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During the 2024 eclipse, biologists like us want to find out how birds will respond to darkness in the middle of the day

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theconversation.com – Kimberly Rosvall, Associate Professor of Biology, Indiana University – 2024-04-04 10:28:15

The total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, coincides with an exciting time for wild birds. Local birds are singing for mates and fighting for territories as they gear up for their once-a-year chance to breed.

Tens of millions of migrating birds will be passing through the path of totality, and they mostly migrate at night.

Because birds use light to match their behaviors to their environment, scientists like us have lots of questions about how they will respond to the eclipse. Will they pause their fighting and wooing and shift toward bedtime-like behaviors? How about a nocturnal animal like an owl or those nighttime migrants – will they start to rustle from their roosts before they realize it’s not night?

As behavioral biologists at Indiana University, we research wild breeding birds, with a goal of understanding why animals behave the way that they do in response to environmental challenges and opportunities. For the 2024 eclipse, our team is launching a new project and developing an app. If everything goes as planned, we should end up with a large dataset after the eclipse, collected by community scientist volunteers across the country.

There’s an app for that

On average, a total solar eclipse occurs in the same place only once every 375 years. Most wild animals, like most people, have never seen the sky quickly switch to night in the middle of the day. These rare events are a natural experiment that can help scientists like us understand how animals respond to an unusual sudden change in light.

A map of the U.S. showing a dark band starting at Texas, moving up towards Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and through New York and Maine.

The path of totality for the 2024 total solar eclipse.
NASA

Most past research on animal behavior during total solar eclipses is anecdotal. Observers have reported that zoo animals acted distressed or went into their enclosures. Scientists have spotted spiders starting the nightly deconstruction of their webs in the middle of the day, and farmers have heard their roosters start to crow after totality, as if it’s once again dawn. Other reports suggest more subtle effects on animal behavior.

Massive amounts of standardized data can help to make sense of these observations. But because totality covers such a large swath of the globe in a short amount of time, it would be impossible for one scientist or even one small team to get enough observations to figure out why some animals respond more strongly to a solar eclipse than others.

With collaborators across our campus – including Jo Anne Tracey at the Office of Science Outreach and Paul Macklin at Indiana University’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering – we have created an app called SolarBird.

Anyone can download SolarBird for free in the Apple Store and Google Play. The app asks participants to find a bird and watch it or listen to it for 30 seconds, while clicking a few prompts on what the bird does before, during and after totality. You don’t need to have any prior knowledge or bird expertise to participate.

These types of public science projects have aided lots of scientific discoveries, and we are hoping the public can help us learn more about bird behavior during an eclipse, too. Anyone can help. Even observations outside of totality collect important baseline data.

Technology and bird behavior

Apps like Solarbird aren’t the only technologies that help researchers observe more than what any one individual scientist can see or hear.

For example, during the August 2017 solar eclipse, researchers collected data from weather stations across the United States, including several sites along the path of totality. Like the weather forecaster on your local news channel, they used radar to detect movement in the skies, but instead of clouds, they focused on the radar signatures of flying insects and birds.

The team saw some changes in activity – mainly, the birds didn’t follow their typical daytime activity patterns as much, but they saw no consistent increase in night-like activity. Because they used radar, it’s not clear exactly which bird behaviors increased or decreased.

The April 2024 eclipse will last longer than 2017’s, with four full minutes of darkness. And, with spring in high gear, birds are singing up a storm.

Bird songs generally convey two critical messages: “keep away” to a rival and “come here” to a prospective mate. Singing is also really easy for observers to notice. Most birds sing at 85 decibels, measured at 3 feet (1 meter) away. That’s the equivalent of a power mower – loud enough to notice that it’s happening or that it’s suddenly stopped, even across your yard or a public park.

Birds sing for different reasons. Recording their songs can tell researchers how birds respond to an eclipse.

With Dustin Reichard from Ohio Wesleyan University, our team has put out passive audio recorders to record how the eclipse affects birds’ singing.

Researchers tracking wildlife have used autonomous recording units for years. These army-green, weatherproof devices are about the size of a Kleenex box, and typically strapped to a tree while they record virtually anything within earshot. We have 20 of them out now, at rural, suburban and urban sites.

A green box strapped to a tree in the woods.

An autonomous recording unit, which records bird songs.
National Parks Service

Software advances help to automate the process of identifying bird songs by species with less work on the human end. We started recording the last week of March to collect song rates at a typical dawn and a typical dusk. We also measured important controls like how much birds normally sing at at 3:06 PM, the peak of totality here in Bloomington, Indiana.

We hope to use these recordings to figure out why some animals might be more or less affected by a solar eclipse.

For example, artificial light at night can affect bird physiology, behavior and abundance, and the total solar eclipse gives us a new way to test how light pollution affects behavior.

Urban birds may have gotten used to odd changes in light. Forest dwellers might differ from grassland birds, based on the amount of light in their natural habitat. Or, social species might increase their alarm calls, which would give insight into how animals use social bonds to navigate the unknown.

If you’re in the path of totality this April, be sure to take in the celestial show. But you may also want to look around and listen for birds, insects and other wildlife to see how they’re responding to this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

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The Conversation

Weight loss plans are less effective for many Black women − because existing ones often don’t meet their unique needs

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theconversation.com – Loneke Blackman Carr, Assistant Professor of Community and Public Health Nutrition, University of Connecticut – 2024-11-13 07:24:00

People who are obese or overweight are at higher risk of developing several chronic diseases.
andreswd/E+ via Getty Images

Loneke Blackman Carr, University of Connecticut and Jameta Nicole Barlow, George Washington University

The popularity of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro continue to reflect Americans’ desire to slim down. While these new drugs have offered a solution for people struggling with obesity, many eligible patients – especially Black adults – cannot afford the high price.

These drugs are also not a one-stop solution for better health, as healthy eating and regular exercise are also key to losing weight. But current weight loss interventions based on lifestyle changes largely fail to meet the needs of Black women.

As community health researchers, we wondered why scientists have been unable to craft a lifestyle-based weight loss solution that works for Black women.

So we reviewed 10 years of research on weight loss interventions based on lifestyle changes. We found that only a few studies focused on Black women, and those that did often resulted in only small amounts of weight loss and were inconsistent in how they approached weight loss. Why is that?

Missing the mark for Black women

Obesity increases the risk of developing weight-related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Nearly 60% of Black women in the U.S. are obese, placing them at greater risk of developing these conditions.

Lifestyle interventions focusing on healthy diet and increased physical activity are proven to help most people lose weight, typically resulting in a 5% to 10% weight reduction that also reduces the risk of chronic disease. However, these lifestyle interventions usually result in only a 2% to 3% weight loss in Black women.

Our review suggests that lifestyle-based weight loss has been stymied among Black women because they often aren’t included in this research. Because their lived experiences aren’t considered in these studies, these interventions might not meet their specific needs. Of the 138 studies we assessed, Black women made up at least half of the participants in only eight studies.

Research on why lifestyle interventions are often less effective for Black women is lacking. However, some studies highlight the effects of race and gender on their daily lives as potential factors.

Person sitting on couch, pinching skin between eyebrows
The ‘strong’ Black woman is compelled to ignore her physical and emotional needs to take care of others.
PixelsEffect/E+ via Getty Images

The superwoman role

Black women exposed to the persistent stress of navigating everyday racism and sexism face the additional burden of what researchers call the superwoman role. Not only do Black women have to weather their own experiences of race- and gender-based inequalities, they’re also expected to be invulnerable, hyperindependent and suppress their emotions in order to seem strong to their family and community. Many minimize their vulnerabilities and overstress their capabilities in order to fulfill an overwhelming obligation to take care of other people.

Many famous names have spoken about the effects of being the strong superwoman. Actress Taraji P. Henson has pointed to how the need to display strength can lead to ignoring the physical and emotional needs of Black women.

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion spoke about the emotional toll of the superwoman role after being shot by rapper Tory Lanez. “As a Black woman … people expect me to take the punches, take the beating, take the lashings, and handle it with grace. But I’m human.”

The superwoman role levies a heavy tax on Black women, leaving little room to prioritize their health. To cope with the stress, some engage in emotional eating or binge eating. The constant demands of playing multiple caregiver roles can also disrupt physical activity.

Naturally, these challenges make it difficult to adopt healthier eating habits and a consistent exercise routine. Even when working toward weight loss, some Black women continue to gain weight.

Improving weight loss for Black women

Lifestyle interventions that fully integrate the lived experiences of Black women into treatment may be key to improving weight loss. We argue that Black Feminism and Womanism, which focus on the experiences of women of color, can guide researchers to rebuild and reframe weight loss interventions to be more effective for Black women.

Black Feminism and Womanism are approaches guiding Black women and girls to surviving and thriving, specifically by always considering the role that gender and race play in different issues. These frameworks focus on multiple areas of health and wellness, including physical, mental and emotional health, arguing that self-care and wellness practices are acts of social change.

Focusing on the full context of Black women’s lives can lead to better overall health. Obesity, specifically, is influenced by multiple factors, and treating obesity requires a focus on holistic health and well-being. This includes addressing Black women’s economic needs, incorporating faith practices central to Black life, attending to emotional and mental health, and building an environment that makes acquiring healthy food and engaging in daily exercise an easy choice.

Three people walking down a tree-lined trail, smiling at each other
Lifestyle changes are easier to incorporate when they’re tailored to your everyday life.
FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

Current weight loss interventions vary widely in which elements of Black women’s lives they focus on. For example, some emphasize spirituality, while others concentrate on emotional health. Approaches to weight loss that respond to individual needs and move away from one-size-fits-all will be critical to addressing the various aspects of Black women’s lives that affect their wellness.

If health care providers and researchers begin listening to and working with Black women to redesign weight loss interventions, they will likely find that their efforts at addressing obesity among Black women are more effective.The Conversation

Loneke Blackman Carr, Assistant Professor of Community and Public Health Nutrition, University of Connecticut and Jameta Nicole Barlow, Associate Professor of Writing, Health Policy & Management and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies,, George Washington University

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

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Can AI chatbots boost human creativity?

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theconversation.com – Jaeyeon Chung, Assistant Professor of Business, Rice University – 2024-11-13 07:26:00

AI chatbots can give helpful suggestions.

Carol Yepes/Moment via Getty Images

Jaeyeon Chung, Rice University

Think back to a time when you needed a quick answer, maybe for a recipe or a DIY project. A few years ago, most people’s first instinct was to “Google it.” Today, however, many people are more likely to reach for ChatGPT, OpenAI’s conversational AI, which is changing the way people look for information.

Rather than simply providing lists of websites, ChatGPT gives more direct, conversational responses. But can ChatGPT do more than just answer straightforward questions? Can it actually help people be more creative?

I study new technologies and consumer interaction with social media. My colleague Byung Lee and I set out to explore this question: Can ChatGPT genuinely assist people in creatively solving problems, and does it perform better at this than traditional search engines like Google?

Across a series of experiments in a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavour, we found that ChatGPT does boost creativity, especially in everyday, practical tasks. Here’s what we learned about how this technology is changing the way people solve problems, brainstorm ideas and think creatively.

ChatGPT and creative tasks

Imagine you’re searching for a creative gift idea for a teenage niece. Previously, you might have googled “creative gifts for teens” and then browsed articles until something clicked. Now, if you ask ChatGPT, it generates a direct response based on its analysis of patterns across the web. It might suggest a custom DIY project or a unique experience, crafting the idea in real time.

To explore whether ChatGPT surpasses Google in creative thinking tasks, we conducted five experiments where participants tackled various creative tasks. For example, we randomly assigned participants to either use ChatGPT for assistance, use Google search, or generate ideas on their own. Once the ideas were collected, external judges, unaware of the participants’ assigned conditions, rated each idea for creativity. We averaged the judges’ scores to provide an overall creativity rating.

One task involved brainstorming ways to repurpose everyday items, such as turning an old tennis racket and a garden hose into something new. Another asked participants to design an innovative dining table. The goal was to test whether ChatGPT could help people come up with more creative solutions compared with using a web search engine or just their own imagination.

two adults and two small children play with an arrangement of cardboard boxes in a brightly lit room with hard flooring

ChatGPT did well with the task of suggesting creative ideas for reusing household items.

Simon Ritzmann/DigitalVision via Getty Images

The results were clear: Judges rated ideas generated with ChatGPT’s assistance as more creative than those generated with Google searches or without any assistance. Interestingly, ideas generated with ChatGPT – even without any human modification – scored higher in creativity than those generated with Google.

One notable finding was ChatGPT’s ability to generate incrementally creative ideas: those that improve or build on what already exists. While truly radical ideas might still be challenging for AI, ChatGPT excelled at suggesting practical yet innovative approaches. In the toy-design experiment, for example, participants using ChatGPT came up with imaginative designs, such as turning a leftover fan and a paper bag into a wind-powered craft.

Limits of AI creativity

ChatGPT’s strength lies in its ability to combine unrelated concepts into a cohesive response. Unlike Google, which requires users to sift through links and piece together information, ChatGPT offers an integrated answer that helps users articulate and refine ideas in a polished format. This makes ChatGPT promising as a creativity tool, especially for tasks that connect disparate ideas or generate new concepts.

It’s important to note, however, that ChatGPT doesn’t generate truly novel ideas. It recognizes and combines linguistic patterns from its training data, subsequently generating outputs with the most probable sequences based on its training. If you’re looking for a way to make an existing idea better or adapt it in a new way, ChatGPT can be a helpful resource. For something groundbreaking, though, human ingenuity and imagination are still essential.

Additionally, while ChatGPT can generate creative suggestions, these aren’t always practical or scalable without expert input. Steps such as screening, feasibility checks, fact-checking and market validation require human expertise. Given that ChatGPT’s responses may reflect biases in its training data, people should exercise caution in sensitive contexts such as those involving race or gender.

We also tested whether ChatGPT could assist with tasks often seen as requiring empathy, such as repurposing items cherished by a loved one. Surprisingly, ChatGPT enhanced creativity even in these scenarios, generating ideas that users found relevant and thoughtful. This result challenges the belief that AI cannot assist with emotionally driven tasks.

Future of AI and creativity

As ChatGPT and similar AI tools become more accessible, they open up new possibilities for creative tasks. Whether in the workplace or at home, AI could assist in brainstorming, problem-solving and enhancing creative projects. However, our research also points to the need for caution: While ChatGPT can augment human creativity, it doesn’t replace the unique human capacity for truly radical, out-of-the-box thinking.

This shift from Googling to asking ChatGPT represents more than just a new way to access information. It marks a transformation in how people collaborate with technology to think, create and innovate.The Conversation

Jaeyeon Chung, Assistant Professor of Business, Rice University

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Brain-training games remain unproven, but research shows what sorts of activities do benefit cognitive functioning

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theconversation.com – Ian McDonough, Associate Professor of Psychology, Binghamton University, State University of New York – 2024-11-13 07:25:00

Brain-training games sell themselves as a way to maintain cognitive function, but the evidence isn’t there yet.

Eva-Katalin/E+ via Getty Images

Ian McDonough, Binghamton University, State University of New York and Michael Dulas, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Some 2.3 million of U.S. adults over 65 – more than 4% – have a diagnosis of dementia. But even without a diagnosis, a certain amount of cognitive decline is normal as age sets in.

And whether it’s due to fear of cognitive decline or noticing lapses in cognition when we are stressed, many of us have had moments when we thought we could use an extra cognitive boost.

The good news is research has shown that people can make changes throughout adulthood that can help prevent or delay cognitive decline and even reduce their risk of dementia. These include quitting smoking and properly managing blood pressure.

In addition to these lifestyle changes, many people are turning to brain-training games, which claim to optimize your brain’s efficiency and capacity at any age. The makers of brain-training apps and games claim their products can do everything from staving off cognitive decline to improving your IQ.

But so far these claims have been met with mixed evidence.

We are cognitive neuroscientists who focus on brain health across the adult lifespan. We study how the brain informs cognition and the ways we can use brain imaging to understand cognitive and brain-training interventions. We aim to understand how our brains change naturally over time as well as what we can do about it.

Ongoing research shows what actually happens to the brain when it is engaged in new learning, offering a window into how people can sustain their brain health and how brain-training games can play a role. We believe these studies offer some strategies to train your brain the right way.

Brain training fact vs. fiction

Brain training is a set of tasks, often computerized, based on well-known tests to measure a type of cognition, but in a gamified manner.

Most brain-training games were designed to help participants master one or more specific skills. One example is a game that shows you a letter and number combination, where sometimes you must quickly identify whether the letter is even or odd, while other times you must switch to deciding whether the letter is a consonant or vowel. The game may increase in difficulty by requiring you to accomplish the task within a set time limit.

Such games are designed to require a high level of attention, fast processing speed and a flexible mind to alternate between the rules, known as executive functioning.

But it turns out that the specific skills learned in these games often do not translate to more general, real-world applications. Whether brain games meet their end goal of lasting cognitive improvement across a number of areas is still highly debated among psychologists. To make such claims requires rigorous evidence that playing a specific game improves cognitive or brain performance.

In 2016, in fact, the Federal Trade Commission issued a US$50 million penalty to one of the most popular brain-training games at the time, Lumosity, for misleading consumers into thinking that they could achieve higher levels of mental performance at work or at school and prevent or delay cognitive decline by using its product.

If improving on a brain game helps the player get better only at that or highly similar games, maybe game developers need a different approach.

Improving our brain function is possible, even if many of the claims made by developers of brain-training games are unsupported by scientific evidence.

Put some challenge into it

In a study dubbed the Synapse Project, in which one of us, Ian McDonough, helped assess the final outcomes, one group of participants were tasked with engaging in a new activity with which they had little experience. They were assigned to either digital photography or quilting. Though these activities were not games, they were meant to be engaging, challenging and done in a social environment.

Another group was assigned activities that involved little active learning, such as engaging in themed activities related to travel or cooking, or more solitary activities such as solving crossword puzzles, listening to music or watching classic movies. These groups met for 15 hours a week over 14 weeks. All participants were tested at the beginning and end of the study on various cognitive abilities.

Those assigned to the new, challenging activities showed significant gains in their memory, processing speed and reasoning abilities relative to those assigned to the less challenging activities. None of the participants were directly trained on these cognitive tests, which means that the challenging activities enhanced skills that transferred to new situations, such as remembering a list of words or solving abstract problems.

Brain scans of participants showed that over the course of the study, those engaged in the more challenging activities increased their neural efficiency. In other words, their brains didn’t have to work as hard to solve problems or recall information.

The study also showed that the more time participants spent on their projects, the bigger their brain gains and the better their memory was at the end of the 14 weeks.

One difference between the types of activities engaged in the Synapse Project and traditional brain training is whether activities are done in a group or alone. Although other studies have found a benefit to social interaction, the Synapse Project found no difference between the social and solitary activities in the low-challenge group. So, challenge rather than the social components seems to be the driver of maintaining cognitive and brain health.

What you can do to maintain a healthy brain

You might be thinking it’s time to take up digital photography or quilting. But in the end, it’s not about those specific tasks. What matters most is that you challenge yourself, which often comes naturally when doing something new.

The new learning that often is accompanied by a sense of effort – and sometimes frustration – requires accessing the resources in the frontal lobe, which manages thinking and judgment, and the parietal lobe, which processes attention and combines different sensory inputs. These regions constantly talk to each other to keep the mind adaptable in all kinds of situations and prevent the brain from going into “habit mode.”

Where does this leave us? Well, on the one hand, games touted as “training your brain” may not be the best solution compared with other routes to improving cognition.

Ironically, you might already be training your brain by playing effortful games that are not marketed as “brain training.” For example, games such as Tetris or real-time strategy games such as Rise of Nations have shown improvements in players’ cognition. Research has even shown that playing Super Mario 64 can result in increases in brain volume in regions such as the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain.

While little evidence suggests that any brain-training game or program globally improves cognition, some may improve specific aspects of it. As with other activities, challenge is key.

If you’re a word person, try a numbers-based game. If you love math, consider a word game or puzzle. Choosing a task that makes you feel uncomfortable gives you the best shot at maintaining and even improving your cognition. Once you start feeling a sense of ease and familiarity, that’s a sign that it’s time to switch tasks, change the game or at least add some challenge by advancing to a new level of difficulty that feels just beyond your reach.The Conversation

Ian McDonough, Associate Professor of Psychology, Binghamton University, State University of New York and Michael Dulas, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Binghamton University, State University of New York

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

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