Malkia Klabu (Queen Club) is a loyalty program designed with and for young women (like this one from Shinyanga, who is on our Youth Advisory Board) to address multiple structural and psychological barriers to accessing sensitive health products. (Photo by Lauren Hunter)

As the school term ends in Tanzania, 18-year old Neema is looking forward to spending time with her boyfriend back home, though she worries he has been unfaithful while apart. She feels anxious whenever her mother gossips about the bad girls who were expelled from school for getting pregnant and who shamed their families. The stakes are high. Shed like to reconnect with her boyfriend in hopes of being together long-term, but also avoid pregnancy and protect herself from HIV. To feel safe and confident about her boyfriends intentions, she wants him to get tested for HIV. Neema feels the stirrings of independence and wants to take charge by seeking health services on her own, but she must tread carefully to avoid suspicion amongst her family and community.

At first glance, Neema should be able to easily get what she needs. She regularly visits drug shops that sell condoms and oral contraception while running errands. Yet she cant get her hands on these products, learn about them, or trust that theyll allow her to better control her future. Why? Shes surrounded by adults in her life who closely monitor and police her behavioradults who, despite their best intentions, enforce social norms that censure contraceptive use through fear and misinformation. Whether feeling ashamed to ask for something behind the counter, getting quizzed about why she needs sensitive products, or being denied outright because shes wearing a school uniform, the shops arent designed with Neemas explicit and subtler needs in mind. This represents a missed opportunity to sell a product that could prevent yet another teenage pregnancy, school dropout, and descent into cyclical poverty.

This isnt unusual. Many public health innovations lack pathways to reach vulnerable customer bases, even with significant last-mile efforts. Polio vaccine teams, for example, often cant reach the most physically and politically isolated communities harboring polio transmission. Business-as-usual is unlikely to solve such market failures. Even efforts to innovate for the base of the pyramid typically focus on lower-cost alternatives or improving distribution; they rarely address the larger contextual forces that keep products out of reach for customers like Neema. Previously, weve written about how patient-centered approaches can help overcome behavioral gaps in the last mile, but the challenge facing Neema exceeds what innovators can optimize with a patient focus alone. She has the desire, intention, and access (at face value) to get what she needs, but the distribution system, as designed, doesnt allow her to act.

So how can social innovators account for these challenges when rolling out health products like HIV self-test kits or self-administered injectable contraception? We recommend building on our previous model of combining design thinking and behavioral science to not only design services for the core user, but also identify and creatively address broader barriers and cultural norms that would otherwise block uptake among vulnerable groups.

Typical product diffusion starts with early adopters, slowly shifts to the broader population, and finally lands with more-vulnerable customers, as marketers learn more about them over time. For goods that drive significant social impact, we have a moral imperative to accelerate this process, and design thinking offers a practical way forward. Design thinking is a creative, empathetic innovation process that draws on ethnographic methods, and relies on rapid prototyping and real-world testing of potential solutions. The approach can help unpack ambiguous opportunity areas, revealing unmet needs among vulnerable customers that innovators might otherwise overlook.

In our own work to design girl-friendly drug shops, where young women can get sexual and reproductive health products and counsel, we interviewed and shadowed girls in their homes, communities, and during shopping trips to learn about their hopes, aspirations, and whats holding them backbarriers they often wont express with traditional research methods. At the same time, through story-based interviews and observations with drug shop owners and employees, we learned about their motivations and business practices, and how they serve different customers. By empathizing with both groups lived experiencesthe foundation of design thinkingwe quickly identified which aspects of community health services should be adapted to fit within each populations unique needs, and solicited their feedback on low-fidelity prototypes before investing in the final solution.

A drug shop owner receives self-test kits from researcher Moza Albert Chitela, co-packaged with specialized referral information to youth-friendly health facilities. Feedback from shop owners and employees informed low-fidelity program prototypes before investment in the final solution. (Photo by Lauren Hunter)

We found that young women often visit drug shops, usually at the behest of their parents. Although contraception (and at some point soon, HIV self-test kits) are ubiquitous in these corner shops, young women with enough nerve to ask for a sensitive product are often hassled by shopkeepers who are willing to forego a sale, despite pressures to maintain profits, to reinforce social norms. From these insights, we conceived of a home delivery program for young women to discreetly get contraception and HIV self-tests at their doorstep. While this idea solved the gatekeeping problem, it failed to excite young women when prototyped and did nothing to help the most vulnerable girlsthose without phones. Further, because we observed that shopping is often a quick, purpose-driven chore that leaves little room to explore new products, a delivery service would lack marketing touchpoints to grow demand. This low-stakes learning allowed us to quickly change course.

Feedback from girls and shopkeepers led us to home in on a loyalty program designed to address multiple structural and psychological barriers: sparking delight in otherwise mundane shopping by awarding prizes from mystery boxes stocked with desirable items, and printing coded symbols for sensitive products on the back of cards to which girls can point instead of having to ask aloud. Shopkeepers were excited about the program because it fit into their workflows, gave them implicit permission to provide sensitive products to young women through the buy-in of their professional association and coalition of participating shops, and could ultimately increase their bottom line.

Rather than accepting the status quo or campaigning for widespread cultural change, design thinking allowed us to create an immediate, actionable solution to circumvent harmful norms in ways that fold into girls and shopkeepers organic behavior. While we still support efforts to shift harmful mindsets, using design thinking can create more immediate market change and allow girls to access health products that improve their lives right away.

While design thinking unlocks creative ideas and allows teams to progressively narrow in on a solution set, many aspects of product or service design are still based on well-informed guesswork. Design teams dont typically pull in rigorously validated, external evidence (rather viewing themselves as charting new territory), and instead draw on real-world feedback from prototyping to help de-risk solutions. Yet its often impossible to prototype every aspect of a solution, and this creates risk. The stakes are especially high when the focus is on vulnerable customers like young women, who have less power or agency than a typical customer. Mitigating these risks is necessary if the ultimate go-to-market strategy is intended to account for the needs of all customers and those who influence their choices.

Researchers Agatha Mnyippembe and Kassim Hassan combine design thinking with behavioral science to design for the core user and creatively address barriers to the uptake of HIV self-testing and contraceptives among young women. (Photo by Lauren Hunter)

Incorporating the evidence-based tools and principles of behavioral science into insights and solutions generated through the design thinking process minimizes these risks by increasing the likelihood that the end-to-end experience will succeed, ultimately bolstering impact. Behavioral science is rooted in well-established theories of human behavior, characterized by behavioral biases and heuristics (like valuing the present more than the future). Its best known for identifying the impact nudges have on improving the uptake, efficacy, or acceptability of an existing product or service. Many are familiar with the classic examples of how opt-out policies can increase organ donations or how automating enrollment into 401(k) plans can increase retirement savings.

On its own, however, behavioral science offers little structure to identify and clarify ambiguous barriers and opportunities, or to create solutions that address them. In our work with drug shops, behavioral science helped us shape and evaluate elements of different options, such as the default choices and incentives embedded within them. But it did not provide practical guidance on choosing between them, such as investing more in the home delivery concept or the loyalty card program. Rather, we used our design thinking insights to find our way to the most promising solution space. When coupled with design thinking, behavioral science becomes a tool to de-risk an innovative concept for maximum possible impact.

Combining insights from design thinking and behavioral science

Mapping design-thinking insights to evidence-based behavioral principles can reveal strengths and weaknesses in service design. This worked well in our past work to drive HIV treatment adherence using patient-centered approaches, and weve continued to employ this approach to broader, market-blocking norms. In Tanzania, we mapped our insights against common biases from behavioral science and the corresponding nudges to address them (see chart). This revealed that the loyalty program worked within girls reality, but added emotional appeal and fun to their routine trips drug shops. It also leveraged multiple strategies from behavioral science, including commitments (planning to complete an action), incentives (rewards for being a repeat customer), and social ties (a feeling of belonging as a program member). By using nudges to mitigate risk on the smaller aspects of behavior changefor example, encouraging repeat visits to the shop with positive reinforcement, and reducing the gap between intentions and actions via commitment deviceswe could focus on the bigger, structural bets of introducing the product experience to the drug shop channel, such as breaking down gatekeeper norms and building trust between shop owners and young women. During a soft launch of our loyalty program, we found that more young women bought and reported using contraceptive and HIV testing products. We have since implemented a randomized experiment in four wards in Tanzania to more precisely measure its impact.

When we use design thinking and behavioral science in tandem, our products and services can have much broader reach and faster adoption among groups who can benefit the most. In this way, girls like Neema can take control of their futures and thrive within communities, markets, and systems designed with them in mind.

Follow this link:
Marrying Empathy and Science to Spread Impact - Stanford Social Innovation Review

Through early adulthood, exposure to new experienceslike learning to drive a car or memorizing information for an examtriggers change in the human brain, re-wiring neural pathways to imprint memories and modify behavior. Similar to humans, the behavior of Florida carpenter ants is not set in stonetheir roles, whether it is protecting the colony or foraging for food, are determined by signals from the physical and social environment early in their life. But questions remain about how long they are vulnerable to epigenetic changes and what pathways govern social behavior in ants.

Now, a team led by researchers in thePerelman School of Medicine discovered that a protein called CoREST, a neural repressor that is also found in humans, plays a central role in determining the social behavior of ants. The results, published inMolecular Cell, also revealed that worker ants called Majors, known as brawny soldiers that protect colonies, can be reprogrammed to perform the foraging rolegenerally reserved for their sisters, the Minor antsup to five days after they emerge as an adult ant. However, the reprogramming is ineffective at the 10-day mark, revealing how narrow the window of epigenetic plasticity is in ants.

How behavior becomes established in humans is deeply fascinatingwe know its quite plastic especially during childhood and early adolescencehowever, of course, we cannot study or manipulate this experimentally, saysthe studys senior authorShelley Berger, the Daniel S. Och University Professor in the departments of Cell and Developmental Biology and Biology, and director of the Penn Epigenetics Institute. Ants, with their complex societies and behavior, and similar plasticity, provide a wonderful laboratory model to understand the underlying mechanisms and pathways."

Read more at Penn Medicine News.

Excerpt from:
Reprogramming ant 'soldiers' - Penn: Office of University Communications

I've made no secret of how impressed I've been by Dance at Illinois' performances this season. I've explored dance film and its additional narrative capacities, enjoyed bold student work, as well as re-conceived classics and powerful new work by faculty. Each experience has challenged previously held notions about what contemporary dance is, and what it isn't; blurring the boundaries between performance art and dance, creating conversations about the significant and often painful challenges facing us today. This brings us to Tere O'Connor Dance: Long Run, which will make it's long-awaited Krannert Center for the Performing Arts premiere this Thursday.

The buzz on Long Runhas been big and for good reason. It is an extremely significant and timely work from a choreographer whose impressive rsum also happens to include Center for Advanced Studies Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and artistic director of the Tere O'Connor Dance.

He has created over 45 works for his company and toured them throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Canada. He has created numerous commissioned works for other dance companies, including the Lyon Opera Ballet and the White Oak Dance Project, and solo works for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jean Butler. In 2014, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. O'Connor received a 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, is a 2009 United States Artist Rockefeller Fellow, and is a 1993 Guggenheim Fellow and has received numerous other grants and awards. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project, The MAP Fund, and many other organizations. He has received three New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Awards. An articulate and provocative educator, O'Connor has taught at festivals and universities around the globe for 25 years. He is in residence at the university for the spring semester each year and in New York or on tour for the remainder of the year. He is an active participant in the New York dance community, mentoring young artists, teaching, writing, and volunteering in various capacities. His most recent work, BLEED, premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in December 2013 and toured throughout the United States through spring 2015. O'Connor will premiere a new work for 12 dancers at the Kitchen in New York City in December 2015.

During these cold dark days of early winter, the presence of someone like O'Connor in our midst burns bright. O'Connor, who splits his time between CU and New York, is an important creative conduit, a through line between the pulse of the New York dance world, and the performing arts laboratory that Dance at Illinois and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts provide.

His contributions to the dance world are rivaled only by those to his students and dancers.

"I think of Tere OConnor as the poet laureate of dance. He has been a passionate advocate for the syntax, rhythms and structural elements of dance to speak on their own terms, separate from the logic of theater, narratives or musical forms. The intensely beautiful kinetic images in his rigorously constructed dances provide the viewer with a moment to reflect on lifes mysteries."Jan Erkert, Head of the Department of Dance

O'Connor approaches choreography through a rare combination of lenses that yield richly layered conversations in movement about human behavior, social constructs, memory, and time. The Tere O'Connor Dance website describes it here.

Tere OConnors choreography finds its logic outclasses the realm of translation, operating in a sub-linguistic area of expression. He views dance as a system with its own properties; an abstract documentary form that doesnt search to depict. The lenses of western culture, spoken language or dance history, often used to interpret dance, are subsumed into layers of the work and decentralized. In addition to a great love of movement and a deep commitment to choreographic craft and design, more philosophical urges animate the work. From his earliest efforts, the complex entanglement of passing time, metaphor, constant change, tangential thought, and memory have ignited an exploration into the nature of consciousness for OConnor. Choreography is a process of observation which includes multiple, disparate elements that float in and out of synchronicity. Engaging in dance as a life style constitutes a move away from the narrow social constructs weve created to standardize human behavior.

Martha Sherman's 2017 review of Long Run for Dancelog.nyc review suggested that it may be O'Connor's best work yet. "Rich and spare at the same time....The cascade of dance never lost its connection, but pushed and pulled so that each trio, duet, and solo had its unique form and character, and the whole, yes, was genuinely greater than the sum of its parts."

Finally, we turn to O'Connor himself, who both choreographed and composed Long Run, in his own words.

I have been making dances for 38 years, and I long ago ceded any desire for the expression of specific ideas in my work, since a blend of inference, essence, quality, reference, and affect seem to bring us to the edge of meaning in dance. I allowed myself to lean into the ambiguous contours and endless associative pathways of the choreographic mind to shape my work. The result has been works whose structures are disobedient and play with time in fragmentary ways. Dance can enliven our experience of time passing. Many forms do this, like novels and film, yet at the most fundamental level, these forms search for a shared understanding for their viewers. Some look for this result in dance as well, but my journey led me down a different pathway. I became interested in the ways that events float outside of narrative sequencing, left to churn in an inexact cloud of memories and present desires. In Long Run, I tried to incorporate the haplessness of sequencing in our lives to create a structure of accidental contrasts. A narrative seems to appear, but it is one etched out of chance and could begin or end at any moment. I created the musical score for this work to further shape its structure of difference and attempt to reign in the inherent unruliness of this type of creative procedure.

Tere O'Connor Dance: Long Run promises the best of what Dance at Illinois and KCPA offer: an evening of awe, inspiration, boundary-pushing innovations in the performing arts, and thought-provoking engagement with our world,

Tere O'Connor Dance: Long RunKrannert Center for the Performing ArtsColwell Playhouse500 S Goodwin Ave., UrbanaNovember 21st, 7:30 p.m.Get tickets online

Learn more about Tere O'Connor Dance on their website

Photo from KCPA website

Long Run is co-commissioned by Live Arts Bard at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College through a Choreographic Fellowship with lead support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and NYU Skirball. This presentation of Long Run is made possible by The New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Cultural Development Fund. Additional funding is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Grant, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Marta Heflin Foundation, the Harkness Foundation, and the research fund from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. The development of Long Run was made possible in part by the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron.

Follow Tere O'Connor Dance on YouTube

The rest is here:
The importance of Tere O'Connor Dance: Long Run and why you won't want to miss it this Thursday : Arts - Smile Politely - Champaign-Urbana's Online...

Many, if not all of us, have some bad habits that we like to change in ourselves. For some, it might be something as simple as biting our fingernails a lot. For others, it might be something as life-changing as losing weight, eating healthier and becoming an overall better person for it. No matter what bad habit we have to change though, recognizing it as one is the first step, and is just as valid as the others.

Unfortunately, most never get past this first step and just end up getting stuck with their bad habits. Thats not to say, however, that you didnt try since human behavior is a complex thing and we know changing a bad habit isnt as simple as it sounds.

Thankfully, world willpower expert Dr. Heather McKee is here to give you some tips to help break down your bad habits and make some good ones from here on forward. Heres how you should do it, according to her:

So this is why it's so hard to break a habit. Charles BERNELAS; CC by 2.0

More here:
Expert Reveals Effective Ways To Break Bad Habits - Medical Daily

What began as a day like any other ended with a haunting quest to source a viral video of a man apparently capturing catfish using Coca-Cola brand soda, Mentos, and an ordinary egg.

If all that left you feeling puzzled, you're not alone. Originally posted to YouTube on November 1, the video in question shows an unidentified man adding Coke, Mentos, and an egg yolk to a muddy hole.

The man then reaches into the hole and produces - presto! - not one, not two, but three catfish.

Clips of the video started circulating on both Twitter and Reddit this past Wednesday, spawning questions about where the fish came from and how or why the trick would ever work.

The dominant theory, prematurely endorsed by some blogs, was that the hole must likely be connected to a larger body of water. The fish, according to the theory, was attracted by the egg, and swam into the hole before "suffocating" on the Coke and Mentos solution.

Far more likely, according to a detailed Futurism investigation, is that the video is at least partially a hoax.

Another possibility we considered was that the video was a bizarre viral marketing scheme, so Futurism reached out to both the Coke and Mentos brands to ask.

A spokesperson for the Mentos brand denied involvement and added, "this is not a practice our company or our brands would condone," while the Coca-Cola company has not responded at the time of publication.

The source of the video is a fledgling, vaguely surreal YouTube channel called Technique Tools. According to YouTube, it was created in 2015 and attracted modest attention until its most recent catfish post, which has accrued an impressive 1.8 million views at press time.

Technique Tools doesn't list contact information, but its account offers other clues. One playlist of Technique Tools' videos includes several in which Coke and Mentos are being poured on various animals, sometimes along with other substances such as toothpaste or eggs.

The descriptions of some videos offer puzzling disclaimers.

"The crocodile is our pet. Coca Cola and mentos [sic] react nothing with the crocodile," reads one.

"Action in this video made b [sic] a professional. Do not repeat! It Can [sic] be dangerous," reads another.

The most telling, though, comes from a video similar to the viral post, also uploaded this month. It claims the videos are planned, scripted, and made for fun, as well as disclaimer that the fish in this instance, "come out by pushing behind the video at the left side."

On the reaction of catfish to eggs and Coca-Cola, the science is more exact.

Most catfish have a sharp sense of taste and some, including the Channel Catfish, which appears to be our viral star based on its four sets of whiskers, have taste receptors on their bodies.

Channel Catfish feed primarily on small fishes and aquatic insects but have been known to eat small birds, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The effectiveness of eggs as catfish bait isn't something that appears to have been tested in the lab setting, however.

As for the Coke and Mentos, it's much easier to explain why dumping soda on animals isn't a nice idea.

In humans, our lungs work to exchange oxygen from the air to replenish our blood cells and exhale waste gasses. In fish, gills work similarly. When oxygenated water is passed over specialized tissues, oxygen from the water is exchanged into the fish's bloodstream.

When there isn't enough oxygen in the water fish can indeed suffocate, which is actually a big problem in the ecology of our modern oceans where shifting currents have created pockets of low-oxygen water. Diluting the oxygen concentration in water by adding carbon dioxide from soda makes extracting oxygen much more difficult, which can cause a fish to panic and try to escape.

As a science lesson, this video offers several insights into animal - and human - behavior. However, as a fishing tactic, this method probably isn't likely to net you a whopping catfish.

Still, we can always count on the depths of the internet to inspire the human imagination.

This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.

See the article here:
Here's The Truth About That Bizarre Catfish-Egg-Coke-Mentos Video - ScienceAlert

Most of us are willing to share when we have a little extra.

Few, though, are willing to give something that exists in finite supply, a precious commodity where theres never any extra like our time.

On Friday evening at the Historic Onesto Hotel and Event Center in downtown Canton, this newspaper honored eight individuals and a foundation for Moving Our Community Forward.

Recipients of the awards at our second annual recognition event have demonstrated that giving isnt limited to opening a checkbook and offering a cash donation to sustain the agencies and programs doing meaningful work in our community.

Not that such magnanimity isnt needed, appreciated and welcomed. Of course it is. And those honored Friday have shared financial blessings graciously, some with excess generosity.

More notable, though, is the time each of the individuals has given to our community. Time spent on others rather than on themselves. And while some of the eight might be able to tap into a larger checking account, none has any more minutes in his or her daily bank than the rest of us.

Its how we, and they, choose to use time and how and when we give it to others that stands above all else.

What would impress us more: a millionaire giving $1,000 to a soup kitchen to buy potatoes or a millionaire giving two hours of time peeling those potatoes for the soup kitchen?

Exactly.

Bob and Linda DeHoff and Bob Gessner werent among the six honorees selected to receive a Clayton G. Horn Award of Excellence because they individually or through their family foundations have spearheaded philanthropic efforts throughout Stark County with direct financial contributions. Rather, they were chosen because of the time they contribute to worthy causes and their desire to pass along to future generations a world made better.

Can anyone measure the depth to which Cyndi Morrow has affected kids lives in the nearly 30 years she has been directing Wishes Can Happen? Thirty years! Or how many children heading down a wrong path in life have found a positive redirection after meeting LaMar Sharpe and coming under the influence of his Be A Better Me Foundation? Each was named a Peoples Champion Award winner because they represent living embodiment of the award itself.

Add in the lifelong devotion to this community of Horn Award winners Barb Bennett, Lisa Warburton-Gregory and Kirk Schuring, along with the myriad ways Stark Community Foundation, under the leadership of CEO Mark Samolczyk, has worked with hundreds of donor partners to lift and support others, and its easy to see why we see this years class of honorees as exceedingly special.

In the 500 or so years since theologian Martin Luther said, Show me where a man spends his time and money, and I'll show you his god little has changed in human behavior.

Many people talk about helping others. Some people share their financial good fortune with others. Few people make time for others.

The willingness of Barb Bennett, Bob and Linda DeHoff, Bob Gessner, Lisa Warburton-Gregory, Kirk Schuring, Cyndi Morrow, LaMar Sharpe and the staff at Stark Community Foundation to devote their most precious resource for the good of others serves as a model and inspiration for all of us.

When you see one of them in our community, take a moment of your valuable time simply to say, Thank you.

Visit link:
Editorial: Giving their precious time distinguishes gala honorees - The-review

Police forces in democratic societies are supposed to safeguard the rights of citizens, and protect their lives and well-being. We think of their role in terms of laws, rules, and regulations but ultimately, so much of what they do is about psychology and human behavior. Its about how people react to threats, what they do when they panic, and how far a person will go when they feel they have nothing left to lose. What does behavioral science say about these situations? Could research help predict peoples behavior, and suggest effective and safe tactics? We take a look at what role behavioral science could play in creating better police forces, from crowd control to foot patrol and adding female officers to departments.

Also heard on this weeks episode:

Read the rest here:
The Science of Policing - WHYY

What began as a day like any other ended with a haunting quest to source a viral video of a man apparently capturing catfish using Coca-Cola brand soda, Mentos, and an ordinary egg.

If all that left you feeling puzzled, youre not alone. Originally posted to YouTube on November 1, the video in question shows an unidentified man adding Coke, Mentos, and an egg yolk to a muddy hole. The man then reaches into the hole and produces presto! not one, not two, but three catfish.

Clips of the video started circulating on both Twitter and Reddit this past Wednesday, spawningquestions about where the fish came from and how or why the trick would ever work. The dominant theory, prematurely endorsed by some blogs, was that the hole must likely be connected to a larger body of water. The fish, according to the theory, was attracted by the egg, and swam into the hole before suffocating on the Coke and Mentos solution.

Far more likely, according to a detailed Futurism investigation, is that the video isat least partially a hoax.

Another possibility we considered was that the video was a bizarre viral marketing scheme, so Futurism reached out to both the Coke and Mentos brands to ask. A spokesperson for the Mentos brand denied involvement and added, this is not a practice our company or our brands would condone, while the Coca-Cola company has not responded at the time of publication.

The source of the video is a fledgling, vaguely surreal YouTube channel called Technique Tools.According to YouTube, it was created in 2015 and attracted modest attention until its most recent catfish post, which has accruedan impressive 1.8 million views at press time.

Technique Tools doesnt list contact information, but its account offersother clues. One playlist of Technique Tools videos includes several in which Coke and Mentos are being poured on various animals, sometimes along with other substances such as toothpaste or eggs. The descriptions of some videos offer puzzling disclaimers.

The crocodile is our pet. Coca Cola and mentos [sic] react nothing with the crocodile, reads one. Action in this video made b [sic] a professional. Do not repeat! It Can [sic] be dangerous, reads another.

The most telling,though, comes from avideo similar to the viral post, also uploaded this month. It claims the videos are planned, scripted, and made for fun, as well as disclaimer that the fish in this instance, come out by pushing behind the video at the left side.

On the reaction of catfish to eggs and Coca-Cola, the science is more exact.

Most catfish have a sharp sense of taste and some, including the Channel Catfish, which appears to be our viral star based on its four sets of whiskers, have taste receptors on their bodies.

Channel Catfish feed primarily on small fishes and aquatic insects but have been known to eat small birds, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The effectiveness of eggs as catfish bait isnt something that appears to have been tested in the lab setting, however.

As for the Coke and Mentos, its much easier to explain why dumping soda on animals isnt a nice idea.

In humans, our lungs work to exchange oxygen from the air to replenish our blood cells and exhale waste gasses. In fish, gills work similarly. When oxygenated water is passed over specialized tissues, oxygen from the water is exchanged into the fishs bloodstream.

When there isnt enough oxygen in the water fish can indeed suffocate, which is actually a big problem in the ecology of our modern oceans where shifting currents have created pockets of low-oxygen water. Diluting the oxygen concentration in water by adding carbon dioxide from soda makes extracting oxygen much more difficult, which can cause a fish to panic and try to escape.

As a science lesson, this video offers several insights into animal and human behavior. However, as a fishing tactic, this method probably isnt likely to net you a whopping catfish. Still, we can always count on the depths of the internet to inspire the human imagination.

View original post here:
Is That Viral Catfish/Egg/Coke/Mentos Vid Real? An Investigation - Futurism

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Do you really know how to faire la bise in Marseille? In Lille? Which cheek do you start on? And how many times? This ritual and its name, faire la bise, can be incomprehensible to those who are unfamiliar with this bisou or bcot, so familiar and routine at the same time.

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Its to better explore this phenomenon that I decided to map it in my forthcoming book, Parlez-vous [les] franais? Atlas des expressions de nos rgions (Armand Colin, October 2019). Thanks to an online survey system set up a few years ago, I was able to collect information from internet users about their use of French. This allowed me to clarify the area of extension and vitality of a number of linguistic regionalisms, and to examine, in a new light, the debate of pain au chocolat vs. chocolatine.

The hypotheses on the origins of la bise are numerous, and often unverifiable. Is it the ritualization of ancestral behaviors, such as sniffing each other to recognize each other or reproducing an emotional expression related to childhood? On this point, historians, anthropologists and other specialists in human behavior have not reached a consensus. Its said that faire la bise (or se faire un schmoutz, se biser, or donner une baise) is a habit that many Anglo-Saxons believe is typically French.

But its not: people also kiss each other in the countries in Southern Europe, in the Catholic or Orthodox tradition, in Russia, in some Arab countries and sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, it would seem that the ritual dates back to Antiquity, and that it has had its ups and downs in the history of modern humanity, sometimes prohibited, sometimes valued.

The question becomes even more complex when we try to take into account the context (saying hello, saying goodbye, wishing each other a happy new year, etc.), the family relationship of the people involved (la bise seems to have long been reserved for familial relations), or their gender. La bise between men has long been stigmatized.

What is certain is that this ritual has been regularly stirring the internet for the past fifteen years or so. Part of the discussion is about the number of kisses given. The question first caused a buzz in 2003, following the launch of the combiendebises website.

The ritual also prompted British stand-up comedian and expat Paul Taylor to post a humorous video about it, which quickly won over audiences (more than three million views on YouTube).

The data we collected as part of our surveys conducted between 2016 and 2019 allowed us to provide new insights to continue the debate.

Our first map was created using the responses of more than 18,600 internet users who reported having spent most of their youth in Belgium, France or Switzerland; and to whom the question How many bises do you do to greet someone close to you? Internet users were asked if they made one, two, three, four, or five or more kisses. We calculated the percentage of responses for each area in Belgium, France and Switzerland.

For each of these area, we used the answer that was most frequently the response:

In Belgium, most internet users reported a single kiss (rates are around 100%), as in the northern part of the Finistre department (Morlaix and Brest, where rates are a little lower, 70%). It seems that the demands of the organization demandingla bise be a single kiss, Groupement de rhabilitation de lusage de la bise unique, have been heard!

Mostly, the French give two kisses, except in Languedoc and in the southern part of the former Rhne-Alpes region. Its a behavior that can be found in French-speaking Switzerland. In the northern part of France, the yellow areas indicate where there are still four kisses. However, analysis of the data shows that, in these regions, the four kisses are highly competitive with the two kisses. Kissing four times is a more common habit among older people than younger people. The future will tell us if the four kisses will continue to be reproduced in the years to come, or if they will become a distant memory.

The origin of these differences remains unknown. An internet user pointed out to me that the three kiss-region covered approximately the Protestant area of the 17th century, and that they would have been a sign of recognition of the Holy Trinity. For the four kisses, the idea would seem to be that everyone can kiss each others cheeks.

The second debate concerns the cheek that should be turned first when you faire la bise. Of the just over 11,000 participants we interviewed, 15% of respondents admitted not knowing or replied both could be first. We excluded the responses of these participants, and generated the following map based on the remaining responses:

We can see that the territory is roughly divided into two parts. In southeastern and eastern France, the left cheek is turned first. In the other hemisphere, it is the right. However, it should be noted that there are two islets in each of these large regions: in the blue zone, French-speaking Switzerland stands out. In the brown zone, Haute-Normandie is the one that stands apart.

Again, it is difficult to explain the rationale for such a distribution, as the area drawn on the map does not correspond to any other known area that would explain it.

Finally, it is a less well-known fact, the way we call the act of faire la bise (and sometimes more generally, the act of faire un bisou to say hello or not) varies from one region to another. Our surveys allowed us to accurately map the area of seven regional verbs and expressions.

Most of the words on this map belong to the same family as the contemporary French word bise (of which bisou is a derivative). The verb se biser, for example, has now emerged in conversational usage, but it is found in the writings of many early 20th-century authors (notably Raymond Queneau), and it still appears in some dictionaries (noted as a familiar term). It is still used in west-central France, where it coexists with the se biger variant, probably passed into regional French through the local dialects (Poitou, Angevin and/or Tourangeau) that were still commonly spoken by our ancestors a century ago.

In Belgium, faire une baise quelquun is not sexual: the word baise corresponds to the noun kiss (we find it in the somewhat outdated word baisemain). The baisse variant, which is found in part of Picardy, is also related to the local form of the word for kiss in the dialects of this region.

The verb se boujouter, typical of Normandy, is built on the word boujou, which is the dialectal form of the French word bonjour in this region of France (so its nothing to do with the cheek).

In French-speaking Switzerland, the word bec, which is used in the expression se faire un becquer, is a phrase formed from the verb becquer, which is still used in French, and which essentially means peck with the beak, then take by the beak. We can compare bec to its equivalent in familiar French bcot (which also created the verb bcotter, se faire des embous, sembrasser amoureusement).

As for the word schmoutz, which is found in the phrase se faire un schmoutz, it is of German origin and means bisou in French (or smacker in English). It is exclusively used in the departments of France where Germanic dialects were still spoken for the most part at the beginning of the 20th century.

In a territory as large as that of the French-speaking world of Europe, it is not surprising that, from one region to another, the greetings, politeness or denominations of this or that object or action dont go by the same name. In the past, in the days of our great-grandparents, dialects provided this community function. French has now taken over, but online social networks make it possible to highlight this beautiful diversity, much to the great pleasure of linguists.

This article was published in partnership with Le Point.

Featured image:Stock Photosfrom Iakov Filimonov /Shutterstock

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From "Se Biser" to "Se Boujouter": the Regional Variations on "La Bise" in France - Frenchly

Prior to migration, animals that migrate experience multiple physiological and behavioral changes. Ethologists adopted the German word zugunruhe, which means migratory restlessness to describe this phenomenon.

Aside from dog and cat owners who head south in the winter with their pets and back north in the summer, we seldom think of migration as a factor in companion animal behavior. When most of us think of migration, we think of birds and monarch butterflies making their semi-annual flights.

However, many species migrate. Although some migrations are long, others may be relatively short.

The seasonal migrations of deer between lower and higher elevations is a familiar example of the latter. But periods of restlessness and anxiety may precede these shorter migrations, too.

Food preferences may shift; animals may eat more or different foods, or cache food in their burrows. And even though some practitioners and many companion animal owners may be unfamiliar with the terminology, many have experienced the direct or indirect effects of zugunruhe.

Recall that establishing the physical and mental territory is a top animal priority. During these periods of transition, both of these are unstable. Animals who functioned in a more solitary or semi-solitary manner in the warmer weather may group together for warmth and protection from predators as the weather becomes colder and food supplies more limited.

While all this occurs, its also increasingly likely that at least some of this activity will occur on pet owners property or on the trails or in the parks where they take their dogs for exercise. Ironically, some of these wild animals may adapt to areas populated by people and their pets much faster than people and pets may adapt to the presence wildlife.

Called human-induced rapid evolution change (HIREC), this population of wildlife inhabiting and even thriving in human habitats has grown so rapidly it warrants its own specialty, urban ecology. It also resulted in a recent PBS series called Wild Metropolis. Thus, while their owners may see their treks with their dogs on their land or in nearby parks as fun and relaxing, these may be anything but for the family pets.

Establishing and protecting the physical and mental territory also is a critical animal priority for even the most sheltered house pets. Consequently, restlessness and behavioral changes in wildlife can and does alter companion canine and feline behavior.

Often the first sign of this is the veterinarians or clients awareness that the behavioral problem is seasonal. Because changes in behavior cause changes in physiology and vice versa, some of these animals may experience physical as well as behavioral issues.

For example, the Browns cat marks with urine in addition to being plagued by urinary tract problems year-round. However, the history reveals that these are being aggravated by the chronic stress generated by other cats in the household, the owners failure to keep the litter boxes clean, and the multiple cat-related arguments that routinely occur between those people.

Compare that cat to the Greens cat who only falls of the litterbox wagon in the spring and fall when the free-roaming wild animal and feral cat community become more restless. As the Greens cat ages and more wildlife and feral cats populate their area, the cat shrinks the in-house territory shes willing to protect.

After one traumatic face-to-face experience with a fox on the opposite side of the sliding glass door, she stops marking that door as well as the other exterior doors in the house. Instead, she only marks the Greens bed where she sleeps with them.

In multiple cat or dog households, the animals may adhere to a social structure in which one animal assumes the bulk of the territorial protective duties. Seasonal increases in wildlife restlessness also may lead to an increase in aggression between the highest-ranking animal and (usually) most subordinate one the household.

Typically, this occurs when the protector animal cant or doesnt want to target a perceived threat (e.g., a wild or feral animal in the yard). Rather than do that, the more fit animal will go after the weaker one.

Sometimes referred to as the bystander effect, targeting another safer or available target enables the protector to quickly dissipate the cascade of stress hormones summoned to take on the threat. Presumably, this spares that animal the negative effects associated with the gradual waning of those hormones over time. Wild animal studies indicate that different levels of stress hormones as a function of rank also protects the animal underdogs when this occurs.

In this situation, though, an elegant mechanism that prevents serious injury in wild animals may wreak havoc in companion animal households if any people present dont understand whats going on and why.

Perhaps all they see is their macho Bruiser snarling and charging their timid little Babycakes. Their minds are so full of images of all the horrible things Bruiser might do to their baby, they cant see what actually is or isnt happening.

Their baby has read their bullys signals and positioned herself between the legs of a chair in a corner where he cant get to her. Meanwhile he carries on until hes spent and goes away Unless, of course, the owners start screaming and yelling and turn this beneficial ritualistic display into a far more serious one.

This brings us to another aspect of zugunruhe as it plays out in human-animal interactions: the real possibility that its effects occur in humans as well as wild and domestic animals. Using a stable physical and mental territory as the standard, consider all of the seasonal transitions companion animal owners may make with or without their pets.

Think of those teachers who may spend their summers at home relaxing with their human-companion animal families who start to gear up for a return to the classroom every year. Or, the seasonal restlessness and anxiety we begin feeling as the holidays approach. In both cases, these adult human feelings may pale beside that of any youngsters in the household. No doubt the family dogs and cats are aware of and influenced by these, too.

Think of zugunruhe as the emotional soundtrack playing in the background as wild and domestic animals experience seasonal transitions of one kind of another. These transitions and any anxiety that goes with them may take many forms in human-companion animal households.

If and how these seasonal physiological and behavioral changes influence an animals behavior depends on the quality of the bond the animal shares with any people in the household as well as whats going on in nature.

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Zugunruhe and companion animal behavior - MultiBriefs Exclusive