Tag Archives: environment

Trump ‘Honors’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By Visiting His DC Memorial for 30 Seconds – The New Civil Rights Movement

January 21, 2020 medical

Whether we want to or not, for the sake of America, we must try to understand the Donald Trump phenomenon, as it has completely swept the nation and also fiercely divided it. What is most baffling about it all is Trumps apparent political invincibility.

As hehimself saideven before he won the presidential election, I could stand in the middle of 5thAvenue and shoot somebody and I wouldnt lose voters. Unfortunately for the American people, this wild-sounding claim appears to be truer than not, at least for the majority of his supporters, and that is something that should disturb us. It should also motivate us to explore the science underlying such peculiar human behavior, so we can learn from it, and potentially inoculate against it.

In all fairness, we should recognize that lying is sadly not uncommon for politicians on both sides of the political aisle, but the frequency and magnitude of the current presidents lies should have us all wondering why they havent destroyed his political career, and instead perhaps strengthened it. Similarly, we should be asking why his inflammatory rhetoric and numerous scandals havent sunk him.

We are talking about a man who was caught on tape saying, When youre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. Politically surviving that video is not normal, or anything close to it, and we can be sure that such a revelation would have been the end of Barack Obama or George Bush had it surfaced weeks before the election.

While dozens of psychologists have analyzed Trump, to explain the mans political invincibility, it is more important to understand the minds of his staunch supporters. While there have been various popular articles that have illuminated a multitude of reasons for his unwavering support, there appears to be no comprehensive analysis that contains all of them. Since there seems to be a real demand for this information, I have tried to provide that analysis below.

This list will begin with the more benign reasons for Trumps intransigent support, and as the list goes on, the explanations become increasingly worrisome, and toward the end, border on the pathological. It should be strongly emphasized that not all Trump supporters are racist, mentally vulnerable, or fundamentally bad people. It can be detrimental to society when those with degrees and platforms try to demonize their political opponents or paint them as mentally ill when they are not. That being said, it is just as harmful to pretend that there are not clear psychological and neural factors that underlie much of Trump supporters unbridled allegiance.

The psychological phenomena described below mostly pertain to those supporters who would follow Trump off a cliff. These are the people who will stand by his side no matter what scandals come to light, or what sort of evidence for immoral and illegal behavior surfaces.

For some wealthy people, its simply a financial matter. Trump offers tax cuts for the rich and wants to do away with government regulation that gets in the way of businessmen making money, even when that regulation exists for the purpose of protecting the environment. Others, like blue-collared workers, like the fact that the president is trying to bring jobs back to America from places like China. Some people who genuinely are not racist (those who are will be discussed later) simply want stronger immigration laws because they know that a country with open borders is not sustainable. These people have put their practical concerns above their moral ones. To them, it does not matter if hes a vagina-grabber, or if his campaign team colluded with Russia to help him defeat his political opponent. It is unknown whether these people are eternally bound to Trump in the way others are, but we may soon find out if the Mueller investigation is allowed to come to completion.

According to astudythat monitored brain activity while participants watched 40 minutes of political ads and debate clips from the presidential candidates, Donald Trump is unique in his ability to keep the brain engaged. While Hillary Clinton could only hold attention for so long, Trump kept both attention and emotional arousal high throughout the viewing session. This pattern of activity was seen even when Trump made remarks that individuals didnt necessarily agree with. His showmanship and simple language clearly resonate with some at a visceral level.

Essentially, the loyalty of Trump supporters may in part be explained by Americasaddictionwith entertainment and reality TV. To some, it doesnt matter what Trump actually says because hes so amusing to watch. With the Donald, you are always left wondering what outrageous thing he is going to say or do next. He keeps us on the edge of our seat, and for that reason, some Trump supporters willforgiveanything he says. They are happy as long as they are kept entertained.

Some intelligent people who know better are supporting Trump simply to be rebellious or to introduce chaos into the political system. They may have such distaste for the establishment and democrats like Hillary Clinton that their support for Trump is a symbolic middle finger directed at Washington. These people do not have their priorities straight, and perhaps have other issues, like an innatedesire to troll others, or a deranged obsession withschadenfreude.

Science has unequivocally shown that the conservativebrainhas an exaggeratedfearresponse when faced with stimuli that may be perceived as threatening. A2008studyin the journal Sciencefound that conservatives have a stronger physiological reaction to startling noises and graphic images compared to liberals. Abrain-imaging studypublished inCurrent Biologyrevealed that those who lean right politically tend to have a larger amygdala a structure that is electrically active during states of fear and anxiety. And a2014 fMRI studyfound that it is possible to predict whether someone is a liberal or conservative simply by looking at their brain activity while they view threatening or disgusting images, such as mutilated bodies. Specifically, the brains of self-identified conservatives generated more activity overall in response to the disturbing images.

These brain responses are automatic, and not influenced by logic or reason. As long as Trump continues his fear mongering by constantly portraying Muslims and Hispanic immigrants as imminent dangers, many conservative brains will involuntarily light up like light bulbs being controlled by a switch. Fear keeps his followers energized and focused on safety. And when you think youve found your protector, you become less concerned with offensive and divisive remarks.

A well-supported theory from social psychology, known asTerror Management Theory, explains why Trumps fear mongering is doubly effective. The theory is based on the fact that humans have a unique awareness of their own mortality. The inevitably of ones death creates existential terror andanxietythat is always residing below the surface. In order to manage this terror, humans adopt cultural worldviews like religions, political ideologies, and national identities that act as a buffer by instilling life with meaning and value.

Terror Management Theory predicts that when people are reminded of their own mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they will more strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnicidentity, and act out more aggressively towards those who do not. Hundreds of studies have confirmed this hypothesis, and some have specifically shown that triggering thoughts of death tends to shift people towards the right.

Not only do death remindersincrease nationalism, they influence actualvoting habitsin favor of more conservative presidential candidates. And more disturbingly, in a study with American students, scientists found that making mortality salient increased support forextreme military interventionsby American forces that could kill thousands of civilians overseas. Interestingly, the effect was present only in conservatives, which can likely be attributed to their heightened fear response.

By constantly emphasizing existential threat, Trump creates a psychological condition that makes the brain respond positively rather than negatively to bigoted statements and divisive rhetoric. Liberals and Independents who have been puzzled over why Trump hasnt lost supporters after such highly offensive comments need look no further than Terror Management Theory.

Some support Donald Trump do so out of ignorance basically they are under-informed or misinformed about the issues at hand. When Trump tells them thatcrimeis skyrocketing in the United States, or that the economy is the worst its ever been, they simply take his word for it.

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains that the problem isnt just that they are misinformed; its that they are completely unaware that they are misinformed, which creates a double burden.

Studieshave shown that people who lack expertise in some area of knowledge often have acognitivebiasthat prevents them from realizing that they lack expertise. As psychologist David Dunning puts it in anop-edfor Politico, The knowledge andintelligencethat are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one isnotgood at that task and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at the task. This includes political judgment. These people cannot be reached because they mistakenly believe they are the ones who should be reaching others.

Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled. It is the discontent felt when one compares their position in life to others who they feel are equal or inferior but have unfairly had more success than them.

Common explanations for Trumps popularity among non-bigoted voters involve economics. There is no doubt that some Trump supporters are simply angry that American jobs are being lost to Mexico and China, which is certainly understandable, although these loyalists often ignore the fact that some of these careers are actually being lost due to the accelerating pace of automation.

These Trump supporters are experiencing relative deprivation, and are common among the swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This kind of deprivation is specifically referred to as relative, as opposed to absolute, because the feeling is often based on a skewed perception of what one is entitled to.

Intergroup contactrefers to contact with members of groups that are outside ones own, which has been experimentallyshown toreduce prejudice.As such, its important to note that there is growing evidence that Trumps white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans. For example, a2016 studyfound that the racial and ethnic isolation of Whites at the zip-code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support. This correlation persisted while controlling for dozens of other variables. In agreement with this finding, the same researchers found that support for Trump increased with the voters physical distance from the Mexican border. These racial biases might be more implicit than explicit, the latter which is addressed in #14.

While the conspiracy theory crowd who predominantly support Donald Trump and crackpot allies like Alex Jones and the shadowyQAnon may appear to just be an odd quirk of modern society, the truth is that many of them suffer from psychological illnesses that involve paranoia and delusions, such as schizophrenia, or are at least vulnerable to them, like those withschizotypy personalities.

Thelinkbetween schizotypy and belief in conspiracy theories is well-established, and arecent studypublished in the journalPsychiatry Researchhas demonstrated that it is still very prevalent in the population. The researchers found that those who were more likely to believe in outlandish conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the U.S. government created the AIDs epidemic, consistently scored high on measures of odd beliefs and magical thinking. One feature of magical thinking is a tendency to make connections between things that are actually unrelated in reality.

Donald Trump and his media alliestarget these people directly.All one has to do is visit alt-right websites and discussion boards to see the evidence for such manipulation.

Collective narcissism is an unrealistic shared belief in the greatness of ones national group. It often occurs when a group who believes it represents the true identity of a nation the ingroup, in this case White Americans perceives itself as being disadvantaged compared to outgroups who are getting ahead of them unrightfully. This psychological phenomenon is related to relative deprivation (#6).

Astudypublished last year in the journalSocial Psychological and Personality Sciencefound a direct link between national collective narcissism and support for Donald Trump. This correlation was discovered by researchers at the University of Warsaw, who surveyed over 400 Americans with a series of questionnaires about political and social beliefs. Where individual narcissism causes aggressiveness toward other individuals, collective narcissism involves negative attitudes and aggression toward outsider groups (outgroups), who are perceived as threats.

Donald Trump exacerbates collective narcissism with his anti-immigrant, anti-elitist, and strongly nationalistic rhetoric. By referring to his supporters, an overwhelminglywhite group, as being true patriots or real Americans, he promotes a brand of populism that is the epitome of identity politics, a term that is usually associated with the political left. Left-wing identity politics, as misguided as they may sometimes be, are generally aimed at achieving equality, while the right-wing brand is based on a belief that one nationality and race is superior or entitled to success and wealth for no other reason than identity.

Social dominance orientation (SDO) which is distinct but related to authoritarian personality syndrome (#13) refers to people who have a preference for the societal hierarchy of groups, specifically with a structure in which the high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones. Those with SDO are typically dominant, tough-minded, and driven by self-interest.

In Trumps speeches, he appeals to those with SDO by repeatedly making a clear distinction between groups that have a generally higher status in society (White), and those groups that are typically thought of as belonging to a lower status (immigrants and minorities). A2016 survey studyof 406 American adults published last year in the journalPersonality and Individual Differencesfound that those who scored high on both SDO and authoritarianism were those who intended to vote for Trump in the election.

Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others.Authoritarian personality syndromea well-studied and globally-prevalent condition is a state of mind that is characterized by belief in total and complete obedience to ones authority. Those with the syndrome often display aggression toward outgroup members, submissiveness to authority, resistance to new experiences, and a rigid hierarchical view of society. The syndrome is often triggered byfear, making it easy for leaders who exaggerate threat or fear monger to gain their allegiance.

Although authoritarian personality is found among liberals, it ismore common among the right-wingaround the world. President Trumps speeches, which are laced with absolutist terms like losers and complete disasters, are naturally appealing to those with the syndrome.

While research showed that Republican voters in the U.S. scored higher than Democrats on measures of authoritarianism before Trump emerged on the political scene, a 2016Politico surveyfound that high authoritarians greatly favored then-candidate Trump, which led to a correct prediction that he would win the election, despite the polls saying otherwise

It would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to say that every one of Trumps supporters have prejudice against ethnic andreligiousminorities, but it would be equally inaccurate to say that many do not. It is a well-known fact that the Republican party, going at least as far back to Richard Nixons southern strategy, used tactics that appealed to bigotry, such as lacing speeches with dog whistles code words that signaled prejudice toward minorities that were designed to be heard by racists but no one else.

While the dog whistles of the past were subtler, Trumps signaling is sometimes shockingly direct. Theres no denying that he routinely appeals to racist and bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims dangerous and Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, often in a blanketed fashion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent study has shown thatsupport for Trump is correlated with a standard scale of modern racism.

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Trump 'Honors' Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By Visiting His DC Memorial for 30 Seconds - The New Civil Rights Movement

Biochemistry

Postdoc Position, Department of Biology job with MASARYK UNIVERSITY | 193197 – Times Higher Education (THE)

January 21, 2020 medical

POSTDOC POSITION in Characterization of factors involved in metabolism of stalled replication forks and their possible disease relevance

Department Department of BiologyFaculty of Medicine

Deadline 29 Feb 2020

Start date March/April 2020 or upon agreement but no later than by 30th November 2020

Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic invites excellent scientists to apply for POSTDOC POSITION in Characterization of factors involved in metabolism of stalled replication forks and their possible disease relevance

Description:

The integrity of DNA continually resists the presence of physical and chemical carcinogens in our environment. In addition to exogenous agents, DNA undergoes spontaneous decay, including replication errors, oxidative and other damages which arise from common metabolic processes. The repair of damaged DNA is vital for the maintenance of genome integrity, and as aresult, all organisms have evolved awide variety of DNA repair pathways that can restore DNA structure and its genetic information.

The main objective of our research is to decipher the intrinsic functions of homologous recombination (HR) which has adual role in the maintenance of genome stability. First, it promotes the faithful repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) belonging among of the most lethal forms of DNA damage. Moreover, HR is responsible for the creation of genetic variability during meiosis by directing the formation of reciprocal crossovers that result in random combinations of alleles and traits. Changes in the execution and regulation of recombination are linked to human infertility, miscarriage and genetic diseases, particularly cancer thus emphasizing the importance of better understanding the mechanism and regulation of this pathway.

To achieve our goals, we utilize awide range of different methods from biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, structural biology, and biophysics that are well established in our lab. Since we believe that interdisciplinary approach is needed to fully understand the fundamental biological processes, we also collaborate with numerous specialists.

The successful candidate should:

Specific criteria can be filled, i.e.:

The application should include:

MU offers the opportunity to get:

Anticipated start date:The position is available from March/April 2020 or upon agreement but no later than by 30th November 2020.

The submission deadline is29th February 2020.

Please submit your application by e-mail tovrablikova@med.muni.cz

Areview of applications will commence immediately after the deadline. Short-listed candidates will be invited for interview within one month of the deadline.

Further information about:

prof. MUDr. Martin Repko, Ph.D.dkan

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Postdoc Position, Department of Biology job with MASARYK UNIVERSITY | 193197 - Times Higher Education (THE)

Neuroscience

DeepMind Discovers AI Training Technique That May Also Work In Our Brains – Unite.AI

January 18, 2020 medical

The human brain often recalls past memories (seemingly) unprompted. As we go throughout our day, we have spontaneous flashes of memory from our lives. While this spontaneous conjuration of memories has long been of interest to neuroscientists, AI research company DeepMind recently published a paper detailing how an AI of theirs replicated this strange pattern of recall.

The conjuration of memories in the brain, neural replay, is tightly linked with the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped formation in the brain that belongs to the limbic system, and it is associated with the formation of new memories, as well as the emotions that memories spark. Current theories on the role of the hippocampi (there is one in each hemisphere of the brain), state that different regions of the hippocampus are responsible for the handling of different types of memories. For instance, spatial memory is believed to be handled in the rear region of the hippocampus.

As reported by Jesus Rodriguez on Medium, Dr. John OKeefe is responsible for many contributions to our understanding of the hippocampus, including the hippocampal place cells. The place cells in the hippocampus are triggered by stimuli in a specific environment. As an example, experiments on rats showed that specific neurons would fire when the rats ran through certain portions of a track. Researchers continued to monitor the rats even when they were resting, and they found that the same patterns of neurons denoting a portion of the maze would fire, although they fired at an accelerated speed. The rats seemed to be replaying the memories of the maze in their minds.

In humans, recalling memories is an important part of the learning process, but when trying to enable AI to learn, it is difficult to recreate the phenomenon.

The DeepMind team set about trying to recreate the phenomenon of recall using reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning algorithms work by getting feedback from their interactions with the environment around them, getting rewarded whenever they take actions that bring them closer to the desired goal. In this context, the reinforcement learning agent records events and then plays them back at later times, with the system being reinforced to improve how efficiently it ends up recalling past experiences.

DeepMind added the replaying of experiences to a reinforcement learning algorithm using a replay buffer that would playback memories/recorded experiences to the system at specific times. Some versions of the system had the experiences played back in random orders while other models had pre-selected playback orders. While the researchers experimented with the order of playback for the reinforcement agents, they also experimented with different methods of replaying the experiences themselves.

There are two primary methods that are used to provide reinforcement algorithms with recalled experiences. These methods are the imagination replay method and the movie replay method. The DeepMind paper uses an analogy to describe both of the strategies:

Suppose you come home and, to your surprise and dismay, discover water pooling on your beautiful wooden floors. Stepping into the dining room, you find a broken vase. Then you hear a whimper, and you glance out the patio door to see your dog looking very guilty.

As reported by Rodriguez, the imagination replay method doesnt record the events in the order that they were experienced. Rather, a probable cause between the events is inferred. The events are inferred based on the agents understanding of the world. Meanwhile, the movie replay method stores memories in the order in which the events occurred, and replays the sequence of stimuli spilled water, broken vase, dog. The chronological ordering of events is preserved.

Research from the field of neuroscience implies that the movie replay method is integral to the creation of associations between concepts and the connection of neurons between events. Yet the imagination replay method could help the agent create new sequences when it reasons by analogy. For instance, the agent could reason that if a barrel is to oil as a vase is to water, a barrel could be spilled by a factory robot instead of a dog. Indeed, when DeepMind probed further into the possibilities of the imagination replay method, they found that their learning agent was able to create impressive, innovative sequences by taking previous experiences into account.

Most of the current progress being made in the area of reinforcement learning memory is being made with the movie strategy, although researchers have recently begun to make progress with the imagination strategy. Research into both methods of AI memory can not only enable better performance from reinforcement learning agents, but they can also help us gain new insight into how the human mind might function.

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DeepMind Discovers AI Training Technique That May Also Work In Our Brains - Unite.AI

Human Behavior

Q&A: The impact of Australia’s fires on humans and animals – University of Denver

January 18, 2020 medical

For months, massive swaths of Australia have been on fire, leaving more than 20 people dead, tens of thousands in flight from their homes, 15 million acres burned and millions of animals dead. Shocked by the destruction, the world has turned its eyes Down Under.

With the fires still blazing, the DU Newsroom invited Shannon Murphy, associate professor of biology, to explain the long-term implications for the countrys environment. Philip Tedeschi and Sarah Bexell of the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at DUs Graduate School of Social Work joined the email conversation to share their insights about the fires toll on animals and humans alike.

The fires in Australia are devastating in scale. What long-term ramifications could this have for human society?

Murphy: Its hard to understand the scale of this disaster right now since its still ongoing, but its likely we will feel the effects for decades or longer. We dont know yet how much of the native ecosystems will be lost, since the fire season still has another month to go, but it sounds like a lot of endemic species may have already suffered huge population losses. These are species that are found nowhere else on Earth. For people who value biodiversity, this is a huge tragedy.

Tedeschi/Bexell: Human behavior is causing mass environmental changes, such as climate change, mass extinction, desertification and countless forms of pollution not just air and water, but also light, noise, soil and more. Due to our inability to address the size of our population and our additions to economic growth, events [like this] will only grow in number and severity.

In addition to grieving the loss of homes and communities, Australians are mourning the dramatic loss of their wildlife. Why is that loss so profound?Tedeschi/Bexell: Whether humans realize it or not, other species are deeply embedded in our psychology and mental health. We also, thankfully, have strong aversions to suffering. To see the magnitude of animal suffering and death occurring in Australia right now is painful and traumatic. That pain is exacerbated by feelings of helplessness, as many [people] do not have the skills or financial resources to help the animals who survive the fires but are left with injuries and/or trauma. Yes, other species also experience trauma.

Humans evolved living alongside other species, and as we lose them, many of us also experience a devastating loneliness and, of course, despair and loss. There is a known term called solastalgia that refers to watching places we love changed, altered or destroyed. This causes a sense of homesickness while still at home or feeling like a stranger in your own land.

Many attribute the cause of the fires to climate change. Is that the case? What could have prevented this?

Murphy: Climate change is known to be altering fire regimes around the world, primarily because droughts are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, and when the landscape dries out, its more likely to burn severely. Natural wildfires are a normal part of many ecosystems, including some in Australia. In these ecosystems where fire is an important periodic disturbance, many species are fire-adapted. Indeed, not only are species that live there adapted to survive fire, many even benefit from periodic fires or require fire to reproduce. For example, some tree species require heat for their cones to open and allow seeds to germinate. However, the problem is that fires today are happening more frequently than normal and even fire-adapted species cannot recover when fires happen so quickly in succession. More pertinent to whats happening in Australia right now is that many fires that we see are much more intense than fires have been historically. Long-term droughts are causing the plants and soil to be much drier than they should be, and so there is a greater fuel load than if there had been normal amounts of rain. This means that fires that would normally have been low-severity fires and may have actually helped the ecosystem are now high-severity fires that are scorching the landscape.

Some reports are saying koalas are effectively extinct, and certainly other animal populations have been significantly harmed. What could it mean to lose a creature so emblematic of their national identity?

Tedeschi/Bexell: We should assume that we will see human depression and deep anxiety about these losses. Often they can be as profound as the losses of human members of our family, in part because these relationships are so reliable and often seen as permanent parts of our lives. This type of serious biodiversity loss is occurring all over the world. [Consider] the U.S. nearly losing bald eagles and China nearly losing giant pandas. These species are emblematic of entire nations, and to lose them would cause sadness and feelings of loss, but perhaps also guilt and shame. The loss of any of these three species would be due to deleterious human behavior, including pesticide use, overdevelopment and climate change. Earth is undergoing [its] sixth mass extinction event, as we know from the fossil record. This current extinction event is caused entirely by the behavior of one species humans.

Once the fire is out, what happens next? How do the environment and the animal population begin to recover?

Murphy: Recovery can be a very slow process, especially from high-severity fires like we see happening now. When fire-adapted landscapes burn with low-severity fires, recovery starts relatively quickly, with plants re-growing from belowground roots or seeds in the seedbank. However, when fires burn with the severity that we are seeing in Australia, sometimes the heat from the fire kills belowground roots and destroys the seedbank in the soil, which means that recovery depends on recolonization from undisturbed areas. Depending on the extent of the fire, this could take a long time because undisturbed areas may be really far away.

Recovery of animal communities depends on the recovery of the plant community, so [that] may be even more delayed. Lastly, the community may never recover to what it was, and depending on which species arrive, [the communities] may end up very different from the ones we knew.

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Q&A: The impact of Australia's fires on humans and animals - University of Denver

Biochemistry

The CEO of Impossible Foods, the startup behind the wildly popular veggie burger backed by Serena Williams and Katy Perry, shares the biggest piece of…

January 16, 2020 medical

captionImpossible Foods CEO Pat Brown holds up an Impossible Burger 2.0, the new and improved version of the companys plant-based vegan burger that tastes like real beef.sourceRobyn Beck/Getty Images

Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown is on a mission to make meat obsolete, and it looks like hes off to a pretty promising start.

Impossible Foods wildly popular plant-based burger can now be found at thousands of restaurants across the United States, and the company is bringing a new faux-sausage breakfast sandwich to Burger King by the end of the month.

Plus, last spring, the company raised $300 million in a Series E round led by Temasek and Horizon Ventures, who were joined by more than a dozen superstar investors ranging from Serena Williams to pop icon Katy Perry and rapper Jay-Z, bringing its valuation to $2 billion.

Suffice it to say that Browns bleeding meatless burger has caught on. But Brown didnt necessarily have any of these milestones in mind before starting Impossible Foods. Rather, the key to starting a successful company has less to do with business-oriented goals like fundraising and retail partnerships and more to do with the problem youre aiming to solve, says Brown.

The main thing I would say to people who are entrepreneurial is, pick a problem that matters to the world, Brown, who is in his 60s, said to Business Insider when asked what advice he would give to his 20-year-old self. Really, that solves a big problem in the world, and dont talk yourself out of it.

Brown started Impossible Foods in 2011 when he was on sabbatical from his roles as a biochemistry professor at Stanford Universitys medical school and an HHMI investigator. But he says he wishes he had a better understanding of the meat industry earlier on in his career so that he could have started Impossible Foods sooner.

If I would have realized how catastrophic the use of animals in the food system was when I was in my 20s, instead of going into biomedical research, I would have gone right to working on this problem, he says.

Impossible Foods recently unveiled its first new foods since debuting the original Impossible Burger in 2016: Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage. The company is testing a new Burger King breakfast sandwich that includes the meatless sausage at 139 locations in the US, but it has not said when Impossible Pork will be launching.

Impossible Foods decided to go with pork for its next major product expansion for two reasons: its the most widely eaten meat in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and Impossible Foods hopes to cut back on the detrimental effects that pig farming can have on the environment.

Were not going to solve the problem by declaring war on the incumbent industry or telling people to change their diets, Brown said in a previous interview with Business Insider. The only way to do it is by making products that do a better job of delivering what consumers value from meat and these other foods.

All told, even if your company fails, youll at least know your efforts have gone toward a worthy cause if you choose to address a meaningful problem, Brown says.

If you think you have the capability of coming up with a useful solution to the problem, thats the big opportunity, he said. I feel like the world does not need more gadgets to collect data on everyone, Alexa-enabled toothbrushes or whatever. Do something actually useful.

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The CEO of Impossible Foods, the startup behind the wildly popular veggie burger backed by Serena Williams and Katy Perry, shares the biggest piece of...

Human Behavior

How to boost recycling: Reward consumers with discounts, deals and social connections – Red, Green, and Blue

January 12, 2020 medical

You finish that last sip of morning coffee and stare at the empty paper cup in your hand. Should it go into the recycling bin, compost, or be landfilled or incinerated?You are not alone. Most Americans are confused about recycling, and the crisis driven by Chinas decision to stop accepting most foreign scrap material is worsening the problem. At this point its hard to be sure that items put in the recycling bin are recycled.

By Magali (Maggie) Delmas, University of California, Los AngelesThe Conversation

Research shows that more often than not, Americans give up trying to sort their recyclables. Or they engage in wishful recycling, tossing nonrecyclables into the bin. Even so, most waste never gets that far. People feel intimidated by the task.

The average American generates about 4.5 pounds of waste each day. Only 1.5 pounds of it is recycled or composted. This means that over an average lifetime of 78.7 years, one American would send 67,000 pounds of waste to landfills. Thats more than twice the weight of a cruise ship anchor.

Although many communities and advocates have adopted regulations and action plans centered on moving toward a circular economy, major barriers still make it hard for individuals to reduce, reuse and recycle. Existing policies have been developed based on insights from engineering and economics, and give little consideration of how human behavior at the individual level fits into the system.

My colleagues and I use behavior science to foster goals ranging from energy conservation to community solidarity. In a recent paper, economist Marieke Huysentruyt, Ph.D. candidate Emma Barnosky and I uncovered promising solutions to the recycling crisis driven by personal benefits and social connections.

Why is getting Americans to recycle more so challenging? First, many of them dont understand waste problems and recycling strategies. Few are aware of the environmental problems waste causes, and most have a hard time connecting individual actions to those problems.

Most people dont know where their waste goes, whether it includes recyclables or what can be made from them. They may know what day to put out curbside trash and recycling, but are unsure which materials the companies accept. In a 2019 survey of 2,000 Americans, 53% erroneously believed greasy pizza boxes could be recycled, and 68% thought the same for used plastic utensils.

Another 39% of respondents cited inconvenience and poor access to recycling facilities as major barriers. California pays a 5- to 10-cent redemption fee for each beverage container, but the facilities often are inconvenient to reach. For example, the closest to my home in Los Angeles is eight miles away, which can involve driving for an hour or more. Thats not worth it for the few cans my family produces.

Most U.S. consumers are opposed to pollution, of course, but research shows that they seldom view themselves as significant contributors. As taxpayers, they hold local governments responsible for recycling. Many are not sure what happens next, or whether their actions make a difference.

What can be done to address these barriers? Better messaging, such as emphasizing how waste can be transformed into new objects, can make a difference.

But as I argue in my 2018 book, The Green Bundle: Pairing the Market With the Planet, information alone cant drive sustainable behavior. People must feel motivated, and the best motivations bundle environmental benefits with personal benefits, such as economic rewards, increased status or social connections.

In a 2014 survey, 41% of respondents said that money or rewards were the most effective way to get them to recycle. Take-back systems, such as deposits on cans and bottles, have proven effective in some contexts. Such systems need to be more convenient, however.

Returning bottles directly to stores is one possibility, but novel strategies are being deployed across the country. Pay-as-you-throw policies charge customers based on how much solid waste they discard, thus incentivizing waste reduction, reuse and more sustainable purchasing behavior. Recyclebank, a New York company, rewards people for recycling with discounts and deals from local and national businesses.

Social status also motivates people. The zero-waste lifestyle has become a sensation on social media, driving the rise of Instagram influencers such as Bea Johnson, Lauren Singer and Kathryn Kellogg, who are competing to leave behind the smallest quantity of waste. Visibility of conservation behavior matters, and could be a powerful component in pay-as-you-throw schemes.

Its also nice to have support. Mutual help organizations, or community-led groups, trigger behavioral change through social connections and face-to-face interactions. They have the potential to transfer empowering information and sustain long-term commitment.

One famous example is Alcoholics Anonymous, which relies on member expertise instead of instructions from health care specialists. Similarly, Weight Watchers focuses on open communication, group celebration of weight loss progress and supportive relationships among members.

French startup Yoyo, founded in 2017, is applying this strategy to recycling. Yoyo connects participants with coaches, who can be individuals or businesses, to help them sort recyclables into orange bags. Coaches train and encourage sorters, who earn points and rewards such as movie tickets for collecting and storing full Yoyo bags.

The process also confers status, giving sorters positive social visibility for work that is ordinarily considered thankless. And because rewards tend to be local, Yoyos infrastructure has the potential to improve members community connections, strengthening the perceived and actual social power of the group.

This system offers a convenient, social, incentive-based approach. In two years the community has grown to 450 coaches and 14,500 sorters and collected almost 4.3 million plastic bottles.

Such novel behavior-based programs alone cannot solve back-end aspects of the global waste crisis, such as recycling capacity and fluctuating scrap material prices. But our research has shown that by leveraging technology and human behavior, behavioral science can encourage people to recycle much more effectively than simplistic campaigns or slogans.

[ Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversations email newsletter. ]

(Magali (Maggie) Delmas, Professor of Management Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Top photo CC by Walter Parenteau on Flickr)

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How to boost recycling: Reward consumers with discounts, deals and social connections - Red, Green, and Blue

Neuroscience

Meditation can better the brain. Are we morally obligated to meditate? – Vox.com

January 12, 2020 medical

Eight weeks ago, I started meditating every day.

I knew Id be going home to visit my family at the end of December, and well, I have a bad habit of regressing into a 13-year-old whenever Im around them. All my old immaturities and anxieties get activated. I become a more reactive, less compassionate version of myself.

But this holiday season, I was determined to avoid fighting with my family. I would be kind and even-tempered throughout the visit. I knew that in order to have a chance in hell of achieving this, Id need a secret weapon.

Thats where the meditation came in.

Starting in 2005, Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar began to publish some mind-blowing findings: Meditation can literally change the structure of your brain, thickening key areas of the cortex that help you control your attention and emotions. Your brain and possibly, by extension, your behavior can reap the benefits if you practice meditation for half an hour a day over eight weeks.

Just eight weeks? I thought when I read the research. This seems too good to be true!

I was intrigued, if skeptical. Above all, I was curious to know more. And I wasnt the only one. By 2014, there had been enough follow-up studies to warrant a meta-analysis, which showed that meditators brains tend to be enlarged in a bunch of regions, including the insula (involved in emotional self-awareness), parts of the cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex (involved in self-regulation), and parts of the prefrontal cortex (involved in attention).

A host of other studies showed that meditation can also change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate, as well as more inclined to have positive feelings toward a victim of suffering and to see things from their perspective.

Further research suggested that meditation can change not only your internal emotional states but also your actual behavior. One study found that people made charitable donations at a higher rate after being trained in meditation for just two weeks. Another study found that people who get that same measly amount of meditation training are about three times more likely than non-meditators to give up their chair when they see someone on crutches and in pain.

Still skeptical, I fell down an internet rabbit hole and soon found many more neuroscientific studies. Looking closely at them, I did find that a fair number are methodologically flawed (more on that below). But there were many others that seemed sound. Taken together, the literature on meditation suggested that the practice can help us get better at relating to one another. It confronted me with evidence that a few weeks of meditation can improve me as a person.

I say confronted because the evidence really did feel like a challenge, even a dare. If it takes such a small amount of time and effort to get better at regulating my emotions, paying attention to other people, seeing things from their point of view, and acting altruistically, then well am I not morally obligated to do it?

The word meditation actually refers to many different practices. In the West, the most well-known set of practices is mindfulness meditation. When people talk about that, theyre typically thinking of a practice for training our attention.

Heres how Jon Kabat-Zinn, a scientist who helped popularize mindfulness in the West, defines it: Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.

And heres what mindfulness meditation practice often involves: You sit down, close your eyes, and focus on feeling your breath go in and out. When you feel your attention drifting to the thoughts that inevitably arise, you notice, and then gently bring your attention back to your breath.

This combination of attention training and direct observation is the basic practice. Sounds simple, right? But according to some studies, it can have profound effects on your brain.

In a 2012 study, people who were new to meditation underwent eight weeks of mindful attention training, practicing for around four hours each week. Before the training, they got fMRIs, scans that show where brain activity is occurring. While they were in the MRI scanner, they viewed a series of pictures, some of which were upsetting (like a photo of a burn victim). After eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, when they viewed the upsetting pictures in the scanner again, they showed reduced activity in a crucial brain region: the amygdala.

The amygdala is our brains threat detector. It scans our environment for danger, and when it perceives a threat, it sets off our fight-flight-freeze response, which includes releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. It glues our attention to the threat, making it hard for us to focus on anything else.

Whats striking about the study is that the reduced amygdala activity lasted even when the participants were in their ordinary baseline state in other words, not actively practicing mindfulness. This suggests the effects of meditation may result in enduring changes in mental function, as the authors wrote. A control group showed no such effects.

In another, similarly designed study, participants showed reduced amygdala activity in response to upsetting pictures after practicing mindfulness for 20 minutes per day over just one week. However, the lessened amygdala reactivity only showed while they were engaged in mindfulness, suggesting we need more continued practice if we want the changes to be permanent.

To see why attention-training can be helpful when it comes to treating others better, think back to a time when you saw someone in distress. Maybe it was a friend who wanted to talk about his painful breakup, or a colleague who was caught in a swirl of anxiety, or a homeless person who needed something to eat.

If you were distracted by your own distressing thoughts if your amygdala was activating like crazy you may have had a hard time putting your issues aside long enough to deal with theirs. You may not have even noticed that they needed something from you until it was too late.

But if your mind is undisturbed, youll probably have an easier time paying attention to what the present moment asks of you: to help this person whos in front of you, right here, right now.

Thats common sense, said Thupten Jinpa, a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and the main English translator to the Dalai Lama. I grew up as a monk, so for me, the most powerful evidence is really the anecdotal evidence in my own personal life.

But as an academic with a PhD in religion, Jinpa doesnt rely only on common sense or personal experience he also works with psychologists on scientific research. In 2015, he co-authored a study titled A wandering mind is a less caring mind, which found that reducing mind-wandering through meditation was associated with increased caring behavior, both for oneself and for others.

Although Jinpa believes mindfulness is important, he told me that when it comes to making us more altruistic, theres another type of practice thats even more effective: loving-kindness or compassion meditation.

Two other meditation practices loving-kindness meditation and its close cousin, compassion meditation have interesting science behind them, too. These practices, which involve concentrated attention to cultivate certain qualities, have been growing in popularity in the West over the past couple of decades thanks to American teachers like Sharon Salzberg. And evidence shows they can change your neural circuitry even faster than mindfulness meditation.

The meditation for loving-kindness typically looks like this: You repeat certain phrases in your head, such as may I be safe, may I be healthy, or may my life unfold with ease. After youve wished these things for yourself, you widen the circle of caring, wishing the same things for the people you love, then for people you feel neutrally about, and then for all living beings including those who get on your nerves or have hurt you. (One compassion meditation works much the same way, except instead of wishing that people be safe and healthy and full of ease, you wish that they be free from suffering.)

So, how does loving-kindness or compassion meditation affect the brain, and in turn, affect our behavior?

Before we answer that question, its important to note that loving-kindness and compassion meditation which involve cultivating love for people who are suffering are not the same thing as empathy, even though we often conflate these concepts.

Empathy is when you share the feelings of other people. If other people are feeling pain, you feel pain, too literally.

Not so with compassion. In a 2013 study at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, researchers put volunteers in a brain scanner, showed them gruesome videos of people suffering, and asked them to empathize with the sufferers. The fMRI showed activated neural circuits centered around the insula exactly the circuits that get activated when were in pain ourselves.

Compare that with what happened when the researchers took a different group of volunteers and gave them eight hours of training in compassion, then showed them the graphic videos. A totally different set of brain circuits lit up: those for love and warmth, the sort a parent feels for a child.

When we feel empathy, we feel like were suffering, and thats upsetting. In the short term, it can cause us to tune out to help alleviate our own feelings of distress. And in the long term, it can cause serious burnout, as many a nurse and social worker can attest.

A little bit of empathy is important, because we need to be able to detect another persons suffering in order to be helpful, Richard Davidson, a prominent University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist whos spent decades studying meditation in the lab, told me. But empathy by itself can be toxic.

Amazingly, compassion because it fosters positive feelings actually attenuates the empathetic distress that can cause burnout, as neuroscientist Tania Singer has demonstrated in her lab.

In other words, practicing compassion or loving-kindness doesnt just help us make other people happier; it makes us happier, too.

Loving-kindness also boosts the connections between the brains circuits for joy and happiness and the prefrontal cortex, a zone critical for guiding behavior, Davidson writes in Altered Traits, his authoritative 2017 book on the neuroscience of meditation, which he co-authored with Daniel Goleman. And the greater the increase in the connection between these regions, the more altruistic a person becomes following compassion meditation training.

In fact, one fMRI study showed that in very experienced practitioners (think Tibetan yogis), compassion meditation actually triggers activity in the brains motor centers, preparing their bodies to physically move in order to help whoever is suffering, even as theyre still lying in the brain scanner.

Given such evidence, Jinpa believes its clear that we can strengthen our compassion through concrete practices, just as we strengthen our muscles through exercise. Working out of Stanford Universitys Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education in 2009, he created the Compassion Cultivation Training, an eight-week course designed with input from neuroscientists and psychologists. Blending formal meditation with other contemplative practices, the course is now taught around the world.

After I started wondering if were morally obligated to meditate, I soon realized thats a very Western and Judeo-Christian way of thinking about it. Growing up, Id had to memorize the Ten Commandments and a long litany of sins, and my mind is still conditioned to think in terms of commandments and obligations.

But Eastern traditions like Buddhism or Confucianism arent grounded in commandments that come from a divine being. Among Buddhists, youre more likely to hear about skillful and unskillful means for minimizing suffering and maximizing the possibility for liberation.

The everybody ought language that wouldnt be the language theyd use, Evan Thompson, a University of British Columbia professor who specializes in Asian philosophical traditions, told me. The idea is that in order to lead a good life, we need to engage in certain self-cultivation practices, such as training our minds to calm down so we can pay attention to the present.

Plus, whereas the language of oughts and obligations suggests a prescriptive or proselytizing attitude, Buddhist tradition has generally been more interested in inviting people to try meditation and discover its benefits for themselves, rather than in mandating adherence. (Not all people who identify as Buddhist practice meditation.)

Jinpa said it would be naive to think someone could get everyone to meditate. That wont happen, he told me. So Im interested in promoting the idea of compassion training that wouldnt necessarily involve formal sitting meditation. He pointed to his Compassion Cultivation Training as an example, saying its likelier to be widely adopted in part because its presented as secular.

Meanwhile, to Davidson, the neuroscientist, the virtues you cultivate by meditating are so crucial as to make the practice feel almost obligatory.

I see this as a public health need, he told me, using the analogy of brushing our teeth something that takes only a few minutes a day, and something that virtually everyone does because we see it as important for our physical hygiene.

I think most people would agree their minds are just as important as their teeth. If we spent such a short time on our mind as we do on brushing our teeth, this world would be a different place, Davidson said, because our emotional well-being would be improved. So there is some sense of a moral obligation, almost.

But theres a caveat: For a small minority of people, meditation can actually provoke adverse effects, like intense mental distress or impaired physical functioning. Brown University psychologist Willoughby Britton is studying these cases in a project called Varieties of Contemplative Experience. More research is still needed, but given that meditation practices might precipitate or exacerbate challenging conditions in some people, it would be wrong to say that absolutely everyone would do well to meditate.

Scientists are publishing more and more studies on meditation each year. But many of these studies are beset by methodological flaws, leading to overhyped results. Davidson calls this neuromythology.

Some studies fail to replicate in other labs. Others fail to include active controls they dont test the potential benefits of a meditation regimen against those of a different regimen, like exercise or health education classes. Still others fail to disaggregate the data of participants who are relatively inexperienced with meditation and those whove had enough hours of practice to be considered experts.

Even though there are methodological issues with some of the studies, others do hold up. And when you consider the hundreds of studies altogether, there is substantial evidence that meditation can help us become better people.

So, the next question is: How much better? Is it worth spending hours on meditation when you could just get out there and start volunteering?

My response to that is, why pose it as an either/or question? I think both are important, Davidson said. Id say the biggest bang for your buck would be to engage in a compassion meditation practice in your mind while youre volunteering.

When we think about meditation, we often picture ourselves sitting on a cushion with our eyes closed. But it doesnt have to look that way. It can just be a state of mind with which we do whatever else it is were doing: volunteering, commuting to work, drinking a cup of tea, washing the dishes.

In fact, the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh is fond of saying, Washing the dishes is like bathing a baby Buddha. The profane is the sacred. Everyday mind is Buddhas mind.

As for me, Ive found that I have enough bandwidth at the end of the day to sit down and close my eyes for a few minutes. So, for eight weeks, I sat in meditation every night.

Then I went home to visit my family.

Im happy to report that we had our best, calmest visit in years. By the end of the holiday break, the number of fights Id gotten into was a glorious, miraculous zero.

Its not that all of my reactive or unkind impulses magically disappeared. But whenever I felt myself starting to get snippy, I went into my old childhood bedroom and closed the door. I took a deep breath, and recalling the heaps of scientific evidence that had confronted me, I did what seemed to me like the reasonable response, a response so easy and so beneficial that it felt like a no-brainer.

Reader, I meditated.

Reporting for this article was supported by Public Theologies of Technology and Presence, a journalism and research initiative based at the Institute of Buddhist Studies and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.

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Meditation can better the brain. Are we morally obligated to meditate? - Vox.com

Human Behavior

The Next Climate Tech Breakthrough May Have Already Happened, We Just Didn’t Notice – State of the Planet

January 10, 2020 medical

by Isabelle Seckler|January 10, 2020

Photo: Pixabay

The president of the UN General Assembly says we have only 11 years to prevent irreversible damage to our planet from climate change. Thats a short deadline in which to prevent an existential crisis. The global community is desperate for solutions that prevent further environmental damage and help us adapt to life in a new climate.

To stay within the targeted limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, scientists insist that we need to reduce the carbon thats already in the atmosphere, in addition to dropping new emissions to net-zero. The goal is to implement carbon dioxide removal strategies that capture carbon from the air and safely store it.

Existing CO2 removal technologies usually mimic natural biogeochemical processes that sequester carbon, or amplify the carbon-capturing qualities of the ocean, forests and sedimentary rocks. One method would fertilize phytoplankton in the ocean to increase the photosynthetic uptake of carbon. Another relies on crushing up carbon-absorbing rocks to increase their surface area, storage potential, and the rate of carbon removal.

Now, more than ever, there is a need for creative solutions, and these examples show that the next breakthroughs in sustainable development wont come from Silicon Valley or scientific labs, but from Mother Nature. We havent paid enough attention to the natural world to recognize that it teems with potential solutions to our problems, hiding in plain sight. We can improve the very infrastructure of our built environment if we mimic certain biochemical and geological processes readily found in the natural environment.

Mother Nature is a master innovator. Her breakthroughs are not revolutionary, but evolutionary. Natural selection is the longest-running research and development project it has lasted 3.8 billion years and counting, to be exact. The traits that survive are the ones that are best adapted to thrive in their specific environment, from sticky gecko feet to water-collecting lotus petals.

The biological world that exists today is efficient, effective and made of the stuff of science fiction: self-regeneration, water resistance, antibacterial materials, incredibly weird methods of movement. Its a world of dynamic innovation that often goes unacknowledged.

Learning about the natural world is one thing. Learning from the natural world thats the switch. Thats the profound switch. Janine Benyus

There is a growing trend of scientists looking toward nature through a new perspective: biomimicry. Essentially, its design innovation that models the natural world. The term was popularized in the 1990s by Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute.

The examples are as fascinating as they are absurd. The bullet trains in Japan reach nearly 200 mph thanks to the Kingfisher birds aerodynamic beak. Wind turbines are 20 percent more energy efficient when shaped like humpback whale fins, and termite mounds show architects how to improve building air conditioning systems. Industry giants like Seventh Generation are looking to beetles that spray poison to remake aerosol packaging. Swimsuits constructed like shark skin reduce drag so effectively that they were banned at the Olympics. Medical spaces are even applying the antimicrobial properties of shark skin to create sterile surfaces without producing antibacterial resistance.

New technologies that owe their designs to biological models are highly lucrative. Its estimated that roughly $1.6 trillion of global GDP will come from products and services based on biological design by 2030.

The true value of biomimicry is priceless. Especially if it can be applied to develop carbon-capture technology. One company, Calera, believes that the way corals absorb carbon dioxide into their limestone skeletons can teach us how to capture carbon dioxide from the air and create cement. Imagine living in sustainable cities literally built from repurposed air pollution.

In a recent podcast, biomimicry expert Danya Baumeister explains how biomimicry can help us bolster our climate resiliency. In her eyes, nature is a shining model for how we could make materials that arent harmful and dont require lots of energy how we could build communities and cities in a way that actually gives back to the local ecosystem as opposed to just drains the local ecosystem.

A whole new market niche for sustainable, nature-based designs has opened up in the last few years. Databases like AskNature.org bring the diversity of life to the fingertips of engineers, artists and entrepreneurs. Companies like Biomimicry 3.8 offer biologists and chemists as consultants to reshape the way entire systems function, such as a carpet factory that functions more like a complete ecosystem. With roof gardens and wetlands built into the actual infrastructure of the factory, Biomimicry 3.8 has not only helped carpet manufacturer Interface reduce its environmental impact, but also provide local water purification and carbon sequestration. When the environment benefits, improved human health and worker productivity is soon to follow as well.

Advanced modern tools now allow scientists to analyze more complex systems in the natural world and adapt them for human behaviors. Computer algorithms can now track the ways ants avoid traffic jams on tiny twigs and in tight tunnels, and then project their efficiency onto traffic light systems and road infrastructure. We can improve our lives by mimicking not only the physical forms of nature, but also natures processes at an ecosystem scale.

Biological inspiration is a ray of hope that the global community desperately needs. Public awareness of natures applicability could usher in a new appreciation for the environment at a time when exploitation is at an all-time high. Medicine, food, water and energy systems all derive from nature. Biomimicry can help us shift from just harnessing natures resources to integrating natures already sustainable pathways into society.

Nature is a Rolodex of efficiency, but not every application of biomimicry is necessarily productive for combating climate change. For instance, ant-like traffic systems that save time by streamlining commutes actually enable more cars to move through the same space, thus intensifying the carbon emissions and fuel demands that destroy the environment. We should be conscious that failures are part of the biomimicry process after all, thats how adaptation leads to evolution. The survival of the fittest ideas will ultimately limit inefficiency.

With human spaces overtaking natural habitat, industrial factories spewing greenhouse gases into the air, excessive waste habits and widespread pollution, its no surprise that the planet is undergoing a sixth mass extinction. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that 60 percent of Earths biodiversity was lost from 1970 to 2014. We need to fundamentally change our behavior before its too late: the very design blueprints that could secure a better future might disappear before we even know it.

Its time to be more sustainable than just passing up on plastic straws. We can revolutionize the way we interact with each other and the planet by learning from evolution. Its smug of us to ignore 3.8 billion years of sustainable development as we urgently seek solutions for a better future. Lets think more like nature. Its time to adapt.

Isabelle Seckler is a first-year student studying sustainable development at Columbia College.

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The Next Climate Tech Breakthrough May Have Already Happened, We Just Didn't Notice - State of the Planet

Human Behavior

Scientists Velcroed 3-D Glasses to Cuttlefish to Study Their Depth Perception – Smithsonian

January 10, 2020 medical

One of the worlds strangest 3-D cinemas is tucked away in a research laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Its underwater interior lacks seats and aisles, and its screen measures only a few inches high. The patrons are European cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis): stout-bodied, color-changing relatives of squids and octopuses that deploy a pair of long, limber tentacles to snare their prey.

The film is in 3-D, though the rabbit-sized mollusks dont take kindly to the blue and red glasses, says Trevor Wardill, a visual ecologist at the University of Minnesota. To get the spectacles to stick, Wardill and his students superglue a patch of Velcro onto the skin between the cuttlefishs eyes, then affix the glasses on top. On first wear, most of the study subjects reach up with one of their many arms and snatch the lenses right back off.

But thanks to an abundance of grass shrimp treats, the cuttlefish eventually learn to tolerate their new accessories and watch the researchers feature films. With this unusual setup, Wardill and his colleagues have shown that cuttlefish perceive depth much like humans do: by comparing and combining the slightly offset images of the world that each of our eyes perceive, as reported today in Science Advances.

This visual trick, called stereopsis or stereo vision, requires complex coordination between the eyes and the brain, and it was once thought to be unique to vertebrates. Two years ago, another team led by Vivek Nityananda and Jenny Read of Newcastle University in the United Kingdom found stereo vision in the praying mantisthe first invertebrate to don 3-D glasses for the sake of science. Now, the cuttlefish brings the number of spineless creatures known to possess the trait up to two.

We tend to take for granted some of the visual abilities that we humans have, says Alex Nahm Kingston, a visual ecologist at the University of South Carolina who wasnt involved in the study. [Stereo vision] is what allows us to reach out and grab something off the kitchen counter or catch a ball. But this makes a great case for looking across lots of different groups and seeing how animals interact with their environment in the most successful ways.

Though a far cry from a human, big-brained cuttlefish are good candidates for stereo vision. Unlike their octopus and squid cousins, they swivel both their camera-like eyes forward when they hunt, seemingly calculating the distance between themselves and their grass shrimp prey. The petite, lithe and translucent crustaceans arent easy to snag, and misjudging the coordinates of a catch can leave a cuttlefish empty-tentacled. To successfully stalk shrimp, they need to judge depth as well as possible, says study author Rachael Feord, a visual ecologist at the University of Cambridge.

Taking inspiration from similar experiments with praying mantises, Wardill and his team searched for stereovision in 11 cuttlefish by situating them in a 3-D cephalopod cinema, similar to old-school 3-D theaters for people. Glasses, outfitted with two filters of different colors, showed each of their eyes a separate image of a tasty shrimp on the screen. If the mollusks were using stereo vision, the colored images would combine in their minds to create the illusion of depth, allowing them to calculate the ideal distance from which to attack their apparently three-dimensional prey.

Trained to treat the faux food as real, the bespectacled creatures struck out again and again. Depending on how close together the colored shrimp were, and the order they appeared in, the cuttlefish would either back up from the image or sidle up closeso much so that theyd often bash their tentacles against the screen itself.

Then the researchers switched things up. Instead of showing their subjects two colored images, they projected just one, effectively blinding one eye. Stripped of stereo vision, the cuttlefish took longer to position themselves in front of the screen. (The cephalopods werent completely flummoxed, though. Like human eyes, cuttlefish eyes, whether solo or in pairs, collect a bevy of visual cues to assess their surroundings.)

Taken together, these experiments make for a really compelling demonstration of cephalopod stereopsis, says Read, who wasnt involved in the study. I cant think of any other explanation.

But not all is equal in the eyes of cuttlefish and human. The team also presented the cephalopods with another set of shrimp projections, this time superimposed on backgrounds of colored patterns of dots, some bright, some dark. In humans, when one eye sees a pattern of bright and dark dots, and the other eye sees the inverse of the patternwhere the bright and dark dots are reversedour brains have difficulty reconciling the differences, compromising depth perception. Remarkably, both praying mantises and cuttlefish are unfazed by these inverted background patterns. Rather than trying to come to grips with the conflicting intel, their brains just ignore it, and stereo vision proceeds unimpeded. (Unlike mantises, however, cuttlefish cant see in 3-D when presented with a pair of images that look nothing alike.)

Of course, real grass shrimp (or any prey, for that matter) dont spend much time scuttling across backdrops of neon dots. But Feord thinks the less stringent types of stereo vision present in the praying mantis and cuttlefish could constitute a powerful advantage. By filtering out some of the clutter in their surroundings, these invertebrates can focus on whats important: their prey. Humans form a very complex image that gets refreshed over and over in the brain, she says. The cuttlefish and praying mantis just pick out the elements they need without getting bogged down in the details.

The researchers also found that cuttlefish, which can rotate their eyes independently of each other, dont always focus both peepers on the same point, and the reason is still a mystery. The positions of their eyes can be as much as 10 degrees apart, Wardill says. For us, that would be disastrous. Wed have trouble walking around.

Then again, cephalopod brains arent exactly organized like ours (or like praying mantises, for that matter), says study author Paloma Gonzalez-Bellido, also of the University of Minnesota, in a statement. While the human brain does most of its visual processing in a region called the occipital lobe, cephalopod neurology appears to be a bit more disorganized. Their brains, which are home to dozens of different lobes with overlapping functions, are pretty much black boxes, Wardill says.

Perhaps the most extraordinary finding is that the brains of dramatically different animals developed 3-D perception independently. Hundreds of millions of years have passed since humans, cuttlefish and praying mantises shared a common ancestor, and they all ended up eyeing the same visual strategy. The recurrence of this evolutionary trait underscores the importance of depth perception, says Judit Pungor, a cephalopod vision expert at the University of Oregon who wasnt involved in the study.

And even more animals with this unusual ability are likely out there. Wardill and Gonzalez-Bellidos previous work hints that predatory robber flies might use stereo vision, too. For years, people thought that you could only do stereopsis if you had a very big [and complex] brain, because thats how it is in humans, Feord says. But the behavior clearly isnt as rare as once thought.

Comparing the specifics of stereo vision in these creatures and others might someday help crack the molecular code that makes depth perception possible. I think people should put more 3-D glasses on more animals, says Nityananda, who helped pioneer the act in the praying mantis. If thats my lasting contribution to science, thatll be good.

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Scientists Velcroed 3-D Glasses to Cuttlefish to Study Their Depth Perception - Smithsonian

Neuroscience

Melissa Franch ’12: ‘Skills I Developed During Teaching Have Transferred Naturally to the Research Environment and Continue to Help Me Become a…

January 9, 2020 medical

Melissa Franch 12 has an older brother with severe, nonverbal autism. From a young age, she wondered what caused him to exhibit various behaviors and how her family could best help him. The more she learned in biology classes, the more curious she became about the causes of autism and ways to improve the lives of individuals with the disorder.

That interest and curiosity led Franch first to the NC State College of Education to complete a bachelors in science education and eventually to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where she is a doctoral student in neuroscience and conducting research on the neural correlates of social behavior such as cooperation.

Role: Neuroscience Ph.D. student at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Education: Bachelor of Science in Science Education, NC State College of Education; Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences, NC State University

What She Enjoys Most About Science: The scientific inquiry and investigation process is truly cathartic for me. There is something wonderful and satisfying about identifying a problem, asking questions and trying to solve it.

Why She Chose the NC State College of Education: I wanted to be a part of the Students Advocating for Youth (SAY) Village because of the youth mentoring responsibilities and because I knew I was joining a community of other individuals who are passionate about service through education. I also really enjoyed the campus atmosphere surrounding the College of Education.

Why She Chose Education: I chose education as my career because one of my core values is service. I think growing up with a brother who has a disability inspired me to empower others, and I decided to do that through education and science. While teaching is very rewarding in the moment as you can see students learn within a lesson, your positive influence as a teacher can lead to future changes in students lives that you will never know about.

Specifically, she records neural activity from animals as they cooperate for a reward. Through this research, she seeks to understand how the brain processes socially relevant visual cues from the environment, like the body language or actions of the partner, to use in social decision-making, such as forming the choice to cooperate.

This project will improve our understanding of social cognition, promoting the development of better therapeutics that can improve the lives of individuals suffering from social dysfunction, Franch said.

Her research was showcased last fall at the Society of Neuroscience annual meeting in Chicago. Having her research featured confirmed to Franch that the problems she wants to solve and the questions she sees as important are also acknowledged by the rest of the neuroscience community.

It really motivates me to continue on this career path and confirms that my ideas and research can make a positive impact, she said.

Franch developed an interest in science at a young age. Her father, an environmental chemist, encouraged her to participate in science events when she was a child and teen. While in high school, for example, she attended a Sally Ride Science event for women in science where they made their own DNA models and lip balm. Through such experiences, Franchs love for science grew.

I am so grateful to my dad for encouraging me to step out of my comfort zone and pursue my talents and interests, she says.

Her high school biology teacher, Mr. Lewis, and his exemplary teaching inspired her to initially pursue a career in science education. She chose to attend the NC State College of Education North Carolinas largest producer of STEM educators because she wanted to be surrounded by other individuals passionate about service through education.

She was also drawn to the mentoring opportunities available through the Students Advocating for Youth (SAY) Village and the field experiences she would receive.

I really enjoyed that we visited and worked in real high school classrooms very often and from the beginning of our college career, said Franch, who was a Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Scholarship recipient while an NC State student.

During her sophomore year, she observed and assisted a proficient biology teacher at Wake Early College High School, which was an invaluable experience for me.

A former high school teacher, a current neuroscientist researcher and a future biology professor, Melissa Franch 12 chose education because of the impact she could have on the lives of others. Help us prepare more extraordinary educators like her.

That same year, she also completed an internship with the U.S. Department of Energy Pre-Service Teachers program. Through that experience, she discovered a desire to contribute her skills and serve others through both education and research on a daily basis, which led her to add a second major in biological sciences and decide to teach high school biology for a few years before pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience.

And this is exactly what I have done, Franch said.

She taught biology for three years at Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, before enrolling in her Ph.D. program.

I hope everyone can teach at some point in their life, as I think the act of teaching instills a skillset and values in you that improve every aspect of yourself, she said. Teaching has helped me become the best person I can be, and the skills of leadership, communication, collaboration and persistent work ethic that I developed during teaching have transferred naturally to the research environment and continue to help me become a successful scientist.

When Franch finishes her Ph.D., she plans to complete a post-doc and remain in academia. She aspires to become a professor so she can teach science and conduct research on a daily basis.

I enjoy knowing that the work I will complete during my career will be used to help people someday, she said. I really enjoy both research and education because the impact is greater than one can imagine.

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Melissa Franch '12: 'Skills I Developed During Teaching Have Transferred Naturally to the Research Environment and Continue to Help Me Become a...