An innovative and new behavioral study is being conducted on Block Island using a free smartphone app to examine how daily activities expose people to the risks of acquiring diseases transmitted by ticks. The all-mobile research study app, called the Tick App,is available to IOS and Android smartphone users.

The app was created by Columbia Universitys tick and Lyme disease research team, led by Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B). It offers the Block Island community a way to understand what activities and specific locations on the island lead to the highest risk of tick exposure. The pilot study is open, and is seeking residents and visitors on Block Island to participate by utilizing the app through September 2017. Dr. Diuk-Wasser intends to report her findings before next spring.

A summary from the research team noted that the goal of the study is to evaluate the use of ecological momentary assessments as a tool to assess risk factors for Lyme disease. This study will be conducted on Block Island, and data on human behavior will be obtained from a smartphone application using momentary assessments methodology to assess real time behavior and movement.

Were excited about the app, said Dr. Diuk-Wasser, who noted that the pilot study was hatched out of collaboration with a colleague. Dr. Diuk-Wassers team began using the app in June, and will share the results with Dr. Peter Krause, a Senior Research Scientist studying vector borne diseases at Yale University. Dr. Krause and his team will test participants at the conclusion of the study at the end of September.

Dr. Diuk-Wasser said subjects will participate using the app for about three weeks during the study. She said the app tracks the participants range of movement daily providing mapping information about dangerous areas on the island. She is hopeful that her research draws a large field of participants.

Dr. Diuk-Wasser has been working on Block Island since 2010, investigating links between the islands environment, animal populations, and human cases of Lyme disease. Other members of her research team are Pilar Fernandez, an Earth Institute post-doctorate fellow, and Pallavi Kache, who will be starting her PhD program at E3B in the fall.

Fernandez, who has been leading the teams communication efforts, said the app provides a way to use new tools and resources to conduct our research.She noted that users can participate using either a username, or their own name if they choose. Were the only ones who will be accessing the data from the study, she said.

According to a press release, The Tick App uses a combination of pop-up survey questions and geolocation technology to collect data. With these functions, Dr. Diuk-Wassers research team will be able to uncover how peoples day-to-day activities and movement around the island play a role in their risk for tick bites and tick-borne diseases. This information can help develop disease-control programs that take the lifestyle of the Block Island community into consideration and help develop educational programs to reduce disease risk.

The Tick App asks participants to:

Answer two multiple-choice questions sent at random times each day about their current activity

Answer two multiple-choice questions at the end of each day about all the activities they did that day

Answer one fill-in-the-blank questionnaire at the end of each day about how many ticks they found on themselves and their pet (if applicable)

Turn on location services so that the participants movement around the island can be detected

The summary states that the aim of the research is to recruit 100 Block Island residents and 100 visitors who have a personal smartphone. Vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women, the elderly, or children, will be excluded. The study will produce highly precise behavioral data about tick exposure which will lead to deepen our understanding on what intervention strategies might be most needed and most effective, pertaining to the fight against tick-borne disease.

The Block Island Times reported on Dr. Diuk-Wassers five-year research study that she presented at the Island Free Library on July 11, 2016. During her presentation she explained the pivotal role that deer and mice play in the spread of tick-borne diseases on Block Island.

To learn more about the app or to schedule an interview, contact: Maria Diuk-Wasser, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Phone: 212-854-3355 E-mail: bitickapp@gmail.com, Website: http://www.columbia.edu/~mad2256, Study Website: https://thetickapp.org/ and Twitter: @diukwasserlab. Dr. Diuk-Wasser said she is seeking additional funding to further the evolution of the app and her studies, which she hopes to continue into the near future.

Read more from the original source:
New app studies tick disease risks - Block Island Times (press release) (subscription) (blog)

When George Zimmerman went on trial four years ago for the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, the Sanford (Florida) Police Department senta request to the states attorney asking whether his death would be determined a justifiable homicide. Under Floridas stand your ground laws, such a designation would allow Zimmerman to claim his killing of Martin occurred in self-defense and he did so, successfully.

By the time the jury delivered a not guilty verdict for Zimmerman in 2013, self-defense had become an increasingly common rationalization for homicide cases in the U.S.as stand your ground laws proliferated state-by-state. In Florida,therateof justifiable homiciderose200%from 2005, when stand your ground went into effect, to 2013.

A new report by the Marshall Project published this month,which examines FBI data about 400,000 civilian homicides,finds that cases are far more likely to be determined justifiable homicides when the killer is white and the victim is black. In fact, while justifiable homicides only constituted 2% of all cases, that percentage swelled to 17%when the cases involved a white civilian killing a black civilian. According to the authors of the Marshall Project report:

The vast majority of killings of whites are committed by other whites, contrary to some folk wisdom, and the overwhelming majority of killings of blacks is by other blacks. But killings of black males by white people are labeled justifiable more than eight times as often as others. This racial disparity has persisted for decades and is hard to explain based solely on the circumstances reported by the police data.

The phrase justifiable homicide is one of those oddities of a justice system that seeks to make room for human fallibility in legal classification and language for example, homicides committed by domestic violence victims against their abusers. But these adjustments for the failures of human judgment end up accommodating prejudices and biases that disproportionately benefit nonblack defendants and victimize black victims. It's not just white-on-black self-defense claims, says Jody David Armour, a professor of law at the University of Southern California. It's any self-defense claims that include a black victim, whether the shooter is white, black, Latino, or Asian.

Jody David Armour. Photo courtesy of the University of Southern California.

Armour is the author of Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America, a 1997 book that examined how unconscious racism against black people manifests systemicallyin institutions like the justice system.

The key legal test for determining whether a homicide was justifiable is something called the reasonable person standard, says Armour in cases involving civilians or a police officer. The test asks one simple question: Would a reasonable person in this situation detect an imminent threat by the victim?

The way the law defines 'reasonable' is not 'rational,' says Armour. Reasonable does not mean right. All reasonable means is 'typical.' 'Ordinary.' You're a reasonable person if you're an ordinary person, if you're the average person.

A persons reasonableness insulates them from accountability when their mistakes are determined to fall within the spectrum of typicalhuman behavior and inadequacy. The reasonable person test says you don't condemn somebody who's just expressed ordinary human frailty in whatever they've done, says Armour. But human failure is not always natural or predetermined its often influenced by the social environments in which we are raised.

The problem with the typical is reasonable approach, which is the one we use in a court, is that it would let off the hook a lot of, for example, Germans in Nazi Germany in 1939 or 1940, adds Armour. If they could say, Hey, I was anti-Semitic but it was typical to be anti-Semitic. You can't blame me for being anti-Semitic if most people around me were.

Though Charlottesville made it clear that anti-Semitism is on the rise in America, racism is undeniably a foundational characteristic of contemporary American society, embedded in the body politic. So it stands to be argued that a reasonable person in the United States is likely a racist one, too.

We know that at an unconscious level, ordinary people harbor negative stereotypes about blacks, says Armour. And among those stereotypes that ordinary people harbor about blacks are that blacks are more violent and crime-prone. That stereotype can operate unconsciously, automatically.

A 1976 study by University of California, Berkeley, professor Birt Duncan exemplifies the ways in which these unconscious beliefs function in real life. Duncan made his subjects of varied races view and evaluate a taped interaction between two people having a discussion about another colleagues job placement. The conversation becomes heated, and one of them gets up to leave, ambiguously bumping the other person on their way out.

When someone black initiated that ambiguous bump, the subjects were much more likely to interpret the bump as hostile or violent. When someone white initiated the same bump, the subject was much more likely to interpret it as merely horseplay or dramatized, says Armour. This pattern of judgment was the same whether the subject was black or white. These findings reveal how ordinary Americans have been socialized to read aggression into the behaviors and movements of black people behaviors that would otherwise be read as nonthreatening when performed by a white people.

If 'reasonable' means 'typical,' then the question becomes, 'Does a typical person in America consider race, consider blackness, when they're assessing the dangerousness of an ambiguous or suspicious person? asks Armour. And the tragic truth is, study after study shows and we know it if we just consult our own intuition that ordinary people in America, ordinary people do consider race when they're assessing someone's dangerousness.

This is why, for example, black men frequently observe white women clutching their purses a little tighter when they walk past them on the street. Its a psychological tic that reporter Frederick H. Lowe explored in an article for the Chicago Reader called the The Clutch of Fear, calling it a form of racist signaling. In it, he interviewed psychiatrist Carl Bell, who said:"It's a nonverbal kinetic that wears at a black man's self-esteem. A white woman sees a black man and she instantly stereotypes him as someone who plans to rape and rob her.

There is a mental tax for these kinds of interactions, levied mostly against black men. This type of projection depletes a black man's energy because he constantly thinks about it, said Bell. It limits his mobility. And it impinges on his life, because he's constantly kept off guard, preventing him from focusing on other issues."

And in places where guns are easily accessible, its not just a black persons energy or mental health that is threatened its their very life, as demonstrated in the case of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman, an ordinary person, harboring many of the same prejudices that the white women in The Clutch of Fear cling to, determined that Martins behaviors were hostileand that Martin, a 17-year-old boy, posed an imminent threat to his life. Zimmermans possession of a gun allowed him to act on that split-second judgment with violence, taking Martins life.

But in the eyes of the law, Zimmermans killing was consideredjustifiable because his perceptions matched those of an ordinary jury. This legal applicationempties the word of its meaning what becomes clear is that in at least one case of justifiable homicide, justicewas not dispensed.

Share image and top image byKena Betancur/Getty Images.

See the article here:
The Killings Of Black Men Are More Likely To Be Labelled 'Justifiable' - GOOD Magazine

Too often, letters, words, and sentences get the credit for conveying information. But the human brain also makes meaning out of pitch. Like how upspeak turns any sentence into a question? Or how emphasizing the beginning of a sentence (Tom and Leila bought a boat) helps clarify that it was in fact Tom and Leila who bought the boat, not some other couple. If you emphasize the end of that sentence (Tom and Leila bought a boat) however, youre just pointing out that your friends didnt buy a car, dirt bike, or pony.

Pitch matters, and youve got the brain cells to prove it. A new study, published Thursday in Science, found groups of neurons that listen for changes in someones speaking tone. Some are tuned for shifts upward, others for shifts downward, and some that fire only when a sound goes up, and then down in pitch. Whats more, these cells arent trained for absolute pitchthey cant tell an A sharp from a D flatbut they listen for relative shifts, taking each voice on its own merit. This gives scientists a big boost in understanding how our brains turn sounds into meaning.

I think most people just take for granted how good humans are at making meaning out of sound, says Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at UC San Francisco and lead author of the new study. This makes sensepeople communicated through sound for millennia before they started to scribble their thoughts down. And obviously, language and grammar matter. In previous research, Chang and some other co-authors showed that human brains had cells specialized to pick out the sounds of consonants and vowels. But vocalized communication contains nuances beyond the order that letters and words get strung togetherfor instance, the way humans modulate their voices up or down to emphasize a word or phrase. These differences are all really important, because they change the meaning of the words without changing the words themselves, says Chang. So he and his new co-authors reasoned that there might also be neurons tuned to intonation.

To find the answer, they needed direct access to the brain. Functional MRI, the famous (and occasionally maligned) method for mapping brain activity, is noninvasive, and lets you look at the whole brain all at once, but the signal is much too slow. So they enlisted some helpful epileptic patients who had electrodes implanted under their skulls. These electrodes allow their doctors to pinpoint exactly where seizures originate, and do so on the millisecond time scale. In some cases we can cure epilepsy if we can identify precisely where the seizures are coming from, says Chang. That millisecond resolution is a huge advantage if you are looking for how auditory signals light up the brain.

Chang and his crew recruited 10 of these electrode-outfitted patients, who volunteered to listen to sentences repeated over and over again. The sentences, four in total, were simple: Humans value genuine behavior; Movies demand minimal energy; Reindeer are a visual animal; Lawyers give a relevant opinion. The researchers recorded each using three different voicesone male, and two femaleand four different intonation patterns. The first intonation was neutral (Think Ferris Buellers econ teacher calling Bueller . Bueller Bueller). Then they spiced it up. The next intonation emphasized the first word (Humans value genuine behavior.); and another emphasized the third word (Humans value genuine behavior.). The last intonation was upspeak: A question?

And voila! When they ran the data, they clearly saw that the brain had specific sets of neurons tuned to pitch, distinct from those tuned to consonants and vowels. So what it tells us is the ear and brain have taken a speech signal and deconstructed it into different elements, and processes them to derive different meanings, says Chang. Chang says these multiple axes for meaning may have evolved because it makes communication more efficient, with a single signal containing many elements for interpretation. Not a stretch for animals as social as human beings.

Thats not even the coolest bit. These pitch-tuned neurons are actually discerning intonation on the fly. Somehow, the cells establish a baseline pitch for the incoming speech and process the ups and downs from there. To musicians, this probably isnt surprising. Its sort of like shifting a melody up or down a keythe melody is still recognizable. Of course, human brains also have neurons trained for absolute pitch. This probably helps with things like identifying individual voices in a crowded, noisy space. I think people take for granted how good humans are at doing stuff like holding conversations in a busy bar where theres all these competing sounds, says Chang.

Next, Chang and his crew will be turning their investigation on its head. He wants to understand how the brain controls intonation. This means not just watching electrodes in the brain, but looking at the muscles that control the vocal folds and larynx. The one limitation is we cant easily see how things like the lips, jaw, and tongue move in coordination with the vocal folds and larynx to produce sound, says Chang. No matter how loud and clear the speech, it won't make any sense without brains.

Follow this link:
Scientists Found the Neurons That Respond to Uptalk - WIRED

One of the researchers made reference in a recent article to the effects of human behavior on the planet while discussing the factors driving long-term sea level rise.

Dont get me wrong, I am a big proponent of being a good steward of the land, but it is amazing how a person can get berated for not believing in man-made global warming and stating the opinion that man is not causing the climate to change. We have politicized this issue to the extent that it is a money machine for activists and the goal of some politicians to make us believe they can save us.

When President Obama and John Kerry visited Alaska in 2015, they stated emphatically that humans are the cause of global warming. However the facts present another story. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace stated that people have lived in the Glacier Bay for 4,000 years. The glacier in Glacier Bay began retreating around 1750. By the time Captain George Vancouver arrived in 1794, the glacier still filled most of the bay but had receded for miles. According to the National Park Service, when John Muir visited in 1879, he found that the glacier had receded more than 30 miles from the mouth of the bay. By 1900, Glacier Bay was mostly ice free, long before human emissions of greenhouse gases could have any impact. In fact, natural factors have caused the climate to change for millions of years, and they will continue to do so.

Read the original post:
Climate has been changing on its own - Brunswick News

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode Hardwired.

About Robert Sapolsky's TED Talk

Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky says nearly all aspects of human behavior are explained by biology: from developments millions of years in the past to microscopic reactions happening in the present.

About Robert Sapolsky

Robert Sapolsky is a primatologist and a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University. His current research examines how stress alters personality patterns and social behavior.

Sapolsky's latest book, Behave: The Biology of Humans At Our Best And Worst, tries to answer the question, why do we do the things we do?

See the original post here:
Robert Sapolsky: How Much Agency Do We Have Over Our Behavior? - NPR

An innovative and new behavioral study is being conducted on Block Island using a free smartphone app to examine how daily activities expose people to the risks of acquiring diseases transmitted by ticks. The all-mobile research study app, called the Tick App,is available to IOS and Android smartphone users.

The app was created by Columbia Universitys tick and Lyme disease research team, led by Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B). It offers the Block Island community a way to understand what activities and specific locations on the island lead to the highest risk of tick exposure. The pilot study is open, and is seeking residents and visitors on Block Island to participate by utilizing the app through September 2017. Dr. Diuk-Wasser intends to report her findings before next spring.

A summary from the research team noted that the goal of the study is to evaluate the use of ecological momentary assessments as a tool to assess risk factors for Lyme disease. This study will be conducted on Block Island, and data on human behavior will be obtained from a smartphone application using momentary assessments methodology to assess real time behavior and movement.

Were excited about the app, said Dr. Diuk-Wasser, who noted that the pilot study was hatched out of collaboration with a colleague. Dr. Diuk-Wassers team began using the app in June, and will share the results with Dr. Peter Krause, a Senior Research Scientist studying vector borne diseases at Yale University. Dr. Krause and his team will test participants at the conclusion of the study at the end of September.

Dr. Diuk-Wasser said subjects will participate using the app for about three weeks during the study. She said the app tracks the participants range of movement daily providing mapping information about dangerous areas on the island. She is hopeful that her research draws a large field of participants.

Dr. Diuk-Wasser has been working on Block Island since 2010, investigating links between the islands environment, animal populations, and human cases of Lyme disease. Other members of her research team are Pilar Fernandez, an Earth Institute post-doctorate fellow, and Pallavi Kache, who will be starting her PhD program at E3B in the fall.

Fernandez, who has been leading the teams communication efforts, said the app provides a way to use new tools and resources to conduct our research.She noted that users can participate using either a username, or their own name if they choose. Were the only ones who will be accessing the data from the study, she said.

According to a press release, The Tick App uses a combination of pop-up survey questions and geolocation technology to collect data. With these functions, Dr. Diuk-Wassers research team will be able to uncover how peoples day-to-day activities and movement around the island play a role in their risk for tick bites and tick-borne diseases. This information can help develop disease-control programs that take the lifestyle of the Block Island community into consideration and help develop educational programs to reduce disease risk.

The Tick App asks participants to:

Answer two multiple-choice questions sent at random times each day about their current activity

Answer two multiple-choice questions at the end of each day about all the activities they did that day

Answer one fill-in-the-blank questionnaire at the end of each day about how many ticks they found on themselves and their pet (if applicable)

Turn on location services so that the participants movement around the island can be detected

The summary states that the aim of the research is to recruit 100 Block Island residents and 100 visitors who have a personal smartphone. Vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women, the elderly, or children, will be excluded. The study will produce highly precise behavioral data about tick exposure which will lead to deepen our understanding on what intervention strategies might be most needed and most effective, pertaining to the fight against tick-borne disease.

The Block Island Times reported on Dr. Diuk-Wassers five-year research study that she presented at the Island Free Library on July 11, 2016. During her presentation she explained the pivotal role that deer and mice play in the spread of tick-borne diseases on Block Island.

To learn more about the app or to schedule an interview, contact: Maria Diuk-Wasser, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Phone: 212-854-3355 E-mail: bitickapp@gmail.com, Website: http://www.columbia.edu/~mad2256, Study Website: https://thetickapp.org/ and Twitter: @diukwasserlab. Dr. Diuk-Wasser said she is seeking additional funding to further the evolution of the app and her studies, which she hopes to continue into the near future.

Read the original here:
New mobile app studies tick disease risks - Block Island Times (press release) (subscription) (blog)

Danielle Di-Masi is an innovative marketing strategist, specializing in digital communications. Standing at the crossroad of technology and human behavior, Danielle is a popular keynote speaker and media commentator, author and university lecturer.

Winning the 2016 Stevie Award for Most Innovative Communications Professional of the Year, Danielle is an expert in how both businesses and professionals perform at their best, creating consistent experiences on and offline.

Danielle spent over 10 years of her corporate career in Investment and Private Banking while studying her MBA. As the world became increasingly digital, Danielle identified a broadening communications gap and turned her focus to researching how we connect and conduct modern business to ensure the digital experience is aligned with an effective customer experience strategy.

Danielle is a regular blogger for the Huffington Post, and in the media her global commentary has appeared in Cosmopolitan, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, Australian Financial Review, ELLE, The Age, Womens Health, Smart Company and since 2011 Danielle has been the resident expert on tech, business and social behaviors for Network Ten.

Originally posted here:
Your Digital Communication: Strategy or Spaghetti - Computerworld India

Scientists fromUniversity of Utah Healthsaythat removing the gene encoding Lef1 in mice and zebrafish disrupts the development of nerve cells in the hypothalamus that affect stress and anxiety, causing the animals to exhibit increased anxiety. Their study ("Lef1-Dependent Hypothalamic Neurogenesis Inhibits Anxiety"), which appears in PLOS Biology, suggeststhat Lef1 functions in the hypothalamus to mediate behavior. The team believes this knowledge could prove useful for diagnosing and treating human brain disorders.

"...we demonstrate that the Wnt/-catenin effector Lef1 is required for the differentiation of anxiolytic hypothalamic neurons in zebrafish and mice, although the identity of Lef1-dependent genes and neurons differ between these 2 species. We further show that zebrafish andDrosophilahave common Lef1-dependent gene expression in their respective neuroendocrine organs, consistent with a conserved pathway that has diverged in the mouse," write the investigators.

"Finally, orthologs of Lef1-dependent genes from both zebrafish and mouse show highly correlated hypothalamic expression in marmosets and humans, suggesting co-regulation of 2 parallel anxiolytic pathways in primates. These findings demonstrate that during evolution, a transcription factor can act through multiple mechanisms to generate a common behavioral output, and that Lef1 regulates circuit development that is fundamentally important for mediating anxiety in a wide variety of animal species."

"Anxiety is an essential behavior that is much more complex than we thought," says first author Yuanyuan Xie, Ph.D., who led the research in collaboration with senior authorRichard Dorsky, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology and anatomy at University of Urah Health. "This work is making us think about how brain structures control behavior in a different way."

Anxiety happens in humans, mice, fish, and flies. It's not always a bad thing. Anxiety in zebrafish causes them to stop moving so they can hide in plain sight from predators. But being anxious at inappropriate times is counterproductive and can be a sign of unnecessary stress, a characterization that holds true not only for fish but also for people, say the researchers.

When Drs. Xie and Dorsky began their investigation, nothing was known about a role for Lef1 in anxiety. Brains of fish missing the gene were relatively normal except there were cells missing from the hypothalamus. "Before we did the experiments we had no idea that the neurons impacted by Lef1 would preferentially impact one type of behavior," says Dr. Dorsky.

Studying the genes that were most perturbed by loss of Lef1 in this brain region revealed that over 20 were involved in mood disorders like depression and anxiety. The scientists then noticed that the fish had telltale signs consistent with these disorders. The animals were reluctant to explore their environment when placed into a new tank, preferred to remain immobile at the bottom. And they grew slowly, another condition often related to elevated stress.

Lef1 appears to mediate anxiety across species, although it uses diverse mechanisms to do so.Mice in which Lef1 had been removed from the hypothalamus showed signs of anxiety, including being smaller and a reluctance to explore. They also had fewer brain cells in the region where Lef1 is normally present. However, the missing cells make pro-melanin-concentrating hormone (Pmch), a brain signal that was not perturbed in zebrafish. By contrast, zebrafish and Drosophila fruit flies lacking their versions of Lef1 are missing cells that make corticotropin-releasing hormone binding protein (Crhbp), and these cells were unaffected in mice.

These results suggested that Lef1 could regulate anxiety through two different nerve cell signals. Support for this scenario was unexpectedly found in humans, where expression of Crhbp and Pmch are extremely closely linked in the hypothalamus, indicating they may actually be present in the same cells and together act downstream of Lef1 to regulate behavior.

"When you think about genes with a conserved function you think everything that gene does must be the same in all animals. But our study shows that that isn't necessarily true," says Dr. Dorsky, who adds that the team's workcould explain how a gene that specifies a particular behavior can adapt to accommodate changes in brain circuitry that happen over evolutionary time. "Our results suggest that during evolution, the brain can innovate different ways to get to the same outcome."

The study reveals information about specific sets of genes and the brain cells they affect as being involved in regulating anxiety. Future work will focus on determining whether these pathways may define a subset of human behavioral and mood disorders.

More:
Eliminating Single Gene from Brain Appears to Increase Anxiety Across Species - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

In a forthcoming research paper from Nature Human Behavior, a group of scientists including University Psychology Prof. Brian Nosek propose to change the p-value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005 in order to enhance the reproducibility of data.

According to an article written by UCLA Biostatistics Prof. Frederick Dorey and published in the journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, a p-value is a calculated probability that tests a null hypothesis, a statement that expresses the opposite of the hypothesis being investigated in a scientific experiment.

This value is often required to be calculated in publishable research papers that compare quantitative data between two or more experimental groups, Chemistry Asst. Prof. Rebecca Pompano said.

A p-value allows scientists to determine statistical significance the notion that an experimental result is likely attributable to a specific cause rather than mere chance of their results. Smaller p-values suggesting strong evidence against the null hypothesis likely correlate with more precise data, indicating potential reproducibility and thereby credibility of a scientific experiment.

Presently, the accepted p-value for statistical significance rests at 0.05. As such, a p-values less than 0.05 represents statistical significance. This cutoff was arbitrarily determined by British statistician and geneticist Sir Ronald Fisher in the early 1900s.

Sir Ronald Fisher proposed it in one of his articles or books, Statistics Prof. and Chair of Statistics Karen Kafadar said in an email to The Cavalier Daily. As I recall, he tossed it off as If the probability of observing our data under our hypothesis is less than 0.05, we might consider that to be statistically significant. And that 0.05 seems to have stayed with us ever since.

A recent paper by a group of researchers from numerous academic institutions including the University of Southern California, Duke University, University of Amsterdam, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Virginia however, challenges the longstanding p-value of 0.05.

The lack of reproducibility of scientific studies has caused growing concern over the credibility of claims of new discoveries based on statistically significant findings, the paper, released as a preprint article on PsyArXiv last month, said. For fields where the threshold for defining significance for new discoveries is P < 0.05, we propose a change to P < 0.005. This simple step would immediately improve the reproducibility of scientific research in many fields.

This proposal seeks to encourage strength of evidence by calling probability values less than 0.005 significant and those between 0.05 and 0.005 suggestive, Nosek said in an email to The Cavalier Daily.

Current scientific literature varies in reliability between fields and research journals the primary sources of study publications. Commonly, lower-quality journals publish untrustworthy papers, as do some high-end elite journals, in which data presented may be cherry-picked by the investigator to present a case as more scientifically elegant than reality. These circumstances may be caused by a scientists lack of knowledge and proficiency in their field, or driven by an individuals desire for vocational success and economic incentive often furthered by larger numbers of publications, Biology Prof. Paul Adler said.

According to Pompano, the benefits of a stricter significance cutoff could include less false data in scientific literature. A lowered threshold could also reduce p-hacking, Asst. Biology Prof. Alan Bergland said.

In p-hacking, people can use websites or programs to find correlations between variables in their experiments, and this allows them to contort their results to fit their desired narrative, Bergland said. You can plot different variables against each other and come across correlations that are completely nonsense, but related. P-hacking would still be possible even if the threshold was lowered to 0.005, but certainly harder.

While the change in p-value may, by some extent, increase the reproducibility of data, researchers worry it could also inhibit scientific progress. A p-value of 0.005 is difficult to obtain when working with smaller sample sizes, which is often the case in pilot studies, human clinical trials and for ethical reasons when experimenting with live mammalian specimen, Pompano said. Ultimately, according to Adler, lowering the p-value would increase expenses, time needed to conduct experiments and false negatives results that incorrectly demonstrate absence of a particular condition within data.

Additionally, although a p-value can determine statistical significance, it is unable to predict the applicability of experimental data to human life.

It cannot tell you if the model for your data is right, or if your sample is representative of the population, or the probability that your hypothesis is true, Kafadar said. It can only tell you how consistent are your data with your hypothesis, assuming both that the sample is representative of the population and the model you are using is correct. If neither of those assumptions is true, the p-value may be misleading.

Due to such limits of the p-value, Adler and Pompano believe errors in experimental design the setup of a procedure undertaken to test a hypothesis are a more immediate source of defects in scientific validity. Both professors said a p-value change is unnecessary.

Essentially, you cant just look at a p-value and decide if the results are reproducible. You have to look at the question being asked and if the experimental design that was being performed actually allows you to answer that question at all, Pompano said. And then, does the data support the answer that the author has concluded? I think the p-value alone is one small piece of assessing the conclusion of the experiment.

In other fields examining non-binary hypotheses, such as experimental physics, a p-value is rarely utilized and therefore unrelated to reproducibility errors. Rather, systematic uncertainties like varying machinery usage and ill-defined experimental design play larger roles in empirical blunders.

According to Physics Prof. Blaine Norum, reproducibility errors often encountered in physics are due to differing equipment types and apparatus setup from lab to lab.

The question is not a statistical question, but a question of systematic uncertainties that is, machinery or experimental design which are not addressed by a p-value, Norum said. How equipment is set up, how one configures it to get measurements varies between people, leading to reproducibility errors from lab to lab. A p-value is a statistically derived quantity, and it doesnt address those issues.

Researchers have expressed that inconsistencies within published scientific data stem from flaws within the career structures of science, more specifically defined as an unstable job market and the immensely difficult nature of discovery, rather than statistical analyses.

In the structure of science, at least American science, a lot of the research is done by graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, so the only way for a faculty member to be successful and keep getting papers and grants is to have lots of people working for them theres a selective advantage to that, Adler said. But that only fuels the oversupply of scientists, meaning you have too many people chasing too few grant awards and people publishing less reliable data just for the sake of publishing a paper. And these problems are much more serious than the p-value.

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Researchers propose p-value change from 0.05 to 0.005 - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily

If it seemed like coastal flooding associated with king tides has been getting particularly worse in recent years, that is because it has, according to a new study by University of Florida scientists.

Essentially, a combination of weather factors and shifting atmospheric pressure pushed water up along the Atlantic coast south of Cape Hatteras, N.C., in what the authors call a sea-level rise hot spot.

King tides already cause regular incursions of seawater into many coastal communities, where continued (sea-level rise) is increasing the frequency of this so-called nuisance flooding, which may be further amplified by short-lived (sea-level rise) hot spots, the authors conclude in journal Geophysical Research Letters. We have demonstrated that (sea-level rise) hot spot anomalies are a recurring feature along the U.S. eastern seaboard related to the combined cumulative effects of (El Nio-Southern Oscillation) and (North Atlantic Oscillation) forcing.

The authors revealed they believe the cause of this sort of sea-level rise was similarly responsible for accelerated sea-level rise detected along the coast running from Massachusetts to North Carolina, something previously attributed to a slowing of a major Atlantic Ocean current.

This distinction is critical to the projection of (sea-level rise) along this heavily populated coastline and defines a new benchmark for ocean dynamic models to capture such a pattern of regional (sea-level rise) variability, the authors noted.

Meanwhile, a major federal climate change report receiving greater attention in recent weeks illustrates more clearly what researchers believe to be the factors driving long-term sea-level rise, along with other results from the effects of human behavior on the planet.

The last few years have also seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, the three warmest years on record for the globe and continued decline in arctic sea ice, according to the Climate Science Special Report, a collaboration of 53 people across 13 agencies. These trends are expected to continue in the future over climate (multidecadal) timescales. Significant advances have also been made in our understanding of extreme weather events and how they relate to increasing global temperatures and associated climate changes.

Since 1980, the cost of extreme events for the United States has exceeded $1.1 trillion, therefore better understanding of the frequency and severity of these events in the context of a changing climate is warranted.

The report is part of the National Climate Assessment, something meant to take place every four years, but the NCA has only published three times in the 27 years since Congress passed the law creating it. And instructions on how to interpret the data into policy implementation will be a little more difficult, as Sunday the Trump administration disbanded the advisory committee tasked with that job.

Further, last week President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing an Obama administration requirement that construction projects in coastal floodplains that receive federal dollars have to take into account sea-level rise and resulting flooding projections.

As predictions both get clearer and more dire from climate scientists, work is beginning to go into what might happen by the centurys end. Using a sea-level rise estimate of nearly six feet, Mathew Hauer leader of the University of Georgia Institute of Governments Applied Demography Program published a piece in the journal Nature Climate Change in April in which he estimates 13.1 million people in the United States could have to permanently move further inland.

Relationships between environmental stressors and migration are highly complex as press and pulse events trigger migration responses that range from short-distance temporary migration to permanent long-distance migration; some will move and others will not, Hauer wrote. (Sea-level rise) is unique among environmental stressors as the conversion of habitable land to uninhabitable water is expected to lead to widespread human migration without the deployment of costly protective infrastructure.

Excerpt from:
New light cast on sea level, climate threats - Brunswick News