In a research essay published recently 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 and recommends a series of collective actions necessary to stem their spread.

As reported by the Entomological Society of America, 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 recently 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:

Regular, large-scale, and loosely regulated movement of bee colonies for commercial pollination. (For instance, in February 2016 alone, of the 2.66 million managed bee colonies in the United States, 1.8 million were transported to California for almond crop pollination.).

Carelessness in the application of integrated pest management principles leading to overuse of pesticides and antibiotics, resulting in increased resistance to them among honey bee parasites and pathogens such as the Varroa destructor mite and the American Foul Brood bacterium (Paenibacillus larvae). The international trade in honey bees and honey bee products that has enabled the global spread of pathogens such as varroa destructor, tracheal mite (Acarapis woodi), Nosema cerana, Small Hive Beetle (Aethina tumida), and the fungal disease chalkbrood (Ascosphaera apis).

Lack of skill or dedication among hobbyist beekeepers to adequately inspect and manage colonies for disease. Owen offers several suggestions for changes in human behavior to improve honey bee health, including: Stronger regulation both of global transport of honey bees and bee products and of migratory beekeeping practices within countries for commercial pollination.

Greater adherence to integrated pest management practices among both commercial and hobbyist beekeepers.

Increased education of beekeepers on pathogen management (perhaps requiring such education for registration as a beekeeper).

Deeper support networks for hobby beekeepers, aided by scientists, beekeeping associations, and government.

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.

Read the original:
Human Behavior Hurting Bees, Researchers Say - PCT Magazine

The term human terrain is often used within the military. Individual Marines are encouraged to understand more about a local population they interact with, either on a deployment or while on liberty.

At the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter course, we specifically dive into this topic to help Marines better understand, to identify, and most importantly to predict human behavior.

For several hundreds of years scientists have studied our behavior as a species. Unilaterally, they conclude that we are predictable as creatures of habit that set patterns and are driven, at times, by uncontrollable responses in the brain.

Combat Hunter highlights these patterns to help recognize and explain why we act or react in a specific predictive pattern. Behavior that is consistent becomes predictable, which directly relates to military operations overseas or while on leave and liberty at home.

Imagine a popular singer visits your local diner and the fuss that creates. People are swarming and asking for autographs and selfies. We call this a Proxemic pull: We are pulled into situations we are interested in or feel safe around.

Conversely, if a crowd of Marines having a smoke see the first sergeant walking toward them, they scatter quickly. This is a Proxemic push: We push away from encounters we dont like or when we sense danger.

A crowd of people conducting normal business in a market overseas will show the same pushes and pulls that can be recognized and observed. When these occur, they have meaning and are not just random.

Thats where the so what? comes in. Why did the locals grab their kids and bolt? What caused the men to congregate only around a car that just pulled up? How come yesterday the locals were smiling and shaking our hands, yet today they keep their distance and are quickly closing up the market?

Every one of us knows we like our space. We dont like strangers getting too close to us, so we move out of the way or cross the street to get away from them. Remember the last time you were in an elevator: Where did the next person stand when they entered? Typically they take a position furthest from another person, and so on as others enter the elevator.

This is another example of proximity or how we use the space around us. It is predictable, and a Marine can observe when a meeting takes place between more than one person: Do they know each other or not? Is one acting submissive or dominant over the other? Are they interested or uninterested? Are they acting comfortable or uncomfortable? This behavior can be seen in a crowd or in an individual and give a read to the others intent.

Anybody can practice this by taking the time to observe people around them in their daily life. The next time you are in a mall, for example, take a seat in the food court or a bench and just watch people. Pick out who is together, who are just dating, the loners, who seems to be in a hurry, how most patrons dress, who is acting a bit odd, and determine why they stand out to you. By practicing this, you will be surprised how quickly you build file folders, or memories, of specific behavior. When you notice it again during one of your future travels, you will key in on it instantly.

People across the globe are wired the same on the inside-the culture may be different, but understanding what to expect behaviorally from people will help you to predict what they will do.

Human behavior is consistent and predictable.Understanding and studying this behavior will equip a Marine with a better understanding of the human terrain they are faced with no matter where they are deployed.

Gus Mingus is a retired Force Recon Marine and infantry officer who currently teaches profiling as an instructor at Combat Hunter, Advanced Infantry Training Battalion, School of Infantry-East, Camp Geiger, North Carolina. Opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

Link:
OPINION: How Marines can better predict human behavior - Marine Corps Times

The only market-affecting factor that is truly constant, is Human behavior. It, never changes. Human behavior is behind sentiment readings which always show confidence at market tops, and fear as markets grind their way higher toward tops. Human psychology is also behind the fundamental underpinnings of markets; it is Humans who make the decisions that result in increasing metrics such as industrial production and GAAP earnings. All of this can be visualized as repetitive patterns throughout the past. In this piece, we present the historical patterns of both sentiment and fundamental indexes and how they correlate to the S&P 500 index.

Sentiment (Emotions)

The AAII investor sentiment survey correlates strongly with S&P 500 tops; Major tops occur when investor bullish sentiment is above 50%, and bearish sentiment is less than 30%. In other words, tops happen when investors are confident (not fearful) about the market, and at the moment, the bullish sentiment is only at 29% while the bearish sentiment is at 37%. This correlates more with the beginning of a bull market than it does the end of one (chart below).

The National Association of Active Investment managers (NAAIM) survey index, although exhibiting wide short-term swings, has its 50 MA rising which corresponds with a rising S&P 500 (chart below).

These levels of investor sentiment are not normally exhibited at market tops.

Fundamentals

While current PE ratios for the equity markets have produced much fearful digital ink, the more fundamental measure, GAAP earnings, is showing a renewed surge in strength (blue-colored oval on the chart below) which has coincided with the start of bull markets going back three decades (pink-rectangles on the chart below).

The chart below also dispels the myth that rising interest rates kill bull markets. Notice how the FED rate was increased during all bull markets since 1989, except for the last one (2009-2015). The latter was certainly an anomaly, but as the chart below shows, the FED is now starting to normalize rates once again just as a new bull market gets underway.

The chart above, also demonstrates how bull markets coincide with rising Industrial Production (dark-green line). Industrial production is now turning back up after a two-year slump, which is what would be expected at the start of a bull market---not at the end of one.

In conclusion, contrary to the majority of current popular market-analysis, we see evidence coming from both sentiment and fundamental metrics that point to the beginning of a bull market, not the end of one.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Originally posted here:
Not Only Is This Not The End Of A Bull Market, We Think It Is The Beginning Of One - Seeking Alpha

When it comes to your brains ability to digest, process, and spit out a good decision in the fastest possible time, you peak at 25, according to a study published in PLOS on Thursday titled Human Behavioral Complexity Peaks at Age 25.

After that, our neural processing of rapid-fire, high cognition goes down, says Hector Zenil, a computer scientist at Stockholms Karolinska Institute and a co-author of the study. You decline very slowly, he assures Inverse. But at 60, you see a strong decline in cognitive tasks like solving programs, puzzles, and problems.

To be clear, what Zenil and his colleagues are measuring is not impulsivity or intelligence, but rather how quickly and well a person can recognize random patterns, what Zenil describes as an algorithmic nature of human behavior that had not been explored before. That might seem like a useless skill, but think about how much of your daily life relies on figuring out patterns memorizing phone numbers or addresses, figuring out which spot on a train you can stand in, zigzagging home in a storm, figuring out which portion of a crowded gym floor to claim as your own. These sorts of patterns play out in fields like cryptography, hacking, and yes, computer science.

The seemingly simple task of making fast decisions out of random pattern recognition is a key indicator of neural health, and Zenil says that the data clearly points to 25-year-olds as the possessors of peak behavioral complexity.

This is a sort of reverse Turing test, where we tested the likelihood of human-generated patterns versus the likelihood of computer program-generated patterns, Zenil says. At a certain age, people beat computer programs best, with some people generating the most random patterns at 25 that only the most diligent computer programs were able to generate.

This reverse Turing test asked 3,249 participants aged between 9 and 91 and recruited through social media, radio, and a popular science magazine ad to complete five tests that looked at how quickly and well participants performed random item generation tasks: creating a series of coin tosses that looked random to everyone else but wasnt; guessing which card would appear next after a shuffle; creating a random-looking sequence that resembled what a person would roll with dice; pointing to one of nine circles appearing repeatedly on a screen; and filling a grid that looked randomly patterned.

Heres a video of how scientists implemented the test.

Zenil says that these seemingly inane puzzles were a reflection of chaos theory, a branch of mathematics that deals with how sensitive, complex systems can drastically alter with the slightest change. They were all given the same instructions, Zenil says. No other factor other than age produced these patterns with statistic randomness.

Zenil and his team made sure to isolate other factors that might have played a role in pointing to behavioral complexity superiority. They checked to see if language and therefore culture played a role, testing in Spanish, English, French, and German with large swaths of people who spoke those languages natively and another group whose second languages were those languages. That didnt make a difference. The team isolated education, which is correlated with economic class, and found that that didnt make a difference either. They considered gender and found that, nope, that didnt make a difference either.

In other words, it really was age that correlated with behavioral complexity, and 25 emerged as the peak age for these sorts of random decisions.

So what purpose do fast pattern recognition skills serve? If youre an animal, it means you can outsmart predators who might try to hunt and devour you you can slip into brush, take an unexpected turn, hide in a crevice. For humans, there is some evolutionary advantage to thinking fast in randomness, Zenil says, arguing that despite us not having to worry about predators or other clans of traveling nomads attacking us at night, fast random thinking can be useful in a modern economy that values creativity. The more randomness you produce, the more access you have to more powerful tools to come up with something new, he says, pointing to jobs ranging from the stock market to advertising to even science. The ability to switch methods quickly in a fast-paced world in a creative way is helpful and can pay dividends down the line.

For those freaking out about the state of their neural decline right now, rest assured its not all bad news. At 25, after all, youre still growing out of the impulsiveness that probably defined your puberty and youre coming into your adult brain, going through a second puberty of sorts on a neurological level. The tradeoff of being able to make random decisions so effectively at 25 is the fact that you really dont know much about the world, Zenil points out. This isnt just because youre wiser as an older person; as you age, youre better able to corral your brain into creative zones and know where you excel in concentrating your efforts. At 25, this isnt the case. And thats a tradeoff thats not really bad, Zenil points out.

Photos via Derbeth / Flickr

Tanya Basu is the Science editor at Inverse. Her writing focuses on the social sciences and behavior. Now based in Brooklyn, she will always call Chicago home and never be too full for one more taco.

Go here to read the rest:
Human Behavioral Complexity Peaks at Age 25 - Inverse

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