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News, Fake News and Propaganda

It’s a confusing world. What is purported to be news isn’t always news. Sometimes it is fake news, alternative facts or propaganda. It can be hard to know the difference. But here is a good rule of thumb: Rely on well-known, long trusted media sources for your news. Organizations such as The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters provide news from around the world in an unbiased manner.

These organizations, along with major newspapers and some major broadcasting networks, endeavor to be accurate and honest in their reporting. Yes, mistakes do happen, but they are corrected as quickly as possible. And the mistakes here are unintentional, not deliberate attempts to deceive.

Simply defined, news is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. Much of what is purported to be news on social media platforms is not news. It may be there just to push a viewpoint or to sow dissent.

Such material can better be described as alternative facts – lies – or fake news. Fake news describes material used by a group or individual to purposely mislead with inaccurate facts. Fake news, essentially lies, is as old as humanity. Fake news has became associated with popular satires, including the comedy paper The Onion and the TV show The Colbert Report. Far right media outlets, conspiracy sites and trolls from foreign governments have developed a reputation for spreading fake news stories.

In its most basic form, fake news is propaganda – information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

There are many techniques for spreading propaganda, some very obvious to those hearing or reading it, some more subtle. Here are a few of those techniques:

Ad hominem – A Latin phrase that has come to mean attacking one’s opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments.

Ad nauseam – This uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth.

Agenda setting – The ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda. If a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.

Appeal to authority – This one cites the views of prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument or course of action.

Appeal to fear – This method seeks to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population.

Appeal to prejudice – Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition.

Bandwagon – Bandwagon appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to join in and take the course of action that “everyone else is taking.” In its simplest usage, a child may falsely tell parents that “all my friends can go, why can’t I?

Inevitable victory – This one invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action. Example: “The debate is over. Nearly everyone who matters agrees with me.”

Beautiful people – The type of propaganda that deals with famous people or depicts attractive, happy people. This suggests if people buy a product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be happy or successful. This is used more in advertising for products, instead of political reasons.

Big Lie – The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the “big lie” generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events. After World War I the German stab in the back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification for Nazi re-militarization and revanchism.

Black-and-white fallacy – Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice.

Cherry picking or selective truth – Richard Crossman, the British Deputy Director of Psychological Warfare Division for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force during the Second World War said “In propaganda truth pays… It is a complete delusion to think of the brilliant propagandist as being a professional liar. The brilliant propagandist is the man who tells the truth, or that selection of the truth which is requisite for his purpose, and tells it in such a way that the recipient does not think he is receiving any propaganda…. The art of propaganda is not telling lies, but rather selecting the truth you require and giving it mixed up with some truths the audience wants to hear.”

Cognitive dissonance – People want to be consistent. Suppose a pollster finds that a certain group of people hates his candidate for senator but loves actor A. They use actor A’s endorsement of their candidate to change people’s minds because people cannot tolerate inconsistency. They are forced to either dislike the actor or like the candidate.

Common man – The “plain folks” or “common man” approach attempts to convince the audience that the propagandist’s positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person.

Cult of personality – A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. The hero personality then advocates the positions that the propagandist desires to promote. For example, modern propagandists hire popular personalities to promote their ideas or products.

Demonizing the enemy – Making individuals from the opposing nation, from a different ethnic group, or those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman (e.g., the Vietnam War-era term “gooks” for National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam aka Vietcong, or “VC”, soldiers), worthless, or immoral, through suggestion or false accusations. Dehumanizing is also a term used synonymously with demonizing, the latter usually serves as an aspect of the former.

Disinformation – The creation or deletion of information from public records, in the purpose of making a false record of an event or the actions of a person or organization, including outright forgery of photographs, motion pictures, broadcasts and sound recordings as well as printed documents.

Euphoria – The use of an event that generates euphoria or happiness, or using an appealing event to boost morale. Euphoria can be created by declaring a holiday, making luxury items available, or mounting a military parade with marching bands and patriotic messages.
Exaggeration

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt – This is an effort to influence public perception by disseminating negative and dubious or outright false information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs.

Firehose of falsehood – A propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (such as news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency.

Flag-waving – An attempt to justify an action on the grounds that doing so will make one more patriotic, or in some way benefit a group, country, or idea. The feeling of patriotism this technique attempts to inspire may not necessarily diminish or entirely omit one’s capability for rational examination of the matter in question.

Gaslighting – Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction and lying to sow seeds of doubt in a target individual or group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, sanity and norms.

Gish gallop – Bombarding a political opponent with obnoxiously complex questions in rapid fire during a debate to make the opponent appear to not know what they are talking about.

Glittering generalities – These are emotionally appealing words that are applied to a product or idea, but present no concrete argument or analysis. This technique has also been referred to as the PT Barnum effect. (e.g., the advertising campaign slogan “Ford has a better idea!”)

Guilt by association – This technique is used to persuade a target audience to disapprove of an action or idea by suggesting that the idea is popular with groups hated, feared or held in contempt by the target audience.

Half-truth –A deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. It comes in several forms: the statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may utilize some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame, or misrepresent the truth.

Labeling – A euphemism is used when the propagandist attempts to increase the perceived quality, credibility, or credence of a particular ideal. A dysphemism is used when the intent of the propagandist is to discredit, diminish the perceived quality, or hurt the perceived righteousness of the individual. By creating a “label”, “category”, or “faction” of a population, it is much easier to make an example of these larger bodies, because they can uplift or defame the individual without actually incurring legal-defamation. Labeling can be thought of as a sub-set of guilt by association.

Loaded language – Specific words and phrases with strong emotional implications are used to influence the audience, for example, using the word reforms rather than a more neutral word like changes.

Managing the news– According to Adolf Hitler, “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” This idea is consistent with the principle of classical conditioning as well as the idea of “Staying on Message.”

Minimization – The opposite of exaggeration, minimization is a type of deception involving denial coupled with rationalization in situations where complete denial is implausible.

Name-calling – Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears and arouse prejudices in their hearers in the intent that the bad names will cause hearers to construct a negative opinion about a group or set of beliefs or ideas that the propagandist wants hearers to denounce. The method is intended to provoke conclusions about a matter apart from impartial examinations of facts. Name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against an idea or belief on its own merits.

Oversimplification – Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems.

Quotes out of context – Selective editing of quotes that can change meanings. Political documentaries designed to discredit an opponent or an opposing political viewpoint often use this technique.

Rationalization – Individuals or groups may use favorable generalities to rationalize questionable acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used to justify such actions or beliefs.

Red herring – Presenting data or issues that, while compelling, are irrelevant to the argument at hand, and then claiming that it validates the argument.

Repetition – This is the repeating of a certain symbol or slogan so that the audience remembers it. This could be in the form of a jingle or an image placed on nearly everything in the picture or scene. This also includes using subliminal phrases, images or other content in a piece of propaganda.

Scapegoating – Assigning blame to an individual or group, thus alleviating feelings of guilt from responsible parties thus distracting attention from the need to fix the problem for which blame is being assigned.

Slogans – A slogan is a brief, striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping. Although slogans may be enlisted to support reasoned ideas, in practice they tend to act only as emotional appeals. Opponents of the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq use the slogan “blood for oil” to suggest that the invasion and its human losses was done to access Iraq’s oil riches. On the other hand, supporters who argue that the US should continue to fight in Iraq use the slogan “cut and run” to suggest withdrawal is cowardly or weak. Similarly, the names of the military campaigns, such as “enduring freedom” or “just cause” can also be considered slogans, devised to influence people.

Smears – A smear is an effort to damage or call into question someone’s reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It can be applied to individuals or groups.

Straw man – A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Thought-terminating cliché – A commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance.

Virtue words – These are words in the value system of the target audience that produce a positive image when attached to a person or issue. Peace, hope, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, “The Truth” etc. are virtue words. Many see religiosity as a virtue, making associations to this quality effectively beneficial.

Negative Review May Land You in Court

Posting online reviews has become second nature for many consumers nowadays – 82 percent of adults say they read online reviews at least some of the time, according to a Pew Research Center Study – so when they have a bad experience with a business, up goes a review, to share it with others.

Unfortunately, bad reviews are too often followed by nightmare lawsuits from the businesses receiving bad reviews.

“We’re seeing a rise in individuals being sued for speaking out online,” said Evan Mascagni, who works for the Public Participation Project. He says many lawsuits are designed simply to intimidate. They’re called “SLAPP” lawsuits (for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). “A SLAPP filer doesn’t go to court to seek justice; they are just trying to silence or harass or intimidate a critic of theirs,” Mascagni said.
Some states have laws against SLAPP lawsuits, but there is no federal anti-SLAPP statute.

Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission began cracking down on businesses that put gag clauses in their consumer contracts in violation of the Consumer Review Fairness Act.

“CBS This Morning” consumer investigative correspondent Anna Werner asked Carl Settlemyer, of the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices, “Why is it important enough that the government feels like, ‘Hey we have to step in sometimes’?”

“The online review medium has really exploded over the past decade or so, and people’s reliance on the ability to learn from online reviews has really grown in proportion to that,” Settlemyer said. “People have stories to tell, and they’re not able to get them out because they feel like they’re going to be threatened.”

Here are some examples.

A Florida man’s simple review turned into a year-long battle in court. “I never thought I’d be sued over anything that I write. There’s no reason to say anything but the truth,” said Tom Lloyd, of DeLand, Florida.

His ordeal began when his 10-year-old poodle Rembrandt suddenly fell ill last year. Lloyd rushed him to nearby DeLand Animal Hospital, where he says he was told the dog needed immediate surgery for what was probably a ruptured spleen.

“I said, ‘You’re going to do this right now?’ And he said, ‘Yeah,'” Lloyd recalled. But six hours later, he says, the clinic told him to come pick Rembrandt up: that they’d been unable to find a surgeon. He took the dog to a second clinic but says he was told it was too late – Rembrandt would need to be euthanized.

“It isn’t like there’s a closure,” Lloyd said. “He deserved a chance and they didn’t give him a chance. If he would have died on the operating table, I would have understood.”

Afterwards, Lloyd posted a review on Yelp, writing “The staff had wasted six hours of Rembrandt’s life and destroyed whatever chance he may have had to live. Our Rembrandt deserved a better last day.”

Weeks later, DeLand Animal Hospital and veterinarian Thomas MacPhail sued Lloyd for defamation, alleging his statements were “false” and “published maliciously and recklessly.” Lloyd said, “I’m finding out that isn’t always cheap to give an honest review, because if the other person has money, they can drive you in the ground.”

In other instances, a New York woman was sued by her doctor for $1 million for posting negative online reviews. A man in Kansas was sued over a three-star Trip Advisor review of a theme park, and a South Carolina woman was sued by a restaurant she claimed refused to honor a coupon.

Thomas Lloyd stuck to his guns, and countersued: Earlier this year, two former veterinarians from DeLand gave sworn affidavits saying even though they lacked experience doing the emergency surgery Lloyd’s dog needed, veterinarian MacPhail had declined to do the surgery and instead left for vacation.

After the animal hospital’s attorneys learned of the CBS interview with Lloyd, the case was quickly settled.
Lloyd told Werner, “They shouldn’t be able to try to financially break somebody just because they don’t like what you say.”

DeLand Animal Hospital, which is now under new ownership, did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment. Neither did veterinarian Thomas MacPhail, who DeLand told us is no longer working at the animal hospital.

Could Artificial Snow Help Antarctica?

What can be done to stop Antarctica’s ice sheets from disintegrating and causing a huge rise in global sea levels? A trio of scientists have simulated a radical geoengineering project to dump 7.4 trillion tons of snow on Antarctica, suggesting it could stop runaway instability in the glaciers.

Recent studies have shown warmer ocean water is being pushed toward the colossal West Antarctic ice sheet, destabilizing it and speeding up the decline of its huge glaciers. The threat of these huge ice deposits falling into the ocean is immense and the overall effect of their decline has been calculated to eventually raise sea levels by approximately 10 feet (3 meters) or more, endangering cities like New York.

“The real concern is that many of these glaciers have a reverse bed slope, meaning that as they retreat it exposes deeper and thicker ice to the ocean,” explains Sue Cook, a glaciologist at the University of Tasmania. “That is a very unstable position, and causes a positive feedback effect which accelerates the retreat (and hence contribution to sea level rise).”

The new study, just published in the journal Science Advances, proposes a drastic, decades-long geoengineering project that would pump huge amounts of ocean water to the ice sheet, adding 7,400 gigatons (7.4 trillion tons) of “artificial snowfall” and reversing the decline. Simulating the current effects on Antarctica’s ice sheets and the changes they experience with increasing snowfall, the researchers were able to map out a process that could potentially halt the ice loss.

Their suggestion would be an incredibly expensive undertaking and include immense technical challenges. The authors say it would present an “unprecedented effort for humankind.” Mostly, the problem lies in pumping the water out of the ocean, which requires an enormous amount of energy. The study suggests constructing a series of 12,000 wind turbines to enable this process to take place and then pumping artificial snow into two glaciers on the West Antarctic coast. The team suggest that activity would result in a 2 to 5 centimeter drop in sea level but the added weight of artificial snow falling on the surface would shore up the glaciers, improving their stability.

The larger effects of such a scheme are yet to be ironed out. What are the lasting effects on the Antarctic ecosystem and what kind of knock-on effects would we see in ocean currents across the world? We just don’t have answers to those questions right now.

What we do know is the Earth’s current default state: Burning fossil fuels and pumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere, warming the planet and causing sweeping changes like threatening a million species with extinction or, you know, the ice sheets melting. Considering the possibility of salvation in artificial Antarctic snow might be jumping a little far ahead.

“Even if a geoengineering project such as this were possible, it certainly shouldn’t detract from the other urgent action which is required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Cook notes.

It’s Not All Bad News

Cops Pay Woman’s Bill

A trio of New York City police officers were called to a Whole Foods store recently after a woman was accused of shoplifting. Instead of arresting her, they paid for the food she had stashed her bag.

Paul Bozymowski, a film and TV director who was at the store, tweeted a photo of the woman with her hands and a tissue over her face as she and the officers stood near the exit at the Whole Foods in Union Square.

“This woman was being held by security. She had food in her bag she didn’t pay for. When the NYPD showed up, they paid for her food,” Bozymowski wrote.

Queens dad saves daughter

A children’s worker trained in CPR used his life-saving skills for the first time to revive his own daughter when she suffered a terrifying seizure the day after a round of immunization shots.

Rasheen Hill had just opened the door to his Queens home after his shift at the New York City Children’s Center nearby when his wife frantically called out to him. Rachel Hill was trying to get her 1-year-old daughter Shiloh and 4-year-old son Zion to bed when the little girl suddenly went limp in her arms.

Seconds earlier, Shiloh was happily camped out near the tub, tugging at a roll of toilet paper as her older brother was bathed. As the busy mom hefted Shiloh to shuffle her two kids to their room for bedtime, the girl stopped moving and fear took over.

The terrified mother heard her husband Rasheen entering their home and hastily called for him.
Rasheen saw his daughter and immediately sprang into action, administering CPR to his daughter.

“Instincts just kicked in,” said Rasheen, 43, a mental health therapy coordinator who is required to take annual CPR classes for his job, even though he’d never had to use them.

The family later learned the adorable tot had a febrile seizure, the likely result of a 102-degree fever she had following a set of immunization shots.

Sea Turtle Count Rising

Although we’re only halfway through nesting season for loggerhead, leatherback and green sea turtles, nest counts have already exceeded last year’s numbers, according to Indian River,Fla., County Environmental Specialist Quintin Bergman.

As of June 28, 487 green-turtle nests have been marked on the Treasure Coast, more than twice the 235 from last year. This is a big deal, considering that four decades ago, biologists thought green sea turtles might go extinct.

Folks living along the beach know that under local ordinances designed to protect sea turtle nesting until Oct. 31. Lights visible from the beach must be shielded, repositioned, or turned off from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Disturbing a sea turtle, its nests or hatchlings also is illegal.

Sand sculptors create art

What better way to celebrate Cocoa Beach’s most famous surf shop than with the raw materials you’ll find on the beach? In front of Ron Jon Surf Shop is a sand sculpture built by local artists, and it is just so cool.

Jill Harris and Thomas Koet are the owners of Sandsational Sand Sculpting, based in Melbourne. They travel the world creating incredible works of art out of sand, but they’ve brought their talents home to Florida to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Ron Jon.

The sculpture was built from 25 tons of sand and water, and took a team of four sculptors a week to complete. It should stand for about two or three months – even if it rains.

Church pays off medical debts

A Michigan church said it raised enough money to pay off the medical debt of nearly 2,000 struggling families.

Sam Rijfkogel, pastor of Grand Rapids First in Wyoming, Michigan, said the church purchased more than $1.8 million worth of medical debt for “less than a penny on the dollar” through a nonprofit group.

“There are people whose medical debt, they cannot pay. There is no way. It’s looming over their head,” Rijfkogel said. “Most of these folks are in poverty levels or below poverty levels and there’s no way that it can be repaid, but they feel the creditor banging on their doors.”

“Today, that $1,832,439.26 that’s looming over families right now has been paid in full as a result of a gift from this church,” he added.

Rijfkogel said the debt was paid off by RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit group that says it has abolished more than $624 million in medical debt since it’s creation in 2014.

Old Friends Sanctuary Saves Dogs

Old dogs don’t care that they’re old. They focus on more important matters – Comfort. Snacks. Naps. And, of course, belly rubs from the people they love.

Nearly 100 senior dogs are enjoying all those essentials and more at Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, a fairy tale land for former shelter dogs in Mount Juliet, Tenn.. Hundreds more are lounging on soft beds and soaking up affection in “forever foster homes” located within a 100-mile radius of the sanctuary. Foster families get to care for calm, content pets without ever having to worry about a single vet bill, and the once-homeless dogs get to spend the rest of their days as part of a family.

“When they come to us from the shelter, we say, ‘Today is the day that they start their new life,'” Zina Goodin, co-founder of Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, said. “We just try to help them feel better and make them healthy so they can live out the rest of their lives happily.”

Zina, 62, and her husband, Michael Goodin, 66, started the sanctuary in 2012 when they were semi-retired and on the prowl for meaningful volunteer opportunities. The couple saw a huge need to help older animals at shelters in Middle Tennessee, where euthanasia rates are high.

“People are less likely to adopt a senior dog from the shelter because they worry about the additional veterinary needs and medications,” Zina Goodin said. “Just like senior people, senior dogs have special needs, so the senior dogs need rescue more than the younger dogs do.”

Eager to prevent older dogs from dying alone and afraid in shelters, the Goodins started out by taking a posse of pooches into their own home. Their efforts gradually grew as friends and strangers heard about what they were doing and offered to foster even more senior dogs in their homes. Then, in 2014 and 2015, that gradual growth became exponential thanks to social media; people began falling madly in love with dogs featured on the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary’s Facebook page.

“Almost like a soap opera, people would cling onto certain dogs,” Michael Goodin said. “They loved it!”
Today, Old Friends has more than 1.8 million followers on Facebook, live cams so fans can watch the dogs’ antics in real time online and about 400 rescued senior dogs in its care. Two and a half years ago, the sanctuary relocated to 2 acres on the site of a former garden center. In their expanded digs, senior dogs can roam inside or outside as much as they want, and there’s no shortage of soft surfaces, socializing, sniffing and snoring.

The sanctuary relies on more than 300 volunteers and employs 26 people, including a full-time, on-site veterinarian to help keep the dogs’ health-care costs down. Every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, small tour groups of as many as six people visit the sanctuary to see its operations in person and meet all the dogs.

“We’ve become a bucket list item for a lot of people,” said Sally McCanner, Old Friends’ foster medical coordinator and tour director.

Most dogs at the sanctuary range in age from about 10 to 14, although their ages are often “guesstimates” from veterinarians because so many animals arrive at shelters with incomplete or mysterious back stories. Some dogs are picked up as strays, while others get removed from situations of hoarding, abuse or neglect. Many more spend years living as family pets until their human owners face a life upheaval of some sort, such as a financial emergency, illness, divorce, home foreclosure or even a military deployment.

Another common scenario for senior shelter dogs is that their older human caretakers either pass away or move into nursing facilities that do not accept pets. Shelter stays can be even more stressful and disorienting for senior dogs in situations like these.

“They’re super confused because they’ve been with a family for 12 years and, all of a sudden, they’re basically in jail,” Michael Goodin said. “It’s wonderful to come in and save these guys and see ’em just brighten up and be great.”

All of the sanctuary’s cleaning supplies, pet food, medications, veterinary care and other needs are paid for by donations. “Our average donation is only $25, so we have a lot of people who support us,” Zina Goodin said. “It also shows that every single donation that we get is very important.”

“A lot of the dogs who come in from the shelters are in pretty bad shape … and it is quite amazing how quickly those dogs will start to heal and turn into lively, energetic, healthy dogs when they’re given the care that they need. They’re able to move on and trust people and love people again.”

The work of Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary and other senior dog rescue efforts across North America is described in the bestselling book “My Old Dog: Rescued Pets with Remarkable Second Acts,” written by TODAY senior editor Laura T. Coffey and with photographs by Lori Fusaro. The book includes a comprehensive, listing of senior dog rescue programs.

Robot Will Make Any Car Self-Driving

You know that self-driving cars are here and soon will be in the mass market. But you also may know that your budget isn’t ready to buy one.

Enter the highly adaptable robot being developed to perform all the functions of driving a vehicle. Israeli startup IVObility is developing a robot that can sit in the driver’s seat of an ordinary vehicle and be the driver. The robot does not require the vehicle to have special drive-by-wire equipment, because it has its own sensors and cameras that “see” what a driver sees.

The cars we drive ourselves eventually will be replaced with those that drive themselves. IVObility’s robot will be able to drive ordinary vehicles. The company’s name combines “Intelligent Vehicle Operator” and “mobility” and is the work of Hugo Guterman, director of the Laboratory for Autonomous Robotics at Ben-Gurion University. Having already developed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (a self-piloting submarine) called the HydroCamel, Guterman’s team is now shifting its focus to dry land.

Where most self-driving-car projects remove the vehicle’s operations from the driver’s seat, IVObility’s device literally sits right in it. The robot is almost humanoid in appearance, with a torso, a lap, a head full of sensors, arms to turn the steering wheel, and legs to work the pedals.

Because the “limbs” are mechanical, it doesn’t require the vehicle it’s operating to be fitted with drive-by-wire controls. Nor does it need a proliferation of radar, lidar, ultrasonic and other sensors to be installed around the vehicle, relying instead entirely on its own cameras to virtually see what a human driver would from behind the wheel.

The concept is simple. The execution is not so simple. CEO Tzvika Goldner says IVObility aims to launch its driving robot by the middle of 2020 and intends to offer three versions: most will be fully autonomous, but some will offer more cost-effective semi-autonomous capability or remote-controlled operation.

The startup is initially focusing on applications removed from public-street traffic, such as agriculture, mining, security and border control. It’s working to launch a pilot project at a European airport later this year and is currently seeking funding to continue development.

Goldner remains reserved on the notion of a consumer version, but the prospect of augmenting existing, driver-operated cars with plug-and-play units like IVObility’s may prove only a matter of time-whether this company makes it, or someone else does.

Extinction Threatens Up to 1 Million Species

Planet Earth has been put on red alert by hundreds of leading scientists who have warned that humanity faces an existential threat within decades if the steep decline of nature is not reversed.

The recently-published conclusions of the greatest-ever stock-taking of the living world show that ecosystems and wild populations are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing completely, and up to 1 million species of land and marine life could be made extinct by humans’ actions if present trends continue.

Food, pollination, clean water and a stable climate all depend on a thriving plant and animal population. But forests and wetlands are being erased worldwide and oceans are under growing stress, says the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the United Nations’ expert nature panel, in the landmark global assessment report. The three-year study, compiled by nearly 500 scientists, analyzed around 15,000 academic studies that focused on everything from plankton and fish to bees, coral, forests, frogs and insects, as well as drawing on indigenous knowledge.

If we continue to pollute the planet and waste natural resources as we have been doing, it won’t just affect people’s quality of life but will lead to a further deterioration of earth’s planetary systems, said the IPBES scientists.

“The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed. This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” said professor Josef Settele, a research ecologist and co-chair of the 1,800 page report, the summary of which was agreed to by 132 governments, including Canada and the United States, at a meeting in Paris.

The scale and rapid speed of this decline of nature is unprecedented in human history and is likely to continue for at least 50 years, say the authors of the global study, but can still largely be turned around if governments, businesses and individuals urgently commit to working together to conserve and restore nature, and to use fewer natural resources better.

It will require a concerted worldwide effort to change the way we live, said IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson, a former chief scientist at NASA who is now with the U.K. government.

“The whole world is focused on climate change but loss of biodiversity is just as important,” said Watson. “You can’t deal with one without the other. There is a recognition now that biodiversity is an environmental issue, but it’s also about economics and development, too. We have to reform the economic system.”

The global assessment report, which will not be published in full until later this year (only the conclusions have been released), is unique among governmental biodiversity studies because it identifies both the direct drivers of nature’s losses ― such as climate change, agricultural expansion, pollution and the exploitation of oceans and forests ― and the underlying causes.

These indirect drivers are more controversial and include world population, which has doubled since 1970 (from 3.7 billion to 7.6 billion people), the tenfold increase in global trade over the last five decades, the sheer amount of goods that people now buy in rich countries, as well as supply chains, the endless pursuit of economic growth, damaging subsidies and the sharp growth of new technologies, all of which put demands on natural resources.

Unless both direct and indirect drivers are addressed simultaneously, there is little hope of the transformational change needed to avert a planetary crisis, said global assessment lead author Kai Chan, professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

“The present system (of environmental protection) has not worked well enough. Governments must get serious about reining in the power of business to regulate itself. We must also focus on supply chains. At present, nature is undermined every time we buy something through the raw materials used or the way goods are produced,” he said.

“Few governments fully understand the magnitude of the problems we face. Most deny the reality of the existential threat we face,” Chan added.

The global assessment report also shows:
• Urban areas have more than doubled in size since 1992, and 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of tropical forest were lost from 1980 to 2000.
• Around 25% of animal and plant species are threatened, and around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades if no action is taken.
• The current rate of species extinction is at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.
• Nearly half the live coral cover on coral reefs has been lost since the 1870s, with losses in recent decades accelerating due to climate change.
• Two-thirds of the oceans are under stress, and over 85% of wetlands area has been lost.
• The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have increased in the past 50 years, while the global average sea level has risen by between 6 and 8 inches since 1900.
• Climate change is projected to become increasingly important as a direct driver of changes in nature and its contributions to humanity in the next decades.
• There are around 2,500 conflicts over fossil fuels, water, food and land currently occurring worldwide.

The global assessment report is a critical piece of science, Joyce Msuya, acting executive director of the U.N.’s Environment Program, said. “It is a reminder that nature is not a luxury but is the building block of economic growth, food security, livelihoods and health. It tells us there is a window of opportunity to change track.”

The authors collectively call for bold, far-reaching economic and social changes, including paying for large-scale ecological restoration of degraded lands, and strengthening international targets to control climate change and biodiversity loss.

NGOs are among those echoing the call for major, transformative changes. “We must end this war against nature. We must eat less meat, which takes up most agricultural land at the expense of nature, and we must stop treating our oceans like a waste dump while also exploiting their resources to the point of collapse,” said John Sauven, director of Greenpeace.

The good news, said Watson, is that governments have accepted the report. “They know the problem. They cannot disagree with the evidence because they have signed off on it. Now we need action.”

College Grads Too Optimistic?

College graduates under 30 strongly believe they’ll live as well as or better than their parents, according to a survey of 21- to 30-year-olds conducted by The NHP Foundation, a not-for-profit provider of affordable housing. Even those saddled with student loans are optimistic about their future financial and housing picture.

Researchers question if their optimism could be overblown.

Sixty percent of college grads surveyed say they fully expect to be able to “afford the kind of housing they most prefer” in one to five years. Seventy percent rated homeownership as “important” to “very important.”
The age group has been labeled “generation rent,” which refers to young adults faced with stagnant wages and high debt who – compared to other generations – are forced to stay renting longer due to the high costs of housing.

Forty-six percent of the graduates surveyed say they expect to live on their own, paying rent with no help from roommates or parents. However, more young adults are living at home with their parents than ever before. For example, in markets like New York, Miami and Los Angeles, as many as 45% of young adults are living at home, the study notes.

More than half of the college grads surveyed say they have student loans – with 10% owing more than $50,000. Nearly 40% say they expect to pay those loans off in one to three years, though. Researchers say it’s more likely it’ll take about 10 years to pay them off. The average bachelor’s degree graduate takes 21 years to pay off loans, the report notes.

College grads may not be completely unrealistic about their finances, researchers note. About 67% did say they expect to spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Most financial experts consider that “cost burdened.”

“We were surprised to learn that 54% of these young graduates know that they could potentially qualify for affordable housing under HUD’s definition,” adds Richard Burns, president and CEO of The NHP Foundation. “This helps us understand how we need to consider housing to suit these renters, who may be in apartments for longer than they think.”

Building Scents That Make Sense

Fragrance developers are helping build brand awareness in the real estate space.

A smelly room is not necessarily a bad thing. In residential real estate, agents go to great pains to make sure their listings include no off-putting odors. But on the commercial side, building owners are relying on sophisticated research about how scent can influence perceptions of a brand. Some developers are teaming up with fragrance makers to fashion signature scents that make work spaces more welcoming and provide office dwellers a pleasant experience in common areas. By leveraging “ambient scenting,” also known as scent marketing, companies hope to use the smell of their space to forge greater emotional connections with their building.

“It’s not just putting an air freshener in a socket. This is much more complex in evaluating a brand and selecting just the right scent for it,” says Mike Fransen, chief operating officer at Parkway Properties, which has worked with the firm Prolitec to add specialized scents to 15 office buildings in the Houston area over the last three years. When visitors or tenants set foot in one of their buildings, they want the space to feel comfortable and familiar. Scent is one way they felt they could achieve that.

The developers of Parkway Properties chose a warm, woodsy fragrance, “blue wood,” for the properties’ main scent because scent researchers have tied the smell to feelings of “luxury,” “modern” and “sophistication” – all terms they wanted associated with their lobby areas. The expectation is that the scent, even subliminally, would reinforce those feelings for everyone entering the buildings, too.

Cintas Corp. says smell is tied to memory and links to the emotional regions of the brain more directly than other senses. What’s more, the corporaton says, people can remember smells with 65 percent accuracy after a year. Visual recall, on the other hand, is only about 50 percent after three months Cintas reports.

Unlike other senses, smell tends to trigger first an emotional reaction and then an identifier. Sight, sound, and taste, on the other hand, initially trigger people to identify the information before they have an emotional response, according to Cintas.

The “blue wood” scent combines crisp green apple notes with floral hints of jasmine and magnolia and a cedar wood component to bring a comfortable elegance to lobbies, entrances and hallways. It is delivered using Prolitec’s high-tech diffuser on the wall, which controls the distribution of the scent uniformly based on the size of the space and its airflow. For the buildings’ fitness centers, they chose a scent to reflect the change in mood: “mandarin zest.” “You don’t want the same mood ambiance of warm elegance in the fitness center but instead a scent that is uplifting and high energy,” says Jeff Sneed, vice president of sales at Prolitec.

The hospitality industry has a proven record for its ambient scenting. For example, in 2005, Westin Hotels & Resorts created a signature scent for its global properties known as “white tea,” a fragrance described as a blend of white tea and vanilla with cedar notes. Its lobby spaces and bath amenities, like lotions and soaps, all carry the same scent to reinforce brand recognition of its spaces.

“The concept of scent marketing has been around for a long time, but it’s really starting to enter the commercial real estate industry,” Sneed says. Here’s why: Research shows smells are easier for humans to recall than visuals and that specific scents are tied to happier, calmer customers and more inviting workspaces.

That’s why real estate developers are allocating scent expenses in their budgeting. Given that creating a formula from scratch can cost up to $25,000, choosing from a library of existing fragrances is a common and more economical approach costing between $200 to $500 per month, Sneed says.

Adding scent to a building should be done cautiously, however. Responses to a smell can be subjective, and a misfire in choosing a fragrance can turn off customers and employees. That’s why building owners are relying on “scent consultants,” who cull research on perceptions of distinct smells and use that information to guide companies to the right scent for their space.

Scent delivery companies like Prolitec, ScentAir and others offer consultations to client firms to help them avoid complaints. They’ll work with firms to ensure the scents make sense, matching the fragrance to the existing design and the brand image and noting how the scent is delivered along with where and why (say, to cover an existing odor or to complement a brand).

Anette Hebert, a district manager with Ambius, a customized scenting company, says the selection of the scent has to be done thoughtfully. She recalls a client company where its leaders selected a clean floral scent for its lobby. But the scent was a mismatch with the lobby’s design, which featured dark woods and cooler burgundys. Instead, Hebert’s team suggested a woodsy scent with a hint of spice – more consistent with the decor.

Besides matching a scent with the visual environment, another consideration is ambient sound. For example, a study found that ambient scent mixed with background music generated more positive customer responses and office evaluations, according to a study published in Journal of Retailing by researchers Anna Mattila and Jochen Wirtz.

Parkway Properties’ “blue wood” fragrance was incorporated into its freshly designed lobbies, which feature more relaxed, conversational areas with a “coffee house” vibe. Acoustic versions of pop songs play quietly in the background. “The smell offers familiarity and comfort, and coupled with the music and the new design of our lobbies, it’s becoming our identity,” Fransen said. “By taking a look at the five senses, we wanted to make sure we were doing everything we could in our campuses to create a good first, second, and lasting impression. The technology around scent is helping us to advance that.”

Student Debt Alters Class Status

A college degree has long been a ticket to the middle class. A college degree typically confers higher pay, stronger job security, greater home ownership and comparatively stable households. Those benefits have long been seen as worth the sacrifices often required, from deferred income to student debt.

Yet college graduates aren’t as likely as they once were to feel they belong to the middle class, according to a collaborative analysis of the 2018 General Social Survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and GSS staff. The survey found that 35% of graduates described themselves as working or lower class, up from just 20% who felt that way in 1983. By contrast, only 64% of college grads say they feel they belong to the middle or upper class.

The findings might seem surprising given that the nearly decade-long U.S. economic expansion is on the verge of becoming the longest on record and unemployment is an ultra-low 3.8 percent. Yet the financial insecurities that afflict many college graduates point to the widening gap between the richest Americans and everyone else. Dan Black, an economist at the University of Chicago, suggested that the consequences of the trend could include delayed family formation, lower levels of consumer spending and, eventually, slower economic growth. “Concerns like this will definitely have impacts for the economy, Black said.

The survey shows that Americans — both college graduates and those without degrees — have broadly benefitted as the country healed from the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. But across age groups, a college degree has become less of an assurance of upward mobility. College graduates ages 50 and over, as well as those under 35, are less likely than they were in 1993 to describe themselves as middle or upper class.

All of which suggests that while college still offers a path upward, that route has been narrowed by student debt loads, an outpacing of home prices relative to wages and widening economic inequality. The income disparities go well beyond the gap between the top 1% of earners and all other households. Disparities are widening even within many occupations, including financial advisers, lawyers and physicians. The result is that an ostensibly middle class job title may provide a pay level more associated with a lower middle class job.

The survey finds that Americans’ satisfaction with their personal finances has finally regained its pre-recession levels even though this hasn’t led to increased identification with the middle class. Both people who have graduated from college and those who haven’t are now as likely as they were before the recession to say their financial situations have improved in the past year.

But Americans are also more likely than they were before the recession to say they feel overworked. College graduates are likelier than those without degrees to say they work overtime (80% to 70% and that they have more work to do than they can complete (40% to 30%).

All told, student debt totals roughly $1.5 trillion — a more than five-fold increase since 2004, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. To help manage the burden, many parents and older family members have borrowed to fund their children’s educations.

Federal researchers concluded that the increase in education debt between 2005 and 2014 has prevented homeownership for roughly 400,000 young people. At the same time, many surveys show that student debt has also delayed marriages and household formation.

Economists have noted that rising college debt has in effect become an entry fee for the job market. Nearly 80% of the net 2 million job gains last year went to college graduates, even though just a third of adults hold a degree. But about 60% of college graduates in 2017 had student loans with the average borrower leaving college with about $30,000 in debt, according to the College Board.

“Young people are facing unprecedented challenges that are preventing them from achieving what we all consider to be the American Dream,” said Soncia Coleman, a senior director at Young Invincibles, an advocacy group for millennials. “They need the education, but the cost to get it is astronomical.”