Gemini Observatory's quick reflexes capture fleeting flash

The international Gemini Observatory detects optical afterglow of short gamma-ray burst within hours

ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY (AURA)

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VIDEO: LIGHT OF POWERFUL BURST CAPTURED BY GEMINI OBSERVATORY view more 

CREDIT: INTERNATIONAL GEMINI OBSERVATORY/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA/J. POLLARD/K. PATERSON & W. FONG (NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY), NAOJ/NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/CI LAB, ESO/M. KORNMESSER. IMAGE PROCESSING: TRAVIS RECTOR (UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA ANCHORAGE), MAHDI ZAMANI & DAVIDE DE...

Rapid follow-up of the optical afterglow from one of the most distant confirmed short gamma-ray bursts (SGRB), thought to be the merger of two neutron stars, is casting new light on these enigmatic objects. The observations, made by the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, confirmed the object's distance and placed it squarely in the epoch of cosmic high noon, when the Universe was in its "teenage years" and rapidly forming stars. The appearance of an SGRB so early in the history of the Universe could alter theories about their origin, in particular how long it takes two neutron stars to merge to produce these powerful events. Precisely-localized SGRBs are rare, typically only 7-8 are detected per year, and this is the most distant high-confidence SGRB with an optical afterglow detection.

Researchers have used the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope to measure the optical afterglow of one of the most distant short gamma-ray bursts (SGRB) ever studied. Thought to result from the merger of two neutron stars, SGRBs are cataclysmic events that are almost unfathomable in terms of their basic properties, emitting huge amounts of energy in about one second [1]. Gemini observations of a new, distant SGRB now suggest that this process could occur surprisingly quickly for some systems -- with massive binary star systems surviving supernova explosions to become neutron star binaries, and the binaries then spiraling together in less than a billion years to create an SGRB. The research will be published in he Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This object, named GRB181123B because it was the second burst discovered on 23 November 2018 -- Thanksgiving night -- was initially detected by NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. When the alert of an event from the Swift satellite was broadcast around the world, several telescopes trained their view on it. Within hours, a team from Northwestern University used the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS), which is also an imager, on the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawai'i to record the very faint afterglow of the object.

"We took advantage of the unique rapid-response capabilities and exquisite sensitivity of Gemini North and its GMOS imager to obtain deep observations of the burst mere hours after its discovery," said Kerry Paterson of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University, USA, who led the research team. "The Gemini images were very sharp, and allowed us to pinpoint the location to a specific galaxy."

"This is a wonderful example of time-domain astronomy, involving extremely rapid follow-up of a quickly evolving event," said Hans Krimm of the US National Science Foundation. "Gemini's rapid response was critical to catching this event swiftly, and the optical and infrared data add to the excitement of multi-messenger astronomy -- where observations of light, gravitational waves, neutrinos and cosmic rays come together to tell a compelling story."

Along with the Gemini observations, the team made follow-up observations using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawai'i and the Multi-Mirror Telescope (MMT), located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona. The researchers then utilized the Gemini South infrared camera and spectrograph, FLAMINGOS-2, in Chile to obtain a spectrum of the host galaxy to pin down the SGRB's distance. The object was found to be some 10 billion light-years away, making it the second most distant confirmed SGRB, and the most distant high-confidence SGRB with an optical afterglow detection [2]. Compared to the detections of gravitational waves from merging neutron stars in the very nearby Universe, SGRBs are distant analogs.

"The identification of certain patterns in the spectrum, together with the colors of the galaxy from the three observatories, allowed us to precisely constrain the distance and solidify it as one of the most distant SGRBs to date in 16 years of Swift operations," said Paterson.

Rapid follow-up of the burst discovery from Swift was essential. Many SGRBs cannot be observed with a telescope in time to catch the optical light. The light from the afterglow fades quickly and it can take a correspondingly long time for a large, sensitive telescope to interrupt its normal observing plan and move to the new target to begin its follow-up observations.

Once the optical detection of the SGRB was made with Gemini, and its host galaxy was identified, the team was able to determine key properties of the parent stellar population within the galaxy that produced the SGRB.

"Performing 'forensics' to understand the local environment of SGRBs and what their home galaxies look like can tell us a lot about the underlying physics of these systems, such as how SGRB progenitors form and how long it takes for them to merge," said Wen-fai Fong of Northwestern University and co-author on the study. "We certainly did not expect to discover an extremely distant SGRB, as they are very rare and faint, but we were pleasantly surprised! This motivates us to go after every one that we possibly can."

The majority of the 43 high-confidence SGRBs used in the study that have had their distances measured to date have been found closer to home. Distant SGRBs offer a unique way to study the same types of events when the Universe was much younger -- a busy period in the Universe when stars were rapidly forming and galaxies were growing fast [3]. The addition of another very distant SGRB to the population could change astronomers' understanding of these events -- in particular, how long it takes two neutron stars to merge, and the rate of neutron star mergers during this epoch of the Universe's history. "Finding an SGRB so early in the Universe's history suggests that at least some neutron star pairs might need to come together relatively rapidly," according to Fong.

"With the proper telescopic resources and dedicated follow-up facilities, such as the Gemini Observatory, we can open a new era of discovery of distant SGRBs, motivating further follow-up studies of past events and similarly intense follow-up of future ones," said Paterson.

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Notes

[1] Despite their spectacular nature, the formation pathway to a SGRB is unknown. Astronomers believe they are likely formed from a pair of massive stars that were born together and "die" together as neutron stars before merging.

[2] The measured redshift is z=1.754.

[3] This era is analogous to the Universe's teenage years -- a lot is happening, everything is kind of messy, and galaxies are growing fast and haven't settled down into the maturity of their later years.

More information

This research was presented in a paper to appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The team is composed of K. Paterson (Northwestern University), W. Fong (Northwestern University), A. Nugent (Northwestern University), A. Rouco Escorial (Northwestern University), J. Leja (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), T. Laskar (University of Bath), R. Chornock (Ohio University), A. A. Miller (Northwestern University and The Adler Planetarium), J. Scharwächter (Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab), S. B. Cenko (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and University of Maryland), D. Perley (Liverpool John Moores University), N. R. Tanvir (University of Leicester), A. Levan (Radboud University and University of Warwick), A. Cucchiara (College of Marin and the University of the Virgin Islands), B. E. Cobb (The George Washington University), K. De (California Institute of Technology), E. Berger (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), G. Terreran (Northwestern University), K. D. Alexander (Northwestern University), M. Nicholl (University of Birmingham and University of Edinburgh), P. K. Blanchard (Northwestern University), and D. Cornish (Northwestern University).

NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab), the US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the international Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC-Canada, ANID-Chile, MCTIC-Brazil, MINCyT-Argentina, and KASI-Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du'ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai?i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O'odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.

Contacts:

COVID-19 makes clear the need to address social determinants of health

An opportunity to emphasize equity, social determinants, and prevention in primary care

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

University of Michigan public health experts Julia Wolfson and Cindy Leung argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has made glaringly apparent the structural conditions that underlie inequities in our nation's health. Race and ethnicity, housing, income, occupation and chronic health conditions are all key factors that influence one's ability to safely weather highly infectious disease pandemics like COVID-19. Unlike the novel coronavirus strain, these social, economic and structural factors are not new. The authors argue, "An opportunity exists to use the unfolding crisis to advocate for structural changes to a system that has long perpetuated disparities." Wolfson and Leung draw together four articles in the July-August 2020 issue of the Annals of Family Medicine that emphasize social determinants of health and highlight the calls to action for primary care.

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An Opportunity to Emphasize Equity, Social Determinants, and Prevention in Primary Care
Julia A. Wolfson, PhD MPP, et al
University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Departments of Health Management and Policy and Nutritional Sciences, Ann Arbor, Michigan
https://www.annfammed.org/content/18/4/290

International conference on social determinants of health identified change needs

Improving Equity Through Primary Care: Proceedings of the 2019 Toronto International Conference on Quality in Primary Care

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

 

In November 2019, clinicians, health administrators, educators and researchers from around the world gathered in Toronto to discuss how to best address social determinants of health from a primary care perspective. Participants developed starting points for accessible and feasible actions to improve health equity in their own primary care setting. They emphasized strategies to incorporate community members, especially those with lived experiences of discrimination, in the health care design team. Additionally, they highlighted the need to address structural determinants of health, including racism, capitalism and colonialism.

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Improving Equity Through Primary Care: Proceedings of the 2019 Toronto International Conference on Quality in Primary Care
Tara Kiran, MD, MSc, CCFP, et al
University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
https://www.annfammed.org/content/18/4/364

NEWS RELEASE 14-JUL-2020

LGBT-friendly medical practices improve STD/HIV screening rates for vulnerable populations

Transforming primary care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people: a collaborative quality improvement initiative

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

 

This report--describing the first national quality improvement collaborative focused on providing culturally affirming care for LGBT people--finds that making primary care practices more LGBT-friendly and inclusive may improve STD and HIV screening rates among this vulnerable population. The goal of the Transforming LGBT Care program was to help highly motivated community health centers implement LGBT-affirming care by providing infrastructure for training, collaboration, knowledge sharing, leadership buy-in and practice change. Ten federally qualified health centers were selected to participate in the year-long program. Small care teams were formed at each site, and those teams received coaching, training and facilitation from the program's staff, much of which was conducted virtually. By the end of the program, estimated HIV screening of LGBT patients at eight of the reporting sites rose from 14.8 percent to 30.5 percent, with increases in STD screenings as well. Most participating centers had improved their electronic health record system to allow for sexual orientation and gender identity documentation, but very few reported improvements in documenting the sexual histories of LGBT patients. The authors of the program's quality improvement study note, "Ultimately, federally qualified health centers and other primary care organizations have an opportunity and a responsibility to provide equitable care to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Even small changes to health care practices may make a large difference for people burdened by health disparities and discrimination."

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Transforming Primary Care for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: A Collaborative Quality Improvement Initiative
Bruce W. Furness, MD, MPH, et al
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia
https://www.annfammed.org/content/18/4/292

Experts' high-flying study reveals secrets of soaring birds

New research has revealed when it comes to flying the largest of birds rely on air currents, not flapping to move around

SWANSEA UNIVERSITY

IMAGE: THE ANDEAN CONDOR IN FLIGHT - RECORDING DEVICES REVEALED IT ACTUALLY FLAPS ITS WINGS FOR JUST ONE PER CENT OF ITS FLIGHT TIME. view more 

CREDIT: PICTURE: FACUNDO VITAL

New research has revealed when it comes to flying the largest of birds don't rely on flapping to move around. Instead they make use of air currents to keep them airborne for hours at a time.

The Andean condor - the world's heaviest soaring bird which can weigh in at up to 15kg - actually flaps its wings for one per cent of its flight time.

The study is part of a collaboration between Swansea University's Professor Emily Shepard and Dr Sergio Lambertucci in Argentina, that uses high-tech flight-recorders on Andean condors. These log each and every wingbeat and twist and turn in flight as condors search for food.

The team wanted to find out more about how birds' flight efforts vary depending on environmental conditions. Their findings will help to improve understanding about large birds' capacity for soaring and the specific circumstances that make flight costly.

During the study, the researchers discovered that more than 75 per cent of the condors' flapping was associated with take-off.

However, once in the sky condors can sustain soaring for long periods in a wide range of wind and thermal conditions - one bird managed to clock up five hours without flapping, covering around 172 km or more than 100 miles.

The findings are revealed in a new paper Physical limits of flight performance in the heaviest soaring bird, which has just been published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr Hannah Williams, now at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour, said: "Watching birds from kites to eagles fly, you might wonder if they ever flap.

"This question is important, because by the time birds are as big as condors, theory tells us they are dependent on soaring to get around.

"Our results revealed the amount the birds flapped didn't change substantially with the weather.

"This suggests that decisions about when and where to land are crucial, as not only do condors need to be able to take off again, but unnecessary landings will add significantly to their overall flight costs."

Professor Shepard, who is part of Swansea Lab for Animal Movement, said as all the birds they studied were immature, it demonstrated that low investment in flight is possible even in the early years of a condor's life.

Closer examination showed the challenges the birds faced as they moved between weak thermals. The condors were seen to flap more as they reached the end of the glides between thermals when they were likely to be closer to the ground.

Dr Lambertucci explained: "This is a critical time as birds need to find rising air to avoid an unplanned landing. These risks are higher when moving between thermal updrafts.

"Thermals can behave like lava lamps, with bubbles of air rising intermittently from the ground when the air is warm enough. Birds may therefore arrive in the right place for a thermal, but at the wrong time."

"This is a nice example of where the behaviour of the birds can provide insight into the behaviour of the air."

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About 94 per cent of wild bee and native plant species networks lost, York study finds

YORK UNIVERSITY

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VIDEO: CLIMATE CHANGE AND AN INCREASE IN DISTURBED BEE HABITATS FROM EXPANDING AGRICULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT IN NORTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS ARE LIKELY RESPONSIBLE FOR A 94 PER... view more 

CREDIT: YORK UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, July 14, 2020 - Climate change and an increase in disturbed bee habitats from expanding agriculture and development in northeastern North America over the last 30 years are likely responsible for a 94 per cent loss of plant-pollinator networks, York University researchers found.

The researchers, corresponding author Professor Sandra Rehan of the Faculty of Science and grad student Minna Mathiasson of the University of New Hampshire, looked at plant-pollinator networks from 125 years ago through present day. The networks are comprised of wild bees and the native plants they historically rely on, although most of those have now been disrupted.

About 30 per cent of plant-pollinator networks were completely lost, which translates to a disappearance of either the bees, the plants or both. In another 64 per cent of the network loss, the wild bees, such as sweat or miner bees, or native plants, such as sumac and willow, are still present in the eco-system, but the bees no longer visit those plants. The association is gone.

The remaining six per cent of the plant-pollinator networks are stable or even thriving with pollinators such as small carpenter bees, which like broken stems for nest making.

"There are several reasons for the losses in the networks. Climate change is likely the biggest driver. We know that over the last 100 years or so annual temperatures have changed by two and a half degrees. This is enough to alter the time when certain native plants bloom," says Rehan.

"For a bee that's out for months on end or is a generalist pollinator, this isn't such a critical mismatch, but for a bee that's only out for two weeks of the year and only has a few floral hosts, this could be devastating." An increase in non-native species of bees and invasive species of plants, which have displaced some of the native species, is another reason for the decline in networks.

"We are getting a lot of invasive species and new records of invasive species every year. This is usually accidentally through trade and through ornamental plants," says Rehan.

Andrena_vacinia, is a miner bee and one of the declining bee species

A lot of these bees live in stems, so it's easy to import plants with non-native bee species without knowing it. "We can actually show routes and means of invasion biology," she says.

These bees are following shipping routes from one continent to the other around the world, including North America through ornamental plants for our gardens.

The researchers say an increase in habitat restoration and native flowering plants in agricultural landscapes are critical for improving wild bee biodiversity, but also food security for humans.

Bees and other pollinators are worth hundreds of billions of dollars globally by pollinating the crops we eat, and wild bees are at the top of the list believed to pollinate more than 87 per cent or 308,006 flowering plant species. Many of these are economically important commercial crops, such as apples and blueberries.

"There is an urgent need to gain a deeper understanding of the environmental circumstances affecting these wild pollinator populations and their specialised, evolutionary relationships with plant communities," says Rehan. "Plant pollinator webs are dependent on changes in the landscape, so knowing how these networks are shaped is important for all regional habitats."

Previous recent research by Rehan and team looked at 119 wild bee species over 125 years and found 14 declining and eight increasing species. All of the wild bee species in decline are native and over half experienced significant range (latitude and elevation) shifts.

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The research, "Wild bee declines linked to plant-pollinator network changes and plant species introductions," was published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity.

Video: https://youtu.be/twfwOHptNWo

York University champions new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-disciplinary programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world's most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university - our 11 faculties and 25 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni. York U's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.

NREL research points to strategies for recycling of solar panels

DOE/NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY

Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have conducted the first global assessment into the most promising approaches to end-of-life management for solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.

PV modules have a 30-year lifespan. There is currently no plan for how to manage this at end of their lifespan. The volume of modules no longer needed could total 80 million metric tons by 2050. In addition to quantity, the nature of the waste also poses challenges. PV modules are made of valuable, precious, critical, and toxic materials. There is currently no standard for how to recycle the valuable ones and mitigate the toxic ones.

Numerous articles review individual options for PV recycling but, until now, no one has done a global assessment of all PV recycling efforts to identify the most promising approaches.

"PV is a major part of the energy transition," said Garvin Heath, a senior scientist at NREL who specializes in sustainability science. "We must be good stewards of these materials and develop a circular economy for PV modules."

Heath is lead author of "Research and development priorities for silicon photovoltaic module recycling supporting a circular economy," which appears in the journal Nature Energy. His co-authors from NREL are Timothy Silverman, Michael Kempe, Michael Deceglie, and Teresa Barnes; and former NREL colleagues Tim Remo and Hao Cui. The team also collaborated with outside experts, particularly in solar manufacturing.

"It provides a succinct, in-depth synthesis of where we should and should not steer our focus as researchers, investors, and policymakers," Heath said.

The authors focused on the recycling of crystalline silicon, a material used in more than 90% of installed PV systems in a very pure form. It accounts for about half of the energy, carbon footprint, and cost to produce PV modules, but only a small portion of their mass. Silicon's value is determined by its purity.

"It takes a lot of investment to make silicon pure," said Silverman, PV hardware expert. "For a PV module, you take these silicon cells, seal them up in a weatherproof package where they're touching other materials, and wait 20 to 30 years--all the while, PV technology is improving. How can we get back that energy and material investment in the best way for the environment?"

The authors found some countries have PV recycling regulations in place, while others are just beginning to consider solutions. Currently, only one crystalline silicon PV-dedicated recycling facility exists in the world due to the limited amount of waste being produced today.

Based on their findings, the authors recommend research and development to reduce recycling costs and environmental impacts, while maximizing material recovery. They suggest focusing on high-value silicon versus intact silicon wafers. The latter has been touted as achievable, but silicon wafers often crack and would not likely meet today's exacting standards to enable direct reuse. To recover high-value silicon, the authors highlight the need for research and development of silicon purification processes.

The authors also emphasize that the environmental and economic impacts of recycling practices should be explored using techno-economic analyses and life-cycle assessments.

Finally, the authors note that finding ways to avoid waste to begin with is an important part of the equation, including how to make solar panels last longer, use materials more effectively, and produce electricity more efficiently.

"We need research and development because the accumulation of waste will sneak up on us," Silverman said. "Much like the exponential growth of PV installations, it will seem to move slowly and then rapidly accelerate. By the time there's enough waste to open a PV-dedicated facility, we need to have already studied the proper process."

If successful, these findings could contribute one piece of a PV circular economy.

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The U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office funded the analysis.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

Designing better asteroid explorers

New research provides important information in improving the accuracy of data collection on asteroids

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

 

Recent NASA missions to asteroids have gathered important data about the early evolution of our Solar System, planet formation, and how life may have originated on Earth. These missions also provide crucial information to deflect asteroids that could hit Earth.

Missions like the OSIRIS-REx mission to Asteroid Bennu and the Hyabusa II mission to Ryugu, are often conducted by robotic explorers that send images back to Earth showing complex asteroid surfaces with cracked, perched boulders and rubble fields.

In order to better understand the behavior of asteroid material and design successful robotic explorers, researchers must first understand exactly how these explorers impact the surface of asteroids during their touchdown.

In a paper published in the journal Icarus, researchers in the University of Rochester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, including Alice Quillen, a professor of physics and astronomy, and Esteban Wright, a graduate student in Quillen's lab, conducted lab experiments to determine what happens when explorers and other objects touch down on complex, granular surfaces in low gravity environments. Their research provides important information in improving the accuracy of data collection on asteroids.

"Controlling the robotic explorer is paramount to mission success," Wright says. "We want to avoid a situation where the lander is stuck in its own landing site or potentially bounces off the surface and goes in an unintended direction. It may also be desirable for the explorer to skip across the surface to travel long distances."

The researchers used sand to represent an asteroid's surface in the lab. They used marbles to measure how objects impact the sandy surfaces at different angles, and filmed the marbles with high-speed video in order to track the marbles' trajectories and spin during impact with the sand.

"Granular materials like sand are usually quite absorbent upon impact," Quillen says. "Similar to a cannonball ricocheting off of water, pushed sand can act like a snow in front of a snowplow, lifting the projectile, causing it to skip off the surface."

The researchers constructed a mathematical model that includes the Froude number, a dimensionless ratio that depends on gravity, speed, and size. By scaling the model with the Froude number, the researchers were able to apply the knowledge gained from their experiments with the marbles to low gravity environments, such as those found on the surfaces of asteroids.

"We found that at velocities near the escape velocity--the velocity at which an object will escape gravitational attraction--many if not most rocks and boulders are likely to ricochet on asteroids," Wright says.

The results provide an explanation for why asteroids have strewn boulders and rocks that are perched on their surfaces, and they also influence the angle at which robotic missions will need to successfully touch down on the surface of an asteroid.

"Robotic missions that touch down on the surface of an asteroid will need to control the moment of touch down so that they don't bounce," Quillen says. "The robots can accomplish this by making their angle of impact nearly vertical, by reducing the velocity of impact to a very small value, or by making the velocity of impact large enough to form a deep crater that the robotic explorer won't bounce out of."

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More than one cognition: A call for change in the field of comparative psychology

Reviewing 40 years of research, a new paper challenges hypotheses and calls for a more biocentric understanding of cognitive evolution

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY

IMAGE: REVIEWING 40 YEARS OF RESEARCH, A NEW PAPER CHALLENGES HYPOTHESES AND CALLS FOR A MORE BIOCENTRIC UNDERSTANDING OF COGNITIVE EVOLUTION. view more 

CREDIT: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SIMONE PIKA, JULIANE BRAEUER, AND NATALIE UOMINI.

What makes a species "smart" and how do strategies for processing information evolve? What goes on in the minds of non-human animals and which cognitive skills can we claim as hallmarks of our species? These are some of the questions addressed by the field of comparative psychology, but a recent review in the Journal of Intelligence joins a growing body of literature that argues that studies of cognition are hampered by anthropocentrism and missing the bigger picture of cognitive evolution.

Based on 40 years of scientific literature and case studies of three non-human animals, the current paper identifies two main problems hindering research in comparative psychology.

First of which is the assumption that human cognition is the standard by which animal cognition should be measured. Human cognition is generally believed to be the most flexible, adaptable form of intelligence, with the abilities of other species evaluated in accordance to the extent they match human cognitive skills. Such an approach tends to overrate human-like cognitive skills and may overlook cognitive skills that play only a small part, or no part at all, in human psychology.

"This approach, whether implicit or explicit, can only produce a restrictive, anthropocentric view of cognitive evolution that ignores the incredible diversity of cognitive skills present in the world," says Juliane Bräuer, leader of the DogLab at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Instead, research into the evolution of cognition should take a biocentric approach, considering each species investigated in its own right.

"Applying Darwinian thinking to comparative psychology and removing the 'benchmark' of human intelligence allows us to reveal the evolutionary, developmental and environmental conditions that foster the growth of certain unique abilities and the convergence of skills shared among a species," adds Natalie Uomini, the main co-author of the paper.

To further address this anthropocentric view, the authors also argue for increased focus on cognitive abilities in which animals outperform humans and discuss cases in which various species demonstrate better-than-human abilities in delayed gratification, navigation, communication, pattern recognition and statistical reasoning.

The second problem addressed is the assumption that cognition evolves as a package of skills similar to those apparent in humans, skills which taken together constitute "one cognition." The authors survey various major hypotheses from psychology, including Social Intelligence Hypothesis, Domestication Hypothesis and Cooperative Breeding Hypothesis, and argue that while each has evidence to support its claims, none account for the whole picture of cognition.

Instead of a cluster of linked skills originating from a single evolutionary pressure, the paper provides a framework for understanding cognitive arrays as the result of species-typical adaptations to the entire ecological and social environment.

"If we want to account for the fascinating variety of animal minds, comparative scientists should focus on skills that are ecologically relevant for a given species," say Bräuer and Uomini.

The paper discusses three distantly related species - chimpanzees, dogs and New Caledonian crows - that are highly sophisticated in one cognitive domain yet perform poorly in others generally believed to be linked.

The paper also lays out recommendations to make future experiments in comparative psychology ecologically relevant to the target species, including differentiating tasks for each species and accounting for diverse senses of perception, such as smell in the case of dogs.

In Germany, where the authors of the paper are based, comparative psychology is a relatively unknown field. The authors hope to stimulate interest and growth in the subject with future research dedicated to the study of each species' cognitive skills for their own sake, leading to a more relevant and holistic perspective on animals' cognitive skills and the recognition that there is not only "one cognition."

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Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

A new study from North Carolina State University and Microsoft finds that the technical interviews currently used in hiring for many software engineering positions test whether a job candidate has performance anxiety rather than whether the candidate is competent at coding. The interviews may also be used to exclude groups or favor specific job candidates.

"Technical interviews are feared and hated in the industry, and it turns out that these interview techniques may also be hurting the industry's ability to find and hire skilled software engineers," says Chris Parnin, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work. "Our study suggests that a lot of well-qualified job candidates are being eliminated because they're not used to working on a whiteboard in front of an audience."

Technical interviews in the software engineering sector generally take the form of giving a job candidate a problem to solve, then requiring the candidate to write out a solution in code on a whiteboard - explaining each step of the process to an interviewer.

Previous research found that many developers in the software engineering community felt the technical interview process was deeply flawed. So the researchers decided to run a study aimed at assessing the effect of the interview process on aspiring software engineers.

For this study, researchers conducted technical interviews of 48 computer science undergraduates and graduate students. Half of the study participants were given a conventional technical interview, with an interviewer looking on. The other half of the participants were asked to solve their problem on a whiteboard in a private room. The private interviews did not require study participants to explain their solutions aloud, and had no interviewers looking over their shoulders.

Researchers measured each study participant's interview performance by assessing the accuracy and efficiency of each solution. In other words, they wanted to know whether the code they wrote would work, and the amount of computing resources needed to run it.

"People who took the traditional interview performed half as well as people that were able to interview in private," Parnin says. "In short, the findings suggest that companies are missing out on really good programmers because those programmers aren't good at writing on a whiteboard and explaining their work out loud while coding."

The researchers also note that the current format of technical interviews may also be used to exclude certain job candidates.

"For example, interviewers may give easier problems to candidates they prefer," Parnin says. "But the format may also serve as a barrier to entire classes of candidates. For example, in our study, all of the women who took the public interview failed, while all of the women who took the private interview passed. Our study was limited, and a larger sample size would be needed to draw firm conclusions, but the idea that the very design of the interview process may effectively exclude an entire class of job candidates is troubling."

What's more, the specific nature of the technical interview process means that many job candidates try to spend weeks or months training specifically for the technical interview, rather than for the actual job they'd be doing.

"The technical interview process gives people with industry connections an advantage," says Mahnaz Behroozi, first author of study and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "But it gives a particularly large advantage to people who can afford to take the time to focus solely on preparing for an interview process that has very little to do with the nature of the work itself.

"And the problems this study highlights are in addition to a suite of other problems associated with the hiring process in the tech sector, which we presented at ICSE-SES [the International Conference on Software Engineering, Software Engineering In Society]," adds Behroozi. "If the tech sector can address all of these challenges in a meaningful way, it will make significant progress in becoming more fair and inclusive. More to the point, the sector will be drawing from a larger and more diverse talent pool, which would contribute to better work."

The study on technical interviews, "Does Stress Impact Technical Interview Performance?," will be presented at the ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, being held virtually from Nov. 8-13. The study was co-authored by Shivani Shirolkar, a Ph.D. student at NC State who worked on the project while an undergraduate; and by Titus Barik, a researcher at Microsoft and former Ph.D. student at NC State.

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