams for final approval.

DD: After the success of Kindred, Abrams invited us to pitch another adaptation. We pitched both Parable of the Sower and its sequel, Parable of the Talents, at the same time, in January 2017, right after Trump was elected.

Interior art by John Jennings

So, there was a sense of urgency, since the subject matter was so prescient, featuring as it does a crumbling American society thats mostly abandoned or undermined things like the rule of law and public education. Thats being destroyed by wildfires and droughts and unchecked climate catastrophe. And, in Talents, that includes a fascist president thats elected by promising to make America great again.

The script process involves a lot of reading the novel over and over again, figuring out what parts definitely need to stay and what aspects are key to the character development of the protagonist. Its about breaking down the story to key components needed to communicate core ideas then translating these into the comics form. I think of it as a cartooning design philosophy, using visual abstraction to communicate complicated concepts.

FLA: For the two of you its clear that comics is the distillation then reconstruction of stories that matter.

John Jennings: One of the things I love about the comics is that its an ever-flexible storytelling medium where everything in the comic is essentially a storytelling device, a storytelling mechanism. You can even start your stories with the visuals of the front cover that then spills into pages proper of the comic. Borders, gutters anything and everything in comics can be used for the narrative. Everythings a picture, even sound and thought. You can actually bend sound and thought in really cool ways that advance the story.

The language of comics is inherently symbolic and surreal, almost like a dream space. Readers are willing to accept and enter into the surreal, dream space of comics. This allows me to take readers places I wouldnt be able to in other storytelling media. I can take readers to new, strange places. The way comics convey information through the pictorial, the symbolic, along with the text is what is so powerful to me about this hybrid storytelling medium.

Sketch by John Jennings

FLA: Damian, can you share some of your creative decisions about the lettering, especially focused on the first couple of pages of Parable of the Sower.

DD: I knew early on that I wanted to reproduce the visuals of lined notebook paper since all the narration comes from the protagonist, Lauren, writing in her journal. I made the narration caption boxes with notebook paper lines and explored using different digital fonts that look handwritten.

The first font that I used, and was printed in the advance readers copy, didnt work. It looked like cursive writing, and the editor and designer at Abrams decided that it was too hard to read. We ended up using a different font in the final product. Which is important because, if I lettered the comic by hand, it would be coming out in roughly a thousand years.

FLA: Damian, you use this journal/notebook motif in the beginning to give shape to her dream sequences in the opening and throughout. Tell me a little about the choice to use dream sequences, especially in the opening?

DD: I decided to use the notebook style to shape the dream motif here and throughout Parable. So much of both novels involves Lauren working out this religion she founds, Earthseed. A lot of it is her giving voice to her dreams and ideas by writing them out, building a belief system as she goes. So it seemed to make sense, connecting the journaling to her dreams.

When I first started the script, I was considering cutting the prologue-like dream sequence that opens Butlers novel. I was worried about introducing the world of the novel through as abstract as a dream. But the more I looked at it, the more I knew that we needed it to function like an overture and foreshadowing of the entire story. The elements of walls, doors, and fire, of flying and falling, and family that show up in that sequence all have huge resonance later on.

Interior art by John Jennings

FLA: John, can you share the decisions you made when geometrizing pages 2 and 3.

JJ: Damian provides a really concise way that he wants the page laid out, either telling me about it or sketching it out for me. Because we have to do advanced reader copies, all the pages have to be sketched out, digitally inkedthe entire book is done digitally and then sent to the color assistants. They do a process called flatting: drawing parallelograms under the images in Photoshop to fill in the color with a flat color before its rendered.

Essentially, theyre using Photoshop to color under the art. They then send me a Photoshop file with flats. I then render it. I add like the color, the nuance and differentiation in the color to show whats going on around it what the image looks like in space.

DD: Texture and shading.

JJ: There you go. All that texture and shading.

FLA: John, with Kindred you inked all the pages. With Parable you digitally ink. Can you talk about the pros and cons for both?

JJ: Honestly the main con for not doing things by hand is that I dont have originals. A lot of artists sell their originals. I donated my entire, set of originals for Kindred to the Science Fiction Archive here at UC Riverside; they are the remnants of the final project.

Honestly, digital is the way to go, especially if youre working on a really serious deadline. The iPad is totally revolutionized the way that I think about making comics.

Everything is generated within iPad, making it easy to import and export Photoshop files. You can make changes very quickly. You can make duplicates of images very quickly. We have tools that allow you to mimic what actual inks look like. If youre trained classically like me, when it comes to the image making you can replicate the feel of actual analog. I dont see going back to hand done comics, honestly. It doesnt make sense to me at this point.

Interior art by John Jennings

FLA: John, elsewhere youve talked about your style as informed strongly by a woodcut aesthetic. Can you tell us a little more about that, especially as it relates to these first couple of pages of Parable?

JJ: Definitely. My mentor, Tom Kovacs, was a woodcut artist, a linocut artist. I was attracted to the German Expressionists creators like Kthe Kollwitz, for instance. Kollwitz was a huge influence on Kindred. She did a lot with translating into art the trauma of the Holocaust. Others like Frans Masereel, Ed Ward, and Denys Cowan were really big influences on my hand.

I abstract in my comics storytelling but I also give them a very personal feel. Comics storytelling doesnt have to be stylized like a superhero comic. To convey this rich experience, I created my own style by drawing on influences from the Harlem Renaissance, German Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism. Ive been working on my woodcut style for years. I love printmaking, but I dont have time to cut prints. But I can simulate that feel through the digital, and thats something that I try to do.

FLA: Damian, page 2 is the prologue-like dream sequence followed by a conventionally stacked page 3. What were you and then John trying to convey as we launch from prologue into the story proper?

DD: We wanted the dream sequence to convey that the main character, Lauren, is sort of a visionary. And, as I mentioned earlier, the imagery is necessary as it previews the events of the story. The panels on page 3 are stacked in a more conventional composition because those scenes are our first proper introduction to the predominant setting of the first half of the book. It takes place inside the walls of the Robledo, a kind of lower middle-class gated community in Southern California where the main character comes from.

Here we wanted the page layout to communicate the perceived safety the community draws from being walled in. But, at the same time, there arent panel borders between the gutters and the panels because, while Robledo is walled in, its really a false sense of security. The walls eventually fall, and when they do the panel structures become less geometric, more disordered.

Cover art by John Jennings

FLA: John, Parable is set in a dystopic Los Angeles with folx of color front and center. How did you decide on a color palette to convey the setting here at the beginning of Parable and throughout?

JJ: One of the things that attracted me to Parable is its a very diverse cast. We wanted to create strong representations of people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds. I live in the Imperial Valley, so Im not in L.A. proper. There is a character in the story from Riverside, where I live. That said, I did want the color palette taupe and browns to convey a really strong connection to the people and landscape in this part of the world. We are surrounded by mountains, but basically, were in a desert. So, I chose to use color schemes that are based off of the desert. I also base a lot of color and shapes of buildings from the Spanish, colonial style architecture here in Riverside.

I also use a rusty red color overtone in Parable. Weve messed up the environment pretty badly, so when the atmosphere starts to be affected by the ozone it starts to get this reddish tint to it. I chose the red color scheme to convey how were killing the environment.

DD: With the recent wildfires and the fire tornados, there were plenty of photo references of it really happening

FLA: While very different in terms of color, feel and layout, is there a way that the dream sequence prologue (page 2) and the beginning of the story proper (page 3) connect with one another as a spread?

JJ: I tried to amplify symbols and motifs in ways that would interconnect the two pages. So the pages that make up this opening spread echo each other in subtle ways, like how the barbed wire fence around the wall starts to feel like the lined-notebook paper, creating a visual motif that connects the two. And, the two pages of the spread work together to foreshadow events and set the tone: Lauren as visionary.

Interior art by John Jennings

FLA: The opening spread also provides a lot of breathing room with the gutter space?

JJ: While it shrinks the art page a little bit, it does give you the feel of, say, a sacred text. Its like you are looking at some of those older, pretty bibles that had a lot of gutter. This in addition to the printing process makes it feel really sacred and precious. Its almost like youre carrying around a chatbook or a bible. This sacredness mirrors Laurens journey in the creating of a new faith and scripture.

FLA: Theres a certain stability with this opening spread that we see eliminated as the narrative unfolds and Laurens life becomes more precarious.

DD: As her life and the story generally becomes more hectic and intense, the page compositions and panel layouts start to mirror that. They become sort of stacked more haphazardly, and the line work around the panels becomes rougher as the events happening in the panels become more chaotic, violent, and crazy.

JJ: Damian did some send me examples of masters like Will Eisner as a way to show me how we might use a meta panel structure doors as smoke and erratic images to convey, for instance, the deterioration of Laurens community.

In comics storytelling everythings a picture, so images of anything like doors as smoke or the borders themselves can be generators of the story.

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Anatomy of a Panel: John Jennings, Damian Duffy, and PARABLE OF THE SOWER - Comicosity

Neuroscience

Why virtual reality is a ‘far from perfect’ tool for studying how the brain works – Genetic Literacy Project

Virtual Reality (VR) is not just for video games. Researchers use it in studies of brains from all kinds of animals .Thishas become a powerful tool in neuroscience, because it has many advantages for researchers that allow them to answer new questions about the brain.

If youve ever experienced VR, you know that it is still quite far from the real world. And this has consequences for how your brain responds to it.

One ofthe issues with VRis thelimited number of sensesit works on. Often the environment is only projected on a screen, giving visual input, without the subject getting any other inputs, such as touch or smell.

We know that we should be critical when interpreting results from neuroscience studies that use VR. Although VR is a great tool, it is far from perfect, and it affects the way our brain acts. We should not readily accept conclusions from VR studies, without first considering how the use of VR in that study may have affected those conclusions. Hopefully, as our methods get more sophisticated, the differences in brain activity between VR and the real world will also become smaller.

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Why virtual reality is a 'far from perfect' tool for studying how the brain works - Genetic Literacy Project

Biochemistry

The Frost Institute supports microbiome research at winter symposium – University of Miami

The recent 2020 Miami Winter Symposium featured scientists and researchers examining the current trends and medical opportunities in microbiome research.

Capable of improving peoples health and transforming care, microbiome research is an emerging field that was front and center during the recent 2020 Miami Winter Symposium.

Each year for the past 50 years, the Miami Winter Symposium highlights a trending research theme; experts and scientists come together to learn about new scientific methods and approaches related to the theme. This years focus was microbiome research, which featured world-renowned researchers at the forefront of the field.

During the event held Jan. 2629 at the Hyatt Regency Miami, interactive displays provided an opportunity for researchers to advance the field and contribute to groundbreaking studies in molecular mechanisms that link microbiome research and improvements in human health. The University of Miami Frost Institute of Chemistry and Molecular Science was a co-sponsor at the symposium.

In collaboration with the symposium, the Frost Institute presented a pre-conference panel session entitled Microbiome and Molecular Sciences: The Next Breakthroughs, which included a distinguished panel of top scientific journal editors, as well as industrial and academic scientists who discussed the current and future of microbiome research and its impact on health, the environment, and society.

The Frost Institute stimulates interdisciplinary research in the fields of chemistry and molecular science, and it is a bridge to new paths of collaboration in scientific discovery and dual research within this growing field of microbiome exploration that studies our world on a molecular level, said Leonidas Bachas, dean of the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences and interim director of the Frost Institutes of Science and Engineering. It was exciting to see how these fields were represented by some of todays greatest minds in science, collaborating on ways to improve human health.

The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Joan Guinovart, a scientist and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Barcelona, and founder and director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine. Featured panelists included Manoj Dadlani, CEO of CosmosID; Dr. Lakshmi Goyal, editor of Cell Host & Microbe; Dr. Andrew Marshall, chief editor of Nature Biotechnology; and Dr. Michal Toborek, professor and vice-chair for research at the University of Miami Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Before a large audience of attendees from more than 30 countries, the panelists examined the current trends and research opportunities in microbiome research, which offers unending possibilities in a field able to pave the way for big breakthroughs.

Researchers continue to deepen their understanding of theimportance of environmental and community factors that drive microbiome composition. They emphasized that as we recognize the underlaying molecular mechanisms that determine microbe-host interactions,we can improve our understanding of the potential microbiome research provides in advancing health and treatment options.

The pre-session panel discussion at the Miami Winter Symposium was also hosted by the University of Miamis Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute. Established in 2017, the Frost Institute of Chemistry and Molecular Science provides programs that advance collaboration and innovation and lead cutting edge research across the sciences.

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The Frost Institute supports microbiome research at winter symposium - University of Miami

Biochemistry

20 stellar scientists and scholars win 2020 Sloan Research fellowships – University of California

Twenty early-career faculty from across the University of California have been named 2020 Sloan Research fellows, an honor that is often a hallmark of future greatness.

UCs fellows are among a class of 126 from 60 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada announced Feb. 12 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship, which can be spent to advance their research.

UC campuses dominated the list of winners, accounting for 15 percent of all Sloan Fellows. UC Berkeley had nine winners, UC San Diego had six, UCLA had four and UC Davis had one.

To receive a Sloan Research fellowship is to be told by your fellow scientists that you stand out among your peers, said Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A Sloan Research fellow is someone whose drive, creativity and insight makes them a researcher to watch.

The Sloan Research fellowships are open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields: chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics.

Candidates are nominated by peers from their respective institutions. Winners are then selected by independent panels of scholars based on the candidates research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become leaders in their fields.

Sloan fellows have often gone on to make history. 50 Sloan fellows have won Nobel Prizes; 17 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics; and 69 have received the National Medal of Science.

Here are the University of Californias 2020 Sloan fellows:

Stephen Brohawn, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

An assistant professor of molecular and cell biology, Brohawn studies lifes electrical system, which is responsible for sensation, thought, learning, memory and many other forms of communication within the body, from a molecular and biophysical perspective.

Roger Casals, UC Davis

An assistant professor in theDepartment of Mathematics in the College of Letters and Science, Casals research centers on how light behaves. His specialty, contact topology, is the study of geometric structures that can describe shapes appearing in rays of light, such as reflections off a rippling pond or the liquid crystals in a television screen.

Tarek M. Elgindi, UC San Diego

An assistant professor ofmathematics, Elgindis research focuses on the mathematical analysis ofmodels for incompressible fluids.

Benjamin Faber, UC Berkeley

An associate professor of economics, Faber works at the intersection of international trade and development economics, focusing on how globalization shapes economic livelihoods in developing countries.

Alex Frano, UC San Diego

An assistant professor ofphysics, Franos research is focused on investigating strongly correlated electron systems using various X-ray scattering techniques.

Sanjam Garg,UC Berkeley

An assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, Garg is a computer theorist who conducts research in cryptography and security.

Cecile Gaubert, UC Berkeley

An assistant professor of economics, Gauberts research interests include international trade and economic geography.

Heather Gray,UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

An assistant professor of physics, Gray is an experimental particle physicist working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland. Her primary interest is the Higgs boson, the most recently discovered elementary particle.

Cressida Madigan, UC San Diego

An assistant professor ofmolecular biology, Madigan conducts research at the crossroads of microbiology, neurobiology and infectious disease. She focuses on the surprising number of microbial infections that can change functions of the nervous system. For example, bacteria that cause leprosy prevent pain sensation in the skin; bacterial meningitis causes neuronal injury; and congenital infections can slow neurodevelopment.

Sung-Jin Oh,UC Berkeley

An assistant professor of mathematics, Oh studies geometric partial differential equations, especially those which originate from physics. He combines ideas from a diverse range of fields, including harmonic analysis, differential geometry and physics.

Aditya Parameswaran,UC Berkeley

Parameswaran has a joint appointment in the School of Information and electrical engineering and computer science (EECS). He develops systems for interactive, or human-in-the-loop, data analytics by synthesizing techniques from database systems, data mining and human-computer interaction. His tools help end-users and teams make sense of large and complex datasets.

Ricardo Perez-Truglia, UCLA

Perez-Truglia is an assistant professor of economics in the global economics and management group at UCLA Anderson. He studies how social image and social comparisons shape economic behavior. What do others think of you? Are you rich? Smart? Hard-working? The desire to shape these opinions is a powerful driver of human behavior.

Erik Petigura, UCLA

Petigura, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, studies exoplanets using ground-based and space-based telescopes. My passion for exoplanets is motivated by a deceptively simple, yet fundamental question: Why are we here? said Petigura. Our species has wrestled with this question since antiquity, and it resonates strongly with me.

Nadia Polikarpova, UC San Diego

An assistant professor ofcomputer science and engineering, Polikarpova builds practical tools and techniques that make it easier for programmers to create secure and reliable software.

Jose Rodriguez, UCLA

An assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Rodriguez develops and applies new scientific methods in bio-imaging to reveal undiscovered structures that influence chemistry, biology and medicine. His laboratory is working to explore the structures adopted by prions a form of infectious protein that causes neurodegenerative disorders.

Amina Schartup, UC San Diego

An assistant professor ofmarine chemistryat Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Schartup specializes in tracing the chemical and biological cycles of metals, especially mercury, in the environment.

Daniel Stolper,UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

An assistant professor of earth and planetary science, Stolper focuses on generating and interpreting climate records of ancient Earth, primarily by studying the modern carbon cycle and reconstructing past atmospheric and marine oxygen concentrations.

Guy Van den Broeck, UCLA

Van den Broeck isanassistant professor of computer science whose research interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation and reasoning, and applications of probabilistic reasoning and learning.He directsthe UCLAStatistical and Relational Artificial Intelligence (StarAI) laboratory.

Wei Xiong, UC San Diego

An assistant professor ofchemistry and biochemistry, Xiong investigates charge dynamics and molecular conformations at interfaces, and molecular dynamics and ultrafast photonics of molecular systems under strong coupling conditions.

Michael Zaletel, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

An assistant professor of physics, Zaletel focuses on theoretical condensed matter physics and its intersection with quantum information and computational approaches. He aims to understand the behavior of electrons in quantum materials where entanglement and the strong interactions between electrons conspire to form new phases of matter.

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20 stellar scientists and scholars win 2020 Sloan Research fellowships - University of California

Neuroscience

Your brain isn’t the same in virtual reality as it is in the real world – Massive Science

Virtual Reality (VR) is not just for video games. Researchers use it in studies of brains from all kinds of animals: bees, fish, rats and, of course, humans. Sadly, this does not mean that the bees have a tiny VR headset. Instead, the setup often consists of either normal computer screens surrounding the subject, or a special cylindrical screen. Thishas become a powerful tool in neuroscience, because it has many advantages for researchers that allow them to answer new questions about the brain.

For one, the subject does not have to physically move for the world around them to change. This makes it easier to study the brain. Techniques such as functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can only be used on stationary subjects. With VR, researchers can ask people to navigate through a virtual world by pressing keys, while their head remains in the same place, which allows the researchers to image their brain.

VR has become a powerful tool in neuroscience.

FDA

The researchers can also control a virtual environment much more precisely than they can control the real world. They can put objects in the exact places they want, and they can even manipulate the environment during an experiment. For example, neuroscientists from HarvardUniversitywere able to change the effortthe zebrafish had to put in to swim to travel the same distance in VR, which causes zebrafish to change how strongly they move their tails. Using this experiment, researchers determined which parts of the zebrafish brain are responsible for controlling their swimming behavior. They could have never performed such a manipulation in the real world.

If you've ever experienced VR, you know that it is still quite far from the real world. And this has consequences for how your brain responds to it.

One of the issues with VR is the limited number of senses it works on. Often the environment is only projected on a screen, giving visual input, without the subject getting any other inputs, such as touch or smell. For example,mice rely heavily on their whiskers when exploring an environment. In VR, their whiskers won't give them any input, because they won't be able to feel when they approach a wall or an object.

VR cannot replicate how mice rely on their whiskers to navigate.

Adapted from Pixabay by Dori Grijseels

Another issue is the lack of proprioception, the feedback you get from your body about the position of your limbs. Pressing a button to walk forward is not the same as actually moving your legs and walking around. Similarly, subjects won't have any input from their vestibular system, which is responsible for balance and spatial orientation. This is also the reason some people get motion sickness when they are wearing VR headsets.

When VR is used for animal studies, the animals are often "headfixed," meaning they cannot turn their head. This is needed to be able to use a microscope to look at the cells in their brain.However, it poses a problem, specifically for navigation, as animals use a special type of cell, called a "head direction cell," in navigation tasks. These cells track the orientation of the head of an animal. And whenthe mouse can't move its head, the head direction cells can't do their job.

This is especially the case for the cells in the hippocampus. That is the part of your brain that is responsible for navigation, and so, relies heavily on inputs that give you information about your location and your direction.

Neurons talk to each other through electrical signals called action potentials, or spikes. The number of spikes per second, called the "firing frequency," is an important measure of how much information is being sent between neurons.A 2015 study found that, in VR, the firing frequency of neurons in a mouse is reduced by over two thirds, meaning thatthe cells don't send as much information.

The same study also showed that the cells are less reliable. They specifically looked at place cells, cells that respond to a particular location in the environment and are incredibly important for navigation. In the real world, these cells send spikes about 80% of the times thatthe animal is in a particular location. However, in VR, this is reduced to about 30%, so when an animal visits a location ten times, the cells will send spikes during only three of those visits. This means the animals are not as sure about their exact location.

Another important feature of brain activity are brainwaves, or neural oscillations. These represent the overall activity of all the neurons in your brain, which goes up and down at a regular interval. Theta oscillations, brainwaves at a frequency of 4-7 Hz, play an important part in navigation. Interestingly, scientists found that rats have a lower frequency of their theta oscillations in VR compared to the real world. This effect on oscillations is not limited to navigation tasks, but was also found for humans who played golf in the real world and in VR. It is most likely caused by the lack of vestibular input, but scientists are still unsure of the consequences of suchchanges in frequency.

We know that we should be critical when interpreting results from neuroscience studies that use VR. Although VR is a great tool, it is far from perfect, and it affects the way our brain acts. We should not readily accept conclusions from VR studies, without first considering how the use of VR in that study may have affected those conclusions. Hopefully, as our methods get more sophisticated, the differences in brain activity between VR and the real world will also become smaller.

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Your brain isn't the same in virtual reality as it is in the real world - Massive Science

Human Behavior

Human Behavior, My Brain Made Me do It? – Dealing with …

Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. was in private practice for more than thirty years. He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the states...Read More

Science has made huge strides in understanding the human brain and how it functions. For example, we know that the frontal lobes are the center of rational thinking and of self control. It is also understood that neurotransmitters, or brain chemicals, are responsible for our moods and of the general state that we are in. It is also known that severe mental illnesses, such as Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, are diseases of the brain. Lesions or damage to the frontal lobes and to other parts of the brain can and affect impulses and impulsive behaviors. All of this knowledge raises disturbing questions. Does any of this mean that we are not responsible for our behavior? Does it mean that we have no free will because my brain made me do it? It its true that my brain made me do it then, as a result, anything I do is a result of the way my brain works. In other words, I didnt choose to steal that item, my brain did?

In criminal trials something called the insanity defense is used when the defendant claims they are not responsible for their actions because of mental health problems. Another defense is called diminished capacity. The diminished capacity plea differs in important ways from not guilty by reason of insanity. In a successful plea of insanity the result is a verdict of not guilty. In this case the judge sends the defendant to a mental institution until it is determined that they are sane. At such time they are discharged from the hospital. Remember, they have been found not guilty. On the other hand, a successful plea of diminished capacity results in the defendant being convicted of a lesser offense and a lesser prison sentence than if they were guilty with full capacity.

So, does this mean that people who commit crimes do so because of the way their brain works? In fact, cant it be said that, even with full capacity, a person should not be held responsible for their crimes because their brain made them do it?

Of course, there is the argument that behavior results from environmental influences. In this case, if some was physically, emotionally and verbally abused during childhood, it explains and forgives their decisions as adults. From time to time I have heard this said about some of the rudest people I have met. For example, rudeness is excused because someone had a tough childhood. In another example, a surly and nasty department store clerk is forgiven because they have a boring job. In these cases it is not their brain that made them do it. Instead, their environment made them do it>

In reality, human behavior and psychology are complicated. It is most likely that our behaviors result from a complex interplay between each of our genetic make-up, brain chemistry and functioning and the economic, social and psychological environments in which we grew up and live.

The basic question remains: Are we responsible for our decisions and behaviors?

I will provide my opinion but I would like to hear from my readers about this issue.

In my opinion, we are responsible for our behaviors. If may boss yelled at me, my wife did not make dinner for me for when I got home from work and I kicked the cat and yelled at the kids, I am responsible for my bad behavior. Simply stated, there is no excuse for kicking the cat and yelling at the kids. In a similar way, this latest mass murderer in Colorado is responsible for his decisions and actions.

What is your opinion?

Allan N. Schwartz, PhD.

Keep Reading By Author Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D.

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