Category Archives: Human Behavior

Behavioral Health Market Growth Set to Continue but may slow: Stay Tuned with Emerging Trends & Dynamics – The Market Journal

The Behavioral Health market is expected to see a growth according to latest report released by AMA Research highlighting development scenario with compelling market sizing by revenue and volume (Consumption, Production)* ranging from 2013-2025. The study feature not only specific market forecasts, but also include significant value-added commentary on Market Trends, Technological Trends and Innovations, Regulatory Trends and Policies, Market Maturity Indicators, Market Share Movements, Growth Drivers and Constraints, New Entrants into the Market & Entry/Exit Barriers and Consumer Demographics.

Some of the profiled players in study out of the total coverage list includes:

Acadia Healthcare (United States),CareTech Holdings (United Kingdom),The MENTOR Network (United States),Universal Health Services (United States),Behavioral Health Network (United States),North Range Behavioral Health (United States),Strategic Behavioral Health (United States),Ascension Seton (United States),Pyramid Healthcare (United States),Promises Behavioral Health (United States)

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Behavioral Health Market Definition:

Behavioral health refers to the scientific study of the behaviors, emotions, and biology relating to a mental well-being of a person, their ability of functioning in everyday life and their concept of the self. Behavioral health is a preferred term to the mental health. A person who is struggling with his or her behavioral health may face depression, stress, anxiety, relationship problems, addiction, grief, ADHD or learning disabilities, mood disorders, or other psychological concerns. There are various techniques used in the treatment of an individual in behavioral health. The therapists study the human behavior to change the bad habits with good one. Also, it is performed to find a solution for certain kinds of phobias, stress as well as bipolar disorder among others. According to the World Health Organization, behavioral health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.

Market Scope Overview:

by Type (Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, Alcohol Use Disorders, Others), Application (Inpatient Hospital Treatment Services, Outpatient Counselling, Emergency Mental Health Services, Home-based Treatment Services, Others)

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Check Inside Story on Trending Factors with Regional Attention: Increasing Preferences of Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHP)

Advent of Online Counselling

Emergence of Behavioral Software

Increasing Number of People Who Are Suffering From Behavioral Health

Growing Accessibility of Therapies for Behavioral HealthDearth of Awareness of Behavioral Health

Lack of Proper Reimbursement

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Country Level Break-up of market Size with Cross Segmentation includes:North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Nordic, Others)Asia-Pacific (Japan, China, Australia, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Middle East & Africa, Others)

On Special Request we do offer a dedicated and focus report on regional or by country level scope.

GET FULL COPY OF United States Behavioral Health market study @ USD 2000

And, Europe Behavioral Health market study @ USD 2500

* Customized Section/Chapter wise Reports or Regional or Country wise Chapters are also available.

Extracts from TOC

1 Study Coverage

Industry Definition

..

2 Executive Summary

Global Behavioral Health Market Size (2014-2025) by Revenue, Production*, Growth rate

Analysis of Competitive Landscape Insights on Market Development Scenario

3 Market Size by Manufacturers [Market Share, Global Rank etc]

4 Global Behavioral Health Production, Consumption by Regions (2014-2025)

5 Market Size by Type

Global Behavioral Health Revenue by Type

Global Behavioral Health Volume by Type

Global Behavioral Health Price by Type

6 Market Size by Application (2014-2025)

Global Behavioral Health Breakdown Data by Revenue, Volume

7 Manufacturers Profiles

8 Value Chain and Sales Channels Analysis

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Our Analyst is tracking high growth study with detailed statistical and in-depth analysis of market trends & dynamics that provide a complete overview of the industry. We follow an extensive research methodology coupled with critical insights related industry factors and market forces to generate the best value for our clients. We Provides reliable primary and secondary data sources, our analysts and consultants derive informative and usable data suited for our clients business needs. The research study enable clients to meet varied market objectives a from global footprint expansion to supply chain optimization and from competitor profiling to M&As.

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Behavioral Health Market Growth Set to Continue but may slow: Stay Tuned with Emerging Trends & Dynamics - The Market Journal

State will pay $10M to mental health providers after suit – Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) New Mexico will pay out $10 million to resolve the last remaining lawsuits over a shake-up of its behavioral health system in 2013 under the prior administration of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez.

Disclosed Wednesday by the Human Services Department, the settlement locks in payments to five businesses and turns the page on a bitter confrontation that drove many mental health care providers away or out of business completely.

Martinezs administration froze payments to 15 mental health service providers in 2013 after an audit identified $36 million in Medicaid overpayments. The state attorney general later cleared the providers of any criminal wrongdoing, but 10 filed lawsuits.

Medicaid payments were frozen without any credible allegations of fraud, the settlement states.

Some providers were forced to close their doors and discontinue provision of any behavioral health services, the agreement states. Other providers were forced to discontinue provision of nearly all behavioral health services. Employees of Providers lost their jobs. Individuals needing behavioral health services in New Mexico were unable to obtain such services.

The largest portion of the settlement a 29% share is earmarked for Santa Marta El Mirador of Santa Fe and Alcalde formerly known as Easter Seals El Mirador. The other beneficiaries are Border Area Mental Health Services, Southwest Counseling Center, Southern New Mexico Human Development and Families and Youth Inc.

First-year Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham campaigned on rebuilding mental health and substance abuse treatment services in a state with the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths in the nation. Many counties in the sparsely populated state lack licensed providers of mental health services for patients who rely on government assistance, according to a recent study by the U.S. Health and Human Services Departments inspector general.

Patsy Romero, CEO of Santa Marta El Mirador, says her organization employs about 200 people, down from 650 people before the shakeup in 2013. Services were discontinued for children and adolescents with severe emotional issues, including alternative classrooms in Espaola and Taos.

She said it is still unclear whether the organization will restore discontinued behavior health services.

Romero said the settlement represents the money that we spent as an organization over the last six years to defend ourselves and maintain our business.

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State will pay $10M to mental health providers after suit - Associated Press

Psychological abuse by a male caregiver is a powerful predictor of hypersexuality in juvenile sex offenders – PsyPost

A study of incarcerated juvenile sex offenders suggests that psychological abuse in childhood may have uniquely damaging effects on mental health.

The findings, which appears in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, shed light on the roots of hypersexuality, which has been found to be a predictor of recidivism.

I have been doing research on various aspects of sexual aggression for the last four decades. It is clear that primary prevention is the optimal intervention strategy for reducing sexual violence, explained Raymond A. Knight, the corresponding author of the study and professor emeritus of human relations at Brandeis University.

Consequently, in my laboratory we have been focusing on identifying the developmental antecedents of various risk factors for sexual aggression. Knowledge of such antecedents is essential for designing and implementing prevention strategies.

In the study, the researchers surveyed 307 male juveniles who were about 16 years old on average and had committed at least one serious sexual crime. The participants completed assessments of abuse and other adverse childhood experiences.

The researchers found those who reported higher levels of psychological abuse by a male caregiver tended to also report more problematic and excessive sexual thoughts and behaviors. The same was true of those who reported more severe sexual abuse in childhood.

Psychological abuse, especially in this case of a father toward his son, is a powerful predictor of hypersexuality and indeed in other studies from our laboratory of other prequels to sexual and nonsexual violence. It requires enhanced research scrutiny to unpack the potential causal components it encompasses, Knight told PsyPost.

Like all research, the study includes some limitations.

This is a retrospective, not a prospective study. The youths are reporting recent past experiences and behavior. All the methodological problems with such a research strategy apply, Knight explained.

Nonetheless, we have replicated these findings with an adult sample, indicating their cross-sample consistency. Prospective studies of psychological and sexual abuse aimed at unraveling the essential causal mechanisms involved in each and examining their consequences are essential.

The study, The Relation of Childhood Abuse Experiences to Problematic Sexual Behaviors in Male Youths Who Have Sexually Offended, was authored by Kathryn A. Davis and Raymond A. Knight.

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Psychological abuse by a male caregiver is a powerful predictor of hypersexuality in juvenile sex offenders - PsyPost

Identity Verification Is Critical To Combating Misinformation And Extremist Content – Forbes

In August, trolls took to Twitter to spout racist slurs at Paul Pogba of Manchester United for committing the unforgivable offense of missing a kick from 12 yards. They felt comfortable doing it because it's easy to be anonymous on social media since all it takes to set up a fake account is an email address, password and name. People can hide heinous actions behind these accounts, shielding themselves from taking responsibility for their actions and possible litigation.

Perhaps unbeknownst to Pogba, his home country of France has already been taking action to try to prevent things like this happening on social media, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg met with French President Emmanuel Macron in May to discuss the platform's role in spreading hate speech and misinformation. Facebook has recognized that it needs to do more to stop extremist content on its platform and, as a result, has granted the French courts access to IP addresses to help them identify its proponents.

But even if Facebook and Twitter allowed this for all countries, does it go far enough? While social media provides a valuable service to billions of people worldwide by connecting the world and giving a voice to those who typically don't have one, such as with #MeToo movement, it also has its issues. It can potentially be used as a platform for misleading people on important topics such as the U.S. elections, European elections, Brexit and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

There is increasing pressure on social media companies to protect their users from this content. In 2017, Germany passed a law that gives social media companies 24 hours to remove any "obviously illegal" posts or face stiff financial penalties. Now, France is looking to go a step further by gaining access to these IP addresses.

While knowing someone's IP address will certainly help, it's no panacea given the proliferation and consumerization of VPN software that can mask a computer's IP address. A better way would be to know what legal identity is connected with the social media account in question. This would make investigating and holding people accountable much easier and help the public regain trust in social media platforms. I believe more identity proofing will only elevate and enhance a social media platform's brand and reputation and make perpetrators think twice about committing such atrocities in the first place.

At Onfido, we're actively working with some social media companies to help them provide a more secure and trusted route to authenticating their users. For bots, which are essentially computer algorithms that mimic human behavior in online social networks to spread misinformation, we can periodically introduce "liveness" tests. These tests act as a CAPTCHA, where the account holder would need to carry out a selfie video in order to proceed to post an article to their account.

Facebook recently showed some signs of moving in this direction with its selfie CAPTCHA, but it doesn't take into account higher-value or riskier transactions. Although there are fears that Facebook may misuse face data, it has confirmed that this service is dedicated to motion only in order to stop bots and "does not use facial recognition."

We're not the only ones looking at this problem. There are startups like Digital Shadows, a cybersecurity firm that uses AI to identify fake websites, phony social media profiles and "counterfeit" company domains set up to spoof a brand's online identity.

LinkedIn also announced it is proactively taking a stance by using a mixture of machine learning and human moderation "to detect groups of accounts that look or act similarly, which implies they were created or controlled by the same bad actor."

Using methods like these can help social media networks stop the spread of misinformation via bots like the recent accusations surrounding the Hong Kong riots while making hate speech spreaders accountable for their actions and helping businesses create a foundation of trust.

Social media companies need only look at the sharing economy space to see how digital identity verification is taking off. Many scooter, car and apartment rental companies are using it to help build trust between service providers and consumers. It has become a necessity in the financial services industry, where fraudulent accounts have the potential for massive financial loses and large fines from regulators if they don't follow AML or KYC policies. Some new online banks have welcomed the arrival of online identity verification, which has helped make banks such as Revolut and Monzo successful at onboarding users quickly but safely.

From my experience, the leaders in these companies needed to figure out the extent to which identity verification had a strategic role within their organization whether it was more a tick-box or core to the integrity of their offerings. They also had to consider where their customers are and how common fraud is in those places before deciding their comfort level with respect to fraud, answering whether they wanted to prioritize the speed of onboarding or the ability to catch all bad actors.

According to research published by DataReportal, there are roughly 3.5 billion global social media users. I believe we have a responsibility to take action now before hate speech becomes the new norm and we find it so hard to distinguish real news from fake news that we no longer accept or consume information.

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Identity Verification Is Critical To Combating Misinformation And Extremist Content - Forbes

The reachers who travelled across the country: Why they came to Georgia State to study the brain – The Signal

First announced at a University Senate Meeting in the spring, Georgia State welcomed a group of researchers from both the University of New Mexico and the Mind Research Network, a non-profit imaging center. This fall, the two seperate research groups came together to work at Georgia State.

These new researchers now combined to work at the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS), which is now located on the 18th floor of 55 Park Place.

All of the researchers were brought over by one person: Vince Calhoun, the founding director and visionary of TReNDS, who also made the trip across the states to come to Georgia State.

But why did the researchers travel across the country to come here?

According to Calhoun, the university was interested in making a mark and expanding their brain imaging portfolio.

The TReNDS center researches the brain in a more general manner, meaning that the center is looking at healthy and unhealthy brains, normal and disordered brains and everything else in between.

With the analysis of brain imaging comes complicated data, especially for the unhealthy and disordered brains. What the center has developed and continues to develop are the techniques for making sense of the complex brain imaging data.

On a deeper level, there are several other, more specific projects going on. One of them is a research project focusing on using tools to analyze brain-imaging data in order to better understand and find features relating to abnormal human behavior, specifically psychiatric disorders like dementia and schizophrenia.

Another project is international, involving the study and research of the effects of city lights and the greenness of the environment on brain patterns using satellite imaging data and brain imaging data.

Sergei Plis, associate professor of computer science and working member of TReNDS, compared the tools involved, to simplify, as being similar to how google translate functions.

Although the center is located at Georgia State, TReNDS is a tri-institutional center shared between Georgia State, Georgia Tech and Emory University. This means that each institution contributes resources in some way to the TReNDS center, such as faculty or support for postdoctorales. Emory, specifically, contributes to the patient population and clinical expertise within psychiatry and neurology.

As work transferred to the state of Georgia, so did ten of the graduate research students involved with the center. But Georgia State lacked one thing: a graduate engineering program.

Because of this, the ten students involved transferred to Georgia Tech. Since the move, there are some postdoctoral research assistants who have joined the team from Georgia State.

Reliable and accurate data needs large and diverse sample sizes, according to Plis. With help from the growing neuroimaging community, TReNDS is able to receive data from across the nation and around the world. Some collaborators are in India, China, and England.

How is this possible? Doesnt the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, protect patient data? What about ethical and legal issues? And why would researchers share data that they have worked years to develop?

As Plis explains it, TReNDS built a system that allows for the data to stay where it is and never leave the data center no matter the location.

We can connect online using algorithms we developed to run around and collect certain data here and there in different data sets. We are sharing minimal information, and we still get the results we need as if all the data were still together, Plis said. We are kind of sharing without sharing and solving this problem of data sharing.

Along with the data gathered around the world, the TReNDS center utilizes the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, located near Georgia Tech. Here, you will find a 3-Tesla Siemens Prisma-Fit MRI system, which according to Calhoun is the most modern, cutting-edge scanner for research available.

The TReNDS center also developed some collaborative tools that are put into CABI so that other people can more easily get access to their data, share it, collaborate and anonymize it.

The data will all get archived and analyzed in standard pipeline, Calhoun said. We speed up the process and eventually were planning to have that enable us to compute scores for the different brain imaging markers that were developing.

Whats unique about the center, according to Jean Liu, an associate professor of computer science at Georgia State, is the strength of the team.

We have a group of extremely trained engineers that can use very sophisticated algorithms to study brain imaging, which is not very common within other brain centers, Liu said.

Other centers, Liu said, will have people with various backgrounds like neuroscience and psychology. Although this may be helpful in some respects, there are obstacles that present themselves in finding specific features when big data is presented, according to Liu.

This is where the trained engineers with sophisticated algorithms that the team relies on come in. Their job is to develop tools using the algorithms to help people in different professional backgrounds better understand and find the specific data they are looking for.

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The reachers who travelled across the country: Why they came to Georgia State to study the brain - The Signal

Business entropy is making the fraud problem worse – PaymentsSource

Marrying up the law of entropy and the fact that the number of digital payments being made across the globe is increasing dramatically, by default means that fraud management processes need to be constantly refined.

Entropy as a scientific principle concerns the loss of energy from a system and describes how an ordered system moves towards disorder. The key point in understanding entropy is that it cannot be stopped, and to maintain a desired level of order, energy or performance, more of the same must be added into the system. A simple example is when you wear your coat on a cold day. When you take your coat off, entropy is the process that explains the loss of warmth, which can only be countered by putting it on again.

In the payment industry this is fully supported by the fact that fraud has reached the highest levels on record, affecting more organizations than ever. The scale of the problem was revealed in last years PWC Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey. Nearly half (49%) of the 7,228 businesses across 123 territories that were interviewed reported that they had experienced fraud and economic crime over a two-year period.

Today, fraud management consists of several manual processes models and rules performance monitoring, fraud pattern discovery and fraud alert management, to name a few. While these manual processes may be manageable at first, as the number of payment types and channels increase, it can rapidly become untenable to add more and more staff to manage and monitor all processes. Managing fraud can become very expensive, which is why efficient management processes are so important.

The fact that entropy exists, and remains a factor that cannot be stopped, means that all aspects of the business need to be monitored. You may be most interested in product development or working with clients, but if you do not watch the other parts of the business, such as accounts payable or accounting, entropy will eventually cause problems. Management regarding entropy aims at small corrections to keep projects or departments on track, rather than letting those areas run in isolation, until there is a much larger breakdown or problem.

There is a lot of information on how machine learning is helping to understand human behavior and more specifically, false/positive detection. However, there is little available research on how this relates to the end-to-end process within fraud management.

This draws you back to the fact that the industry is focused, and rightly so, on detecting fraud, but is not focused on evaluating the impact to the whole end-to-end process. Clearly the interdependencies on these two activity streams are significant, so the question is why both factors arent being considered by the fraud prevention suppliers.

While things naturally move to disorder over time, we can position ourselves to create stability. There are two types of stability: active and passive. Consider an airplane, which, if designed well, should be able to fly without intervention this is passive stability. Conversely, a fighter jet requires active stability. With active stability, you are applying energy to a system, in order to bring about some advantage (keeping the plane from crashing). The plane cant fly for more than a few seconds, without having to adjust its wings and these adjustments happen so quickly that its controlled by software in modern airplanes.

Autopilot ML, in this analogy, is the fighter pilot for fraud defense. Reacting quickly to fraud pattern changes by creating new machine learning models to stop the threats; while continually optimizing the fraud detection strategy, so that it is equipped to counter the newest and most damaging threats, while maintaining high acceptance and low insult rates.

In summary, machine learning is having a huge impact on the entropy of fraud detection, it is helping to maintain order, providing the system with passive stability. However, as stated above, without constant refinement and active stability, effectiveness is likely to decay. This rate of entropic decay needs to be measured, understood and more importantly learned from and acted upon. In terms of the latter, it is the efficiency of the changes that are critical, essentially providing stability optimization.

Are the fraud prevention products and services you are currently deploying maintaining stability?

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Business entropy is making the fraud problem worse - PaymentsSource

We Have Questions for This Sloth Found Gorging on Human Poo in a Toilet – Free

At the beginning of this millennium, just two months after 9/11, scientists in the Peruvian Amazon made one of the most unsettling discoveries ever to be reported in the pages of the prestigious journal Mammalian Biology.

It was a sloth, and it was hanging out inside of a toilet, and it was absolutely gorging itself on a potent liquid slurry of human waste by the handful. It apparently didn't want to be seen engaging in whatever esoteric sloth ritual this was.

"It was scooping with one hand from the semi-liquid manure composed of faeces, urine and toilet paper and then eating from the hand," the researchers reported in a 2011 research paper that made the rounds last week for some unknown reason, but which I absolutely could not resist clicking on because I am broken.

"When more persons gathered around the latrine to watch this bizarre behavior, the sloth emerged from the latrine and climbed into the nearest tree," the researchers wrote.

Over the next few years, until the latrine was fenced in in 2007, the researchers observed 25 more sloths heading to the poo pit for a midnight feast. As for why this is a thing, the researchers speculated that the sloths could be trying to glean some nutrients from human waste or possibly eating worms.

And yet, I have questions that demand answers:

1. Did we bother you?

I have seen this face before, in the mirror. This is how I look when I am forced to admit I ate an entire pizza after the box is discovered. I am weak, and I am ashamed, and I am fundamentally seen. This is Lenny from The Simpsons feebly pleading, "Please don't tell anyone how I live" after his wretched existence is exposed by a wall in his house comically falling down. I empathize deeply, and I want to apologize if we humans interrupted or embarrassed you, the poo sloth.

2. Where are you now?

It's been a long time since we found you eating crap. Are you OK? Have you moved on to trading cryptocurrencies or investing in cannabis? How long do sloths even live?

3. What is sloths' whole deal with poo?

It seems like poo is a whole thing for sloths. These creatures have one gigantic, probably-painful poo once a week. It is risky because they have to do it on the ground, exposing them to predators, and honestly does not sound all that fun. And yet, sloths desire to consume this same substance with unmatched ferocity, even desperation. What gives?

All I know is that, somehow, this sloth set the tone for our current shitworld which was just ramping up when we found the long-armed toilet hamster eating its first handful of poo, like it was pulling some huge cosmic lever.

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We Have Questions for This Sloth Found Gorging on Human Poo in a Toilet - Free

Columbus police address concerns of human trafficking after 2 recent attempted abduction reports – 10TV

On November 21 around 6 p.m., 18-year-old Kennedy Stokes said she was at Walmart with her sister and cousin when they ran into two men who tried to talk to them several times.

Stokes said they felt like they were being followed and texted their parents.

A day later, Stokes said she was driving to her apartment when her car started making a rattling noise. She said she made it to the entrance of her apartment complex on the east side, when she got out to check under the hood of her car.

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"When I closed the hood down when I'm walking back towards the driving side of my car this guy is approaching me he doesn't say anything, he legit just started grabbing on me," Stokes said.

She said she noticed he was wearing gloves and what she believes was a box cutter in his hand. She told us she strongly believes it was one of the men from Walmart the day before because she said she remembers the clothing one of the men was wearing.

"He was grabbing on me my jacket unzips and he's like cutting my chest I had all of these scratches on my chest," "Stokes said.

Her mother, Kana Stokes, not knowing what the man's intentions were has a lot of thoughts running through her mind. She said she is mainly worried that it could be linked to human trafficking, but she doesn't know for sure.

"It really is sickening, it really is taking over my mindset right now, Kana Stokes said.

Fourteen miles away, on the same day Stokes said she was attacked, another mother said she experienced a terrifying situation.

A mother, who wished to remain anonymous for safety, said her 12-year-old son stayed in the car while she paid for gas at a UDF gas station on Indianola.

"When I came outside, he was very upset he was visibly shaken and he said that someone had tried to get into the car," she said.

The young boy told his mother a man was yanking on the handle, not saying anything, just looking at him trying to get in. In the police report, Columbus police said the incident was caught on a security camera which they are reviewing.

Sgt. James Fuqua said the man had talked to several other people in the lot of this business before leaving in a white van. He said it now an investigation with the human trafficking task force.

Two different situations, two locations, but both mothers fearing "what if?"

The mother of the 12-year-old boy said, "Immediately and this is because I'm aware of what human trafficking is, I thought this could've been a situation where I never saw my son again."

Sgt. Fuqua said most, not all, but most human traffickers know the victim and try to build a relationship with them earning the victim's trust.

Regardless, Columbus police take every report, like these two situations, very seriously and look at every possible motive or intention of the stranger.

"You don't want to just assume that when someone is approaching someone they just want theft, you don't want to ever assume that maybe they're trying to make that person a victim of sexual assault, it could always be as extreme as someone trying to take someone away for the purposes of human trafficking," Sgt. James Fuqua said.

He said when it comes to the topic of human trafficking, human traffickers don't just target young females, a victim could be any gender or any age.

Sgt. Fuqua said if a victim is being human trafficked, they may show some signs of missing work, constantly fearing for their life but not explaining why, personality changes, financial changes, and signs of physical or mental abuse.

He said if someone finds themselves in a questionable situation, make a lot of noise and call attention to what is happening. He said to make it known to the stranger and loudly, that their behavior is unwanted.

In order to avoid certain situations, he suggests to park or walk in well-lit areas and make sure to be visible to others at all times.

Here is a website for the human trafficking hotline: https://humantrafficking.ohio.gov/index.html

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Columbus police address concerns of human trafficking after 2 recent attempted abduction reports - 10TV

Often Wrong, Never In Doubt – American Council on Science and Health

Scientists studying cognition report that we are frequently overconfident when considering small possibilities we think they are more significant than they are, at least mathematically. Overconfidence is not necessarily good or bad; a belief in a slight chance of recovery is called hope. An abundance of caution may prompt us to be more prudent in the face of a small, but existentialrisk.

Overconfidence can be particularly problematic when two conditions prevail. First, when the information we are assessing is noisy, there is some signal of truth, but it is accompanied by a degree of doubt. Second, when this same noisy informational environment provides weak feedback, that is, feedback that comes after a significant delay or that is not overly convincing. Many of the scientific positions that are controversial and attract strident polarized views often meet those two criteria.

For an older example, consider the hundred-year history of smokings effect on our health. Lung cancer, long before it was the most common cause of cancer deaths, was so rare that physicians gathered around to see this odd pathology. And in the early days of the twentieth century, many other causes of death hid the rising tide of lung cancer. Additionally, smokers dont develop lung cancer for many years after they start smoking; the feedback that smoking is harmful is an excellent example of very delayed feedback. Over the next thirty or forty years, the persistent signal of lung cancer became more evident, there was less noise, and we had longitudinal data that made the feedback stronger. Tobacco companies facing financial peril did not and could not repress the growing evidence, but they cast doubt on the conclusions, by framing the evidence as not overly convincing. By casting doubt through every available media sources, they sought to enforce the truth of their claims by shouting louder and more frequently than their opponents.

One would hope that disseminating information more broadly and cheaply would serve as a corrective; the Internet could be counted upon to reduce the distortions of noise and weak feedback. But, if anything, it has proven to be a more effective, pliable way to continue to increase the noise and spread the doubt. Searching for information on the net has been likened to drinking water from a fire hose - our first precondition for overconfidence, little signal, much noise. To use an old meme, when you use the net, no one knows youre a dog everyone can present themselves as an expert. And knowing that, makes every report a little more doubtful, it further weakens the feedback.

Science is, at its heart, about discovery, but the media that communicates science to us is often about advocacy. Everything is a sales pitch. The study funded by Big Tobacco, Big Climate, or Big Natural is readily identified. Still, government-funded research is pitched to what is politically fundable, and journals and foundations are pitched attention-getting results. One consequence of such a system is what Steven Colbert characterized as truthiness, our belief in something because it feels right; another way we share our overconfidence. The error for us lies not in the overconfidence, after all, that is our human behavior, it is in confusing the science of discovery with the sales pitch, and it results in us talking past one another rather than engaging in the discussion that is science.

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Often Wrong, Never In Doubt - American Council on Science and Health

An Interview With Singer-Songwriter BRIGITTE MENA On New Music and More! | All Access Music – All Access Music Group

Meet the singer-songwriter,Brigitte Mena! The Texas-native recently released a brand new single entitled Maniac. The track is based on the Netlix show Maniac that was released last September, and is inspired by Emma Stones character, Annie Landsberg (suffering from Borderline PD) who takes a series of pills in a pharmaceutical trial that is supposed to cure her struggles/disorder. There are many references to machines including various sound effects throughout the song as a way of recreating her experience of the trials.

Brigitte Mena was born to be a storyteller, and her vehicle is music. The singer-songwriters heartrending tunes tell harrowing tales enveloped in atmospheric, ambient melodies. But the artist has her sights set on much more than producing pop rock tracks. Armed with her versatile voice, a pen and a penchant for crafting compelling songs, Mena strives to strike a chord with audiences and tell relevant, resonant stories.

Mena started crafting original music in high school, and founded her first rock band as a freshman at Southern Methodist University, where she studied Music and Psychology. Menas music studies helped her hone her craft, while her work in psychology gave her an avenue to explore her interest in human behavior. Instead of choosing one passion over the other, the artist decided to merge the two roads ahead of her. By using her talents as a musician, Mena shines a light on topics like behavior, mental health, relationships and identity.

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Learn more Brigitte Mena in the following All Access interview-

Thank you for your time! So what does a typical day look like for you lately?

Of course! Thanks for taking the time to chat with me! Ialways begin my day with a good cup of coffee and usually plan out my to-dolist for the day. I can easily get overwhelmed with everything I have toaccomplish, so this simple routine of making a daily task list really helps me.Lately Ive been in the studio finishing up my next record so a lot of my daysare filled with recording and mixing sessions.

Now that we are inthe latter half of the year, how has 2019 treated you? What are some goals thatyou have had for yourself this year? How close are you to reaching them or didyou already? What are you already looking forward to in 2020?

This year has been pretty amazing. I released three singlesthis year and Im almost finished recording my second album! One of my goals Iset at the end of last year was to write a full length record, so its beenexciting seeing it all come together. Im looking forward to the release nextyear hopefully next Spring or Summer! Keep an eye out!

Growing up, howimportant was music in your life? Can you recall the moment when you decidedthat you wanted to be a musician? Was it an easy or difficult choice to make?

Music has always been my saving grace. When I think back onmy most difficult times, its music that has literally saved me. Although Ivealways loved music, it was about two years ago where I finally realized that Iwanted to make a career as a musician. I left my job to officially pursue itfull time.

Was there ever atime when you thought about doing something else? If you werent a musiciantoday, what else could you see yourself doing? Would you be as fulfilled inlife?

Definitely. I changed my major like 4 times throughoutcollege, but I ended up finishing my music degree. As much as I wanted to be amusician, the whole making it work part always scared me. I had to learn howto become comfortable with the unknown and even more comfortable with theamount of work it takes to be successful. If I wasnt doing music, Im prettysure I would be a teacher. After college, I worked a few different teachingjobs, and although I loved teaching, I knew that music was my true passion, andhow unhappy I would be if I didnt just go for it.

What has been thebiggest surprise so far about making music your career? What has been anunexpected or welcome challenge to it all? What has been the best part about itall?

Honestly, how Ive never once regretted just going for it.There were a lot of times right before I quit my job where I was thinking okay, this is just for a few months or something, so you better enjoy it! Butthe everyday challenge of fighting for something you believe in has been sorewarding. There are days where the grind is overwhelming, but I love everysecond of it. For me Its like planting a seed and watching it grow intosomething beautiful. You have to provide that seed with its nutrients, love,attention, and PATIENCE. Making a career out of music is just like that for me.

What was theinspiration for your newest track, Maniac? What was it like having it bebased on the Netflix show also called Maniac?

Maniac is inspired by Emma Stones character, Annie.Its basically a song about her experience throughout the show and thechallenges she faces. The show definitely brought the song to life. A lot of mysongs are written from a psychological perspective, but this song was moreinfluenced by her character.

How would you saythat Maniac compares to anything else that you have released?

I think content-wise its probably the most differentcompared to other songs Ive released. Ive never written a song based on ashow, so it was definitely a different experience for me.

Do you have plansto release more new music soon and a full of collection of new songs?

YES! Be on the lookout for a new album from me next year!

How would you saythat your newest music compares to anything else that you have released in thepast?

I think the biggest difference between my last record andthe record I am currently recording is the content. Maslow, the album Ireleased last year, was a collection of songs primarily based on a reallydifficult breakup I went through. It was also a concept album based onMaslows Hierarchy of Needs. My newest material is still personal, butencompasses various experiences both myself and others close to me have hadthroughout a years timespan.

How do you thinkyou have grown as a musician since you first started making music? What, ifanything, has stayed the same about your music-making process?

I think my biggest area of growth has been findinginspiration out of literally anything. When I first started writing, I couldonly create when I was extremely sad or unhappy. But now, I feel like Im ableto look outside of those darker experiences a bit, and find inspirationelsewhere. Thats kind of how Maniac was formed looking for inspirationoutside of my personal experiences. Of course, I think we can all agree thatsome of the best writing comes out from painful times. What has stayedconsistent for me is that most of my songs start off with anacoustic/singer-songwriter feel.

How do you feel about social media? What do you think social media has done for your career?

Eh I have a love/hate relationship with it. While I thinkits a great way to get your name out there, I also think its A LOT to keep upwith. I feel like youre expected to constantly be posting about whats goingon in your life and keep up with various content. I will say that its helpedme share my music with people who would have never heard it!

What musicianswould you absolutely still love to work with in the future?

Anthony Green or Billie Eilish for sure. Also PhoebeBridgers or LIGHTS would be super cool.

If you coulddesign your dream music video right now, what would it look like?

I have something in mind for a song off my forthcomingalbum, so I dont want to give it away quite yet

At the end of theday, what do you hope people take away from your music?

I hope my music fills a void in peoples lives That ithelps get them through difficult times and brings a sense of security andfulfillment in the same way it has for me. I hope my music creates a connectionbetween what Ive personally experienced and what the listener is experiencing.

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An Interview With Singer-Songwriter BRIGITTE MENA On New Music and More! | All Access Music - All Access Music Group