In 1962, a strange epidemic swept through several communities in Tanganyika, present-day Tanzania. It wasnt a virus, but laughter among teenage schoolgirls. The contagious laughter, which lasted for about two and a half years, afflicted about 1,000 people and forced at least 14 schools to temporarily shut down.

Experts later determined that the origin of the epidemic was psychological, perhaps related to stress caused by the presence of British colonialism. But such events have raised scientific questions about why humans cant control behaviors such as laughing, yawning, coughing and shivering and why they spread among groups of people.

We are a part of a human herd whose behavior is often the involuntary playing out of an ancient neurological script that is so familiar that it goes unnoticed, wrote neuroscientist Robert Provine in his book, "Curious Behavior."

Consider what is really happening when your body is hijacked by an observed yawn or you spontaneously join others in a communal chorus of ha-ha-ha," Provine wrote. "You dont decide to yawn or laugh contagiously. It just happens.

Provinediscovered that people are 30 times more likely to laugh around others than alone. To date, there has been much research thats observed socially contagious behaviors in humans and animals, but scientists are just starting to look into what makes them ripple through groups of people.

Empathy may not have much to do with it

Many studies have suggested that empathy could explain contagious yawning. A study published a year ago, for example, indicated that women are more susceptible to catch yawns than men. Researchers also noted that women score higher on empathy tests, and thought the two might be associated.

Another study published in 2008 found that dogs may yawn in response to their owners, but not to strangers or other dogs. Researchers wrote that because dogs are incredibly skilled at reading human cues and generally have unique social interactions with people, there is the potential that dogs may also have developed the capacity for empathy towards humans, and may catch human yawns.

Other studies, however, suggest that empathy is less significant in contagious behaviors than we might think. A paper in 2014 published by Duke University researchers, for example, analyzed various factors that influenced yawning among more than 300 human volunteers. Scientists considered a number of influencers such as empathy, energy levels and age. They saw that contagious yawning decreased among older people.

In our study, there was a connection between contagious yawning and empathy, but it was explained by a stronger connection between contagious yawning and age, said Elizabeth Cirulli, a geneticist at Duke University and an author of that paper.

Other research also showed that young children arent likely to catch yawns from other people, either.

Itch researchers at Washington University believe empathy has very little to do with such behaviors. This month, they published a study in the journal Science that showed that mice will scratch themselves in response to seeing videos of other mice that have chronic itch problems.

At the beginning, this [experiment] may sound like a crazy idea because, as you know, mice are nocturnal. They have very poor vision, said Zhou-Feng Chen, director for the schools Center for the Study of Itch.

Chen and his colleagues examined the brains of the non-itchy mice in the study and found that a specific

region, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, released a chemical thats been known to signal when theres an itch that needs to be scratched.

Basically, our study shows those kinds of contagious behaviors are instinctive behaviors and are hardwired into our neurocircuitry, Chen said.

However, more research is needed to understand exactly how involved the brain is when we uncontrollably copy each others behaviors. As Cirulli noted, other factors need to be examined. Empathy, she said, shouldnt be ruled out, but is likely just as connected to such behaviors as height is to weight.

I dont think empathy is totally unrelated, Cirulli said. Its just that its absolutely not everything thats going on with contagious yawning. In some cases, its a proxy for something else.

We behave like the pack to survive

In the animal kingdom, one principle that prevails is strength in numbers. Snow geese, for example, will fly in groups as large as 5,000. A pack of zebras will whine loudly when they detect a predator nearby.

Some scientists believe that humans evolved to uncontrollably copy others behavior, as a means of communicating important information.

You can imagine millions of years ago when animals lived widely and maybe living in places where there are parasites," Chen said. "If all the animals begin to scratch, it could mean the area that theyre in may be dangerous.

He further speculated that as scratching became a regular way to alarm others that they needed to leave certain environments, its possible that the behavior became innate and written into our genetics over time.

From an evolutionary point of view, contagious behaviors actually help animals to better survive because you dont have to learn everything from scratch, Chen said.

How the brain works

While it might seem frivolous to study why we catch yawns and participate in other kinds of unconsciously provoked micmicry, the research could provide fundamental insight into how our brains work and develop. For instance, a 2009 study by University of Zurich researchers showed that contagious yawning and laughing happened much less frequently with people who have schizophrenia. Yawning also spread much less among people with autism.

Such findings still need further research to be understood. However, its promising that contagious scratching is observed among mice, for example, since theyre often used as experimental subjects to understand brain diseases.

Reflecting on her contagious yawning study, Cirulli mused that it would be interesting to study how genetics might influence a persons susceptibility to this behavior and how that might be connected to neurological conditions.

Because big genetic studies have been done on schizophrenia and autism and other diseases, you can calculate someones risks of developing those diseases from their genetic information and you can see if its associated with contagious yawning, she said.

Follow Eli Chen on Twitter:@StoriesByEli

Read this article:
Contagious yawning, laughing and scratching gives clues to how the human brain works - KRCU

Why did human beings evolve to be nice to one another? From a scientific standpoint, it doesn't make much sense for us to go out of our way to help others, especially when we don't receive any direct benefit. But new research suggests there may be an evolutionary reason that kindness exists, and it may have more to do with microbes than genetics.

Most theories that attempt to explain the evolution of altruism focus on the individual; some people see the benefit of helping the community to help their own species. These theories assume that altruism is genetically encoded that some people just have bigger hearts than others, and that quality is determined by the genes passed down to them. But a new study has found that altruism may have less to do with the kindness in someone's heart and more to do with the number of microbes in their gut.

Researchers at Tel-Aviv University in Israel recently took a look at the role that microbes play in human behavior to determine the evolutionary benefit of altruistic behavior. We already know that viruses and bacteria can change a host's behavior. Rabies, for example, can make an individual more aggressive. There are certain parasites that can cause their insect hosts to commit suicide, and there are types of plasma that can manipulate their bacterial hosts into cooperating with one another.

The new study, which was published in a recent issue of Nature, proposed that microbes could make humans act altruistically, meaning it's microbes that explain and determine the evolution of human kindness.

Using a series of computer models, researchers tested a number of scenarios involving interactions between humans, some with altruism-inducing microbes and others without. They found that humans could not only be influenced by microbes to act altruistically, but that doing so would help promote the transfer of these microbes from one individual to another. In other words, microbes may make their human hosts act altruistically to give the microbe a better chance of spreading to the new host. That's evolution.

Researchers also compared the altruism-inducing microbe theory with the possibility that niceness is simply encoded in our genes. In these models, they found that genetically-encoded altruism would not evolve over time as it would with a microbial influence. They also noted that while genetic kindness could persist from generation to generation, microbe-induced niceness is much more likely to spread to the next generation.

"I believe the most important aspect of the work is that it changes the way we think about altruism from centering on the animals (or humans) performing the altruistic acts to their microbes," Dr. Lilach Hadany, a researcher of population genetics and evolution theory at Tel Aviv University and a lead researcher for the study, told Phys.org.

The microbial theory explains why altruism tends to "spread" within a community. One act of kindness often causes a snowballing of such acts within a population. That wouldn't be caused by genetics, but it does make sense when you consider the possibility that altruism is caused by microbes.

Can microbes make us better people? It's certainly possible. And if we have to "catch" something while interacting with another human being, wouldn't it be nice if that something was a dose of kindness?

Continued here:
Can microbes make us better people? - Mother Nature Network (blog)

Imagine a teeter totter (or seesaw, if you will). One one side, sits a technical security practitioner. On the other side, sits a person with advanced skills in changing behaviors and community engagement. In order for the teeter totter to stay level, each person needs to have equal experience, or one needs to move further to the center to achieve the desired equilibrium. If one level of experience too demonstrably outweighs the other, the right balance of talent won't be achieved.

Talent for what? The oft-misunderstood role of the security awareness professional.

Security awareness at its most basic level is the act of applying technical security knowledge to programs and activities that raise the awareness -- and diminish risky behaviors -- of employees within a given organization. This includes everything from phishing and password test programs, to community engagement with educated practitioners teaching less security savvy users how to change their behavior to better secure protect themselves or their companies.

It's long been stated that security is not convenient, and for many years cybersecurity teams were challenged with addressing the human element of security risk (patch your systems! change your passwords! no, that is not a real email from George Clooney!) while also trying to create a secure infrastructure that defends the organization from external attackers. While the challenge of insider threats is real and malicious employees do exist, there's an equal chance that human faux pas creates a significant risk -- whether it be someone losing a device, clicking on a malicious link, or emailing the wrong file to the wrong person.

Hence the importance of security awareness programs.

According to Masha Sedova, co-founder of Elevate Security, and former trust engagement leader at Salesforce, a good awareness program gets feedback from the rest of the security organization into what the top people-centric risks are for the company and, then creates an effective campaign to address those risks.

"Security awareness was initially started about 10 years ago with the advent of regulation and compliance requirements," Sedova said. "Unfortunately, they were designed with the wrong question in mind. They ask 'show me how many people have taken your training.' Instead they should have asked 'show me metrics that your program yields improvement in X behavior.' The companies leading the charge in the awareness space today are creating their programs around this question."

This leads back to the discussion around the right balance of talent for creating these programs. According to the SANS 2016 report on security awareness, more than 80 percent of security awareness personnel have a technical background, but also need soft skills such as communications, change management, learning theory, and behavior modeling, in order to be most effective.

The report calls out one option to address this gap: Adding a communications professional to the security awareness team. Although not wrong, this is a tricky one. While facets of marketing and communications expertise are helpful for many teams, as represented in the soft skills written above, the old adage applies: "you can't secure what you don't see." And if you don't have a firm understanding of security, and how risk can be created by humans and how such risk tracks back to security technology and implementation, marketing and communications skills alone cannot create the robustness required for a security awareness team.

In fact, too much of a focus on the communications elements of the security awareness role can somewhat water down its criticality. While communications programs, educational events, community dialogue and networking are important components, security awareness programs are not built on this kind of skill. These are just merely channels for influencing more people to understand their part in securing their organizations, or their communities at large.

"Most marketing people can't identify the underlying behaviors that need most focus, and unfortunately most technology-focused security people aren't great at that either," Sedova said. "Security folks will say 'employees need to be less dumb' which is hard to measure and drive a specific campaign for. And marketing people will say 'don't click on phishing links' but can't spend the time to explain why an employee should care about not clicking on phishing links and how it connects to a bigger picture. A good security awareness practitioner can bridge both skills sets."

The other component in achieving the proper torque in the seesaw, is ensuring there are resources available to fuel these security awareness programs. They are must-haves as much as basic security programs are themselves. According to the same SANS security awareness report, more than 50 percent of security awareness professionals survive on a budget of less than $5,000, or those professionals are not able to dedicate all of their time to awareness. The report also says that the amount of support is relative to the maturity of a security awareness program, so a focus on education, the human actor, and demonstrable metrics is crucial.

Corporate support, whether it be freeing up budget or resources, for security awareness programs and professionals is a must-have, as they need to scale as their organizations do.

"What needs to happen are programs that can create and educate local security champions throughout the organization," Sedova said. "This includes subjects such as secure coding, vulnerability identification and remediation, and threat sharing. These programs are great areas for security awareness practitioners to partner with security subject matter experts and create effective programs that scale. Overtime, I hope to see this happening more in this field."

View post:
Security awareness relies on balance of technical, human-behavior skill sets - ZDNet

A computer gamer in Osnabrueck, Germany. / Getty Images

BY: Jack Butler March 26, 2017 4:50 am

What if the Internet shut down?

The Internet is so enmeshed in modern life that such a question seems unthinkable, an apocalyptic disaster of the sort reserved for fiction, such as E.M. Forster's startlingly prescient 1909 short story"The Machine Stops." But at the end of February, huge swaths of the Internet went dark due to problems with Amazon's servers. (The cause was a typo.) A similar outage occurred last October. That time, though, it wasn't accidental. The culprit was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on key aspects of the Internet's infrastructure. The attackflooded vitalwebsites and services with requests, amplifying itself through loosely secured, Internet-connected devices. Such devices, includinghousehold fixtures like wireless printers and DVD players, are known collectively as the "Internet of things."

Mary Aiken's The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online deals only tangentially with such threats to the Internet. But, after reading it, one is tempted to hope that an attacksucceeds in bringing the whole thing down.

Aiken didn't set out to make the case for nuking the Internet from orbit. Her goal was rather to dissent from typical tech reporting, which breathlessly focuses on the relentless pace of change or submits paeans to Silicon Valley. Instead, she observes dispassionately how the Internet, smartphones, and related items affect us. As Aiken somewhat clumsily notes, "[w]e are living through a unique period of human history, an intense period of flux, change, and disruption that may never be repeated." At the same time, she submits another awkward, obvious, but important message: "What is new is not always goodand technology does not always mean progress."

Aiken struggles through parts of the book to convey her thesis. Virtually every page bears a trite phrase (beginning with the JFK-quoting epigraph "Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future"), some meaningless filler (the first words of the book proper are "I am sitting on a cold, hard bench"), or a pointless rhetorical question (my favorite was "where am I going with this?"). Aiken could have used a better editor.

Moreover, the authorhas a curious habit of explaining or discovering the obvious. Is it really that surprising to learn that "people behave differently when they are interacting with technology than they do in the face-to-face real world"? Is anyone shocked to find that "the more you mention something, the more you normalize it"? Did she really need to define "content analysis" and "logic" for readers?

Yet the importance of Aiken's message inclines me to forgive these faults. The meat of the book isdata and anecdotes about technology's effects, and she is at her best simply conveying these. Aiken rightly notes that "[t]he impact of technology on human behavior begins at birth and ends at death," and providesplenty of striking examples to show how technology may be deforming human behavior.

There's what Aiken calls "online syndication," or the way the Internet has allowed all sorts of warped individuals to organize aroundtheir fetishes and festering ideas. There are the video game addicts who have literally played themselves to death, and the ever-growing cohort of mostly young males who may not be literally dying but who are increasingly checking out of the real world for the more reliable stimulants of video games and pornography. Aiken cites psychologist Philip Zimbardo's claim that the average boy watches 50 pornographic videos a week, and will have played ten thousand hours of video games by age 21.

And then there are today's infants and children, the first generation raised entirely in a digitally saturated world. As Aiken notes, we will not know how staring at screens for hours from birth will affect the neurological development of today's children,or how social media will affect the self-image of today's teenagers who have spent their entire lives cultivating themselves forit, until it's too late. Don't forget the children harassed in online game worlds or lured into prostitution; horror stories of this kindmay convince you of the need fora separate Internet just for kids, an idea Aiken endorses. These and countless other examples, drawn from headlines and psychological literature, enliven the book, and nearly suffice as expiation for other faults.

The Cyber Effect may not be the world's best-written book, but Aiken has performed an invaluable service by producing it. We desperately need pushback against the tech-addled mores of our time, which encroachon us seemingly from every direction, at every stage of our lives. The Internet has given us many great things, and it would probably be a bad thing on the whole if one of these cyber attacks does take it out. Nevertheless, we still must pay attention to the work of Aiken and others, consider the questions they raise, and try our best to resist the Internet.

Read more here:
Nuke the Internet From Orbit? - Washington Free Beacon

Bandung Mayor M. Ridwan Kamil says that his grandfather, the late cleric K.H. Muhyiddin, had a lot of wisdom, particularly relating to kindness and human relations, that is worth spreading among people.

Muhyiddin was the man who established the Pagelaran Islamic boarding school (pesantren), whose branches are scattered across the province of West Java.

The boarding school itself was established in the Subang regency by Muhyiddin around the year 1880. In line with the socio-political atmosphere of that time, the boarding school was also set up in Sumedang and other parts of the West Java province.

The boarding school contributed significantly to Indonesias struggle for independence from the colonialists. The Pagelaran boarding school in Subang, for instance, was once the base camp of the Hizbullah movement fighting the incipient nations colonial masters.

We have to remember the fighting spirit of the boarding house, carrying it to the present, where the boarding school has to remain active in contributing to nation building, Ridwan said.

Furthermore, he also said that his grandfathers wisdom and exemplary behavior should be emulated by the public.

I also hope that his exemplary behavior can inspire the generations to come. He believed that human beings could be more useful [for their fellow humans] if they engaged in creative activities in their lives, Ridwan said during the third congress of the Pagelaran Islamic boarding school management coordination institution in Bandung, West Java.

According to Ridwan, he has witnessed concrete examples demonstrating that his grandfathers beliefs really ring true in our day-to-day lives.

-(Photo courtesy of Bandung city administration/-)

Our generosity in sharing knowledge and maintaining our connections with other human beings will only lead us to experience more kindness, which is infinite in nature, he said.

By spreading kindness to other human beings, we actually leave footprints that will be remembered by other people, even long after we have passed away.

In order to sustain the legacy of his grandfathers exemplary behaviors, the mayor said he dreamt of setting up a Pagelaran boarding school in Bandung, as an institution that will preserve great values among young people.

We have so many land plots in Bandung that we can make use of. As a mayor, I have facilitated the activities of various mass organizations, religious and non-religious. If we are able to manage these activities positively, many people will respond to this initiative in an enthusiastic manner, he said.

Excerpt from:
We should emulate KH Muhyiddin's exemplary behavior: Bandung Mayor - Jakarta Post

In 1962, a strange epidemic swept through several communities in Tanganyika, present-day Tanzania. It wasnt a virus, but laughter among teenage schoolgirls. The contagious laughter, which lasted for about two and a half years, afflicted about 1,000 people and forced at least 14 schools to temporarily shut down.

Experts later determined that the origin of the epidemic was psychological, perhaps related to stress caused by the presence of British colonialism. But such events have raised scientific questions about why humans cant control behaviors such as laughing, yawning, coughing and shivering and why they spread among groups of people.

We are a part of a human herd whose behavior is often the involuntary playing out of an ancient neurological script that is so familiar that it goes unnoticed, wrote neuroscientist Robert Provine in his book, "Curious Behavior."

Consider what is really happening when your body is hijacked by an observed yawn or you spontaneously join others in a communal chorus of ha-ha-ha," Provine wrote. "You dont decide to yawn or laugh contagiously. It just happens.

Provinediscovered that people are 30 times more likely to laugh around others than alone. To date, there has been much research thats observed socially contagious behaviors in humans and animals, but scientists are just starting to look into what makes them ripple through groups of people.

Empathy may not have much to do with it

Many studies have suggested that empathy could explain contagious yawning. A study published a year ago, for example, indicated that women are more susceptible to catch yawns than men. Researchers also noted that women score higher on empathy tests, and thought the two might be associated.

Another study published in 2008 found that dogs may yawn in response to their owners, but not to strangers or other dogs. Researchers wrote that because dogs are incredibly skilled at reading human cues and generally have unique social interactions with people, there is the potential that dogs may also have developed the capacity for empathy towards humans, and may catch human yawns.

Other studies, however, suggest that empathy is less significant in contagious behaviors than we might think. A paper in 2014 published by Duke University researchers, for example, analyzed various factors that influenced yawning among more than 300 human volunteers. Scientists considered a number of influencers such as empathy, energy levels and age. They saw that contagious yawning decreased among older people.

In our study, there was a connection between contagious yawning and empathy, but it was explained by a stronger connection between contagious yawning and age, said Elizabeth Cirulli, a geneticist at Duke University and an author of that paper.

Other research also showed that young children arent likely to catch yawns from other people, either.

Itch researchers at Washington University believe empathy has very little to do with such behaviors. This month, they published a study in the journal Science that showed that mice will scratch themselves in response to seeing videos of other mice that have chronic itch problems.

At the beginning, this [experiment] may sound like a crazy idea because, as you know, mice are nocturnal. They have very poor vision, said Zhou-Feng Chen, director for the schools Center for the Study of Itch.

Chen and his colleagues examined the brains of the non-itchy mice in the study and found that a specific

region, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, released a chemical thats been known to signal when theres an itch that needs to be scratched.

Basically, our study shows those kinds of contagious behaviors are instinctive behaviors and are hardwired into our neurocircuitry, Chen said.

However, more research is needed to understand exactly how involved the brain is when we uncontrollably copy each others behaviors. As Cirulli noted, other factors need to be examined. Empathy, she said, shouldnt be ruled out, but is likely just as connected to such behaviors as height is to weight.

I dont think empathy is totally unrelated, Cirulli said. Its just that its absolutely not everything thats going on with contagious yawning. In some cases, its a proxy for something else.

We behave like the pack to survive

In the animal kingdom, one principle that prevails is strength in numbers. Snow geese, for example, will fly in groups as large as 5,000. A pack of zebras will whine loudly when they detect a predator nearby.

Some scientists believe that humans evolved to uncontrollably copy others behavior, as a means of communicating important information.

You can imagine millions of years ago when animals lived widely and maybe living in places where there are parasites," Chen said. "If all the animals begin to scratch, it could mean the area that theyre in may be dangerous.

He further speculated that as scratching became a regular way to alarm others that they needed to leave certain environments, its possible that the behavior became innate and written into our genetics over time.

From an evolutionary point of view, contagious behaviors actually help animals to better survive because you dont have to learn everything from scratch, Chen said.

How the brain works

While it might seem frivolous to study why we catch yawns and participate in other kinds of unconsciously provoked micmicry, the research could provide fundamental insight into how our brains work and develop. For instance, a 2009 study by University of Zurich researchers showed that contagious yawning and laughing happened much less frequently with people who have schizophrenia. Yawning also spread much less among people with autism.

Such findings still need further research to be understood. However, its promising that contagious scratching is observed among mice, for example, since theyre often used as experimental subjects to understand brain diseases.

Reflecting on her contagious yawning study, Cirulli mused that it would be interesting to study how genetics might influence a persons susceptibility to this behavior and how that might be connected to neurological conditions.

Because big genetic studies have been done on schizophrenia and autism and other diseases, you can calculate someones risks of developing those diseases from their genetic information and you can see if its associated with contagious yawning, she said.

Follow Eli Chen on Twitter:@StoriesByEli

See original here:
Contagious yawning, laughing and scratching gives clues to how the human brain works - KBIA

How to predict violence after leaving an abuser

We know that leaving is the most dangerous time for a domestic violence survivor. Abusers often lash out in an attempt to regain control over their partner or may resort to extreme violence, even homicide, because they feel they have nothing left to lose. But not all abusers escalate violence when the survivor leaves. So how do you know if your abuser will?

There are plenty of stories in which an abuser becomes violent after the survivor decides to end the relationship, even though no physical abuse was present while they were together. Survivor Audrey Mabrey has one such story she told DomesticShelters her husband became violent for the first time only after they became estranged.

For the most part, though, examining your partners behavior during the relationship will give you the best clues as to how he will act once you leave.

Danger Ahead Red Flags to Watch For

Human behavior is one of the hardest things to predict, says Melanie Carlson, MSW, a former shelter advocate and case manager who is currently working on her Ph.D. in gender-based violence. Still, past behavior is the most predictive of future behavior. There are often clear patterns in behavior.

Domestic violence has a high rate of recidivism, meaning if it happens once, its likely to happen again. A Bureau of Justice survey found that women ages 35 to 49 who reported an incident of intimate partner abuse had previously been abused by the same partner.

If your partner was physically abusive during the relationship, he or she may continue to be physically abusive after the relationship ends. And if the physical violence escalated during the relationship, it is best to assume it may continue to escalate after leaving. There are other red flags to look out for, too, Carlson says.

If there was physical abuse while pregnant or in public, strangulation, threats with a weapon or statements like, If you leave, Ill kill myself, use extreme caution when leaving, she says. Those kinds of behaviors show theyre really not concerned with consequences.

Access to weapons is another predictor of intimate partner homicide, particularly intimate partner femicide, or the murder of a woman. A womans chance of being murdered by her abuser increases by 500 percent if a gun is present in the home.

Abusive partners with any military or police trainingthat makes the situation more dangerous because of their access to weapons and being more effective at doing max physical harm, Carlson says.

Dont Ignore Nonphysical Warning Signs

Of course, abusers may resort to violence once the relationship ends even if they werent physically abusive during the relationship. Carlson recommends taking caution when leaving a relationship if your partner showed any signs of controlling behavior, including financial abuse, sexual coercion, isolating you from loved ones, verbal abuse and gaslighting.

If youre dealing with any of this, its best to talk to someone who has expertise in safety planning and the resources to get you the help you need, Carlson says. Call a hotline or reach out to a shelter to talk to someone who can coach you through all the mechanisms you can use to leave safely.

Thinking about leaving but scared of what your partner might do? Read Leave Without Dying (bit.ly/2oaNbmW) for tips on what to think about when it comes to getting out safely.

Relief After Violent Encounter - Ionia/ Montcalm, Inc. (RAVE) offers free and confidential services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence in Ionia and Montcalm counties. For more information, visit http://www.raveim.org. If you are a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault, call RAVEs 24-hour crisis and support line at 1-800- 720-7233.

Link:
'Will my partner be violent after I leave?' - Sentinel-Standard

Larry Aumiller spent 40 years trying to come to terms with the expression on the Boone and Crockett Clubs bear statue.

Those bears can be aggressive, Aumiller said. But thats less than one-hundredth of a percent of what they do. In fact, if you want to be really typical, youd have them sleeping.

Standing beneath the ferocious bronze with its flared lips and reaching paws, the man who ran Alaskas McNeil River State Game Sanctuary for three decades can back up his opinion. If youve ever seen a picture of a huge bear catching a salmon, it was probably taken by someone standing close to Larry Aumiller. He recently winnowed through 35,000 slides he shot while leading visitor groups to the fabled riverside.

Aumillers experiences have been compiled in a new book by Jeff Fair released this month. Titled In Wild Trust, it lays out Aumillers conviction that big bears deserve a place in a human-dominated world.

Aumiller told his story to Fair, first in an Anchorage coffeeshop and then through dozens of interviews at Aumillers Missoula home. Fair himself spent 23 years in Alaska studying wildlife. He also trapped grizzly bears for radio-collar studies in Yellowstone National Park and worked for decades managing loons and other creatures all over North America.

A recent McNeil River study logged 14 serious bear charges toward people in the sanctuarys 50-year existence. In each case, it appeared the person triggered the charge and the bear was a non-habituated newcomer to the scene.

Habituated bears are very predictable, Aumiller said. I realize its a really tough sell, but its possible for humans and bears to co-exist in the same place. And to live with them not only enhances our day, it sets the stage for long-term human survival. Theres a quote from Chuck Jonkel: If we can live with them, we can live with ourselves.

Jonkel died last April at 85 after decades of teaching bear biology and founding the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula. Most living bear researchers and managers today had some contact with him as a student, colleague or occasional scratching post.

At a recent conference on bear-human interaction, the roomful of experts was debating how to handle the growing interest in raising chickens (which tempt bears). From the back of the room, Jonkel raised his hand to speak.

The room went silent, Aumiller recalled. Chuck says, 7.2 billion people in the world, and were talking about chickens? He was always a big-picture guy.

Because the big picture shows humans building houses and roads in prime bear country. The vast majority of those humans only deal with bears in two dimensions, as a photograph or possibly a rug. The idea of sharing personal space with, as Aumiller says, something big and furry that bites engages more the cave-dwellers primal fear than the space-travelers rational consideration.

We have an intellectual ability to get beyond fear, Aumiller said. Just driving to this interview today was statistically more dangerous than all those years in the (McNeil) sanctuary. I wish we were more tolerant as a species. It would be good for critters and good for us, too.

When former Missoulian reporter Ginny Merriam got a chance to visit McNeil River in 1999, she encountered Aumiller. As she described the scene:

Humans can visit here, but only in groups of 10 or fewer, flanked at either end by bear biologists armed with tender sensibilities and Remington Model 870 shotguns that they never use. The guests must bunch together, talk softly, make small movements, never threaten or crowd a bear and never, ever allow a bear to get human food. In the 25-mile-long and 4- to 5-mile-wide McNeil River State Game Sanctuary at the top of the Alaska Peninsula and off Cook Inlet, no bear is hunted or even darted and tagged.

Aumiller, who has been called the Dian Fossey of bears and obsessive, is recognized as one of the best in the world at reading bears. He believes passionately that people and bears can live together peacefully if the tone of the relationship is set up properly. Bears can be habituated to the presence of people if the people exhibit inoffensive and predictable human behavior rather than setting up an adversarial relationship in which we yell and shoot, and bears flee and attack, he says. His definition of habituation means the absence of a flight response and the absence of aggression.

Some bear biologists believe any habituated bear is a dangerous bear. Aumiller and (fellow McNeil staff member Derek) Stonorov disagree. They say a key is keeping bears from seeing people as food sources, becoming food-conditioned.

Aumiller maintains that basic rule underpins all good bear management. As federal, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming wildlife managers contemplate removing Endangered Species Act protection from grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains, those rules will undergo lots of review.

In advance of that possibility, Aumiller has spent much time working with organizations like Missoula-headquartered Vital Ground Foundation, which protects bits of landscape necessary for bear survival.

Larrys experiences in McNeil River produced some amazing insights, said Vital Ground administrator Shannon Drye. Hes helped us select properties and made sure they were the best parcel for grizzly bear need, like biological connectivity between ecosystems. He really brought the biological expertise.

All that expertise came despite never attending a wildlife class or earning a biology degree. Fair described Aumillers first day at McNeil in 1976, wondering when he would see his first bear:

Then he remembered the raft carrying his equipment and goods, out there by the incoming tide. He went to the door. Something was wrong with the picture before him. His raft and its cargo were now animated. Bow, stern, and sides leaping up and down, loaded rifle (protection!) tossing into the air now and again, boxes of food somersaulting in the wild tumult

The engine of the whole performance, the perpetrator, was a young brown bear, who had become infatuated with the rubbery bounciness of the raft. Aumiller watched the young bear, rump-down in the raft and obviously enjoying the effects of pounding his paws on the inflated sides of his new playpen, making the gun and food boxes bounce to high heaven reveling in the entertainment.

He stood at the threshold of his new headquarters, the bear now in possession of his loaded gun, his food and his raft and wondered what the hell to do.

Aumiller told the bear to leave, and it did. That idea of setting trust boundaries became the foundation of McNeil River interactions, although the wider world still has trouble with the concept. Looking at a map of the sanctuary, Aumiller points out the surrounding McNeil River State Game Refuge, itself surrounded by the Katmai National Park and Katmai National Preserve, which in turn are enveloped by the rest of Alaska. Each place has different rules where bears are revered as tourist attractions or keystone predators or hunting trophies, with the bears themselves wandering across invisible lines at will.

I spent 34 years with (Alaska State) Fish and Game, Aumiller said. I understand hunting, although Id never shoot a bear. I hope to get people convinced that its possible to live with them. To do that, you have to protect the absolutely best places on earth.

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Master of McNeil tells how he learned to trust bears - Casper Star-Tribune Online

Metamorphosesby Ovid explains that misogynistic behavior of men are displayed during the time period. Gods and goddesses are all very flawed characters, advising us that even immortals arent perfect. The men in the book are flawed because of their morals; they are flawed because they sexual assault goddesses and they believe they are powerful. This also represents people in todays society. Ovids book reflects his opinion about men and mens misogynistic behavior back then and how it is reflected in todays society.

The gods inMetamorphosesdo not have any morals because they think they are the most powerful. The highest level of authority is the Gods, even above the goddesses.Metamorphoses doesnt really have a plot but a rather series of scenes. In these scenes the characters reflect the carelessness in society.In this scene the god decides to kill someone.

His plan was to make a sudden attack in the night on my

Sleeping.

Body and kill me. This was chosen method of

Proving

The truth. Not content with that, he applied his sword

To the throat (Ovid 16.)

This quote express that the gods show no mercy to humans and is a reflection of human behavior. There are many people who are violent and have uncontrollable behavior in todays society. In one scene a god rapes a goddess and turns into a tree, stroking her. This is also displayed in the news today. According to New York Daily News, a student recently, from Columbia was raped by her boyfriend. The student carried a mattress around campus trying to remove her rapist from campus. Even though some men dont behave morally, others do.

In the bookMetamorphosesthere are a large portion of misogynistic behaviors such as rape. In this scene Nereus is getting raped. The perpetrator is sexually aroused and wants full power over her.

When Perseus noticed the maiden tied by the arms to a

Jagged

Rock-face (but for the light breeze stirring her hair and

The warm tears

Coursing over her cheeks, he would have supposed she

Was merely

A marble statue), unconscious desire was kindled

Within him, (Ovid 164.)

In this scene Perseus gets such extreme sexual desires that he rapes her. Its in mens animalistic behavior, and strong urges arise to do this when a man is attracted to a women.This shows the behavior that still goes on today. In the past there were no rules against sexual assault, but now there are. However rape is still a huge problem around the world. There are a slew of cases, similar to this one. There is a situation where a girl from India wasgang raped and she got beaten to death. Men in certain parts of the world sometimes dont respect women.This behavior is human nature and it is dominating over women. That is what Ovid is trying to represent in the book.

In Metamorphosesmen manipulate women. Men look at women as some pretty object, with whom they can play.Men believe they have all the power. The gods in this book believe they are the most powerful. This scene explains how men dominate the earth.

So man came into the world. Maybe the great artificer

Made him of seed divine in a plan for a better universe.

Maybe the earth that was freshly formed and newly

Divorced from the heavenly ether retained some seeds of its

Kindred element-

Earth, which Prometheus, the son of Iapetus, sprinkled with

Raindrops

And moulded into the likeness of gods who govern the

Universe.

When other animals walk on all fours and look to the ground,

Man was given a towering head and commanded to stand (Ovid 8,9.)

This quote explains how man tries to dominate the world. This quote reflects what Ovid thinks of men. It shows that he thinks men have all the power over everything. Even today men seem to have more power over women. Women get less of a salary than men in certain cases.

This book,Metamorphoses,shows the opinion of Ovid and how he believes that we live in a misogynistic world, even today. Women have politically and economically less power than men. Men want to be dominant over women, they own most of the businesses and back in the book,Metamorphose, women didnt even have jobs. There was a time women didnt even go to college. Some countries such as Lebanon women cant even get a divorce. (Presentation social work) InMetamorphoses thegod and goddesses get themselves in sticky situations, reflecting human behavior and how all humans are imperfect. There really is no plot in this book but it reflects how flawed society is. This book also shows how there is no such thing as love and most men want power. The gods lust after the goddesses. Today, in society, there are a lot of relationships built out of lust. However, there are some stable and loving relationships. Overall, in the bookMetamorphoses,there is a lot of misogynistic behavior in the book. There is also much misogynistic behavior in todays society. Sometimes men would beat their wives or sexually assault them but it also can be the other way around where women can beat their husband or abuse them or sexually assault them too like Duessa from Metamorphoses. Women had less control of what was happening and what to create. In this book the goddesses were abused. The men had more power, sexually assaulted women and had flawed morals. With this kind of behavior in this world, will humans ever grow? This superiority complex some people are affecting our world from growing. This shows how flawed society is. Human behavior reflects humans intelligence. It is the time humans need to acknowledge that women and men should have equal rights. Ovids story shows that humans are flawed and society is very misogynistic.

Link:
Book Review: Metamorphoses by Ovid - Uloop News

ideas42, a leading non-profit behavioral design firm, hasunveiled a unique approach to highlighting and resolving key behavioral problems in cybersecurity with the launch of an original, serialized novella.

The new true-crime- style short story Deep Thought: A Cybersecurity Story dramatizes the human factors in cybersecurity and is followed by a robust index of key insights from behavioral science that can be used to improve security protocols.

The narrative, to be released in multiple installments, highlights the human actions and decisions that often compromise digital information and computer security.

These range from password issues to more complex concerns such as coding practices and organizations resource investment choices.

(Experts estimate that 70-80% of the costs attributed to cyber attacks are actually the result of human error. Thats why ideas42 is applying a behavioral science lens to what has traditionally been considered a technological problem. Courtesy ofideas42 and YouTube)

Despite public and private sector investments in sophisticated security systems, the level of risk is immense.

In the search for answers, efforts have been heavily skewed toward finding technological solutions. However, up to 80% of the cost attributed to cyber-attacks is actually a result of human error.

With Internet access rapidly expanding across the globe and the proliferation of greater connectedness across business, finance, and individuals, ensuring privacy and security is more important than ever, as underscored by recent high-profile breaches such as the hacking of American political party systems during the 2016 election cycle.

It is because of the urgency around strengthening cybersecurity that we chose to present our insights as an engaging novella instead of using the more traditional white paper approach, said ideas42 Executive Director Josh Wright.

With the release of a unique piece like Deep Thought: A Cybersecurity Story and our supporting analysis, we hope to reach more leaders and decision-makers who can take needed steps to increase the strength of their organizations digital networks.

The first installment of ideas42s novella debuted today at New Americas Cybersecurity for a New America conference and can be read at ideas42.org/cyber.

Simply clicking on a bad link can be devastating to network security, and the strongest security network in the world is only as good as the human with the password, continued Wright.

Furthermore, human error in security is not limited to end-users. The challenges around understanding and addressing human behavioral factors in cybersecurity present a rich vein of opportunity for making the system as a whole more robust.

(Hear from the author,Josh Wright, Executive Director at ideas42 on Changing the World with Behavioral Science, courtesy ofBehaviourWorks Australiaand YouTube)

ideas42s work in cybersecurity is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Cyber Initiative in partnership with New Americas Cybersecurity Initiative. The goal is to focus on behavioral insights and solutions that can be adopted quickly and brought to scale.

For a full copy of the novella and behavioral insight appendix contact us at cyber@ideas42.org.

To use our unique experience at the forefront of behavioral science to change millions of lives.

We create innovative solutions to tough problems in economic mobility, health, education, consumer finance, energy efficiency and international development.

Our approach is based on a deep understanding of human behavior and why people make the decisions they do. Working closely with our partners from government, foundations, NGOs and companies, we have more than 80 active projects in the United States and around the world.

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True Crime Novella Highlights Human Factor in Cyber Solutions (Video) - 107.180.56.147 (press release) (registration) (blog)