Looking up to the Joneses: Consequences of the perceptions of white wealth

by Society for Personality and Social Psychology
JULY 30, 2020

Before the era of COVID-19, research suggested that premature deaths among white Americans were rising. Even before the era of COVID-19, these findings were surprising. As Dr. Cooley explains, "These trends were puzzling to us because white people, on average, have more wealth than other racial groups and are generally privileged in our society." As a result, Cooley and colleagues questioned whether factors other than income and education, known as objective indicators of status, may not buy happiness for white people. Instead, they investigated the role of social comparisons—or the desire to "keep up with the Joneses."


Their research indicates that white Americans tend to compare their own status to other white Americans—people they perceive as much wealthier than their selves; and, the greater the perceived disparity, the worse they feel—psychologically and physically—regardless of their objective status.

In one study, white and Black Americans (490 white people and 519 Black people) were asked to rank their own status on a ladder—selecting higher ladder rungs if they felt high status and lower rungs if they felt low status. Next, participants were asked to rank "the majority of their racial group" (i.e., white or Black people) on the same scale. The researchers followed with questions about participants' health, emotions, and wellbeing. A second study replicated their findings.

"Results revealed that white Americans tended to make upward status comparisons—in other words, they most often compared their status to other white people—people who they perceived as having higher status than the self" says Erin Cooley, one of the study's co-lead authors. "In contrast, Black Americans most often compared their status to other Black people—people who they perceived as doing worse than the self." And, among white Americans, larger upward comparisons were associated with feeling fewer positive emotions and having worse physical health.

Interestingly, these data suggest that it is exactly because of this belief that white = wealth, that many white people feel as if they are falling behind.

Although their work illuminates psychological processes that may harm the health of white Americans, the authors also urge readers to consider two points: (1) these data were collected before the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) as clearly revealed by the pandemic, minority racial/ethnic groups—particularly African Americans and Latinx Americans—are disproportionately impacted by poor health outcomes and economic downturns.

"Due to racism and persistent racial inequities, there are many health disparities experienced by people of color in the United States including rates of heart disease and diabetes," says Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, also a co-lead author of the research. Thus, while the authors think the current work represents an interesting psychological mechanism for white Americans, this work should not detract from the fact that structural racism in this country creates health and wealth inequalities along racial lines.


Explore furtherPerceived 'whiteness' of Middle Eastern Americans correlates with discrimination
More information: Erin Cooley et al, Investigating the Health Consequences for White Americans Who Believe White Americans Are Wealthy, Social Psychological and Personality Science (2020). DOI: 10.1177/1948550620905219
Journal information: Social Psychological and Personality Science


Provided by Society for Personality and Social Psychology
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A rebranding of 'freedom'?

by University of Chicago

According to recent Gallup polls, socialism is now more popular than capitalism among Democrats and young people, and support for "some form of socialism" among all Americans is at 43% (compared to 25% in 1942). Policies that went unmentioned or were declared out-of-bounds in elections four years ago—a federal jobs guarantee, single-payer health care, free college, massive tax hikes on the rich, and the Green New Deal—are commonplace in Democrats' 2020 campaigns.


However, in "Freedom Now," a new paper published by Alex Gourevitch and Corey Robin in Polity's May Symposium on the Challenges Facing Democrats, there is still no clear, unifying idea behind this political shift. "One has not heard anything on the order of Franklin Roosevelt's Commonwealth Club speech or Reagan's story of the free market," the authors write. If these policies are to have a chance of breaking through, they will need a grounding principle, or ideology name the enemy, organize the policies, orient the actions, state the destination, and provide the fuel for the movement.

Gourevitch and Robin propose that that idea is freedom. "While the left once understood freedom as emancipation from the economy, the right spent the twentieth century neutralizing and appropriating the idea of freedom by reinventing the economy as the true site of freedom."

To reclaim freedom as a value of the left, the authors believe the first place to start is the unfreedom of the workplace. "In nearly every capitalist country, one of the leading elements of the legal definition of employment is subordination to the will of a superior." That can mean that employees must urinate—or are forbidden to urinate. It can mean that they should be sexually appealing—or must not be sexually appealing. They may be told how to speak, what to say, whom to say it to, where to be, where to go, how to dress, when to eat, and what to read—all in the name of the job. "But isn't the worker free to leave a bad boss? Formally speaking, yes," the authors write. "But even if they are free to exit this workplace, they are not free to exit the workplace."

Reclaiming "freedom" names the problem that an increasing number of people face today: systemic unfreedom in the neoliberal economy. By confronting that unfreedom, the left can do more than identify, in a coherent and cohesive way, the myriad problems that individuals are currently facing. The authors find the seeds of that idea in Bernie Sanders's rhetoric about being "organizer in chief," and in proposals from the Warren and Sanders camps that would strengthen workers' right to strike and organize.

However, they note, "A real politics of freedom posits a belief in the capacity of people to revise the terms of their existence and a commitment to the institutions that make these collective revisions possible." In other words, freedom is best realized not through tending our own gardens but through disciplined commitment and collective struggle, in activities like mass strikes and party politics. "These democratic struggles are not simply expressions and experiences of freedom, though they are that. They are also the means to the freedoms people deserve."

Why some people won't wear face masks even if told to

More information: Alex Gourevitch et al, Freedom Now, Polity (2020). DOI: 10.1086/708919

Provided by University of Chicago

For urban conservation, local resident involvement is key

"Do not ask people to tolerate conservation, Instead, seek win-win scenarios for communities and biodiversity."

by Laura Arenschield, The Ohio State University
Credit: The Ohio State University

Conservation projects in cities are most likely to succeed when nearby residents are part of the planning and design process and feel ownership over the projects, researchers who spent seven years studying conservation in Cleveland say.


Conservation projects in cities also are more likely to be successful if they are tackled at a micro, neighborhood level, rather than approached as a city-wide project, the researchers believe.

The researchers made the case in a commentary article based on seven years of research studying the ecology of vacant land in Cleveland, published online Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.

"By seeding vacant lots with native Ohio wildflowers, we sought to both beautify these spaces and support biodiversity," said Mary Gardiner, professor of entomology at The Ohio State University and senior author of the paper. "With this article, we wanted to highlight conservation is not successful when it creates conflict with local residents, and summarize best practices from the literature and our own experiences on the ground."

This study was part of a larger research project designed to understand the best ways to encourage biodiversity among beneficial insects such as bees, spiders and beetles in urban vacant lots.

When the project began in 2012, the researchers worked closely with city leaders, including members of the Cleveland City Council, the Cleveland Land Bank (an organization that manages the city's vacant properties), and others to identify neighborhoods—and vacant lots within those neighborhoods—for conservation projects. The team designed eight different conservation styles to be used over eight vacant lots in eight neighborhoods across Cleveland. In each neighborhood, vacant lots were cleaned and planted with different wildflowers that would support beneficial insects.

Then, they went door-to-door within a one-block radius of each of the 64 vacant lots in the study to talk with neighbors and make sure they were on board.

But that approach could have been improved, Gardiner said.

"That is asking people to accept something. It's not asking them to co-create it with you, which is a better strategy," she said. Also, she said, communication throughout the project duration is key and the group faced many challenges getting the word out about their conservation goals.


"Many living near our sites were short-term renters—the neighbors you would meet in year one, when you were establishing and planting, were not always the same neighbors present in year two. And so, people would notice our signs or the habitat and not know the back story and wouldn't feel like they were part of the decision-making process, which unfortunately disenfranchised some from the study."

Cleveland is a city of around 400,000 people; its population has declined in recent decades. The city covers about 84 square miles and has more than 27,000 vacant lots.

The project covered eight neighborhoods, with different conservation approaches in each area. That design was important for research purposes—it allowed the researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of each conservation approach, and to try to replicate approaches across one city. But the researchers emphasize that this research design is not ideal for conservation initiatives that might follow. A one-size-fits-all approach to conservation, even across one city, is unlikely to meet the needs of both residents and target species.

For example, the researchers mowed the edges of each vacant lot habitat, thinking that the residents might appreciate a border between their homes and a wild habitat that might feature tall flowers. But in some areas, residents thought that the teams had abandoned the lots partway through a mow job. Some residents appreciated the fencing that went around vacant lots; others thought it blocked them from accessing the habitats.

"We would advise conservation scientists in the future to focus on starting small in one particular community," said Katie Turo, first author of the paper and a doctoral student in Gardiner's lab. "And to recognize how important it is to invest in the community, develop objectives and continue to work with them to understand what's working and what's not working."

And while the researchers put up signs at each lot that included contact information, the scientists found that residents were most likely to talk with them—to complain, compliment the planting or ask questions—when they were on site.

"That was difficult, because many neighbors were working during the day when we were collecting data and managing the sites," Turo said. "We found that when we were able to stick around after 5 p.m., we were more likely to get feedback from residents. In the future though, we'd recommend that scientists avoid similar issues by partnering with sociologists who can help proactively gather community feedback."

The researchers cited a successful conservation project in Chicago, the Burnham Wildlife Corridor, which developed a migratory bird habitat, but which also invited community groups and residents to design their own project goals and habitat plans. That project was also designed in partnership with the Field Museum and Chicago Park District and built on 20 years of research into the local communities.

That local community buy-in matters: Conservation projects, Gardiner said, are more likely to be successful when the local community is excited about them and takes ownership. That means engaging residents throughout project conceptualization, implementation and assessment.

"Do not ask people to tolerate conservation," she said. "Instead, seek win-win scenarios for communities and biodiversity."

Large Lot Program shows the power of private land stewardship in addressing urban vacancy

More information: Katherine J. Turo et al. The balancing act of urban conservation, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17539-0
Journal information: Nature Communications

How to improve climate modeling and prediction

by University of Copenhagen

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

We are changing the Earth system at a unprecedented speed without knowing the consequences in detail. Increasingly detailed, physics-based models are improving steadily, but an in-depth understanding of persisting uncertainties is still lacking. The two main challenges have been to obtain the necessary amount of detail in the models and to accurately predict how anthropogenic carbon dioxide disturbs the climate's intrinsic, natural variability. A path to surmounting both of these obstacles are now laid out in a comprehensive review published in Reviews of Modern Physics by Michael Ghil and Valerio Lucarini from the EU Horizon 2020 climate science project TiPES.


"We propose ideas to perform much more effective climate simulations than the traditional approach of relying exclusively on bigger and bigger models allows. And we show how to extract much more information at much higher predictive power from those models. We think it is a valuable, original and much more effective way than a lot of things that are being done," says Valerio Lucarini, professor in mathematics and statistics at the University of Reading, UK and at CEN, the Institute of meteorology, University of Hamburg, Germany.

Such an approach is urgently needed, because current climate models generally fail in performing two important tasks. First, they cannot reduce the uncertainty in determining the mean global temperature at the surface after a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. This number is called equilibrium climate sensitivity, and in 1979, it was computed to 1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius. Since then, the uncertainty has grown. Today it is 1.5 to 6 degrees in spite of decades of improvement to numerical models and huge gains in computational power over the same period.

Second, climate models struggle to predict tipping points, which occur when a subsystem i.e. a sea current, an ice sheet, a landscape, an eco system suddenly and irrevocably shift from one state to another. These kind of events are well documented in historical records and pose a major threat to modern societies. Still, they are not predicted by the high-end climate models that the IPCC assessments rely upon.

These difficulties are grounded in the fact that mathematical methodology used in most high-resolution climate calculations does not adequately reproduce deterministically chaotic behavior nor the associated uncertainties in the presence of time-dependent forcing.

Chaotic behavior is intrinsic to the Earth system, as many physical, chemical, geological and biological processes range in timescales from microseconds to million of years, including cloud formation, sedimentation, weathering, ocean currents, wind patterns, moisture, photosynthesis etc. Apart from that, the system is forced mainly by solar radiation, which varies naturally over time, but also by anthropogenic changes to the atmosphere. Thus, the Earth system is highly complex, deterministically chaotic, stochastically perturbed and never in equilibrium.

"What we are doing is essentially extending deterministic chaos to a much more general mathematical framework, which provides the tools to determine the response of the climate system to all sorts of forcings, deterministic as well as stochastic," explains Michael Ghil, professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure and PSL University in Paris, France and at the University of California, Los Angeles, U.S..

The fundamental ideas are not that new. The theory was developed decades ago, but is a very difficult mathematical theory calling for multidisciplinary cooperation between experts in order to be implemented in climate models. Such interdisciplinary approaches have been slowly emerging, involving the climate science community as well as experts in applied mathematics, theoretical physics and dynamical systems theory. The authors hope the review paper will accelerate this tendency as it describes the mathematical tools needed for such work.

"We present a self-consistent understanding of climate change and climate variability in a well defined coherent framework. I think that is an important step in solving the problem. Because first of all you have to pose it correctly. So the idea is—if we use the conceptual tools we discuss extensively in our paper, we might hope to help climate science and climate modeling make a leap forward," says Valerio Lucarini.Much improved climate predictions from statistical mechanics

More information: Ghil et al., The physics of climate variability and climate change. Reviews of Modern Physics (2020). journals.aps.org/rmp/accepted/ … 16873abe98ea7deb542d

Journal information: Reviews of Modern Physics


Provided by University of Copenhagen

New study confirms extensive gas leaks in the North Sea

by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres

On the basis of investigations directly on the seafloor it was possible to determine the amount of escaping gas. Credit: ROV team/GEOMAR

During expeditions to oil and gas reservoirs in the central North Sea in 2012 and 2013, scientists of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany) became aware of a phenomenon that had been hardly recognized before. They discovered that methane bubbles emerged from the seabed around abandoned wells. The gas originates from shallow gas pockets, which lie less than 1000 meters deep below the seafloor and that were not the target of the original drilling operations. An initial assessment showed that these emissions could be the dominant source of methane in the North Sea.

A new study published by GEOMAR scientists today in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, confirms this initial estimate on a larger data basis. "We have combined investigations at additional wells with extensive seismic data. The results clearly show that thousands of tons of methane are leaking from old drill holes on the North Sea floor every year," says Dr. Christoph Böttner, who is the main author of the study, which is part of his doctoral thesis at GEOMAR.

During expeditions with RV POSEIDON in 2017 and 2019, the researchers were able to detect gas leakage at 28 of 43 directly investigated wells. "The propensity for such leaks increases the closer the boreholes are located with respect to shallow gas pockets, which are normally uninteresting for commercial use. Apparently, however, the disturbance of the overburden sediment by drilling process causes the gas to rise along the borehole," explains Dr. Matthias Haeckel from GEOMAR, who lead the study.

In addition, the team used available seismic data of the industry from the British sector of the North Sea to make further statements about the boreholes in the area. "We cover 20,000 square kilometers of seafloor in our study, which is approximately the size of Wales. This area contains 1,792 wells of which we have information. We evaluated a number of factors, such as location, distance to shallow gas pockets, and age, based on our direct measurements and weighted how these factors promote methane gas leakage from old wells. The most important factor was indeed the distance of the wells from the gas pockets," explains Dr. Böttner.

Distribution of drill holes across the Exclusive Economic Zones of the UK, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Credit: Christoph Böttner/GEOMAR.

The positions of the boreholes and the location and extent of the gas pockets indicate that this area of the North Sea alone has the potential to emit 900 to 3700 tons of methane every year. "However, more than 15,000 boreholes have been drilled in the entire North Sea," adds Dr. Haeckel.

In seawater, methane is usually consumed by microbes. This can lead to local seawater acidification. In the North Sea, about half of the boreholes are at such shallow water depths that part of the emitted methane can escape into the atmosphere. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.

The authors of the study encourage the industry to publish their data and recommend more independent emission measurements from abandoned wells in order to develop stricter guidelines and legally binding regulations for abandonment procedures.

"The sources and sinks of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, are still subject to large uncertainties. This also applies to emissions from the fossil energy sector. In order to better understand the reasons for the continuously increasing methane concentrations in the atmosphere and to be able to take mitigation measures, it is important to have a reliable numbers of the individual anthropogenic contributions," summarizes Dr. HaeckelOil and gas wells as a strong source of greenhouse gases

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More information: Christoph Böttner et al, Greenhouse gas emissions from marine decommissioned hydrocarbon wells: leakage detection, monitoring and mitigation strategies, International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2020.103119

Provided by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres

Stunning space butterfly captured by telescope

by ESO

Credit: ESO

Resembling a butterfly with its symmetrical structure, beautiful colors, and intricate patterns, this striking bubble of gas—known as NGC 2899—appears to float and flutter across the sky in this new picture from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). This object has never before been imaged in such striking detail, with even the faint outer edges of the planetary nebula glowing over the background stars.


NGC 2899's vast swathes of gas extend up to a maximum of two light-years from its center, glowing brightly in front of the stars of the Milky Way as the gas reaches temperatures upwards of ten thousand degrees. The high temperatures are due to the large amount of radiation from the nebula's parent star, which causes the hydrogen gas in the nebula to glow in a reddish halo around the oxygen gas, in blue.

This object, located between 3000 and 6500 light-years away in the Southern constellation of Vela (The Sails), has two central stars, which are believed to give it its nearly symmetric appearance. After one star reached the end of its life and cast off its outer layers, the other star now interferes with the flow of gas, forming the two-lobed shape seen here. Only about 10-20% of planetary nebulae display this type of bipolar shape.

Astronomers were able to capture this highly detailed image of NGC 2899 using the FORS instrument installed on UT1 (Antu), one of the four 8.2-meter telescopes that make up ESO's VLT in Chile. Standing for FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph, this high-resolution instrument was one of the first to be installed on ESO's VLT and is behind numerous beautiful images and discoveries from ESO. FORS has contributed to observations of light from a gravitational wave source, has researched the first known interstellar asteroid, and has been used to study in depth the physics behind the formation of complex planetary nebulae.


This image was created under the ESO Cosmic Gems program, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The program makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations. All data collected may also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to astronomers through ESO's science archive.

Gemini South telescope captures exquisite planetary nebula

Provided by ESO

New analysis method predicts disruptive solar flares

by Meredith Fore, Inside Science, American Institute of Physics

An image of a solar flare captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on Oct. 2, 2014. Credit: NASA/SDO

Solar flares—violent explosions on the surface of the sun—can send blasts of radiation hurtling toward Earth. While the planet's magnetic field protects humans on the surface, powerful solar flares can disable satellites, power grids and radio communications. But scientists aren't sure exactly what triggers solar flares, which makes it difficult to predict when one will occur. One theory suggests these massive explosions can be set off by small disturbances in the sun's magnetic field. Now, researchers have applied that theory to develop a novel method of predicting solar flares before they happen. This method could make the forecasting of solar flares more accurate and reliable than ever before.

Solar flares are intimately connected with the sun's magnetic field. While the lines of Earth's magnetic field are straight and static, running from the south pole to the north pole, the surface of the sun is a chaotic sea of ions and heat, making its magnetic field lines wildly more complicated.

Some models suggest that solar flares occur when many magnetic field lines merge into one far larger loop. This can be caused by something as small as a single cosmic particle striking the surface—if the conditions are right. The new prediction method uses satellite images to find the places on the sun where conditions are ripe for these magnetic reconnections, and therefore solar flares. These conditions can also suggest how big a potential flare can be.

"At some positions on a mountain, a small crack can trigger an avalanche," said Kanya Kusano, a professor of Earth and space science at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan, and lead author of the study. "But in other places, only a big crack will trigger it. We implement our theory to calculate how many magnetic reconnections, at a certain position, are required to trigger a solar flare."

An X-class solar flare flashes on the edge of the Sun on March 7, 2012. This image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and shows a type of light that is invisible to human eyes, called extreme ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

Kusano's work analyzed satellite data from the nine biggest solar flares in the last two solar cycles, and found his method was able to predict seven of them from satellite images alone. He and his colleagues detailed their findings online July 30 in the journal Science.Researchers shed new light on solar flares

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More information: Kanya Kusano et al. A physics-based method that can predict imminent large solar flares, Science (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz2511

Journal information: Science 

Provided by Inside Science, American Institute of Physics 

This story is republished courtesy of Inside Science. Read the original story here. Used with permission. Inside Science is an editorially independent news service of the American Institute of Physics.

British Airways parent IAG swoops for more cash to survive crisis

by Roland Jackson

IAG kept most of its aircraft parked during the coronavirus outbreak due to travel restrictions, leading to massive losses

Airline giant IAG, the owner of British Airways and Spanish carrier Iberia, on Friday logged a 3.8-billion-euro ($4.5 billion) first-half net loss—and launched a capital-raising to help it navigate the demand-destroying coronavirus crisis.

The European travel giant, whose portfolio also includes Aer Lingus, Level and Vueling, said in a results statement that the loss after taxation in the six months to June compared with year-earlier profit of 806 million euros.

The airline conglomerate has been ravaged this year by COVID-19, which grounded planes worldwide as global lockdowns and border closures sought to halt the spread of the killer disease.

"The results ... were significantly impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19, which has had a devastating impact on the global airline and travel sectors, particularly from late February 2020 onwards," the company said.

Sales more than halved to just 5.3 billion euros in the first six months of the year, while it swung to a pre-tax loss of 4.2 billion euros after a profit of 1.0 billion euros last time around.

The London-listed titan has meanwhile embarked upon a massive jobs-slashing efficiency drive, in line with carriers like Air Canada, American Airlines and Lufthansa.

And on Friday, IAG announced it would seek to raise up to 2.75 billion euros in capital from investors.

'Substantial losses'

"All IAG airlines made substantial losses," said Chief Executive Willie Walsh, noting that second-quarter traffic collapsed by a staggering 98.4 percent as a result of government travel restrictions—and capacity shrank 95.3 percent.

"We have seen evidence that demand recovers when government restrictions are lifted," he said, adding that IAG had taken extra measures to reassure customers about health and safety.

But Walsh said "we continue to expect that it will take until at least 2023 for passenger demand to recover to 2019 levels."

The International Air Transport Association had warned earlier this week that global air traffic will not return to levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic until at least 2024, adding that new UK restrictions on travel with Spain had created a lot of uncertainty.

British Airways had already warned in April that it could slash up to 12,000 jobs, or a quarter of its workforce, in a drastic restructuring as the carrier grapples with fallout from the deadly pandemic.

Britain's BALPA pilots' trade union is meanwhile consulting members over a provisional agreement with BA over plans to cut wages by 20 percent and potentially shed about 270 jobs. The ballot closes on Friday.

'Darkest hour'

In late morning deals on Friday, IAG's share price tumbled 9.3 percent to 164.21 pence as many investors took flight on the grim set of news.

London's FTSE 100 index, on which the group is listed, flatlined at 5,987.62 points.

"Who will back International Consolidated Airlines in its darkest hour?" asked AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

"The airline sector is in desperate need of cash to help see it through a very difficult period and investors will be taking considerable risk by participating in its rights issue."

While Mould said cash injection will give IAG a bit of breathing space, the pace of the airline sector recovery is out of its hands.

"It is dependent on the course of coronavirus and government decisions on travel restrictions, quarantines and lockdowns in case of new flare-ups."

British Airways parent dives into huge quarterly loss

Will next AirPods feature bone conduction?

by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Credit: US Patent 10,728,649 B1

Will Apple's next big air bud project be called iBone?

Maybe not, but the folks at Cupertino are exploring a new approach to its AirPod line of earpieces.

A patent was granted to Apple on Tuesday for a design that would use bone conduction to transmit sounds instead of a traditional ear piece placed in the ear.

With bone conduction, the user wears a device that transmits vibrations through the skull directly to the cochlea, the inner ear structure than converts vibrations to neural signals that our brains interpret as sounds. The device is held by a band wrapped behind the head. This leaves the ears free and is helpful when the user requires minimal interference with hearing ambient sounds.

It allows for ear bud functionality in environments where regular ear buds would not function, such as under water. And it is more convenient for joggers, for instance, who should find more stability with firmly placed bone-conduction devices than with less stable ear buds that can easily fall out when running.

There currently are a few ear buds based on bone conduction on the market, such as the AfterShokz Aeropex and Pyle PSWBT550.

Some critics say the sound quality of bone conduction ear pieces is inferior to standard ones. This is largely due to bone conduction's poor handling of high frequency sounds. The technology works best with sounds in the 4,000 Hz level and below, while sounds spanning 4,000 Hz to 20,000 Hz are better handled by traditional air bud transmission called air induction.

Apple's patent, titled "Multipath audio stimulation using audio compressors," addresses this problem by relying on two transmission methods. One component of what may eventually become the AirPod 3 would use a bone-conduction transducer to transmit low- and mid-frequency sounds, while high-frequency sounds would be handled by the traditional ear bud approach using an air-conduction transducer.

Actually, Apple has researched this area of sound transmission before. They have obtained a patent for noise cancellation on bone conduction devices, relying on accelerometers to detect vibrations. Apple's current line of AirPods have noise cancellation, but they do not feature bone conduction.

It may not yet have had the name, but the principle of bone conduction can be traced back at least nearly 200 years. The great composer Ludwig van Beethoven compensated for his nearly total hearing loss in his later years by attaching one end of a rod to his piano and the other between his teeth so he could "hear" his compositions. Musicians commonly use that approach today when tuning a piano. With both hands occupied tuning the keys, the tuners grasp a tuning fork between their teeth that helps prolong the sound while they match the precise pitch.

Interestingly, a health product back in 2013 relied on bone conduction to help encourage kids to brush their teeth. Arm and Hammer Tooth Tunes unveiled its "Music in Your Mouth" campaign featuring toothbrushes that played two-minute clips of the enormously popular boy band One Direction. The toothbrushes streamed vibrations through the bristles of the toothbrush into the young lads' mouths.

Arm and Hammer promoted the devices with the slogan, "It's like a private One Direction concert in their mouth!"

A password of another kind: User identification through the skull

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More information: US Patent 10,728,649 B1

Apple Insider

Amazon closer to launching satellites, upping internet reach
by Joseph Pisani

The Amazon DTW1 fulfillment center is shown in Romulus, Mich. Amazon is heading to space. The online shopping giant received government approval to put more than 3,200 satellites into orbit that would beam down internet service to earth. Amazon said the satellites could provide internet to parts of the world that don't have it. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

Amazon.com is one step closer to space.

The company received government approval to put more than 3,200 satellites into orbit with the goal of beaming internet service to earth.
Amazon said the satellites could provide internet to parts of the world that don't have it. It could also become a new business for Amazon, selling internet service to people or companies.
"We have heard so many stories lately about people who are unable to do their job or complete schoolwork because they don't have reliable internet at home," said Amazon executive Dave Limp, in a written statement.
Amazon said it will spend $10 billion on the initiative, called Project Kuiper. It's opening a research facility in Redmond, Washington, where the satellites will be designed and tested.
That would be about twice the profit that the Seattle company made in its most recent three-month financial reporting period.
Other companies have already put satellites into orbit, including SpaceX, the rocket company owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. SpaceX received government approval for the project in 2018.
Space is a major focus of Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man. He privately owns a space exploration company and has spoken of, at some point in the distant future, the potential of relocating manufacturing and other heavy industries to space, keeping the resulting emissions out of the earth's atmosphere.
Amazon didn't say when it expects to have Project Kuiper operating, but the Federal Communications Commission, which approved the initiative on Thursday, said half of its satellites must be in orbit by July 2026.

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