Understanding differences in nonconformity

UGA study looks at qualities of mavericks and contrarians

30-Jan-2024  University of Georgia

BYLINE: Erica Techoetecho@uga.edu

Newswise — Stand out individuals often capture our attention, especially in the United States. According to a recent University of Georgia study, not all nonconformists are the same. Although on the surface, several “stand out” individuals may look the same, they are likely different from one another in several important ways.

Across multiple studies, researchers examined stereotypes about two types of nonconformists: mavericks and contrarians. Lead author and associate professor of psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Brian Haas said that understanding how nonconformists are stereotyped can not only provide insight into how Americans perceive individuality, but also clarify how different types of stand out individuals are treated.

“When people are stereotyped in a box, whether it’s a maverick or a contrarian, it’s likely to come with a bunch of consequences,” Haas said. “By researching this topic using a stereotyping approach, we get a good sense of what those consequences may be.”

The United States seems to be a place where nonconformists capture a great deal of society’s attention, Haas said. While Americans often celebrate individuality in general, this study shows that Americans tend to think more positively about mavericks than contrarians. The stereotypes likely have consequences in terms of social relationships and job prospects, Haas said. 

In the first study, participants were asked to provide characteristics and potential jobs for “a person who finds their own way in life and is not influenced by what other people think or do” (a maverick) and “a person who really likes to be different than everybody else” (a contrarian).

Participants associated leadership roles such as CEO and entrepreneur with mavericks and more creative roles like musician and artist with contrarians. Additionally, mavericks were viewed as more agreeable and competent, and contrarians were seen as more social and neurotic. 

“This has relevance into the type of people that others want to hire or have on their team. Do you want somebody who is independent in thought and doesn’t think much about what everyone else is doing, or do you want somebody who is super creative in coming up with novel and different ideas?” Haas said, describing mavericks and contrarians, respectively.

In addition to creativity, contrarians were also thought to be rather high in sociability, Haas said, as it shows that some nonconformists must be very socially aware in order to actively avoid fitting in. 

“If somebody really wants to be different, they need to first tune into what everybody’s doing,” Haas said. “And then they need to calculate how to do the opposite and get noticed doing so. You have to be really, really tuned into what everybody else is doing to develop behavior that’s opposite to what everyone else is doing.” 

Moving forward, Haas hopes this research can act as a stepping stone in comparing conformity and nonconformity across cultures and countries.

“The strength of wanting to conform to others around you differs according to where on earth you are,” Haas said. “In the United States, there seems to be a particularly high value associated with standing out from the crowd, and that's not necessarily the case in many other places in the world. So, a logical next step is to study what stereotypes about nonconformists are like in cultures other than the United States.”

Telehealth makes timely abortions possible for many, research shows





The COVID-19 pandemic brought telehealth into the mainstream.

  Sladic/E+ via Getty Images

Published: January 30, 2024 

Access to telehealth abortion care can determine whether a person can obtain an abortion in the United States. For young people and those living on low incomes, telehealth makes a critical difference in getting timely abortion care.

These are the key findings from our recent studies published in the American Journal of Public Health and the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

We surveyed 1,600 people across the country who accessed telehealth abortion in 2021 and 2022, prior to the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision in June 2022 that led to abortion bans in much of the U.S. South and Midwest.

Telehealth abortion, which has been widely available in the U.S. only since 2021, allows patients to be evaluated remotely by a licensed provider and, if medically eligible, receive abortion medications in the mail. Our research has shown that this type of abortion care is extremely safe.

Written by academics, edited by journalists, backed by evidence.Get newsletter

Nearly all the patients we surveyed had positive experiences with telehealth abortion: They were satisfied, trusted their telehealth provider, felt cared for and felt telehealth was the right decision. Our research shows that for many patients, telehealth offers important benefits over abortion care from a clinic.

Why it matters

Since 14 states have banned abortion as of January 2024 following the Dobbs decision, patients have been traveling long distances to access care. This puts increased pressure on clinics in states where abortion remains legal.

Research has shown that the consequences of abortion bans are highly unequal. People of color, young people and those living on lower incomes are disproportionately affected by abortion restrictions. These are the same people who stand to benefit the most from access to telehealth abortion.

Nearly 1 in 10 abortions in the U.S. are now done via telehealth. At the same time, access to telehealth abortion is under threat. The Supreme Court will decide on the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA case in 2024, which could limit access to telehealth abortion across the country.

While there will always be a need for in-person abortion care, and many patients prefer it, our research shows that telehealth can make a critical difference for many. Telehealth can bring an otherwise impossible abortion within reach, especially for people who have been underserved in health care. Restrictions on telehealth abortion threaten equitable abortion access.

Telehealth allows patients to avoid a significant amount of travel to an abortion clinic, which has become prohibitively difficult as abortion clinics have closed in record numbers. Avoiding travel can make abortion care much more accessible without the need to arrange for transport, time off from work and child care. Telehealth abortion appointments are usually available sooner, and in many cases they are more affordable than abortion care from a clinic. Telehealth also allows patients to tell fewer people about their abortion decision.

When we asked people what would have happened if they had not been able to have a telehealth abortion, 43% of those we surveyed said they would not have been able to get a timely abortion without telehealth.

This was more likely to be true for young people, those living on lower incomes, those living in rural areas and those who lived far from an abortion clinic. While only 2% of patients said they would have continued the pregnancy if they had not had access to telehealth abortion, we expect that this proportion would have been substantially higher if we replicated this study after Dobbs.
New York City’s public health system offers telehealth visits to pregnant patients, who then can receive abortion pills by mail.
What’s next

Our future research will look at the structural changes necessary to ensure that the benefits of telehealth abortion are available equitably. We will also test how to tailor telehealth abortion so that it reaches people historically excluded from health care.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Authors

Leah Koenig
PhD Candidate in Public Health, University of California, San Francisco

Leah Koenig receives funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Society of Family Planning.

Ushma Upadhyay
Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Science, University of California, San Francisco

Ushma Upadhyay receives funding from the BaSe Family Fund, Erik E. and Edith H. Bergstrom Foundation, Isabel Allende Foundation, Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, Preston-Werner Ventures, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development under Award Number 1R01HD110659-01A1. She is a member of the Society of Family Planning, the Population Association of America, and the South Asian Public Health Association.

 

Child poverty is on the rise in Canada, putting over 1 million kids at risk of life-long negative effects

by Nicole Racine and Shainur Premji, The Conversation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

At first glance, Canada ranks among the top third of countries for its work in addressing child poverty. But that isn't the whole story.

Based on current rates of and overall progress in reducing child poverty, the latest UNICEF report card ranks Canada 11th out of 39 of the world's wealthiest countries. Initially, it seems Canada is doing well; between 2012 and 2021, child poverty fell by 23 percent.

In reality, since 2021, the number of children living in monetary poverty has sharply risen from 15.2 percent in 2020 to 17.8 percent in 2021, and more than one million Canadian children live in poverty today.

This means that one in five children live in persistent fear and stress, face barriers to having their basic needs met, such as stable housing and nutritious food, and experience a lack of opportunity, including access to quality early childhood experiences. As a child psychologist and a health economist, we know that the consequences of child poverty are lifelong and are worth prioritizing.

We know that poverty persists, generation by generation. This is why, although Canada ranks in the top third of countries, we shouldn't lose sight of our reality. Canada is presently experiencing rising inflation and interest rates, both driving the cost of living crisis and the increase in child poverty rates. And while the economy continues to place constraints on all Canadians, it has a magnifying effect on those most vulnerable, including children.

Building a solid foundation for the future

Child poverty is a pernicious childhood adversity that has detrimental long-term impacts on children's health, development and well-being throughout life. Children living in poverty have lower academic outcomes, including school readiness and academic achievement, than financially better-off children. Poverty is also a risk factor for behavioral and emotional difficulties.

These educational and social gaps are associated with chronic stress that persists over time, leading to lower earning potential, poorer health and poorer well-being. Poverty, including income loss, housing insecurity and material hardship, is also strongly associated with abuse and neglect, which are known toxic stressors for children and youth.

Poverty reduction has the potential to initiate a beneficial cascade that would improve the lives of children and youth. Taken together, addressing child poverty has the potential to put children on a more optimal developmental course and reduce their risk for poor outcomes.

Balancing today's needs with tomorrow's

Between 2012 and 2021, Canada made great strides in addressing child poverty. In 2016, the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) was introduced as a monthly tax-free supplement for eligible families to support the cost of raising children. Families in low to middle-income households benefited the most; the CCB reduced poverty by 11 percent in single-parent families and 17 percent in two-parent families.

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program provided additional temporary relief for eligible individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. And, in recent years, the minimum wage has also increased for Canadians.

Although there is evidence that monetary interventions, such as cash transfers, help reduce mental health symptoms among youth experiencing poverty, there remains debate on whether these increases have helped families overcome challenges to the cost of living.

Furthermore, the CERB, provided during the pandemic, has now been discontinued, increasing the hardship among Canadian families. Until families are provided with adequate support, the reality is Canada may continue experiencing a rise in rates of child poverty with significant cascading effects.

Long-term payoffs of addressing child poverty

Addressing child poverty has long-term payoffs. Child benefit programs in Canada have been shown to positively affect children's educational attainment and improve mothers' health and mental health. These improvements can subsequently lead to improved health and mental health among children, which reduces long-term public costs.

In addition to being a human rights issue, addressing child poverty makes economic sense. This is why addressing child poverty needs to remain a priority for all Canadians. Governments, employers and communities must partner to reduce the risk of poverty. They can do this by:

1. Adopting a national living wage policy, where the hourly minimum wage supports the cost of living in Canadian communities.
2. Reducing food insecurity by enhancing access to nutritional food through nationally available school food programs.
3. Increasing school readiness by providing universal access to quality early childhood development programs across Canada.

Some are more at risk than others

In its report card, UNICEF identified single-parent families, families living in Indigenous communities, and families with racialized or disabled children as being at higher risk of poverty. These risks come with cascading health, social and justice consequences. Further multidimensional and targeted approaches are needed to support families that are more severely affected.

The Government of Canada has a legislated target to reduce poverty by at least 50 percent relative to 2015 levels by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

As we saw before the pandemic, it is possible to reduce child poverty in Canada. However, unless the impact of the current economic climate on families is considered and suitably responded to, Canada may continue experiencing a rise in rates of child poverty, putting our collective future at risk. Canada can do better, and we should do better for our kids.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Expanded child tax credit would ultimately save money, reduce poverty, says expert

Making green steel from red mud

BY TIM WOGAN

30 JANUARY 2024
CHEMISTRY WORLD


Red mud – a strongly alkaline, potentially toxic slurry generated in huge quantities by aluminium production – could be transformed into a safe, useful building material using a new hydrogen plasma-based reduction process. The method, developed by researchers in Germany, offers a green source of iron that could be used in steelmaking, and it could also be used to extract other valuable rare-earth metals.

Aluminium is one of the most in-demand materials on Earth, used in everything from civil engineering structures and lightweight vehicle bodies to food packaging. To produce metallic aluminium, alumina (aluminium oxide) must first be purified from the sedimentary rock bauxite. This is usually accomplished using the Bayer process, of which the first step involves heating with sodium hydroxide to dissolve the alumina, forming sodium aluminate. Red mud is the byproduct, and the backlog of around 4.5 billion tonnes grows by 180 million tonnes each year. ‘In some countries it’s absolutely shocking – they just pour it straight into the jungle,’ says Dierk Raabe at the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research in Düsseldorf. ‘In Europe we put it into huge basins.’ In 2010, the collapse of one of these basins led to an infamous disaster in Hungary that caused 10 deaths and cost nearly £100 million to clean up.



Source: © Matic Jovičević-Klug et al 2024

A scheme showing how the new process extracts solid metal from red mud

There is practically no industry recycling of the red mud, notes Raabe. Efforts to develop such processes involve sintering the material into ceramics that can be used in construction. But at present only 3% of the material is recycled – something Raabe is keen to change. ‘In principle, we say you want to extract all the metal value of it,’ he says.

The exact composition of red mud varies depending on the bauxite source: it often contains traces of valuable rare-earth metals such as yttrium and scandium and potentially toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and chromium as well as unreacted alumina. One constant, however – and the source of the red colour – is the most widely used metal in the world: iron. The production of iron is also a severe sustainability problem because producing it from iron ore involves the use of coke as a reductant, which releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

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A carbon-free process that reduced red mud to release the iron would therefore offer a tantalising bipartite solution, and is something Raabe’s team aims to achieve using plasma chemistry. The researchers placed red mud samples in an electric arc furnace before injecting a mixture of hydrogen and argon. They then used a 200A discharge to simultaneously melt the sample and ionise the hydrogen, forcing it to react with the iron. The resulting metallic iron, which chemically partitioned from the oxide byproducts, was purer than from a typical blast furnace and could be used directly for steelmaking. After the researchers repeated the procedure six times, they extracted 2.6g of metallic iron from 15g of red mud – around 98% of the theoretical limit.

The ‘real breakthrough’, explains Raabe, is the selective reduction of a complex mixed phase oxide such as red mud and extraction of a single, almost pure target product. ‘We did a couple of thermodynamic calculations to show in which excitation energy spectrum we had to work to carve out the iron and not the other elements,’ he says. ‘Iron is the easiest to extract material.’ In future, Raabe says he would like to extend the technique to see whether the trace rare-earth elements present in some red muds can also be extracted.



Source: © Samuel Kubani/AFP/Getty Images
An industrial accident in 2010 flooded several Hungarian towns with red mud, leading to 10 deaths and costing millions to clean up


The process could be highly energy efficient, says Raabe, because the reaction between hydrogen radicals and oxides is exothermic. Therefore, once the plasma is ignited, the reaction supplies the energy to keep the oxides molten and the only energy input needed is the electricity to maintain the arc. Unlike coke, this can be produced renewably. If the hydrogen is also renewable, the process becomes truly zero carbon, but Raabe acknowledges that to produce all the steel required each year by this process would require 10,000 times more green hydrogen than is currently available globally. However, he points out that the use of a plasma process uses as little hydrogen as possible by maximising its reactivity. He also believes that the potential to renewably produce a valuable end product at all could help to make the detoxification of red mud economically viable.

Ray Peterson, Director of Technology at the US aluminium recycling company Real Alloy, is impressed by the science but cautions that the process is still a long way from industrial application. ‘They have shown the process is possible, they have a byproduct that appears to be inert, they’re getting iron metal out, so that’s all good,’ he says. ‘To make the process work they’re going to need cheap electricity and cheap hydrogen, which everybody wants right now, but is not available,’


‘The problem is you’re competing against conventional processes already out there for making iron,’ adds Peterson. ‘Granted, they all have a carbon footprint, but until we get a carbon tax or some other incentive to go down this route [the opportunities for using this process are ] probably going to be limited,’ he concludes.


References

M Jovičević-Klug et al, Nature, 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06901-z

Trihalomethane levels in Irish drinking water too high, European court rules

BY JULIA ROBINSON

30 JANUARY 2024
CHEMISTRY WORLD


The Republic of Ireland has failed to take measures to ensure that levels of trihalomethanes (THMs) in its drinking water fall within EU safety levels, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.

THMs are compounds that are formed by a reaction between chlorine-based disinfectants and the organic matter in the water, such as bacteria and plant material. They are often present in drinking water, particularly in water treatment systems that use chlorine to eliminate bacteria and contaminants. However, long-term exposure could pose risks to human health and the environment.

EU directives state that water regulation authorities must use alternative disinfection methods, reduce the amount of organic matter in untreated water and optimise treatment processes to minimise the formation of THMs.

However, in 2021 the European Commission filed two complaints to the ECJ claiming that Ireland had failed to take necessary measures to ensure that water intended for human consumption met the minimum requirement relating to concentrations of THMs and that it had failed to ensure that the remedial action was take ‘as soon as possible’ to restore the quality of the water.

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On 25 January 2024, after hearing from both parties, the ECJ agreed that Ireland had failed to fulfil its obligations and would be required to pay the costs of the court proceedings.

Responding to the ruling, Uisce Éireann, formerly known as Irish Water, said it was ‘determined’ to address the remaining THM non-compliances effectively and that it had made ‘significant progress in addressing these issues’.

Machine sentience and you: what happens when machine learning goes too far

30-Jan-2024 

by Tsinghua University Press

Newswise — There’s always some truth in fiction, and now is about the time to get a step ahead of sci-fi dystopias and determine what the risk in machine sentience can be for humans.

Although people have long pondered the future of intelligent machinery, such questions have become all the more pressing with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These machines resemble human interactions: they can help problem solve, create content, and even carry on conversations. For fans of science fiction and dystopian novels, a looming issue could be on the horizon: what if these machines develop a sense of consciousness? 

Researchers published their results in the Journal of Social Computing on December 31, 2023. 

While there is no quantifiable data presented in this discussion on artificial sentience (AS) in machines, there are many parallels drawn between human language development and the factors needed for machines to develop language in a meaningful way. 

“Many of the people concerned with the possibility of machine sentience developing worry about the ethics of our use of these machines, or whether machines, being rational calculators, would attack humans to ensure their own survival,” said John Levi Martin, author and researcher. “We here are worried about them catching a form of self-estrangement by transitioning to a specifically linguistic form of sentience.”

The main characteristics making such a transition possible appear to be: unstructured deep learning, such as in neural networks (computer analysis of data and training examples to provide better feedback), interaction between both humans and other machines, and a wide range of actions to continue self-driven learning. An example of this would be self-driving cars. Many forms of AI check these boxes already, leading to the concern of what the next step in their “evolution” might be.  

This discussion states that it’s not enough to be concerned with just the development of AS in machines, but raises the question of if we’re fully prepared for a type of consciousness to emerge in our machinery. Right now, with AI that can generate blog posts, diagnose an illness, create recipes, predict diseases or tell stories perfectly tailored to its inputs, it’s not far off to imagine having what feels like a real connection with a machine that has learned of its state of being. However, researchers of this study warn, that is exactly the point at which we need to be wary of the outputs we receive. 

“Becoming a linguistic being is more about orienting to the strategic control of information, and introduces a loss of wholeness and integrity…not something we want in devices we make responsible for our security,” said Martin. As we’ve already put AI in charge of so much of our information, essentially relying on it to learn much in the way a human brain does, it has become a dangerous game to play when entrusting it with so much vital information in an almost reckless way. 

Mimicking human responses and strategically controlling information are two very separate things. A “linguistic being” can have the capacity to be duplicitous and calculated in their responses. An important element of this is, at what point do we find out we’re being played by the machine? 

What’s to come is in the hands of computer scientists to develop strategies or protocols to test machines for linguistic sentience. The ethics behind using machines that have developed a linguistic form of sentience or sense of “self” are yet to be fully established, but one can imagine it would become a social hot topic. The relationship between a self-realized person and a sentient machine is sure to be complex, and the uncharted waters of this type of kinship would surely bring about many concepts regarding ethics, morality and the continued use of this “self-aware” technology.

Maurice Bokanga, Alessandra Lembo and John Levi Martin of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago contributed to this research.

 

Mars helicopter Ingenuity has ended its mission, paving the way for more flying vehicles on other planets, moons

by Kevin Olsen, The Conversation

The Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

It is difficult to emphasize the significance of the milestone surpassed by Nasa's Mars helicopter, Ingenuity.

The little (1.8kg) helicopter touched down with the Perseverance rover in 2021. On 25 January 2024, Nasa announced that the flying vehicle had to perform an emergency landing which damaged one of its rotors and ended its mission.

This reminds us that space exploration is still difficult to do. But Ingenuity's three years on Mars proved that powered, controlled flight on Mars was possible.

The little helicopter lasted for far longer than had been planned and flew higher and further than many had envisaged. Beyond this Martian experiment, the rotorcraft's success paves the way for other missions using flying vehicles to explore planets and moons.

The first landings on the moon were static. The year 1969 was probably the most important one for space exploration, when Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 brought astronauts to the lunar surface, but 1970 was the year for planetary exploration.

In 1970, we had the first soft landing on another planet, Venus. The first robotic sample delivered to Earth from the moon. And the first robot rover to drive around another body (also the moon).

Since then, following more than 50 years of planetary exploration and technology development, there have only been a small number of successful surface missions, and even fewer were able to move. Venus was visited by a dozen static landers between 1970 and 1985, and never again.

From rovers to helicopters

Mars was only successfully landed on three times between 1971 and 1976 before the Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover arrived in 1997. The European Huygens spacecraft then landed on Titan, the moon of Saturn, in 2005.

These attempts at reaching the surface are rare, extremely difficult, and, historically, the landers were hardly ever mobile. Yet the Nasa Mars rovers Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance have all exceeded their designs and traveled further and further.

And Ingenuity flew.

It wasn't the first spacecraft to fly. Those would be the balloons deployed by the Soviet Vega 1 and 2 missions, which floated over Venus in 1985. But Ingenuity had control, cameras, and connectivity. It took photos of its rover and of Mars from an entirely new perspective. It commanded the world's attention and captured our hearts.

An artist’s impression of the Dragonfly spacecraft in flight. 

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

In Moscow, I had the chance to see models and replicas of the Vega balloons and the first lunar rover. They made a stronger impression on me than the Mars rover twins being used at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. The Soviet missions were more audacious and different, and they were from generations ago, before my time and long before my career as a planetary scientist.

Ingenuity was audacious, original and completely new. The photos it took, of Perseverance, finding technology discarded from the descent module that carried it down to Mars and of the Martian vistas from a bird's eye view, were breathtaking. Meanwhile, Perseverance also took videos of Ingenuity flying in the air. Nothing like it had ever seen before.

Future flights

Ingenuity had a rough ride getting there, however. The entire Mars 2020 mission (of Perseverance, Ingenuity and their transport systems) was sudden.

Following Nasa's withdrawal from the joint European Space Agency ExoMars program, which included a Mars rover mission, the US space agency started developing one on its own. This rover, later named Perseverance, went from announcement to concept to development and launch in just seven-and-a-half years.

And Ingenuity wasn't included onboard at first. As an idea, it was proposed late in the development phase of Mars 2020, and faced serious opposition. It added extra complexity, cost, risk and new failure modes. It was also driven by an engineering objective, with the possibility of a little outreach—the opportunity to communicate the mission's science and engineering to the public—on the side.

Ingenuity wasn't intended to last for very long. It was designed to prove helicopter flight in the thin Mars atmosphere. It targeted five short flights over a month. Possible outcomes included hard landings, toppling over, losing power if its solar panels were covered in dust, or losing communication when it was far from the rover (this happened several times).

But it went way beyond expectations, surviving three years on the Martian surface, even through a dusty season, and making 72 flights. Much of its success was aided by the communication network that now exists at Mars.

Ingenuity receives instructions and transmits data to Perseverance, which communicates with a fleet of satellites that include the European ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, Nasa's Maven spacecraft, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These, in turn, communicate with two deep space networks on Earth, systems of radio antennas around the world that command and track spacecraft.

It took 50 years of planetary exploration to get here, but already we can see the impact on future exploration that Ingenuity's mission is having. The next interplanetary rotorcraft will be the Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan.

It will be a very different from Ingenuity. It will weigh about a ton and fly with eight rotors. It is a huge vehicle designed to fly in Titan's thick atmosphere.

One of the next Red Planet missions will be Mars Sample Return, aiming to collect sample containers of Martian soil being prepared and cached by Perseverance. This has been planned to be carried out with use of a rover, but the success of Ingenuity has led to the idea—and now the development—of a helicopter to do that.

The future that Ingenuity has opened up for us is exciting. We'll see helicopters on Mars and Venus, more balloons on Venus, swimming vehicles under the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and maybe even an airplane or two.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

After three years on Mars, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter mission ends

Intelligence doesn’t make you immune to conspiracy theories – it’s more about thinking style

THE CONVERSATION
Published: January 30, 2024 


Over the last two decades, and in particular over the last five years, there has been a growing scientific interest in conspiracy theories and people who believe in them. Although, some may think belief in such stories is linked to intelligence, research is beginning to show that how people think could be more important.

Scientists agree that having a measure of skepticism about official accounts of events is healthy and important, but conspiracy theorising can lead to dangerous consequences for the individual and for society.

Some conspiracy theories, for example the QAnon conspiracy, can be considered a minority belief, with a 2021 YouGov poll showing that 8% of those polled in the UK endorsed this conspiracy theory. However, some beliefs are more widespread. A 2018 survey of people from around Europe found 60% of British participants endorsed at least one conspiracy theory. So, who are the people who are more susceptible to conspiracy theorising?

There is a dramatically growing body of research endeavouring to understand this question. First, let’s re-examine those assumptions about who engages with conspiracy theories.

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People with high education levels, such as doctors and nurses, have been reported to propagate conspiracy theories. So it’s not just about intelligence – education won’t necessarily make you immune.

Read more: How morbid curiosity can lead people to conspiracy theories

Critical thinking

Research shows that our thinking style can be predictive of susceptibility to conspiracy theories. The dual processing theory of cognitive style suggests that we have two routes which we can use to process information.

One route is the fast, intuitive route which leans more on personal experiences and gut feelings. The other route is a slower, more analytical route which instead relies on elaborative and detailed processing of information.

Conspiracy theory belief seems to be linked to thinking style. philippgehrke.de/Shutterstock

What you tend to see is that people who are not necessarily smarter but who favour the more effortful, analytical thinking style are more resistant to conspiracy beliefs. For example, a British 2014 study found that those who scored highly for questions such as “I enjoy problems that require hard thinking” were less likely to accept conspiracy beliefs. It also found those who were less likely to engage in effortful thinking styles and more likely to use intuitive thinking showed a higher belief in conspiracy theories.

Similarly, a 2022 study across 45 countries used a cognitive reflection test, which measured engagement in analytical thinking in three questions. It found that participants who engaged in the labour intensive thinking style were less likely to endorse COVID 19 conspiracy theories.

Critical thinking is a valuable skill, particularly within education, and has been shown to buffer susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs. This is probably because this more arduous thinking style allows people time to identify inconsistencies in theories and look to additional resources to verify information.
Thinking style is not the same as intelligence

A 2021 meta-analysis study indicates that an intuitive thinking style is unrelated to intelligence. So, even really smart people could be susceptible to conspiracy beliefs – if they are more inclined to revert to faster, intuitive thinking styles.

Research shows that belief in conspiracy theories is predicted by cognitive biases that come from a reliance on mental shortcuts when processing information. First, conspiracy beliefs seem to be predicted by the flawed belief that big events must have big consequences.

This is known in psychology as proportionality bias. It is difficult to accept that events which have such world-changing consequences (for example, the death of a president or the COVID-19 outbreak) can really be caused by comparably “small” causes (for example, a lone gunman or a virus). This is how thinking styles reliant on gut feelings and intuition can lead people to endorse conspiracy theories.

Another example of intuitive thinking styles influencing conspiracy beliefs is the conjunction fallacy. A conjunction fallacy is the erroneous belief that the likelihood of two independent events occurring together is higher than the probability of the events occurring alone. Have a try at the Linda Problem:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more probable?

a) Linda is a bank teller.

b) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

The most probable is a) Linda is a bank teller as, statistically, the probably probability of one event occurring is always higher than the combination. However, research shows that higher conjunction fallacy errors are associated with stronger conspiracy beliefs. So people prone to conspiratorial thinking would be more likely to say b.

Exposure to conspiracy beliefs have also consistently been shown to increase people’s susceptibility to them, even if they don’t realise that they have had a change in belief.

It may sound concerning that anyone could be susceptible to conspiracy beliefs. However, these studies are helping researchers find interventions which can increase analytical and critical thinking styles and so buffer against susceptibility to such beliefs. A 2023 review of 25 different studies found these types of interventions were a promising tool to tackle the dangerous consequences of conspiracy beliefs.

The more we understand about the psychology behind conspiracy theories, the better equipped we are to tackle them.

Author

Darel Cookson
Lecturer in Psychology, Nottingham Trent University

 

Ethiopia Requests Regional Summit to Discuss Red Sea-Access Plan

Simon Marks, Bloomberg News

, Source: Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia requested a summit of East African leaders to “explain itself on current regional matters,” after it announced plans to mull the recognition of the breakaway region of Somaliland as a sovereign state in return for access to the Red Sea.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry made the request in a letter to the Foreign Ministry of Djibouti, where a regional bloc known as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development is based. No date for the summit has been set, the Djiboutian ministry said by email.

The request by Addis Ababa comes days after Somaliland’s president said his government will proceed with a deal allowing Ethiopia to build a naval base on its coast. An agreement on the plan is being drafted that envisages providing landlocked Ethiopia with direct access to the Gulf of Aden, situated at the entrance to the Red Sea, in return for diplomatic recognition, President Muse Bihi Abdi said in an interview with the state broadcaster last week. 

“The official signing agreement will explicitly mention the recognition of Somaliland,” Abdi said in a transcript of the interview posted to X on Thursday. “A small piece of land has been leased to the Ethiopian navy as a naval base, with the understanding that trade and ports in Somaliland fall under our jurisdiction. The agreement specifies that Ethiopia’s imports and exports will utilize the port of Berbera.”

The planned accord has raised tensions in the Horn of Africa. Somalia claims Somaliland as part of its territory and says the region’s unilateral declaration of independence more than three decades ago is illegal. No other African nation has recognized Somaliland as a sovereign state.

Somalia has threatened military retaliation should the deal go ahead. The authorities in Mogadishu have drawn the support of countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea, which have either sent officials to Somalia or issued statements backing its sovereignty.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said on Monday that granting recognition to Somaliland would amount to annexation of its territory.

“It is untenable if one African state decides to break international laws by attempting to annex the territory of another, as Ethiopia has unsuccessfully attempted to do in my country,” he said in remarks posted on X. “This illegal action will cause tensions, conflict, and regional instability if it is not retracted.”

The dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia adds to growing tensions on the Red Sea, where attacks by Houthi militants on vessels have led to the US and British military carrying out air strikes on the Iran-backed rebels.

Redwan Hussein, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s national security adviser, has denied Ethiopia plans to annex part of Somalia. 

“The signed MoU with Somaliland is a deal for cooperation and partnership that grants Ethiopia access to sea on business terms,” he said on X last week. “It isn’t annexation or assumption of sovereignty over the territory of any state.”

William Ruto, the president of Ethiopia’s southern neighbor Kenya, said discussions are continuing to “persuade Ethiopia” to consider other options beyond its demand for a port.

“There are different options that necessarily don’t involve sovereignty issues of other countries,” he said in an interview in Rome. “Because as a rules-based world, we all must respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of countries. And that’s really the basic minimum.”

--With assistance from Fasika Tadesse, Mohammed Omar Ahmed, Karl Maier and David Herbling.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

'One of the holy grails of shark science': Watch 1st ever footage of a pure white newborn great white shark

By Melissa Hobson

A newborn great white shark has been seen in the wild for the first time, and the discovery could help scientists finally solve a longstanding mystery about the threatened species

A newborn great white shark has been spotted in the wild for the first time, researchers have announced.

The ghostly white pup was photographed off the coast of California on July 9, 2023 and was nothing like any great white shark documented before.

Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes, who found the unusual pup, noticed the 5-foot (1.5 meters) shark was thin, short and had rounded fins — a trait usually seen in embryos. It was also entirely white. They documented the sighting in a study published Jan. 29 in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.

The pure white shark is believed to be the first newborn great white ever documented. (Image credit: Carlos Gauna/The Malibu Artist)

Great whites (Carcharodon carcharias) are the largest predatory sharks in the world today and can grow to be up to 21 feet (6.4 m) long as adults. The researchers think the pup was just hours old: "Maybe one day old at most," Sternes said in a statement.

The unique sighting, which was captured via drone, could help answer one of the biggest mysteries about great white sharks. "Where white sharks give birth is one of the holy grails of shark science. No one has ever been able to pinpoint where they are born, nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive," Gauna said in the statement. "There have been dead white sharks found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this


It is possible that the California coastline could be a critical breeding ground for great white sharks. (Image credit: Carlos Gauna/The Malibu Artist)

Related: Great white sharks are hanging out in the twilight zone and scientists don't know why

On closer inspection, they noticed that the pup was covered in a white film that the pup was shedding as it swam. Great white sharks usually have countershading on their bodies — a gray back and white underside — but the authors think the baby shark was white because pregnant female white sharks produce a milky fluid called "uterine milk" for her embryos to consume.

"I believe what we saw was the baby shedding the intrauterine milk," Sternes said. However, the authors noted it could also be caused by an unknown skin condition.

This potential newborn was spotted around 1,000 feet (305 m) from the beach. Large, apparently pregnant, females have been seen in that location before, indicating they may give birth in the area.

"This may well be the first evidence we have of a pup in the wild, making this a definitive birthing location," Sternes said, although the authors noted that some scientists believe white sharks may give birth further offshore.

Knowing where great white babies are born is important for the conservation of the species, which is listed as vulnerable to extinction. "Further research is needed to confirm these waters are indeed a great white breeding ground. But if it does, we would want lawmakers to step in and protect these waters to help white sharks keep thriving," Sternes said.

First-ever sighting of a live newborn great white

Footage may help solve longstanding mystery in shark science 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: 

NEWBORN GREAT WHITE, FILMED OFF THE CALIFORNIA COAST NEAR SANTA BARBARA.

view more 

CREDIT: CARLOS GAUNA/THE MALIBU ARTIST

Great whites, the largest predatory sharks in the world with the most fatal attacks on humans, are tough to imagine as newborn babies. That is partially because no one has seen one in the wild, it seems, until now. 

Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and UC Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes were scanning the waters for sharks on July 9, 2023, near Santa Barbara on California’s central coast. That day, something exciting appeared on the viewfinder of Gauna’s drone camera. It was a shark pup unlike any they’d ever seen. 

Great whites, referred to only as white sharks by scientists, are gray on top and white on the bottom. But this roughly 5-foot-long shark was pure white.

“We enlarged the images, put them in slow motion, and realized the white layer was being shed from the body as it was swimming,” Sternes said. “I believe it was a newborn white shark shedding its embryonic layer.”

These observations are documented in a new paper in the Environmental Biology of Fishes journal. The paper also details the significance of having seen a live newborn white shark. 

Gauna is known online as The Malibu Artist. He has spent thousands of hours filming sharks around the world, and his videos of them swimming close to beachgoers have millions of views. What he and Sternes observed could help solve the longstanding mystery of great white birthing habits.

“Where white sharks give birth is one of the holy grails of shark science. No one has ever been able to pinpoint where they are born, nor has anyone seen a newborn baby shark alive,” Gauna said. “There have been dead white sharks found inside deceased pregnant mothers. But nothing like this.”

Though the paper authors acknowledge it is possible the white film the shark shed could have been a skin condition, the duo do not believe this to be the case. “If that is what we saw, then that too is monumental because no such condition has ever been reported for these sharks,” Gauna said. 

For many reasons, the duo believes what they saw was in fact a newborn great white. 

First, great white females give birth to live pups. While in utero, the embryonic sharks might feed on unfertilized eggs for protein. The mothers offer additional nourishment to the growing shark pups with a ‘milk’ secreted in the uterus. 

“I believe what we saw was the baby shedding the intrauterine milk,” Sternes said. 

A second reason is the presence of large, likely pregnant great whites in this location. Gauna had observed them here in previous years, and in the weeks leading up to the observation. “I filmed three very large sharks that appeared pregnant at this specific location in the days prior. On this day, one of them dove down, and not long afterwards, this fully white shark appears,” Gauna said. “It’s not a stretch to deduce where the baby came from.”

Thirdly, the shark’s size and shape are also indicative of a newborn. What the two observed was thin, short, and rounded. “In my opinion, this one was likely hours, maybe one day old at most,” Sternes said. 

Finally, this location off the coast of central California has long been proposed as a birthing location for great whites. “There are a lot of hypothetical areas, but despite intense interest in these sharks, no one’s seen a birth or a newborn pup in the wild,” Sternes said. “This may well be the first evidence we have of a pup in the wild, making this a definitive birthing location.”

Many scholars believe great whites are born farther out at sea. That this pup was filmed so close to shore — roughly 1,000 feet from the beach — is significant because its age means it was likely born in shallow waters.

Great whites are listed as an international endangered species. “Further research is needed to confirm these waters are indeed a great white breeding ground. But if it does, we would want lawmakers to step in and protect these waters to help white sharks keep thriving,” Sternes said. 

Another view of the newborn white shark.

CREDIT

Carlos Gauna/The Malibu Artist

JOURNAL

Environmental Biology of Fishes

DOI

10.1007/s10641-024-01512-7 

ARTICLE TITLE

Novel aerial observations of a possible newborn white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) in Southern California

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Jan-2024