Wild robots: Five ways scientists are using robotics to study animal behavior

Biomimetic bots can teach researchers a lot about how creatures interact in the natural world

By Bob Holmes

Honeybees dance to direct hive mates to new food sources. Guppies negotiate leadership with their schoolmates. Flocks of homing pigeons take evasive action when a falcon attacks. Since the dawn of animal behavior research, scientists have studied social interactions like these. But now there’s a new twist to their research: Here, one of the actors is not a real animal, but a robot. Under the control of researchers, these bots socialize with flesh and blood creatures in experiments that scientists hope will yield fresh insights into what it means to be a socially competent guppy, how bees educate their hive mates and other features of animal social life.

The notion isn’t as peculiar as it sounds. Advances in robotics technology and computing power mean that engineers can build robots realistic enough that animals respond to them as if they were real. (How realistic is “realistic enough” varies with the animals being studied. Sometimes the robot has to look right, sometimes it has to smell right and sometimes all it has to do is move.)

And robots offer one big advantage over live animals: They do what researchers tell them to do, in exactly the same way, time after time. That gives scientists a degree of control over their experiments that can be difficult or impossible to achieve in any other way. “If you can build a robot that you can embed in a group of animals as a stooge, and they accept that robot as one of them, then you can make the robot do things and see how real animals respond,” says Dora Biro, an animal cognition researcher at the University of Rochester, New York.

With robots, researchers can tease apart factors, such as a fish’s size and its experience, that are inextricably linked in real animals. They can expose animals to exactly the same stimulus over and over, speeding up the experimental process. And sometimes, they can do all this without exposing animals to risk from real predators or potentially invasive species.

Here are five animal-like, or biomimetic, robots that researchers are already using to study — and, in one case, to control — the social life of real-life animals.

Robobee is in the hive

The famous “waggle dance” of honeybees — in which a worker returning to the hive signals the location of a food source by running in specific patterns near the entrance to the hive while vibrating its wings and body — has been known for more than 60 years. But researchers still don’t know exactly how the bee’s hive mates decode its message. “What are the signals here? What are the components of the dance that actually carry information, and which are just a by-product?” says Tim Landgraf, a roboticist at the Free University of Berlin. This, he thought, was a job for Robobee.

Landgraf built a life-size bee replica — just a vaguely bee-shaped plastic blob with a single wing — and attached it to a mechanical drive system that allowed him to vary where and how the replica moved and vibrated. After inserting the bee into the hive, Landgraf found he could indeed direct real bees to a food source, even one they’d never used before — solid proof of principle.

But Robobee’s successes didn’t happen reliably. “Sometimes the bees would follow within seconds,” Landgraf says. “But sometimes it would take days, and we couldn’t say why.” That made him realize there was another facet to the dance communication that he had never considered: how bees decide which dancer to follow, and when. Are potential follower bees actively searching for information about food sources, he wondered, or does the dancer somehow have to persuade them to listen? Are only certain individual workers receptive to any particular signal, as a result of their prior experience?

To answer these questions, Landgraf and his team are developing an upgraded Robobee with a more realistic odor and a more reliable wing-vibration mechanism to go in a hive full of individually marked bees whose experience they can track. After the inevitable Covid-related delays, they’ve finally begun testing the system, but he’s not ready to talk about results yet. However, he says, “I think there’s a good chance of finding something.”

Robotic falcon on the hunt

When a falcon strikes, how does a flock of pigeons respond? The classic theory — often called the “selfish herd” hypothesis — assumes that every pigeon merely tries to get into the middle of the flock, so that the predator takes some other unfortunate bird. But that idea isn’t easy to test. Every falcon strike is different: Some start a little higher than others, or from a different angle, and all this variability can affect how the pigeons respond. So Daniel Sankey, a behavioral ecologist now at the University of Exeter in the UK, turned to a robot.

“We thought of it as a very controlled way to conduct this study,” says Sankey. “You could make sure the falcon was always exactly 20 meters behind when the pigeons were released, which made it repeatable.” Plus, he notes, the robot was safer for the pigeons. “I know a trained falcon in the past has absolutely obliterated a flock of pigeons.”

With the help of a falcon enthusiast’s robotic falcon — lifelike in appearance, except for the propellers that drive it — Sankey repeatedly attacked a flock of homing pigeons, while tracking each bird’s position by GPS. Contrary to the selfish flock hypothesis, the pigeons were no more likely to move to the middle of the flock when under attack than when unmolested, he found.

Instead, Sankey’s analysis showed that the pigeons mostly tried to fly in the same direction as their flock mates, so that the flock dodged in unison, leaving no stragglers for the predator to pick off. “This suggests that by aligning with each other, you can escape the predator as a group, so no one gets eaten,” he says. While not conclusive proof, this suggests that the pigeon flock may be cooperative, not selfish.

Robofish in school

Which fish in a school are most likely to lead the group? Most studies have suggested that the larger fish tend to have the most influence over where the school swims — but there’s a problem: Big fish are also older and more experienced, and they can act differently than their smaller schoolmates. Which of these differences has the strongest effect on who becomes the leader? That’s hard to test with real fish. “How could you make a big fish behave like a small one? These are the kinds of things you could only test with robots,” says Jens Krause, an animal behaviorist at Humboldt University of Berlin who coauthored an overview of robots in behavioral research in the 2021  Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems.

So Krause and his colleagues developed Robofish, a 3D-printed replica of a guppy mounted on a magnetic pedestal and driven by a motorized unit underneath the tank. Two video cameras coupled to computers let Robofish respond to its schoolmates’ movements in real time.

As long as the model had eyes and a vaguely realistic color pattern, they found, the guppies behaved toward the model much as they did toward any other fish. This allowed the researchers to swap in larger or smaller versions of Robofish while keeping every other aspect of its behavior identical, to study the effect of size alone. Sure enough, real guppies were more likely to follow larger Robofish leaders, they found. The team has also used Robofish to study how individuals’  swimming speeds affect the behavior of the school.

And Krause’s team learned another surprising thing about fishy leadership: Politeness helps. Early versions of their Robofish control program caused the robot to approach schoolmates too closely, causing the real fish to back off. “We had some robots that ended up chasing the fish,” Krause recalls. After the team tweaked the robot so it respected its schoolmates’ space, the new “socially competent” Robofish proved to be much better at attracting followers. 

Termite robots in a swarm

The previous studies used robots to infiltrate real groups of animals and provoke a response. But there’s another way to use robots to understand animal behavior: Program a swarm of robots to act according to the rules you think real animals are following, and see if the result mimics how the animals act.

That’s the approach followed by Justin Werfel, a collective behavior researcher at Harvard. Werfel wanted to understand how termites build such intricate mounds, notable for the arrays of fluted chimneys at their entrances. He focused on a single step in the process: how termites carrying excavated soil from the mound choose where to dump it. This simple decision determines the complex shape of the mound entrance.

Werfel and his colleagues had some evidence to suggest that termites might drop their dirt at the point where the mound’s high internal humidity gives way to the drier air on the surface, a good marker for the boundary of their home. But they didn’t know if the termites’ dirt-dropping behavior depended on other factors, too.

So they built a swarm of robotic termites. Since the robots didn’t have to interact with real insects, they didn’t have to appear lifelike. Instead, the robots were brick-sized carts that could carry and drop colored blocks on a flat surface. Each “termite” carried a humidity sensor and was programmed to carry the blocks when humidity was high and drop them when humidity fell. Meanwhile, a hamster tube dribbled water as each “termite” moved, ensuring that the humidity was higher in occupied areas.

“We know the robot is only paying attention to humidity, because that’s what we told it to do,” says Werfel. And that proved to be enough: The robot swarm ended up dropping its blocks in a two-dimensional version of a real termite mound entrance. The robots even sealed off the opening on breezy days, just like real termites do. The experiment doesn’t prove, of course, that termites actually use a humidity rule to build their mounds, Werfel notes — but such a rule is sufficient to accomplish the task.

The terror-fish is lurking

Biomimetic robots don’t just reveal animal behavior. They may soon be used to manipulate it in useful ways.

Mosquitofish, native to the southern US, have become one of the top 100 invasive species worldwide. Giovanni Polverino, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Western Australia, decided to try an unusual form of bio-robotic control.

Polverino and his colleagues built a robotic fish designed to look like a largemouth bass, a key predator of mosquitofish in their native waterways. By programming the robot to swim aggressively toward mosquitofish, they hoped to terrorize the invasive species while leaving native Australian species unaffected. (Many wild animals show lasting effects of fear.)

And that’s exactly what they saw: As little as 15 minutes per week with the robotic predator caused the mosquitofish to lose body fat and allocate more energy to escape and less to reproduction. “The effect on the mosquitofish is huge, and the other species is not scared at all, because we copied a predator that in Australia does not exist,” says Polverino.

Polverino has a lot more work to do before he can deploy his artificial predator in the real world. “Our robot works well in the lab,” he says. “But it has a computer nearby, a webcam over the tank and a battery with a short lifetime.”

Even so, he’s in discussion now with a national park in Queensland where two endangered fish species live in small, clear pools that have recently been colonized by mosquitofish. Because the pools are so small, they might provide a good first test in the wild. “It’s not ready now,” says Polverino, “but it’s a clear possibility.”

Much can go wrong, of course, when researchers try to insinuate robots into animal social groups — and sometimes, the failures are for prosaic reasons. When Biro tried to build a robotic pigeon to study collective decision-making by groups of homing pigeons, for example, the robot proved unable to fly fast enough to keep up with the real flock. Still, the opportunity to test animal behavior in new ways has enough promise that she hopes to try again someday. “If we had got all of this to work, there would have been all sorts of interesting things to do,” she says. “It is on my list of things that I hope to do.”

The cultural lives of birds

An explosion of research is finding that culture — once thought to be exclusive to humans — is widespread among animals and plays an important part in their social lives and survival. Birds offer some of the most interesting and surprising examples of animal culture. Just as with human languages, songbirds have dialects that are learned and passed down through generations. Construction and use of tools by crows and problem solving by cockatoos also appear to be culturally learned and transmitted.

Learn what researchers mean by bird culture, what’s known about how it develops and is sustained, and what it means for how we think about and relate to birds and other animals.

Watch the discussion and Q&A with two experts, and get your questions answered. Watch now!

Bob Holmes is a science writer based in Edmonton, Canada.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews.

Emmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died – here’s how the 1955 murder case helped define civil rights history

Carolyn Bryant Donham, left, reads newspaper accounts of the Emmett Till murder trial in 1955. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Davis W. Houck, Florida State University

Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making inappropriate advances toward her in 1955, has died at the age of 88 in Louisiana, according to a coroner’s report.

Nearly 68 years after Till was kidnapped, brutally tortured, murdered and then dumped into the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, the case continues to resonate with audiences around the world because it represents an egregious example of justice denied.

As a historian of the Mississippi civil rights movements, I quickly learned that most Mississippi civil rights history leads back to the widespread outrage over the Till case in the summer of 1955.

Emmett Till is shown lying on his bed in 1954, one year before his murder. Bettmann/Contributor

Emmett in Money, Mississippi

Fourteen-year-old Emmett arrived in Mississippi on Aug. 20, 1955, from Chicago to visit his mother’s family, who sharecropped cotton in the tiny Delta community of Money.

On the evening of Aug. 24, Emmett and several cousins and neighbors drove the 2.8 miles into Money to buy candy at the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market.

Emmett entered the store alone. He bought 2 cents’ worth of bubble gum and left. At the door Emmett let out a loud, two-note wolf whistle directed at white 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. His cousins were terrified: Emmett had just hit the trip wire of Southern racial fears by flirting with a white woman.

Early on Aug. 28, several men – white and Black – took Emmett from his family’s house. Emmett’s badly decomposed and battered body was discovered three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett’s uncle could identify Emmett only by a ring he was wearing that once belonged to Emmett’s father, Louis Till.

Two white men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were quickly arrested and later charged with murder. During a five-day trial in September, the two men were found not guilty after a 67-minute deliberation by an all-white, all-male jury.

Several years later, members of the jury confessed to a Florida State University graduate student, Hugh Stephen Whitaker, that they knew the men were guilty but simply wouldn’t convict a white man of crimes against a Black child.

In 1956, Milam and Bryant sold their “shocking true story” of what happened to Till for US$3,150 to Look magazine. For nearly 50 years, celebrity journalist William Bradford Huie’s “confession” story in Look functioned as the final word on the case.

Continued interest and coverage

Southern newspapers wanted immediately to forget the Till story, ashamed of the backlash caused by Milam and Bryant’s “confession.” Many Northern and Western newspapers editorialized on the case long after its conclusion. America’s Black press never quit writing about the case; it was their work, after all, helping to track down Black eyewitnesses in September 1955 that helped us understand the truth of what actually happened to Emmett Till on Aug. 28, 1955.

Thanks to investigative work by documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp and others, the public has since learned that Milam and Bryant were part of a much larger lynching party, none of whom were ever punished.

Today, all of the people directly involved in Till’s murder are dead.

Carolyn Byant Donham stands with her sons outside the store where she first encountered Emmett Till. Bettmann/Getty Images

A case that aged with Carolyn Bryant Donham

The last 20 years of Bryant Donham’s life were characterized by the attempt of private citizens and law enforcement to bring her to justice for the part she played in Till’s kidnapping and murder.

When Bryant Donham was in her 80s and living with family in Raleigh, North Carolina, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors revisited her case and the potential for prosecuting her for Till’s kidnapping and death. One question was whether Bryant Donham recanted her previous testimony about Till’s advances and said that it was false.

A historian said in 2017 that Bryant Donham told him in a rare interview that the most egregious parts of the story she and others told about Emmett Till were false.

The Justice Department said in 2021, though, that it was unable to confirm whether Bryant Donham actually went back on her previous testimony, and it closed the case.

Then, in 2022, a team of researchers – including two of Till’s relatives – discovered an unserved arrest warrant for Bryant Donham in a courthouse basement. This led some legal experts to say that the 1955 document could support probable cause to prosecute Bryant Donham for her involvement in Till’s death.

Mississippi’s attorney general said in 2022 that the office did not plan to prosecute Bryant Donham – though that didn’t stop activists from protesting outside her home that same year.

Recently unearthed documents also showed that Till did not put his hands on her nor talk lewdly to her in the store. That was all fabricated as part of the defense’s strategy to argue that the lynching amounted to justifiable homicide. When the presiding judge, Curtis Swango, did not allow the jury to hear Bryant Donham’s testimony, the defense pivoted to the absurd claim that the body taken from the Tallahatchie River wasn’t Till’s.

Over the past several decades, the Till case has continued to resonate, especially for a nation that still experiences the all-too-frequent and seemingly unprovoked deaths of young Black men. The Till family has had to live with an open wound for 68 years. As Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” has noted, that wound won’t suddenly go away with Bryant Donham’s passing.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 13, 2018.

Davis W. Houck, Professor, Florida State University

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

The varied landscape of universal health care

There’s more than one way for a nation to achieve universal coverage for its residents. Here are the systems of six different countries.

By James Gaines

There is no single way to achieve universal health care — countries have done it in many different manners. Some have systems built on a foundation of public health coverage; others lean more heavily toward the private sector. Building largely on information from The Commonwealth Fund, we’ve compiled six examples.

Switzerland

Basic coverage: Residents must purchase basic health insurance from private, nonprofit insurers.

Basic coverage funding: Individuals must pay premiums. The government also contributes via general taxes and other funding.

Cost-sharing: Individuals pay out of pocket for services like primary care, specialty care, hospitalizations and prescriptions drugs, up to an annual deductible. After that’s met, patients pay coinsurance up to a cap. Hospitals also charge a small amount per day for stays.

Supplemental or alternate coverage: People can also purchase supplemental private insurance from for-profit insurers for services not covered by the basic plan, to get a greater choice of physicians, or to get better hospital rooms.

Notes: The government may help individuals with income-based premium subsidies.

The Netherlands

Basic coverage: Residents must purchase basic health insurance from private, nonprofit insurers.

Basic coverage funding: Individuals must pay premiums, and employers pay payroll taxes. The government also contributes via a central health insurance fund supplied by income taxes and government grants. 

Cost-sharing: Individuals pay out of pocket for things like hospital admissions, specialist services and prescription drugs, up to a deductible. After that, copayments, coinsurance or direct payments may be required for select services, like physiotherapy, medical devices and out-of-network care.   

Supplemental or alternate coverage: People can also purchase supplemental insurance for services not covered by the basic plan, like dental care and contraceptives, or brand name drugs.

Notes: The government may help individuals with income-based premium subsidies.

Germany

Basic coverage: Residents under a certain income are required to enroll in one of many private, nonprofit health insurance plans known as sickness funds.

Basic coverage funding: Most funding comes from income-dependent wage contributions for each individual (up to a ceiling). This cost is split between the individual and their employer. These contributions are pooled by the government in a central fund along with a tax subsidy, and then reallocated to individual sickness funds. Some individual sickness funds also charge income-dependent contributions on top of that, also split between employees and employers.

Cost-sharing: There is no deductible for basic coverage. Certain services, like prescription drugs, medical devices and hospital care, require copayments. There’s an annual out-of-pocket maximum based on income.

Supplemental or alternate coverage: Individuals above a certain income can opt out of buying into a sickness fund and instead purchase private health insurance. People in sickness funds can also purchase supplemental insurance to help with payments for things like dental care or private hospital rooms.

Notes: Individuals in certain fields, like civil servants, may also be able to opt for private health insurance or be insured through a different government program.

Canada

Basic coverage: As part of the nation’s overall health care program, residents are automatically enrolled in the health insurance program of their home territory or province.

Basic coverage funding: Provincial and territorial taxes and federal funding.

Cost-sharing: Applies only to non-covered benefits, such as outpatient prescription drugs or dental care.

Supplemental or alternate coverage: People can buy private insurance or receive it through their employers to help pay for outpatient prescription drugs and other services. Provinces or territories also offer outpatient drug plans.

Notes: Individuals with significant out-of-pocket expenses can get tax credits. Private hospital rooms may charge a fee.

Australia

Basic coverage: Citizens are automatically enrolled in a universal public health insurance program. Non-citizens may be allowed access to the program or may be treated as private-pay patients.

Basic coverage funding: A government levy on individuals and other tax revenue. The government may also charge a tax penalty on higher-income households that do not buy private insurance.

Cost-sharing: There are no deductibles or out-of-pocket costs for care at public hospitals. Patients can incur cost-sharing for outpatient visits and outpatient pharmaceuticals, but the government generally caps out-of-pocket fees. Certain medicines may not be covered at all.

Supplemental or alternate coverage: About half of Australians buy private supplementary insurance to pay for such things as private hospital care and dental and vision care.

Notes: The government may help individuals with income-based premium rebates for private insurance.

England

Basic coverage: Residents are automatically enrolled in public health coverage.

Basic coverage funding: General taxation, plus a payroll tax paid by employers and employees.

Cost-sharing: Limited to certain services, like some travel vaccinations or dentistry, and out-patient prescription drugs. Individuals can purchase a yearly certificate that will cover all pharmaceuticals.

Supplemental or alternate coverage: Residents can purchase private insurance, primarily to gain faster access to elective care.

Notes: Each country inside the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) has its own National Health Service program providing universal health care, but there are differences between them. Private hospitals may not be covered by England’s National Health Service. Certain visitors to the country may have to pay a health surcharge.

How has the US health care system fared during Covid-19? Read our conversation with economist Sherry Glied.

James Gaines, a staff researcher for Knowable Magazine, lives in Seattle, Washington and has written for publications such as Undark, Nature and the Seattle Times. Find him on Twitter at @the_jmgaines

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. 

Simple Kid-Friendly Sliders

For those busy nights plan, on this simple yet savory sliders recipe. Kids are almost certain to love the taste and you will enjoy how quick and easy they are to make.

For more recipes, visit culinary.net.

Watch video to see how to make this delicious recipe!

Pepperoni Pizza Sliders

• 1          package slider rolls
• 1/2       cup pizza sauce
• 1/2       cup mini pepperoni
• 1 1/2    cups shredded, low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1/4       cup butter, melted
• 1          teaspoon parsley flakes
• 1/2       teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2       teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2       cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• nonstick cooking spray

1. Heat oven 350º F.
2. Keeping rolls connected, cut sheet of rolls horizontally, separating tops from bottoms. Place bottom halves of rolls in baking dish.
3. Spread pizza sauce evenly over bottom halves. Sprinkle pepperoni over sauce. Sprinkle mozzarella over pepperoni and cover with top halves of rolls.
4. Mix melted butter with parsley flakes, dried oregano, garlic powder, and shredded Parmesan cheese. Spoon evenly over sliders.
5. Cover baking dish with aluminum foil sprayed with nonstick cooking spray to keep cheese from sticking.
6. Bake 20 minutes.
7. Remove foil and bake additional 5-10 minutes or until Parmesan is melted and golden brown.
8. Cut sliders and serve immediately.

Recipe adapted from MilkMeansMore.org

SOURCE:
Culinary.net

Historic flooding in Fort Lauderdale was a sign of things to come – a look at who is most at risk and how to prepare

The hardest-hit homes in Florida’s mid-April flooding were in modest neighborhoods in low-lying areas. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Smitha Rao, The Ohio State University

When a powerful storm flooded neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in April with what preliminary reports show was 25 inches of rain in 24 hours, few people were prepared. Even hurricanes rarely drop that much rain in one area that fast. Residents could do little to stop the floodwater as it spread over their yards and into their homes.

Studies show that as global temperatures rise, more people will be at risk from such destructive flooding – including in areas far from the coasts that rarely faced extreme flooding in the past.

In many of these communities, the people at greatest risk of harm from flash flooding are low-wage workers, older adults and other vulnerable residents who live in low-lying areas and who have few resources to protect their properties and themselves.

I study the impact of extreme weather on vulnerable communities as an assistant professor of social work. To limit the damage, communities need to know who is at risk and how they can be better prepared.

More extreme downpours in a warming world

The Fort Lauderdale storm on April 12-13, 2023, offered a view into the risks ahead as temperatures rise.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to stronger downpours. The resulting deluges can be devastating. These events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in many regions as greenhouse gas emissions from human activities continue to heat up the planet.

Where extreme precipitation events are forecast to increase under a low-emissions scenario and a high one. National Climate Assessment 2018

Recent disasters, including several in 2022 and in 2023 already, show how the risk of flash flooding is expanding beyond areas traditionally considered at risk.

Knowing who is most at risk

To plan for extreme weather, it’s crucial for community leaders and residents to know where the risks are highest and who might not be prepared.

Low-lying areas with poorly planned development, lack of investment in protective infrastructure and the lingering effects of historic disinvestment and discrimination are often at higher risk. So are low-income communities with tight budgets that can’t afford protective measures like upgraded levees or stormwater systems and can’t recover from damage quickly.

When older adults live in these flood-prone areas, they are at even higher risk. Older adults have a higher likelihood of having health needs or some form of disability that could affect their ability to leave quickly during a disaster. They are also more likely to be socially isolated, which may mean they don’t hear timely information or have help to evacuate or quick access to resources for recovering.

Residents walk out of a flooded neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale on April 13, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Renters and the impact of housing insecurity

In a recent study, my colleagues and I looked at how prepared people were for disasters of any kind across the U.S. – flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes and others – and how housing security played a role. The numbers were sobering.

Overall, we found 57% of the population, among 29,070 housing units surveyed nationwide, reported they were not prepared with food, water, emergency funds and transportation in case disaster struck. We found that households facing housing insecurity – those behind on their payments for rent, mortgage or utilities – were less prepared for disasters than others, even when the occupants had similar incomes and educations.

For residents with low incomes and without flood insurance, cleanup costs from flooding can be overwhelming. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

People who are struggling to meet day-to-day needs often don’t have the ability and resources to plan for everyday events, let alone for disasters. Our research has shown that households with children, households led by women, and low-income households were less prepared than others for disasters.

Renting adds additional challenges. In the U.S., lower-income families often depend on the rental market. They tend to move more frequently, and since they don’t own the property, they often can’t make upgrades for safety. And landlords might not prioritize those risks that seem rare but carry costs.

How to help communities stay safe

The most effective way to address these challenges is through solutions that are tailored to the community.

That can involve investing in infrastructure, including state-funded priorities like drainage systems and large-scale flood prevention measures, as well as ensuring that people have access to safe and affordable housing. Some communities and federal agencies have bought out properties that frequently flood and changed zoning rules to prevent more people from moving into harm’s way.

Raising community awareness about climate change and extreme weather risks is also crucial, especially among those most at risk, such as older adults. If people understand the risks, know how to prepare their homes, know how to plan for emergencies and know where to find assistance, they’re more likely to be prepared when disasters strikes.

Scientists explain why warming can lead to heavier downpours and flash flooding.

I believe the most successful efforts are those that bring at-risk communities into planning discussions.

For example, in Columbus, Ohio, the city is working with the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging, Age Friendly Innovation Center and my team to improve disaster preparedness among older residents. We hope to learn from older adults in affordable housing communities who have experienced extreme weather in recent years to help design action plans for communities with special needs. The goal is to ensure residents are better prepared for climate- and weather-related emergencies in the future.

Smitha Rao, Assistant Professor of Social Work, The Ohio State University

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

How Climate Change Impacts Birds, Their Feeding Habits and How to Help from Home

(Joan Casanova) Bird feeding is a common practice in the United States, with more than 59 million Americans participating, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In addition to providing aesthetic and recreational benefits, bird feeding can have positive impacts on bird populations.

According to the National Audubon Society, birds provide important ecosystem services, such as pollination, pest control and seed dispersal. In fact, around 87% of flowering plants rely on animal pollinators, including birds, to reproduce and grow, according to a study published in “Science.” Birds also consume fruits and berries then spread the seeds, which helps maintain biodiversity and promotes the growth of new plants.

Considered good indicators of the health of the ecosystem, changes in bird populations and behaviors can signal changes in the environment, such as pollution, habitat loss and climate change. As temperatures, weather patterns and ecosystems change, it can affect the availability of food for birds, which may alter their behavior.

Feeding birds can be a beneficial practice that helps them cope with climate change. Consider these benefits:

• Supplemental Food: Bird feeders provide a supplemental source of food for birds when natural food sources may be scarce due to prolonged droughts or severe storms. Bird feeding can help birds maintain energy levels, especially during breeding or migration when nutritional needs are higher.

• Range Shifts: Climate change can cause shifts in the distribution and abundance of bird species. Feeders can serve as “refuges” for birds, providing reliable food sources as they move in search of suitable habitats.

• Behavioral Adaptations: Some species may alter their feeding behaviors due to changes in timing of insects hatching or plants flowering, which can affect the availability of natural food sources. Bird feeders can help bridge these gaps, providing a stable source of food when traditional sources are disrupted.

Feeders
To attract more birds this season, it’s important to offer quality feed in a variety of bird feeder types placed at different heights.

Traditional tube feeders are basic, all-purpose, must-have feeders that work well for finches, nuthatches and other small birds that cling. Made with state-of- the-art materials to prevent warping and discoloration, Cole’s Terrific Tube Feeder features a quick-clean removable base.

Simply push a button and the bottom of the feeder comes off for easy access. Rinse well with soapy water, submerge in a 9-1 water-bleach solution, rinse and dry. Then reattach the bottom; there’s no disassembly or assembly of multiple parts necessary. Regular cleaning of feeders is essential, preventing mold, germs and disease.

Another option, bowl feeders, can serve not only seeds, but also dried mealworms, fruit and suet in cake or kibble form. For example, Cole’s Bountiful Bowl Feeder comes with an adjustable dome cover you can raise or lower to protect from rain and prevent larger birds and squirrels from getting to the food.

Popular Foods
In addition to feeders, offering a variety of foods is vital for inviting different species to your backyard.

• Birdseed: Not all birdseed is created equal. Look for quality blends without filler seeds like red millet and oats. All-natural seed, containing no chemicals or mineral oil, is safe and more appealing to birds. Consider researched, specially formulated options like all-natural black oil sunflower, Cole’s “Hot Meats” (sunflower meats infused with habanero chile peppers) or Special Feeder blend, which is packed with black oil sunflower, sunflower meats, black striped sunflower, raw peanuts, safflower and pecans.

• Dried Mealworms: Full of energy, essential nutrients, fats and proteins, mealworms are a preferred food for adult songbirds. Dried mealworms are easy to feed, less messy and lack the “ick” factor of live worms.

• Fresh Fruit: Apple and orange halves and chunks of banana are favorites for orioles and tanagers.  

• No-Melt Suet: Perfect for insect-eating birds, high-fat food provides abundant calories and rich nutrition. 

Don’t forget, birds need water just as much as humans. Drinking water helps regulate body processes, improves metabolism and maintains health. Birds also use water for preening and bathing, and on hot days, standing in cool water or taking a quick splash can help them keep cool.

Find more solutions to bring birds to your backyard at ColesWildBird.com. 

SOURCE:
Cole’s Wild Bird Products

How Wrexham’s football fairy tale is fuelled by Disney and Hollywood glamour

Simon Chadwick, SKEMA Business School and Paul Widdop, Manchester Metropolitan University

For one of the oldest football clubs in the world, this has been a season to remember. Wrexham’s men’s team have won the National League title and promotion to League Two, the fourth tier of English football.

And while it’s still a long way from the dizzy heights of the Premier League, success has been joyfully embraced by Wrexham’s fans and the club’s celebrity owners, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

The Hollywood-based pair bought Wrexham Association Football Club (AFC) in 2021, bringing £2 million to the table, and plenty of Californian glamour to their adopted corner of north Wales, which is now the subject of a documentary series streaming on Disney+.

But it was another of Disney’s famous productions which came to our minds when we considered this modern football fairytale: the popular cartoon Cars, in which a big star finds himself living in a small provincial town.

The star, Lightning McQueen, eventually falls in love with the town of Radiator Springs, and inspires his new neighbours to dream big. Cars tells the story of the great American dream, that anyone can make it to the top, and highlights the importance of a place and its people.

The real life version playing out in north Wales has Reynolds in the starring role, and Wrexham as Radiator Springs. But their story also illustrates some of the profound changes that are taking place across professional football – where kicking a ball around a pitch has become a lucrative industry involving marketing strategies, media partnerships and commercial opportunities.

Wrexham AFC has a long history and a loyal fan base. But of late, it has fallen upon hard times and languished in the lower reaches of the English professional leagues. At one stage in the 2000s, the club spent almost two years in administration, and in 2011 it was served with a winding-up order for not paying its taxes.

Big players

The club’s Hollywood saviour, Ryan Reynolds, arrived at a time when he was needed. And he has also proved himself to be no slouch when it comes to the business world. If his plan was to extract commercial and financial value from football through shrewd management and experience in entertainment, his record already looks pretty impressive.

Wrexham has secured promotion, attracting global attention, and new sponsorship deals. Reynolds is now even talking about building a sport franchise network and has gone from being an impassive observer of football to someone who has developed a love for the game and for Wrexham.

He and McElhenney are the stars of Welcome to Wrexham, the Disney+ series which claims the actors are “bringing some serious hope and change to a community that needs it”. Each episode is estimated to have generated around £430,000 for the club and its owners.

As a result, some of Wrexham’s success carries the hallmarks of what is termed “Disneyfication”, the creation of sentimentally compelling entertainment for mass audiences in everything from sport to nature and children’s stories. Disneyfication is often seen as being synonymous with globalisation, commercialisation and commodification, and research suggests it has some key characteristics.

The first, known as “theming” involves an institution being placed into a narrative that is mostly unrelated to its original purpose. Wrexham AFC was formed in 1864 and for most of its existence was never the subject of heart-rending digital content for a US entertainment business and two Hollywood actors. Players have gone from kicking a ball in a stadium to becoming performers in a drama that is streamed around the world.

Another component of Disneyfication is “hybrid consumption” – attracting fans and potential consumers through various commercial means. In Wrexham’s case, that started with owning a fairly large stadium with room for 10,000 spectators, and continues with more than 319,000 people watching the first episode of Welcome to Wrexham, and over 1 million followers of the club’s TikTok account.

Disneyfication also requires a focus on selling things. To that end, TikTok’s logo has appeared on Wrexham’s shirts which are a cornerstone of Wrexham’s rapidly proliferating merchandise portfolio. Visit Wrexham’s online store and you’ll even see shirts carrying the logo of Aviation Gin, an alcohol business in which Reynolds has a stake.

Football traditionalists may despair at the influence Wrexham’s owners are having on the sport and on the club, and worry that Disneyfication may now be reaching the lower leagues as well as the very pinnacle of English football. Some will worry that the Racecourse Ground is becoming more like a theme park attraction than a football stadium.

Even so, the Disneyfication of Wrexham is changing the town, in a way not dissimilar to Lightening McQueen’s influence on Radiator Springs. Visitor numbers have soared and the football club’s success is beginning to have a tangible local economic impact, adding to hotel room bookings and beer sales.

Like Disney attractions around the world, a small football club is proving capable of generating financial returns and a hint of fantasy. There is clearly a Disney version of the American dream to be had – and enjoyed – in this provincial town of north Wales.

Simon Chadwick, Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy, SKEMA Business School and Paul Widdop, Reader of Sport Business, Manchester Metropolitan University

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

Zooming in on the brains of babies

New tools are helping neuroscientists investigate why early life is such a crucial time for neural development

By Emily Underwood

Many of our defining traits — including the languages we speak and how we connect with others — can be traced back at least in part to our earliest experiences. Although our brains remain malleable throughout our lives, most neuroscientists agree that the changes that occur in the womb and in the first few years of life are among the most consequential, with an outsize effect on our risk of developmental and psychiatric conditions.

“Early on in life, the brain is still forming itself,” says Claudia Lugo-Candelas, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University and coauthor of an overview of the prenatal origins of psychiatric illness in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. Starting from a tiny cluster of stem cells, the brain develops into a complex organ of roughly 100 billion neurons and trillions of connections in just nine months. Compared to the more subtle brain changes that occur later in life, Lugo-Candelas says, what happens in utero and shortly after birth “is like building the house, versus finishing the deck.”

But just how this process unfolds, and why it sometimes goes awry, has been a hard mystery to crack, largely because so many of the key events are difficult to observe. The first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of baby and fetal brains were taken back in the early 1980s, and doctors seized on the tool to diagnose major malformations in brain structure. But neuroimaging tools that can capture the baby brain’s inner workings in detail and spy on fetal brain activity in pregnant moms are much newer developments. Today, this research, coupled with long-term studies that follow thousands of individual children for years, is giving scientists new insights into how the brain develops.

These advances have propelled researchers to a different stage than they were in even five years ago, says Damien Fair, a neuroscientist at the University of Minnesota who studies developmental conditions like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Until recently, a major challenge has been that, unlike an adult, a fetus or newborn baby won’t lie still inside a brain scanner. Buoyed by amniotic fluid, a fetus constantly shifts position, and newborn babies love to wriggle around, checking out their environment. In the past, researchers and clinicians often had to do multiple time-consuming, expensive scans to get a good image. They sometimes sedated children and pregnant moms to reduce movement, an approach that alters brain function and may have health risks.

But new imaging and computational techniques that reduce distortions caused by fidgeting — including software developed by a company cofounded by Fair — have made it easier to collect data from babies and fetuses. And that has invigorated the field.

Peering into prenatal brain development

The new work is starting to reveal what typical brain development looks like and hint at how atypical conditions like autism and ADHD may arise. In a first-of-its kind study in 2017, for example, a team of researchers led by pediatric neuroscientist Moriah Thomason, now at New York University, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate patterns of neural communication among brain regions in 32 fetuses. Half of the pregnant women were at high risk of early delivery and 14 of the babies ultimately were born prematurely.

Premature birth is a known risk factor for cognitive and emotional issues later on. But it has been difficult for scientists to determine whether this is due to the trauma of premature delivery, which often involves brain injury and oxygen deprivation, or to preexisting brain differences that start in the womb.

Thomason’s study provided the first evidence that the problems start in utero.

As fetuses, the preemies-to-be that were scanned by her team had brain activity that suggested weaker communication between various brain regions compared with fetuses that ended up being carried to term. Most strikingly, the scientists found altered neural communication in networks that eventually support language, including a language center on the left side of the brain.

Researchers have since found more evidence for prenatal brain disruption in preemies. In 2021, for example, another group found that 24 prematurely delivered infants had lower brain volumes and less cerebrospinal fluid while still in utero, compared with a group of infants carried to term. And a variety of studies have found that women who delivered prematurely had high levels of inflammation caused by bacterial or viral infections in the amniotic fluid and placental tissues.

The findings add to growing evidence that inflammatory events during pregnancy can alter fetal brain development. Large-population studies, for example, have shown that mothers who have had a severe infection during pregnancy are at a slightly elevated risk of having an autistic child, although it’s not yet clear that prenatal infection alone can actually cause autism.

Lugo-Candelas’s research focuses on how a pregnant woman’s perceived stress, life events, depression and anxiety may affect early brain development. A number of studies have found that high maternal anxiety and depression during pregnancy are associated with a twofold increase in the risk of the child developing a mental disorder later in life. If the risks start earlier in development, “that also means there’s a chance to intervene earlier than we thought,” she says. But, Lugo-Candelas adds, scientists are still working to untangle the mechanisms behind that increased risk, what stressors might have the most impact, and when and how to intervene.

Moreover, like many other risk factors in pregnancy, there’s no one thing that leads to psychiatric illness or developmental problems, says Lugo-Candelas. “It’s a collection of tiny risks.” She emphasizes that there’s nothing rigidly deterministic about any of these early exposures or experiences. “You can have children that are exposed prenatally to a bunch of the things that we think could increase risk for a psychiatric disease, and then have a child that doesn’t have a disorder at all and will never have it.”

That complexity speaks to one of the greatest challenges of studying the developing brain: the fact that similar outcomes, such as autism or schizophrenia, can have many underlying neurological causes. Some people with autism have increased connectivity between certain brain regions compared with the neurotypical population, for example — but others have less. There’s no single neural signature for the condition.

Brain connections as ‘neural fingerprints’

Fair’s approach to this problem has been to identify what he calls “functional fingerprints,” patterns — unique to each individual — in how different brain regions communicate with each other when a person is at rest inside an fMRI scanner.

He first observed these neural fingerprints in adults in 2014, and went on to show that children have them too. The patterns are surprisingly consistent within families, even across generations, he and his colleagues have found, suggesting that certain types of brain connectivity are at least partially inherited.

Last year, he published evidence that even eight-month-old babies have these neural fingerprints — and that certain elements of the fingerprint, such as the amount of crosstalk between regions involved in functions like attention and movement, can predict an infant’s precise age, down to a few months.

Meanwhile, Thomason’s fMRI studies of the fetal brain suggest that these distinct connectivity patterns emerge in the second and third trimester, including in neural circuits that eventually govern learning, memory and emotion. Thomason and others are now using neuroimaging to investigate how a variety of prenatal experiences — ranging from maternal Covid-19 infection to cannabis use — affect how these circuits develop.

The fact that scientists can detect these distinct brain activity patterns so early suggests to Fair and others that much of what makes us who we are is already in place by the time we’re born, even though we’ll continue to be shaped by our experiences and exposures throughout life. Because every baby’s brain is shaped by so many different factors, however, researchers are going to need long-term imaging data from thousands of children to get a robust understanding of what “typical” development looks like, Fair and colleagues argue in the 2021 Annual Review of Developmental Psychology.

Eventually, imaging tools could help clinicians and researchers monitor how a baby’s brain is developing, spot signs of future trouble and develop earlier personalized interventions and treatments for conditions like autism, Fair adds.

In the meantime, Lugo-Candelas thinks that we already know enough to take action. “I feel pretty confident that interventions that effectively minimize distress in pregnancy, like paid maternal leave, are going to be beneficial for the next generation,” she says. She notes that could lead to better outcomes in school and other areas, like mental health, that ripple across the lifespan. “I just don’t think we’ve done a really good job yet at measuring what those outcomes look like, or the mechanisms that lead to them.”

Emily Underwood is a science journalist and the host/producer for Knowable Magazine’s series of live online events. She is the host of “ Inside the brain: A lifetime of change,” a series of discussions on how the latest neuroscience research can help us thrive across the lifespan.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. 

Shelby Podiatry

     Shelby Podiatry opened in May 1997. I graduated podiatry school, completed my surgical residency , then joined the Army as a podiatrist at Ft Leonard Wood, MO.  After completing my Army service I moved to Alabama and started working here.  Podiatry is a medical field for foot care specifically. 

Podiatrists treat different types of foot problems from skin and nails, to bone and joint issues in the foot. The most common foot problems I see are ingrown toenails and heel pain. Ingrown toenails can be treated in the office  as a same day procedure with immediate relief. Heel pain is oftentimes a chronic problem made worse with increased activity.  

www.shelbypodiatry.com

     Our office accepts most every insurance or those patients without insurance. We have a friendly, caring staff who will happily book your appointment and answer your questions.  

We treat an assortment of foot problems, including common issues like broken bones and athlete’s foot. We also treat issues that may need surgical intervention, like bunions or rearfoot deformities. Whatever the problem may be, you can rest assured that we will take care of you.  
At Shelby Podiatry, we are with you every step of the way. We create a personalized foot care plan to meet your treatment goals starting from your first appointment. 

Your feet are your body’s foundation, and when your foundation starts to falter look to Shelby Podiatry. We can perform many surgical procedures in-office and get you back on your feet sooner.  For life-threatening situations, please call 911! 

Shelby Podiatry will make sure you get the medicine you need. Some acute and chronic foot conditions can be treated or managed with medication. We will advise you on the best pharmaceutical treatment options. Whatever you may need, our team is here to assist and make you as comfortable as possible.  

Shelby Podiatry is the best option for all of your foot care needs. Whether you are suffering from foot pain, bunions, or ingrown toenails, we offer the solutions you need! These can range from custom made orthotic inserts to in-office surgical procedures. Contact Shelby Podiatry today to help set you on the right foot.

  We offer advanced treatment for a variety of wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers. Wound bed preparation, for example, is a vital first step to proper treatment, and our team is qualified to handle some of the most complex foot wounds our patients may encounter.

www.shelbypodiatry.com

Our goal is to make your experience comfortable and friendly.

www.shelbypodiatry.com

We love our customers, so feel free to visit during normal business hours.

Please send us a message, or call us for an appointment.

227 1st St N A, Alabaster, AL 35007

205) 663-3224 

www.shelbypodiatry.com

We Provide a Professional & Honest Approach to Podiatry

www.shelbypodiatry.com