Aug 18, 2022 09:53 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 18, 2022 09:59 PM by C C.)
Study fails to show that dogs or wolves can form reputations of humans
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271590
RELEASE: A small study did not find evidence that wolves or dogs could form reputations of humans as "generous" or "selfish" with food, after direct or indirect interactions. Hoi-Lam Jim and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria, present the findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 17, 2022.
Among animals that live in groups, forming reputations of individuals can play an important role in cooperation. Because dogs can cooperate with humans, some researchers have hypothesized that dogs can form reputations of individual humans by observing humans' interactions with a third party. However, research on the topic has produced mixed findings. Additionally, if dogs indeed have this ability, it is unclear whether it evolved during domestication or was already present in their wolf ancestors.
To help clarify, Jim and colleagues conducted a study with nine wolves and six dogs at the Wolf Science Center in Austria. Each test animal observed interactions between two humans and a dog, in which the "generous" human fed the dog and the "selfish" human withheld food. Afterwards, the test animal demonstrated whether they had formed reputations of the humans by choosing which of the two humans to approach. A second phase tested whether each animal formed reputations after interacting directly with humans who either fed them or withheld food.
Statistical analysis of the results suggested that neither the dogs nor the wolves formed reputations of the humans after either indirect observation or direct interaction. Thus, the findings do not support the idea that dogs and wolves are able to form reputations.
However, the wolves did pay more attention to the generous human when observing interactions with a dog. Furthermore, two wolves and three dogs did show preference for the generous human after the combined experience of both indirect observation and direct interaction.
The researchers call for further research on the topic, perhaps involving a larger number of dogs and wolves, and with thoughtful consideration of context. For instance, it may be that some animals are more likely to form reputations in stressful or dangerous situations, although those are not possible to test experimentally for ethical reasons.
The authors add: "Overall, neither dogs nor wolves distinguished between a generous or selfish human after indirect or direct experience. However, wolves showed more attention toward the generous person during the observation phase, and some dogs and wolves did prefer the generous person when looking at indirect and direct experiences combined."
Professor working to heal homelessness and fix a broken industry
https://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2...ssness.php
RELEASE: While volunteering at an Indian orphanage in 1984, Dr. David Buck found his passion for helping those most in need during an encounter with the greatest humanitarian in human history -- Mother Teresa. That unforgettable experience put him on a decades-long path to reshaping how communities care for the underserved.
"Mother Teresa asked us 'Who among you wants to change the world?'" recalled Buck. "Internally I was screaming 'Me, I do!'"
But Buck, now a professor and associate dean for community health at the University of Houston Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, didn't raise his hand.
"She said 'For all of you who want to do that, there's the door. Our task is much greater. Our task is to love one person at a time,'" he said. "So, I came back to the U.S. and knew I wanted to make a difference here at home."
Buck recently reflected on his nearly 40 years of tackling the homelessness epidemic, repairing a fragmented aid industry, and challenging the status quo in medicine in a first-person account published in the Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness.
Early in his career, just after returning from that life-changing experience with Mother Teresa, Buck volunteered with Houston Catholic Worker House where he learned the biggest problem facing the homeless was access to health care. Not long after, he established two free health clinics and a dental clinic, but soon realized the root problem wasn't just access. Instead, it was a lack of integration of all the services they needed.
"There was no system of care, from primary care to subspecialty care, health care to housing, food, even identification cards to transportation. Homelessness is like a prison of these catastrophic failures at every level. Education, employment, the judicial system. It goes on and on," said Buck, noting that there are hundreds of non-profits but no financial incentives for one service industry to work with others like housing, transportation or employment.
Recognizing what he calls a "profound lack of leadership," Buck founded Healthcare for the Homeless Houston in 1999 to promote health, hope and dignity for those affected by homelessness through accessible and comprehensive quality care. His vision was to provide pathways for moving beyond the cycle of homelessness through integrated care and collaborative partnerships and eliminate those obstructive service silos.
"You have to go to the place that does housing, but you don't have transportation," he said. "You have to get I.D., but that's a different Texas agency. You have psychiatry here, but not at your primary care doctor, and then you have to go somewhere else for your meds. It's this endless cycle."
To further the mission, Buck founded another non-profit, the Patient Care Intervention Center (PCIC), and partnered with United Way, among others, to build a coordinated health safety-net where stakeholders share and integrate social and medical data to help make better decisions.
In the journal article, Buck suggests three strategies that need to be adopted across the health care system to more effectively treat homeless individuals and improve health outcomes:
"Imagine your typical doctor's appointment: "Hi Mr. Patient, nice to see you today for your hypertension, obesity, substance use, your mental illness, oh and did I mention your obesity?" As I go on with that statement, you become less and less motivated for the behavior change that could improve your health. Now compare that to a values-based approach. Who and what is most important to you? And then you derive goals from that," he said in the journal interview with article authors Nicholas Peoples and Mary Fang, both medical students at Baylor College of Medicine.
Buck said challenging the status quo is what brought him into academic administration. The Fertitta Family College of Medicine was founded in 2019 on a distinct social mission to improve health and health care in underserved urban and rural communities where poor health outcomes are often more prevalent. Buck is part of the team educating medical students on how to provide compassionate, high-value care (high quality at reasonable cost), with a focus on primary care and other needed physician specialties.
In September, Fertitta Family College of Medicine students for the first time will join students from Baylor and UT medical schools in working at the HOMES (Houston Outreach Medicine, Education and Social Services) Clinic at Healthcare for the Homeless, one of the first student-run medical clinics in the country and the only one in Houston, and the first one at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC).
"We know what's wrong, and now we have the tools to fix it," he said.
His vision goes back to that day nearly 40 years ago when Mother Teresa gave him the inspiration for what has become his life's work. But that work is far from finished, and now he's hoping that inspiration is passed along to his students. "We need the next generation of doctors to implement new approaches to improve the quality of care, and that's part of our focus at UH."
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271590
RELEASE: A small study did not find evidence that wolves or dogs could form reputations of humans as "generous" or "selfish" with food, after direct or indirect interactions. Hoi-Lam Jim and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria, present the findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 17, 2022.
Among animals that live in groups, forming reputations of individuals can play an important role in cooperation. Because dogs can cooperate with humans, some researchers have hypothesized that dogs can form reputations of individual humans by observing humans' interactions with a third party. However, research on the topic has produced mixed findings. Additionally, if dogs indeed have this ability, it is unclear whether it evolved during domestication or was already present in their wolf ancestors.
To help clarify, Jim and colleagues conducted a study with nine wolves and six dogs at the Wolf Science Center in Austria. Each test animal observed interactions between two humans and a dog, in which the "generous" human fed the dog and the "selfish" human withheld food. Afterwards, the test animal demonstrated whether they had formed reputations of the humans by choosing which of the two humans to approach. A second phase tested whether each animal formed reputations after interacting directly with humans who either fed them or withheld food.
Statistical analysis of the results suggested that neither the dogs nor the wolves formed reputations of the humans after either indirect observation or direct interaction. Thus, the findings do not support the idea that dogs and wolves are able to form reputations.
However, the wolves did pay more attention to the generous human when observing interactions with a dog. Furthermore, two wolves and three dogs did show preference for the generous human after the combined experience of both indirect observation and direct interaction.
The researchers call for further research on the topic, perhaps involving a larger number of dogs and wolves, and with thoughtful consideration of context. For instance, it may be that some animals are more likely to form reputations in stressful or dangerous situations, although those are not possible to test experimentally for ethical reasons.
The authors add: "Overall, neither dogs nor wolves distinguished between a generous or selfish human after indirect or direct experience. However, wolves showed more attention toward the generous person during the observation phase, and some dogs and wolves did prefer the generous person when looking at indirect and direct experiences combined."
Professor working to heal homelessness and fix a broken industry
https://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2...ssness.php
RELEASE: While volunteering at an Indian orphanage in 1984, Dr. David Buck found his passion for helping those most in need during an encounter with the greatest humanitarian in human history -- Mother Teresa. That unforgettable experience put him on a decades-long path to reshaping how communities care for the underserved.
"Mother Teresa asked us 'Who among you wants to change the world?'" recalled Buck. "Internally I was screaming 'Me, I do!'"
But Buck, now a professor and associate dean for community health at the University of Houston Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, didn't raise his hand.
"She said 'For all of you who want to do that, there's the door. Our task is much greater. Our task is to love one person at a time,'" he said. "So, I came back to the U.S. and knew I wanted to make a difference here at home."
Buck recently reflected on his nearly 40 years of tackling the homelessness epidemic, repairing a fragmented aid industry, and challenging the status quo in medicine in a first-person account published in the Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness.
Early in his career, just after returning from that life-changing experience with Mother Teresa, Buck volunteered with Houston Catholic Worker House where he learned the biggest problem facing the homeless was access to health care. Not long after, he established two free health clinics and a dental clinic, but soon realized the root problem wasn't just access. Instead, it was a lack of integration of all the services they needed.
"There was no system of care, from primary care to subspecialty care, health care to housing, food, even identification cards to transportation. Homelessness is like a prison of these catastrophic failures at every level. Education, employment, the judicial system. It goes on and on," said Buck, noting that there are hundreds of non-profits but no financial incentives for one service industry to work with others like housing, transportation or employment.
Recognizing what he calls a "profound lack of leadership," Buck founded Healthcare for the Homeless Houston in 1999 to promote health, hope and dignity for those affected by homelessness through accessible and comprehensive quality care. His vision was to provide pathways for moving beyond the cycle of homelessness through integrated care and collaborative partnerships and eliminate those obstructive service silos.
"You have to go to the place that does housing, but you don't have transportation," he said. "You have to get I.D., but that's a different Texas agency. You have psychiatry here, but not at your primary care doctor, and then you have to go somewhere else for your meds. It's this endless cycle."
To further the mission, Buck founded another non-profit, the Patient Care Intervention Center (PCIC), and partnered with United Way, among others, to build a coordinated health safety-net where stakeholders share and integrate social and medical data to help make better decisions.
In the journal article, Buck suggests three strategies that need to be adopted across the health care system to more effectively treat homeless individuals and improve health outcomes:
- Challenge funders at all levels: Philanthropic institutions, the private sector, local, national, and international public grant agencies must implement financing strategies that incentivize and reward collaboration among service organizations.
- Resist the temptation to add new non-profits: Further proliferation of non-profit organizations will only serve to further fragment care. Instead, regardless of whether the financial incentives are there or not, reach across the aisle and build meaningful coalitions with existing players.
- Change starts from within: Reform professional culture to reward practices that are proven to improve key outcomes.
"Imagine your typical doctor's appointment: "Hi Mr. Patient, nice to see you today for your hypertension, obesity, substance use, your mental illness, oh and did I mention your obesity?" As I go on with that statement, you become less and less motivated for the behavior change that could improve your health. Now compare that to a values-based approach. Who and what is most important to you? And then you derive goals from that," he said in the journal interview with article authors Nicholas Peoples and Mary Fang, both medical students at Baylor College of Medicine.
Buck said challenging the status quo is what brought him into academic administration. The Fertitta Family College of Medicine was founded in 2019 on a distinct social mission to improve health and health care in underserved urban and rural communities where poor health outcomes are often more prevalent. Buck is part of the team educating medical students on how to provide compassionate, high-value care (high quality at reasonable cost), with a focus on primary care and other needed physician specialties.
In September, Fertitta Family College of Medicine students for the first time will join students from Baylor and UT medical schools in working at the HOMES (Houston Outreach Medicine, Education and Social Services) Clinic at Healthcare for the Homeless, one of the first student-run medical clinics in the country and the only one in Houston, and the first one at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC).
"We know what's wrong, and now we have the tools to fix it," he said.
His vision goes back to that day nearly 40 years ago when Mother Teresa gave him the inspiration for what has become his life's work. But that work is far from finished, and now he's hoping that inspiration is passed along to his students. "We need the next generation of doctors to implement new approaches to improve the quality of care, and that's part of our focus at UH."