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

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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.

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'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.

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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.

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

Any good wine snob knows that, despite the terms intended negative connotation, the label should really be worn like a badge of honor. Sure, some beer lovers or, even worse, casual wine drinkers might find that snobbery worthy of derision, but they clearly dont understand the difficulty, dexterity and dedication necessary to reach that level. Thankfully, however, a scientist has finally tossed us wine snobs a life preservera Yale neuroscientist nonetheless. In his recently published book, Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine, Gordon Shepherd argues that wine tasting actually stimulates your brain more than allegedly highfalutin activities like listening to music or even tackling a complicated math problem. Remember that time you did trigonometry while sipping wine with Beethoven playing the background? Thats basically the closest youve ever come to being Albert Einstein.

According to Shepherd, tasting wine engages more of our brain than any other human behavior. His book essentially an oenologic extension of his previous publication, Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters delves into this process with extreme detail, from the fluid dynamics of how wine is manipulated in our mouths; to the effect of its appearance, smell and mouthfeel; to the way our brains process and share all that information. He suggests that unlike something like math that utilizes a specific source of knowledge, wine tasting engages us more completely. Speaking to NPR, he explained how even basic steps of wine tasting can be more complicated than they seem. You don't just put wine in your mouth and leave it there, Shepherd said. You move it about and then swallow it, which is a very complex motor act.

However, possibly the most complex part of wine tastingone of Shepherds central points and the subtitle of his bookis his argument than when we drink wine, our brains are actually need to create the flavors for us to enjoy. The analogy one can use is color, he explained to NPR. The objects we see don't have color themselves, light hits them and bounces off. It's when light strikes our eyes that it activates systems in the brain that create color from those different wavelengths. Similarly, the molecules in wine don't have taste or flavor, but when they stimulate our brains, the brain creates flavor the same way it creates color.

Its a pretty intense philosophy to wrap your head around. However, I will tell you, one time I drank so much wine that all the sights, smells and flavors of wine completely disappeared. So maybe hes on to something.

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Wine Tasting Engages Your Brain More Than Any Other Behavior ... - Food & Wine

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.

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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.

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

At a point during human prehistory, hunters' reliance on the spear-thrower, or atlatl, shifted to another kind of weapon the self-bow.

This change happened on multiple continents (though bows never really caught on in Australia, where atlatls tended to yield only later, to firearms).

The first bows we know of conclusively, from archaeology, come from pine arrow shafts found at a bog site in Germany called Stellmoor, dating to around 11,000 years ago. Though, it's possible bows were in use much earlier in Africa.

Why did the bow replace the atlatl, and what social consequences may have followed from that shift? These are questions being asked by University of Wyoming PhD candidate in anthropology Brigid Sky Grund in a new paper in American Anthropologist, from which I took the above information.

As Grund notes in the article, most theories about this shift have pointed to the bow's greater accuracy and faster reload rate in hunting smaller fauna or in warfare. But Grund herself is looking instead at a different factor: the comparative learnability of each weapon. She writes:

"Most studies of bow and atlatl performance characteristics focus on the inherent qualities of the weapons themselves, neglecting to consider that functional weapons are wielded by capable individuals of various ages, sexes, strengths, dexterities, and skill levels."

I like this insight, because it puts people, in all our formidable variation, back into the equation, front and center. It's a dynamic-systems analysis if you will, in which a weapon and its user are inseparable.

In her analysis of learnability, Grund uses modern-day, long-term data sets up to eight years' worth from competitors participating in the World Atlatl Association International Standard Accuracy Contest (ISAC) and the Society for Creative Anachronism Inter-Kingdom Archery Competition (IAC).

Because she was able to track individual competitors' scores over time, she could see something about the rapidity of the learning curve for each weapon. As it turned out, individuals' atlatl scores increase rapidly right from the start, whereas people's bow scores don't in fact only in the fourth year of competition do bow users begin to approach maximum skill level.

In addition, youth scores from the two competitions, taken together with anthropological data on real-world hunting-weapon use, show that "biological constraints may preclude juveniles from wielding bows until later ages than atlatls."

Grund thinks, then, that less strong weapon users in the past based on contemporary differences in strength and dexterity in men and women, this group was likely to have included some women as well as juveniles may have been more likely to learn how to use an atlatl effectively. The stronger, skilled members of a population would, then, be the ones more likely to readily learn how to use a bow successfully.

In an email message last week, Grund elaborated on this point:

"If entire family groups comprised of people of varying ages, sexes, and strengths wield projectile technologies as part of hunting parties, atlatls may be favored over bows because they are accessible to wider segments of human populations.

On the other hand, if only a few individuals from a family or cultural group are required to participate in hunting behavior, then the exclusivity of bow technology might not matter, since projectiles would only be wielded by a few hunting specialists within that group."

It's that line of reasoning that leads Grund straight into the realm of prehistoric social behavior. In her paper, she concludes that the bow's favoring of highly skilled weapon users probably "exacerbated prehistoric social disparities and likely catalyzed emergent age- and-sex-based social divisions in prehistory."

If she's right, that's a broadly important finding in anthropology, because it clues us in to a cascade of major social changes in human groups over time.

But what about our why question: Why the shift from an easier-to-use to a harder-to-use hunting weapon?

Echoing the behavioral-ecology perspective in her paper, Grund said (excerpted from a lengthier answer):

"Chronologically, in many regions of the world, the adoption of bow technology seems to be coarsely correlated with a broadening of diet breadth and an increased preponderance of small game hunting.

Many human behavioral ecology studies of modern foragers have shown that under broad diet breadth and/or high resource stress conditions, the sexual division of labor increases. Therefore, a shift towards hunting smaller game under many prehistoric scenarios was likely associated with an increase in the division of labor, simply as a product of fluctuating resource exploitation strategies and dietary needs."

As she continues, Grund explains more precisely where the atlatl-to-bow shift comes in:

"Increased divisions of labor associated with broadened diet breadth and the appearance of hunting 'specialists' might cause a shift from atlatl to bow technology, and, reciprocally, the adoption of bow technology might inherently intensify emergent divisions of labor since it is less accessible to people of varying ages, sexes, strengths, and/or dexterities.

Though I haven't disentangled cause and effect yet, it seems that both the shift from atlatl to bow and chronologically associated fluctuations in resource exploitation strategies likely worked together to increase divisions of labor in prehistoric societies."

An acknowledgment that cause and effect can't easily be distinguished in this case is welcome. Still, I think Grund is on to something by thinking broadly about generalists versus specialists in weapon use.

In our prehistory, at certain times and places, individuals became more specialized for certain tasks that others in the group couldn't, or didn't, carry out and this in turn set social changes into effect. Precisely how human groups might be affected by the exclusion of certain group members from effective use of hunting technology such as bows may vary by region and will require new hypotheses and further work.

While discussing all this, I learned that for Grund, atlatls aren't merely academic. She threw her first atlatl dart back in high school, continued to experiment with atlatls during archaeology fieldwork, and in 2011 took first place in the novice/"non-regular competitor" women's division of an informal atlatl competition organized by the World Atlatl Association and the Wyoming Archaeological Society.

"We shot at homemade Pleistocene animal targets, including a paper mch mammoth," Grund explained.

That paper mch mammoth isn't credited in Grund's American Anthropologist paper. But who knows? Grund's hands-on experience may have played a role in her coming up with an innovative hypothesis about hunting patterns in our past.

Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara's new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape

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Adoption Of Bow Use In Ancient Hunting May Have Set Off Societal Changes - New Hampshire Public Radio

The internet dominates our world and each one of us is leaving a larger digital footprint as more time passes. Those footprints are ripe for studying, experts say.

A new paper urges sociologists and social psychologists to focus on developing online research studies with the help of big data to advance theories of social interaction and structure. (Image credit: pixelfit / Getty Images)

In a recently published paper, a group of Stanford sociology experts encourage other sociologists and social psychologists to focus on developing online research studies with the help of big data in order to advance the theories of social interaction and structure.

Companies have long used information they gather about their online customers to get insights into performance of their products, a process called A/B testing. Researchers in other fields, such as computer science, have also been taking advantage of the growing amount of data.

But the standard for many experiments on social interactions remains limited to face-to-face laboratory studies, said Paolo Parigi, a lead author of the study, titled Online Field Experiments: Studying Social Interactions in Context.

Parigi, along with co-authors Karen Cook, a professor of sociology, and Jessica Santana, a graduate student in sociology, are urging more sociology researchers to take advantage of the internet.

What I think is exciting is that we now have data on interactions to a level of precision that was unthinkable 20 years ago, said Parigi, who is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

In the new study, the researchers make a case for online field experiments that could be embedded within the structure of existing communities on the internet.

The researchers differentiate online field experiments from online lab experiments, which create a controlled online situation instead of using preexisting environments that have engaged participants.

In their new study, sociology Professor Karen Cook and her co-authors make a case for online field experiments that could be embedded within the structure of existing communities on the internet. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

The internet is not just another mechanism for recruiting more subjects, Parigi said. There is now space for what we call computational social sciences that lies at the intersection of sociology, psychology, computer science and other technical sciences, through which we can try to understand human behavior as it is shaped and illuminated by online platforms.

As part of this type of experiment, researchers would utilize online platforms to take advantage of big data and predictive algorithms. Recruiting and retaining participants for such field studies is therefore more challenging and time-consuming because of the need for a close partnership with the platforms.

But online field experiments allow researchers to gain an enhanced look at certain human behaviors that cannot be replicated in a laboratory environment, the researchers said.

For example, theories about how and why people trust each other can be better examined in the online environments, the researchers said, because the context of different complex social relationships is recorded. In laboratory experiments, researchers can only isolate the type of trust that occurs between strangers, which is called thin trust.

Most recently, Cook and Parigi have used the field experiment design to research the development of trust in online sharing communities, such as Airbnb, a home and room rental service. The results of the study are scheduled to be published later this year. More information about that experiment is available at stanfordexchange.org.

Its a new social world out there, Cook said, and it keeps expanding.

Using big data does come with a greater need for ethical responsibility. In order for the online studies of social interactions to be as accurate as possible, researchers require access to private information for their participants.

One solution that protects participants privacy is linking their information, such as names or email addresses, to unique identifiers, which could be a set of letters or numbers assigned to each research subject. The administrators of the platform would then provide those identifiers to researchers without compromising privacy.

Its also important to make sure researchers acquire the permission of the online platforms participants. Transparency is key in those situations, Cook said.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

See the article here:
Sociologists urge use of big data to study human interaction ... - Stanford University News

Dr. Allen Carl walks Nellie, a border collie mix, while his wife, Susan Ross, carries Stanley the Maltese in a sling on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union) less Dr. Allen Carl walks Nellie, a border collie mix, while his wife, Susan Ross, carries Stanley the Maltese in a sling on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times ... more

Dr. Allen Carl holds a roll of dog poop plastic bags on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Dr. Allen Carl holds a roll of dog poop plastic bags on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Dana Graupe poses with Monty, a 3-year-old St. Bernard mix, on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Dana Graupe poses with Monty, a 3-year-old St. Bernard mix, on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Stanley, a Maltese, in her preferred transportation mode, a dog sling carried by Susan Ross, on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Stanley, a Maltese, in her preferred transportation mode, a dog sling carried by Susan Ross, on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Susan Ross with Stanley, a Maltese, in his dog sling, where he falls asleep and snores on walks on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Susan Ross with Stanley, a Maltese, in his dog sling, where he falls asleep and snores on walks on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Susan Ross and her dogs Nellie and Stanley (in sling) meet Dana Graupe and her dog, Monty, on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Susan Ross and her dogs Nellie and Stanley (in sling) meet Dana Graupe and her dog, Monty, on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Albany's Washington Park. (Paul Grondahl/Special to the Times Union)

Roxie, Stella and Grace from the French bulldog-Boston terrier page on AlbanyDogs.net (Photo by Michael Kalin)

Roxie, Stella and Grace from the French bulldog-Boston terrier page on AlbanyDogs.net (Photo by Michael Kalin)

Caroline and Daisy, best companions for 14 years. (Caroline Grondahl)

Caroline and Daisy, best companions for 14 years. (Caroline Grondahl)

Caroline Grondahl on her 4th birthday, when she got Daisy as a surprise birthday present. (Paul Grondahl)

Caroline Grondahl on her 4th birthday, when she got Daisy as a surprise birthday present. (Paul Grondahl)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Daisy, an Australian shepherd mix (Photo couresy of Jake Dillon)

Max, a jumbo-sized Shetland sheepdog (Photo courtesy of Norma Chepaitis Shook)

Max, a jumbo-sized Shetland sheepdog (Photo courtesy of Norma Chepaitis Shook)

Max, a jumbo-sized Shetland sheepdog (Photo courtesy of Norma Chepaitis Shook)

Max, a jumbo-sized Shetland sheepdog (Photo courtesy of Norma Chepaitis Shook)

The best memory with Willow, a service dog at Pine Bush Elementary School (Drawing by Sanjana Stephen)

The best memory with Willow, a service dog at Pine Bush Elementary School (Drawing by Sanjana Stephen)

Micah the yellow Lab (Photo courtesy of Sue Raynis)

Micah the yellow Lab (Photo courtesy of Sue Raynis)

Micah the yellow Lab (Photo courtesy of Sue Raynis)

Micah the yellow Lab (Photo courtesy of Sue Raynis)

Minnie the shepherd mix on the dog bed she hated. (Photo courtesy of Claire Lynch)

Minnie the shepherd mix on the dog bed she hated. (Photo courtesy of Claire Lynch)

Minnie, a shepherd mix, enjoying Washington Park in Albany. (Photo courtesy of Claire Lynch)

Minnie, a shepherd mix, enjoying Washington Park in Albany. (Photo courtesy of Claire Lynch)

Jake the beagle with Kim Kendrick's son Michael. (Photo courtesy of Kim Kendrick)

Jake the beagle with Kim Kendrick's son Michael. (Photo courtesy of Kim Kendrick)

Tucker the cocker spaniel (Drawing by Conner Len)

Tucker the cocker spaniel (Drawing by Conner Len)

Bandit, a dog who thinks he's a cat. (Drawing by Lauren, a 5th grader at Pine Bush Elementary School)

Bandit, a dog who thinks he's a cat. (Drawing by Lauren, a 5th grader at Pine Bush Elementary School)

Gerty, my funny puppy (Drawing by Erika Para)

Gerty, my funny puppy (Drawing by Erika Para)

Gerty the Funny Puppy (Drawing by Erika, a 5th grader at Pine Bush Elementary School)

Gerty the Funny Puppy (Drawing by Erika, a 5th grader at Pine Bush Elementary School)

Precious, a cocker spaniel who lived up to her name. (Photo by Ed DerGurahian)

Precious, a cocker spaniel who lived up to her name. (Photo by Ed DerGurahian)

Precious, a beloved cocker spaniel and faithful companion. (Photo by Ed DerGurahian)

Precious, a beloved cocker spaniel and faithful companion. (Photo by Ed DerGurahian)

Kosmo the Sheltie was named after Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld show fame (Photo courtesy of Dianne L. Patterson)

Kosmo the Sheltie was named after Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld show fame (Photo courtesy of Dianne L. Patterson)

Kosmo the Sheltie was named after Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld show fame (Photo courtesy of Dianne L. Patterson)

Kosmo the Sheltie was named after Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld show fame (Photo courtesy of Dianne L. Patterson)

Raymond G. Shepherd as a young dog. (Photo courtesy of Dan Doyle)

Raymond G. Shepherd as a young dog. (Photo courtesy of Dan Doyle)

Raymond G. Shepherd at Lake Harris (Photo courtesy of Dan Doyle)

Raymond G. Shepherd at Lake Harris (Photo courtesy of Dan Doyle)

Red "The Houndicorn," a bloodhound. (Photo courtesy of Shelby Cady)

Red "The Houndicorn," a bloodhound. (Photo courtesy of Shelby Cady)

Red "The Houndicorn," a bloodhound. (Photo courtesy of Shelby Cady) ORG XMIT: Gf9lqfJtNms_KWVN14GS

Red "The Houndicorn," a bloodhound. (Photo courtesy of Shelby Cady) ORG XMIT: Gf9lqfJtNms_KWVN14GS

John Runfola's dog, Sailor Bob. (Courtesy John Runfola)

John Runfola's dog, Sailor Bob. (Courtesy John Runfola)

John Runfola's dog, Sailor Bob. (Courtesy John Runfola)

John Runfola's dog, Sailor Bob. (Courtesy John Runfola)

Scamp, a Schnoodle -- Schnauzer and poodle cross -- meets some children at Dr. Jonathan Pasternack's Delmar pediatric office. (Photo courtesy of Lois Pasternack)

Scamp, a Schnoodle -- Schnauzer and poodle cross -- meets some children at Dr. Jonathan Pasternack's Delmar pediatric office. (Photo courtesy of Lois Pasternack)

Lois Pasternack with Scamp, her Schnoodle. (Photo courtesy of Lois Pasternack)

Lois Pasternack with Scamp, her Schnoodle. (Photo courtesy of Lois Pasternack)

Maxwell, a black Lab/spaniel mix. (Photo courtesy of Connie Jo Fedorwich)

Maxwell, a black Lab/spaniel mix. (Photo courtesy of Connie Jo Fedorwich)

Maxwell, a black Lab/spaniel mix. (Photo courtesy of Connie Jo Fedorwich)

Maxwell, a black Lab/spaniel mix. (Photo courtesy of Connie Jo Fedorwich)

Simba, a Lab/chow mix (Photo courtesy of Clare Mertz)

Simba, a Lab/chow mix (Photo courtesy of Clare Mertz)

Clockwise from top, Jack Huber, Sunny and Julia Huber, at their home in Delmar in 2008.

Clockwise from top, Jack Huber, Sunny and Julia Huber, at their home in Delmar in 2008.

Jack Huber and Sunny, who can barely keep his eyes open, at their home in Delmar in 2007.

Jack Huber and Sunny, who can barely keep his eyes open, at their home in Delmar in 2007.

Julia Huber and Sunny at their home in Delmar in 2008.

Julia Huber and Sunny at their home in Delmar in 2008.

Syliva the bull terrier (Photo courtesy of Mark Schaming)

Syliva the bull terrier (Photo courtesy of Mark Schaming)

Kaiser Von Buckingham Streeter, the "King of Buckingham," after the Albany neighborhood pond. (Photo courtesy of Elmer Streeter)

Kaiser Von Buckingham Streeter, the "King of Buckingham," after the Albany neighborhood pond. (Photo courtesy of Elmer Streeter)

Rudy the beagle with a Stewart's milk carton (Photo courtesy of Gina Giuliano)

Rudy the beagle with a Stewart's milk carton (Photo courtesy of Gina Giuliano)

Rudy the beagle as a puppy (Photo courtesy of Gina Giuliano)

Rudy the beagle as a puppy (Photo courtesy of Gina Giuliano)

Nellie Bly, a black Lab mix (Photo courtesy of Holly McKenna)

Nellie Bly, a black Lab mix (Photo courtesy of Holly McKenna)

Nellie Bly, a black Lab mix (Photo courtesy of Holly McKenna)

Nellie Bly, a black Lab mix (Photo courtesy of Holly McKenna)

Daisy, Maggie and Kalie the German shorthaired pointers (Photos courtesy of Renee Pizzo-Roy)

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A psychologist, dog poop and human behavior - Albany Times Union