The Varroa destructor mite (shown above attached to bee) is a widespread parasite of European honey bees (Apis mellifera). Poor management practices have enabled the spread of V. destructor and other bee pathogens, an Australian bee researcher argues. (Photo credit:Stephen Ausmus, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Bugwood.org)

In the search for answers to the complex health problems and colony losses experienced by honey bees in recent years, it may be time for professionals and hobbyists in the beekeeping industry to look in the mirror.

In a research essay published last week in the Journal of Economic Entomology, Robert Owen argues that human activity is a key driver in the spread of pathogens afflicting the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) and recommends a series of collective actions necessary to stem their spread. While some research seeks a magic bullet solution to honey bee maladies such as Colony Collapse Disorder, many of the problems are caused by human action and can only be mitigated by changes in human behavior, Owen says.

Owen is author of The Australian Beekeeping Handbook, owner of a beekeeping supply company, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis at the University of Melbourne. In his essay in the Journal of Economic Entomology, he outlines an array of human-driven factors that have enabled the spread of honey bee pathogens:

Owen offers several suggestions for changes in human behavior to improve honey bee health, including:

The problems facing honeybees today are complex and will not be easy to mitigate, says Owen. The role of inappropriate human action in the spread of pathogens and the resulting high numbers of colony losses needs to be brought into the fore of management and policy decisions if we are to reduce colony losses to acceptable levels.

Like Loading...

See the article here:
Why Human Behavior is Hurting Honey Bees - Entomology Today

For years, Todd Surovell has studied an ancient Paleoindian site in Colorado and wondered why he would find concentrations of tools in one spot or a particular type of tool in another. He had to go to Mongolia to find the answers.

Surovell, a University of Wyoming professor of anthropology and director of the George C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, is an expert in Paleoindian archaeology. He heads the Dukha Ethnoarchaeological Project, which has a primary goal of developing spatial theory of human behavior for application to archaeological problems.

In essence, he is interested in understanding how people decide where to do the things they do.

Im interested in how people use space from an archaeological perspective, Surovell says. We might, for example, identify prehistoric households and examine how people used space, both inside and outside. We also might ask how the spaces in different households were used, whether similarly or differently.

For a number of years, Surovell and his colleague, Nicole Waguespack, a UW associate professor of anthropology, studied the Barger Gulch archaeological site that dates back 12,500 years and is located in Middle Park, Colo. There, they recovered more than 75,000 chipped stone tools and artifacts. Sometimes, a large number of various tools would be found in one spot. Other times, similar tools would be found in another.

From studying spatial patterns in the Middle Park site, Surovell surmised that Folsom people, nomadic hunter-gatherers, lived in round-shaped structures with fires in their centers. Artifacts preferentially accumulated to one side of the house (east or west), and often toward the back, or south side, of the home.

Archaeologically, all you see are spatial patterns in chipped stone artifacts. There is no house or physical architectural remains, he says.

In order to understand archaeological spatial patterns and how they translate into past human behavior, Surovell, as a scientist and a researcher, wanted to see how nomadic people use space in real life.

To interpret human behavior from the past was not easy, Surovell concedes. I wanted to see nomadic people in the real world, and how they use space in the real world.

So, Surovell traveled to the Khovsgol Province of Mongolia to study the Dukha (pronounced Do-ha), nomadic reindeer herders of Tuvan descent. Like the Paleoindians of the past, the Dukha of today live in rounded homes, called an ortz, with iron stoves located in the middle. The structures somewhat resemble teepees.

He has traveled to the northeast Asian country five times, and in all seasons, as part of the Dukha Ethnoarchaeological Project, which began in 2012. Ethnoarchaeology is the study of living peoples for the purpose of developing tools for improving interpretation of the archaeological record. This project differs from traditional spatial ethnoarchaeology, in that Surovell shifted the focus from the mapping of material remains to the direct mapping of human behavior. To do so, he has used a combination of observational mapping and time-lapse photography coupled with photogrammetry, or mapping from photographic imagery.

For example, one composite time-lapse photo that was taken shows all camp occupants -- in all of the spaces they occupied in exterior camp space -- over the course of a 12-hour day. Photos were taken roughly every three minutes from a camera perched atop a fiberglass mast. Cameras relied on battery and solar power. In all, about 300 photos were shot and then combined into the composite photo that accompanies this story.

That is unique to the project. The big innovation in our project is this idea of mapping people as they go about their lives, Surovell says. Technically, it wasnt possible to do this with high precision until recently. Imagine being in a place with no electricity, and you want to map how they (Mongolians) go about their lives. So, we turned to time-lapse photography.

The goal was to precisely map people in camp sites over frequent intervals. The information can be used to develop spatial datasets which, in turn, allow Surovell and his research team to understand how people make space-use decisions. Spatial datasets included information on a person, his or her sex, age, activity, equipment, household membership and weather.

Initial results suggest that human spatial behavior on small scales is highly patterned, predictable and explainable.

During his five separate treks to Mongolia, Surovell has lived in seven different camps. The days are long, filled with lots of hard work just for basic survival.

Its physically challenging. Its cold in winter -- 40 below regularly every night, he recalls. In summer, it freezes almost every night. Its rustic. You sleep on the ground. You cant take a shower for months on end. I bring freeze-dried food. You have to ride in on a horse or a reindeer.

During the spring, Surovell often rode a reindeer -- the Dukhas mode of transportation -- to help haul firewood to summer camps with the family with whom he stayed and studied. He says he paid attention to being careful, knowing medical help was often three or four days away. Still, his body was beaten up, and he typically lost 8-10 pounds during each trip.

Still, he enjoyed the simplicity of living in the moment and being away from technology.

Its wonderful, physically challenging, and they dont speak English. I had to learn Mongolian, Surovell says.

Surovell says spatial patterns of tools used at the Colorado Middle Park site could be used at Wyomings archaeological sites, including the Mammoth Kill site near Douglas, the Hanson site in the northern Big Horn Basin and at Hell Gap.

I dont know if there are obvious, practical benefits of this work. The major benefits are largely academic, he says. Architects who design workspaces would probably be very interested in those kinds of data of how people use space.

Funding and sponsorship of the Dukha Ethnoarchaeological Project was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Scholars Program and the George C. Frison Institute. Surovell says he has a few publication papers in the works and, ultimately, he says his group -- which includes Randy Haas, a UW postdoctoral researcher, and Matthew OBrien, an assistant professor of anthropology at California State University-Chico -- plans to write a book about the research experience.

A lot of these things, they do became obvious when you see it in the real world, Surovell says. We have found, for example, that the distribution of light is an important factor governing the performance of many activities in interior spaces. I dont go to a dark closet to read a book. We knew people tended to gather around a stove.

I suspect how Mongolians use their spaces is fairly similar to how we use our homes, too, he says. I hope this research will give us insight into spatial patterns worldwide and not just in Colorado.

Read more:
UW scientist explores archaeological record by studying Mongolian reindeer herder camps - Gillette News Record

Jason Haremza 2:59 p.m. ET April 14, 2017

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 27: A pedestrian crosses the intersection of 3rd Avenue and 14th Street, one of Manhattan's most dangerous crosswalks for pedestrians, on October 27, 2014 in New York City. Four pedestrians have been killed in the last few weeks in New York City while a total of 212 people have been killed in total traffic deaths so far this year. These numbers have added to the urgency of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero program, which aims to eliminate city traffic deaths. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)(Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

A recent editorial opened with Walking is good for your health and, if you do it instead of driving to your destination, it benefits both the environment and your wallet.

I wholeheartedly agree. However, the tone implies that walking is a good, perhaps even noble activity, but not a requirement- like eating vegetables and turning down the thermostat. That is a very limited view of walking. Walking is an elemental part of humanity. It is, or should be, the basic and primary method of moving about our world. Only in the past 100 years has walking to our destinations come to be seen as alternative.

The phrase pedestrian error, which comes from Pedestrian Safety Action Plans, has a connotation of blaming the victim. Pedestrian error also suggests jaywalking, which is a crime invented by the automobile industry. One hundred years ago, people were outraged over the death and injury caused by motorists. Cities considered strict regulation of motor vehicles. The automobile industry fought back with a self-serving and, tragically successful, public relations campaign to shift the blame to the walker.

The editorial does not mention the role that street design has in human behavior. Narrower streets and narrower lanes have a dramatic impact on driver behavior and human safety, slowing vehicles to safer speeds. Other counties, notably the Netherlands and Sweden, have seen significant reductions in vehicle related injuries and deaths. Frustratingly, and tragically, the United States has only taken the most tentative of steps toward designing streets for human safety. Far too often, the swift and unimpeded flow of vehicles is the design priority. .

Carefully designed streets have safe speed limits that are largely self-enforcing. On the other hand, on wide streets with multiple lanes, it feels okay to drive 40 or 50 mph, regardless of the posted speed. A local example is Chestnut/Monroe from Court to Union. At Court, Chestnut has four wide lanes, and most drivers naturally accelerate. However, once Chestnut turns into Monroe, the street narrows to two lanes with parked cars on either side. Most drivers naturally slow down.

Americans, helped by sensational or superficial media coverage, are fearful of dramatic but rare dangers like terrorism. Yet vehicles kill 40,000 people per year in the United States. Let us commit to public streets that prioritize the health, safety, and comfort of all people.

Jason Haremza of Rochester is an avid walker and an urbanist.

Read or Share this story: http://on.rocne.ws/2pfN65Q

Continue reading here:
Guest essay: Design streets for human safety - Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Executive Summary

ANew York Timesarticleon how Uber is using insights from behavioral economics to push, or nudge, its drivers to pick up more fares sometimes with little benefit to them has generated quite a bit of criticism of Uber. It raises a question that executives often ask about how their own organizations might apply behavioral economics: Isnt there a danger it will be used with ill intent? Behavioral economics takes the view that people have fallible judgment and malleable preferences and behaviors, can make mistakes calculating risks, can be impulsive or myopic, and are driven by social desires.Organizations that embrace behavioral economics design processes to use these tendencies to nudge people to do something. The determining factor between when nudges should be deemed good and when they should be deemed bad is: Are they being used to benefit both parties involved in the interaction or do they create benefits for one side and costs for the other?

A recent New York Times article on how Uber is using various insights from behavioral economics to push, or nudge, its drivers to pick up more fares sometimes with little benefit to them has generated quite a bit of criticism of Uber. Its just one of several stories of late that have cast the company in a poor light.

When I read the piece, it reminded me of a question executives often ask me when I talk to them about the benefits of behavioral economics or give them examples of how they could use it in their own organizations: Arent you afraid itwill be used with ill intent?

I always respond that, like many tools, it can be used in good and bad ways. Before I delve into the differences between the two, I should first make sure you are familiar with the somewhat new field of behavioral economics.

According to the traditional view in economics, we are rational agents, well informed with stable preferences, self-controlled, self-interested, and optimizing. The behavioral perspective takes issue with this view and suggests that we are characterized by fallible judgment and malleable preferences and behaviors, can make mistakes calculating risks, can be impulsive or myopic, and are driven by social desires (e.g., looking good in the eyes of others). In other words, we are simply human.

Behavioral economics starts with this latter assumption. It is a discipline that combines insights from the fields of psychology, economics, judgment, and decision making, and neuroscience to understand, predict, and ultimately change human behavior in ways that are more powerful than any one of those fields could provide on its own. Over the last few years, organizations in both the private and public sectors have applied some of the insights from behavioral economics to address a wide range of problems from reducing cheating on taxes, work stress, and turnover to encouraging healthy habits, increasing savings for retirement as well as turning up to vote (as I wrote previously).

Uber has been using similar insights to influence drivers behavior. As Noam Scheiber writes in the Times article, Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists, Uber has experimented with video game techniques, graphics and noncash rewards of little value that can prod drivers into working longer and harder and sometimes at hours and locations that are less lucrative for them.

One such approach, according to Scheiber, compels drivers toward collecting more fares based on the insight from behavioral sciences that people are highly influenced by goals. According to the article, Uber alerts drivers that they are very close to hitting a precious target when they try to log off. And it also sends drivers their next fare opportunity before their current ride is over.

Now lets return to the question of when are nudges good and when are they bad. In discussing this topic with executives, I first provide a couple of examples. One of my favorites is the use of checklists in surgery to reduce patient complications. Checklists describe several standard critical processes of care that many operating rooms typically implement from memory. In a paper published in 2009, Alex Haynes and colleagues examined the use and effectiveness of checklists in eight hospitals in eight cities in the Unites States. They found the rate of death for patients undergoing surgery fell from 1.6% to 0.8% following the introduction of checklists. Inpatient complications also fell from 11% to 7%.

In a related paper published in 2013, Alexander Arriaga and colleagues had 17 operating-room teams participate in 106 simulated surgical-crisis scenarios. Each team was randomly assigned to work with or without a checklist and instructed to implement the critical processes of care.

The results were striking: Checklists reduced missed steps in the processes of care from 23% to 6%. Every team performed better when checklists were available. Remarkably, 97% of those who participated in the study reported that if one of these crises occurred while they were undergoing an operation, they would want the checklist used.

Another example I often give concerns the use of fuel- and carbon-efficient flight practices in the airline industry. In a recent paper, using data from more than 40,000 unique flights, John List and colleagues found significant savings in carbon emissions and monetary costs when airline captains received tailored monthly information on fuel efficiency, along with targets and individualized feedback. In the field study, captains were randomly assigned to one of four groups, including one business as usual control group and three intervention groups, and were provided with monthly letters from February 2014 through September 2014. The letters included one or more of the following: personalized feedback on the previous months fuel-efficiency practices; targets and feedback on fuel efficiency in the upcoming month; and a 10 donation to a charity of the captains choosing for each of three behavior targets met.

The result? All four groups increased their implementation of fuel-efficient behaviors. Thus, informing captains of their involvement in a study significantly changed their actions. (Its a well-documented social-science finding called the Hawthorne effect.) Tailored information with targets and feedback was the most cost-effective intervention, improving fueling precision, in-flight efficiency measures, and efficient taxiing practices by 9% to 20%. The intervention, it appears, encourages a new habit, as fuel efficiency measures remained in use after the study ended. The implication? An estimated cost savings of $5.37 million in fuel costs for the airline and reduced emissions of more than 21,500 metric tons of CO2 over the eight-month period of the study.

Both in the case of surgeons using checklists or captains receiving feedback about fuel efficiency, one of the main goals of the intervention was to motivate the participants to act in a certain way. So, in a sense, the researchers were trying to encourage a change in behavior the same way managers at Uber were trying to bring about a change in their drivers behavior.

But there is an important difference across these three examples. Are the nudges used to benefit both parties involved in the interaction or do they create benefits for one side and costs for the other? If the former, then (as Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein argue in their influential book Nudge) we are nudging for good. Thaler and Sunstein identify three guiding principles that should be on top of mind when designing nudges: Nudges should be transparent and never misleading, easily opted out of, and driven by the strong belief that the behavior being encouraged will improve the welfare of those being nudged.

Thats where the line between encouraging certain behaviors and manipulating people lies. And thats also where I see little difference between applying behavioral economics or any other strategies or frameworks for leadership, talent management, and negotiations that I teach in my classes. We always have the opportunity to use them for either good or bad.

If the interests of a company and its employees differ, the organization can exploit its own members as Uber appears to have done. But there are plenty of situations where the interests are, in fact, aligned the company certainly benefits from higher levels of performance and motivation, but the workers do, too, because they feel more satisfied with their work.

And that is where I see great potential in applying behavioral economics in organizations: to create real win-wins.

More here:
Uber Shows How Not to Apply Behavioral Economics - Harvard Business Review

Our Song of the Day comes from Human Behavior, the moniker for the Los Angeles-based folk collective, led by chief songwriter Andres Parada. Mineristhe second single fromHuman Behaviors new EPCancer: As Seen From Basement, coming April 14 via Keeled Scales. Its a cover of a Karima Walker song, and while the track is wildly different from her original version, Karima sings on this recording too.

Furnishing an uncomfortably personal collection of releases, live shows that border performance art, and extensive U.S. touring, Human Behavior has functioned as an achingly honest document of Andres personal life, charted to music that has swerved from glitchy americana, craftily orchestrated drone-folk, waves of spoken word over organic noise, and always presented under the guise of tradition folk music for those who dont like folk music. The ritualization of discomfort for those who are searching for comfort.

Their most recent reinterpretation of modern American folk music is their new EP, Cancer: As Seen From Basement a sonic sidestep in response to their 2016 full length, Kedumim. The music is an old-time passage between life and death, a compromise between the sudden passing of Paradas father to cancer, and the discomfort of tradition as heard through Paradas breaking voice atop sparse arrangements. Created in tribute to his father, Parada focuses the EP around an early 20th-century banjo that he bought with his inheritance, to explore the parents of his sound slow humming banjo from the Appalachians, bleak tin horns from the American 1940s, like a monotone prayer read between Woody Guthrie and Jeff Mangum. Live, these songs are never played the same twice sometimes a three-piece savouring the space between notes, sometimes a ten person feast of loud gluttony, with Parada often backed up by the L.A.-based freak-folk outfit, The Manx.

Although this EP plays with traditionalism, Human Behavior still sounds unlike they ever have a tradition in itself for a group that always chases the sound of an ever-changing moment.

Cancer: As Seen From Basement is out 4/14/17 on cassette tape through Keeled Scale.

The EP is limited to 50 physical copies released on blood-red cassette wrapped in newsprint with a narrative about the EP. The lyrics are unflinchingly honest and at times hard to digest. Human Behaviors carefully arranged, visceral music reveals more and more melody with each listen.

Preorder link: http://keeledscales.com/store/humanbehavior

Premiere: Human Behavior Miner (Karima Walker cover) was last modified: April 11th, 2017 by Alex Gallacher

Read the original here:
Premiere: Human Behavior - Miner (Karima Walker cover) - Folk Radio UK (blog)

KUCHING: Human behavior is the leading cause of accidents and fatal accidents in Malaysia according to police statistics.

Director of Bukit Aman Investigation and Traffic Enforcement Department SAC Datuk Mahamad Akhir Darus said analysis showed there were six main offences committed by drivers.

They are speeding, using handphones while driving, cutting queues, driving on emergency lanes, overtaking at double lines and misjudgement while overtaking, Akhir told a press conference after the symbolic handing over of 32 Kawasaki Ninja motorcycles to the Sarawak police contingent here yesterday.

He added that drivers who misjudged the distance while overtaking on dangerous stretches of roads or blindspots were more likely to end up in an accident.

All these (offences) point to the behaviour of drivers. We are not yet disciplined, he said.

On another note, he said ever since the police started to issue summonses to foreign drivers in Malaysia, there was a decrease in the number of offences committed by those drivers.

Among the offences were speeding and illegal parking.

Singaporeans make up the most number of offenders summonsed, followed by the Thais. He, however, was unable to disclose the total number of summonses being issued to the foreigners.

We want to let everyone know that no one is above the law when using the roads in Malaysia. We will also make sure that foreigners pay their summonses before they return to their own country, he added. Operations, he added, were carried out periodically by Bukit Aman with the state contingents that border the neighbouring countries.

Recently, we had an operation at the Kelantan-Thailand border while operations were carried out last year at the Johor Bahru-Singapore and Limbang-Miri-Brunei borders.

The next operation would be carried out at the Sabah-Indonesia border followed by the Sarawak-Indonesia border.

On the installation of the Automated Enforcement System (AES) in Sarawak, Akhir clarified that it came under the jurisdiction of the Road and Transport Department which would decide where the cameras would be installed.

What do you think of this story?

Sad(67%)

Great(33%)

Angry(0%)

Nothing(0%)

Interesting(0%)

Excerpt from:
'Human behaviour leading cause of accidents' - The Borneo Post

People are taking actions to combat behaviors they see as harmful to the environment.As the climate changes and natural resources deplete, its necessary for people to take responsibility for,and action against, harmful human behaviors.James Farmer is one of those people.

Farmer,a professor in the School of Public Health, is one of five recipients of IUs Outstanding Junior Faculty for 2016-2017 award. The award is given to tenure track faculty members,who are working on nationally recognized research.

Farmerresearches sustainable behavior and decision-making at the Human Dimensions Lab. The lab researchers concentrate on food and farming systems as well as natural resource sustainability.

Farmer said the research is a collaborative effort between undergraduate, graduateand post-doctoralstudents as well as many colleagues.

This isnt just James Farmer, he said. This is a total group effort by really dedicated, brilliant people.

He and other researchersat the lab work to understand human behavior and how it affects the environment, he said,as this understanding is necessary to develop management and policy tactics to protect the environment.

The researchers are also interested in understanding the perceptions of municipal park professionals pertaining to climate change and how these perceptions affect the general population.

Municipal parks manage about 50 percent of the urban tree canopy, he said. We need to better understand their role in making cities habitable in the future with climate change issues.

Farmer said if parks arent implementing adaptation strategies, individual citizens will be less likely to change their behavior as well. However, if people adopt eco-friendly behavior to diminish the effects of climate change, it is typically a result of them experiencing climate change themselves, he said.

If one is experiencing what he or sheperceives to be acts of climate change, theymore apt to accept it on an individual level, he said.

Farmer received his bachelors, mastersand doctoral degrees from IU, but said his passion for nature developed much earlier in his life.

I grew up playing in the woods, he said. I lived in the same house in the woods with a creek in my front yard, until I moved into Willkie my freshman year.

Farmer said he played outdoors often, if not every day, as a child and was involved in Boy Scouts and Future Farmers of America, so studying natural resources has always made sense for him.

However, he said he had never thought about studying food systems until ten years ago when he listened to Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Farmer said he had recently started considering what he and his family were eating and found the social factors behind food consumption interesting.

He and his wife began attending Community Supported Agriculture events, where people buy food from farmers. Here he met a graduate student who was studying food systems, which made him realize it was a possibility.

If she can study this, I can study this, he said. So, she and I collaborated on a grant to study famers markets and CSAs.

One aspect of food systems Farmer is studying is the barriers that exist for people to attain local food. He said there are two main barriers: cultural and economic.

Farmer said a common critique he and other researchers make of farmers markets is that the primary demographic is white, upper-middle class because they typically have more privilege, thus dont have the limitations lower class minorities have.

You can improve a system by critically reflecting on a system, he said. Thats what we try to do. Local foods not just panacea. Its part of a movement to improve food sovereignty, to improve ecological systems.

Like what you are reading? Support independent, award-winning college journalism on this site. Donate here.

Here is the original post:
Professor researches effects of human behavior - Indiana Daily Student

By Walter Williams / Creators News Service

Profiling is needlessly a misunderstood concept. What's called profiling is part of the optimal stock of human behavior and something we all do. Let's begin by describing behavior that might come under the heading of profiling.

Prior to making decisions, people seek to gain information. To obtain information is costly, requiring the expenditure of time and/or money. Therefore, people seek to find ways to economize on information costs. Let's try simple examples.

You are a manager of a furniture moving company and seek to hire 10 people to load and unload furniture onto and off trucks. Twenty people show up for the job, and they all appear to be equal except by sex. Ten are men, and 10 are women. Whom would you hire? You might give them all tests to determine how much weight they could carry under various conditions, such as inclines and declines, and the speed at which they could carry. To conduct such tests might be costly. Such costs could be avoided through profiling that is, using an easily observable physical attribute, such as a person's sex, as a proxy for unobserved attributes, such as endurance and strength. Though sex is not a perfect predictor of strength and endurance, it's pretty reliable.

Imagine that you're a chief of police. There has been a rash of auto break-ins by which electronic equipment has been stolen. You're trying to capture the culprits. Would you have your officers stake out and investigate residents of senior citizen homes? What about spending resources investigating men and women 50 years of age or older? I'm guessing there would be greater success capturing the culprits by focusing police resources on younger people and particularly young men. The reason is that breaking in to autos is mostly a young man's game. Should charges be brought against you because, as police chief, you used the physical attributes of age and sex as a crime tool? Would it be fair for people to accuse you of playing favorites by not using investigative resources on seniors and middle-aged adults of either sex even though there is a non-zero chance that they are among the culprits?

Physicians routinely screen women for breast cancer and do not routinely screen men. The American Cancer Society says that the lifetime risk of men getting breast cancer is about 0.1 percent. Should doctors and medical insurance companies be prosecuted for the discriminatory practice of prescribing routine breast cancer screening for women but not for men?

Some racial and ethnic groups have higher incidence and mortality from various diseases than the national average. The rates of death from cardiovascular diseases are about 30 percent higher among black adults than among white adults. Cervical cancer rates are five times greater among Vietnamese women in the U.S. than among white women. Pima Indians of Arizona have the world's highest known diabetes rates. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as it is among white men. Using a cheap-to-observe attribute, such as race, as a proxy for a costly-to-observe attribute, such as the probability of some disease, can assist medical providers in the delivery of more effective medical services. For example, just knowing that a patient is a black man causes a physician to be alert to the prospect of prostate cancer. The unintelligent might call this racial profiling, but it's really prostate cancer profiling.

In the real world, there are many attributes correlated with race and sex. Jews are 3 percent of the U.S. population but 35 percent of our Nobel Prize winners. Blacks are 13 percent of our population but about 74 percent of professional basketball players and about 69 percent of professional football players. Male geniuses outnumber female geniuses 7-to-1. Women have wider peripheral vision than men. Men have better distance vision than women.

The bottom line is that people differ significantly by race and sex. Just knowing the race or sex of an individual may on occasion allow us to guess about something not readily observed.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Williams, see http://www.creators.com.

Continue reading here:
Column: 'Profiling' is a normal part of human behavior - Burlington Times News

If you were to eat, say, another human being, how many calories would you be taking in? Thats a valid question not only for health-conscious people, but for anthropologists, too. You see, our human ancestors were cannibals but we dont really know why. Did they kill and eat each other like they would a mammoth or a wholly rhino for the meat? Or were they practicing some sort of religious ritual?

To answer that question, James Cole, a senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of Brighton, looked into the nutritional value of a human being and then compared it to that of other animals our ancestors dined on. He found that eating a man provides fewer calories than gobbling down a mammoth, bison, or red deer. And that suggests that our ancestors ate each other not for nutrition but for some other purpose maybe as a form of funerary or cultural ritual. The findings were published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

Was it some sort of religious ritual?

Today, cannibalism is a taboo (although its still practiced by some remote tribes). But we have evidence that our prehistoric ancestors including Neanderthals dined on human flesh. All over Europe, bones of early humans, collectively called hominins, show butchering marks similar to those found on animal remains. Some hominin bones are clearly chewed, or broken to extract the marrow; sometimes the base of the skull is missing, meaning someone was trying to get to the brain. Researchers mostly believe that early humans were eating the dead because they provided easy access to tasty steaks, Cole says. But there are still questions about how often we practiced cannibalism and why.

In modern humans, cannibalism happens for a variety of reasons: some people have resorted to eating human flesh after surviving plane crashes; in some cultures, the dead were eaten as part of ritualistic process; other times, dining on humans is a sign of sociopathic behavior (think Hannibal Lecter). So how do we know that cannibalism in early humans doesnt have some meaning other than pure nutrition? Cole wanted to know, and thought of answering the question by calculating the nutritional value of humans vs. animals.

Hes bringing a different perspective to the question, says Hlne Rougier, an associate professor of anthropology at California State University, Northridge, who did not work on the study. Its an interesting approach.

A man is 125,822 calories

To calculate the calories of a human being, Cole looked at several studies done in the 1940s and 50s that analyzed the protein and fat content of different parts of the human body. From that information, he could calculate how many calories you get from a one-pound heart (650), a four-pound liver (2,569), and three pounds of nerve tissue (2,001). After combining all organs together, you can basically slap a nutritional label on a human corpse that reads: 125,822 calories. At least, within the constraints of those 1940s and 50s studies. (They analyzed a total of four men, ranging from 35 to 60 years old, and weighing an average of 145 pounds, so Coles caloric count only applies to male Homo sapiens with those parameters.)

Cole then wanted to compare our nutritional value to that of other animals known to be eaten by early humans. Again, he pulled from the published literature, and calculated how many calories you could get from the muscle mass of 20 ancient animals. (No information for internal organs exists, Cole says.) He found that the muscles of a mammoth would provide 3,600,000 calories, woolly rhinos 1,260,000 calories, and red deer 163,680 calories. In comparison, a mans muscles can get you only 32,376 calories. We just arent that nutritionally viable, Cole says.

So if eating a man isnt that nutritious, why in the world would our ancestors spend time and resources to hunt other hominins that are just as smart just to get dinner? Cannibalism must have had another purpose, Cole says, possibly one connected to warfare or religion. Other researchers think those are valid conclusions. There can be a cultural explanation for all of these episodes of cannibalism, Rougier says. But thats not a completely new conclusion, she says. For years now, weve gotten more and more evidence that early humans like the Neanderthals were actually quite complex. So its totally plausible that they ate human flesh for more than just gobbling down some juicy meat.

The problem, however, is that we might never know and we certainly dont know now. Im not sure the evidence can really help to pick one or the other, says Silvia Bello of Londons Natural History Museum, who researches the evolution of human behavior. In fact, we cant even say whether some of the early humans that were eaten were hunted, or died of natural causes and were then turned into meals. And every instance of cannibalism would have happened under different circumstances, Cole says. But the new data should be taken into account when analyzing cases of prehistoric cannibalism, Rougier says.

After all, understanding why early humans sometimes ate one another will help us better understand their behavior, beliefs, and social interactions. Plus, theres something morbidly engrossing about Neanderthals butchering hominin bones in a cave thousands of years ago and that perverse fascination is what drew Cole into studying this in the first place. Its like a car crash, he says, you cant stop looking.

Go here to read the rest:
How many calories is that human? A nutritional guide for prehistoric ... - The Verge

We'll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor. Now brace yourself before reading further. Ready for this? Not one, but TWO studies linking violent video games to real-life violent tendencies have been retracted. Granted, that still leaves about a trillion more, but it's a start, right?

The first of those studies is titled "Boom, Headshot!" It was published in the Journal of Communication Research five years ago and it looked at the "effect of video game play and controller type on firing aim and accuracy." Not without controversy, the study concluded that first person shooters were essentially training gamers to become skilled gunmen in real life. Because you know, mashing a mouse or gamepad button while aiming with an analog stick is exactly like the real thing. Or not.

"He wants to discredit my research and ruin my reputation," Bushman said.

The Journal of Communication Research ultimately retracted the study this past January.

"A Committee of Initial Inquiry at Ohio State University recommended retracting this article after being alerted to irregularities in some variables of the data set by Drs. Markey and Elson in January 2015," the retraction notice read. "Unfortunately, the values of the questioned variables could not be confirmed because the original research records were unavailable."

While that might have been tough luck for Bushman, it wasn't the only controversial study of his to be scrutinized and eventually retracted. In another paper published in Gifted Child Quarterly in 2016, Bushman and three other researchers studied the "effects of violent media on verbal task performance in gifted and general cohort children." They noted a substantial (and temporary) drop in verbal skills in children after subjecting them to 12 minutes of a violent cartoon.

Joseph Hilgard, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, had doubts about the study. When looking into the matter, he noted that Bushman and his colleagues were forthcoming but couldn't provide details on the study's data collection process. The person who collected the data lived in Turkey and has been out of contact with the group. As a result, it too was retracted.

"As the integrity of the data could not be confirmed, the journal has determined, and the co-authors have agreed, to retract the study," the retraction notice said.

It's a tough break for Bushman, but a good day for gamers.

Continue reading here:
Surprised? Studies Linking Violent Video Games To Real-World Human Behavior Have Been Retracted - Hot Hardware