CitSci.org and CyberTracker Team Up to Advance Citizen Science

Odzala-Damase

by: Sarah Newman | February 16th, 2017 6:00 am

The year is 2001 and this is Central Africa. Reports are trickling in about an Ebola outbreak. The outbreak is unanticipated. Data for tracking and predicting the spread of the outbreak are scarce. Lives are at stake. What do you do?

Enter CyberTracker.

CyberTracker is a downloadable desktop software application developed to assist non-literate wild animal trackers collecting data about animal movements and behavior. CyberTracker, developed by Louis Liebenberg, Associate of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Justin Stevenson, lead software developer, is a participatory citizen science project. Trackers reported data on gorilla and other wildlife in Central Africa at the time of the 2001 Ebola outbreak. The European Commission was funding part of the project at that time and turned to CyberTrackers for help.

CyberTracker patrol data showed presence of lowland gorilla before the outbreak and absence over a large area after the outbreak. When subsequent Ebola outbreaks occurred in Gabon and later in the Republic of the Congo, CyberTracker data again came to the rescue. Data showed a significant drop in signs of gorilla, chimpanzee, duiker and bushpig. Wild animal Ebola outbreaks, it turns out, began before each of the five human Ebola outbreaks. By keeping an eye on CyberTracker data, it became possible to alert health authorities to an imminent risk for human Ebola outbreaks on two different occasions weeks before they occurred.

“One of the great features of CyberTracker software is that it was developed with an icon-based user interface that enables expert non-literate trackers to record complex geo-referenced observations on animal behaviour,” says Louis Liebenberg.

But…there’s a catch.

“Unfortunately CyberTracker data are not yet available online. Cybertracker does not have an online back-end, which makes it impractical for citizen science projects, since it is not easy for citizens to get access to the data. Instead, data are stored in a physical Access database on individual PCs or, in MySQL, MSSQL Server, or PostGreSQL databases on a server. That’s where we come in,” says Greg Newman, a scientist with the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory.

That ‘we’ is the team at Colorado State University’s CitSci.org. In 2007, while CyberTracker software was continuing to be used to alert health officials of Ebola outbreaks, researchers at CitSci.org were busy developing an online platform to allow people around the world to create their own online, open, and easily shared citizen science and community based monitoring projects. They set about developing a platform that allows individuals and groups to create and customize their own citizen science projects in much in the same way that CyberTracker users configure their own apps.

So – it comes to no surprise that these two innovators – CyberTracker and CitSci.org – eventually became aware of each other’s work. They formed a collaborative team and recently received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation Directorate, SI2-SSI entitled Advancing and Mobilizing Citizen Science Data through an Integrated Sustainable Cyberinfrastructure, to integrate these two innovative software systems.

This new collaboration between CyberTracker and CitSci.org (dubbed the cyberFABRICS project) is novel in the rapidly growing field of citizen science because it focuses on integration of existing systems and interoperability between existing systems. Rather than build yet another platform or app or desktop software application, this grant instead wrestles with the challenge of integrating existing systems in a plug-and-play way to amplify the utility and reach of existing software.

By making the millions of scientific observations made by CyberTracker users freely available and accessible online via CitSci.org – the grant will mobilize these important scientific datasets and empower others to combine them in what are called meta-synthetic studies to generate novel findings and advance knowledge. Additionally, by extending the capabilities of CitSci.org to support the icon-based user interfaces of CyberTracker – the reach and utility of CitSci.org will also be amplified – allowing the platform to better serve anyone – regardless of their literacy, language, locale or age. Other examples of envisioned software integrations enabled through this project include automated sharing of CitSci.org and CyberTracker species observations with the popular and global iNaturalist network of voluntary naturalists and enthusiasts that vet species identifications and the sharing of fine-scale meteorological observations made by a network of rain-gauge monitors powered by the Colorado State University-based Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS).

The results of this CyberTracker/CitSci.org partnership are due to be completed by October 2020. When that time comes, those alerting health officials of new Ebola outbreaks will be able to easily post their CyberTracker apps on CitSci.org for others to download and use to report new disease incidences. They will also be able to upload data captured by their CyberTracker apps to CitSci.org – making these data free and open for use by other scientists, partners, collaborators, and stakeholders around the world. The data may prove important for prediction of more than just Ebola. The creative sharing of software and data will open up opportunities to address a much broader array of locally relevant and globally important challenges.

From: CitSci.org Blog
Photos courtesy of Louis Leibenburg. Banner Photo: CyberTracker App; Insert photo: Damase Ekondzo using the CyberTracker app in the Odzala National Park, Republic of Congo

Which Is More Important: Intuitive or Analytical Thinking?

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Psychology Today, October 30, 2016

david-ludden

David Ludden, PhD – Talking Apes

We need both to make the best decisions.

Last Monday, I engaged in a public conversation with comedienne Ilana Glazer on the topic of “Intuition” at the Rubin Museum in New York City. For 45 minutes, we discussed the role of intuition on stage and in everyday life. Afterward came the Q&A session. Although the audience tossed a number of thought-provoking questions our way, one stands out—perhaps because I’m not satisfied with the response I gave at the time.

One of the themes that came out in the discussion was the need to find a balance between intuitive and analytical thinking. (This is a position I argued in my blog post “Are You an Intuitive or Analytical Thinker?”) Our intuitions have been finely honed over evolutionary history for making quick decisions in the social realm. Within seconds, we know whether we like some or not, whether we trust them or not. We’re also remarkably good at predicting each other’s behavior in the moment.

Beyond the social realm, however, our intuitions often lead us astray—and often in predictable ways. And that’s where analytical thinking becomes important. Even if our rapid-response intuitive system is wrong, our slower, more effortful analytical system can bring us to the best decision.

And so we come to the question from the audience: “If you could only have one mode of thinking in your life—intuitive or analytical—which would you choose?”

I, the analytical scientist, quickly responded: “Of course you need both.”

But Ilana, the intuitive actress, was willing to play along with the hypothetical situation. Of course she chose intuition, as she couldn’t engage in her profession without it.

And I agreed it was the best choice in her situation. I also added that most people lead their lives solely on the basis of their intuitions, sometimes doing well and sometimes making disastrous choices. But then I said something that I now regret.

“If we were living on the savannahs of Africa engaged in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, all we would need is our intuitions to guide us,” I said. “But our modern society is so far removed from the environment we are adapted for that we can no longer depend on intuition alone.”

It’s true that we live today in an environment vastly different from that in which we evolved. And this fact accounts in large part for why our intuitions so often lead us astray in modern life. That is, our intuitions are evolved for a stone-age hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

But that doesn’t mean analytical thinking is a modern invention. Quite to the contrary, hunter-gatherers display remarkable feats of analytical thinking. As Louis Liebenberg describes in his 2013 book The Origin of Science, persistence hunters in the Kalahari Desert engage in a process remarkably similar to the scientific method when stalking their prey.

Persistence hunting is done without any projectile weapons. Instead, you run your prey to exhaustion and then finish it off with a knife. You see, four-legged animals can run fast but only for short distances, whereas humans run slow but can continue at that pace for hours.

Persistence hunters spot a likely prey, say a wounded gazelle, and chase after it. Of course the gazelle quickly leaps out of sight, but it leaves behind a trail of footprints. Furthermore, persistence hunters put themselves inside the mind of their prey and ask: “If I were being chased by humans, where would I go?” The team gathers data, debating and evaluating it, before heading off in the likely direction at a leisurely jog. When they find their prey cooling off under the shade of a tree, they once again take chase. This process is repeated until the animal collapses of heat exhaustion. Then all you have to do is slit its throat and carry it home.

The whole point is that even our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on both intuitive and analytical reasoning. In the social realm, the fast thinking of intuition serves us quite well. But when it comes to important decisions outside that realm, intuitions will lead us astray and only a slow analytical process will lead us to good decisions. This is the lesson we need to take from our hunter-gatherer cousins, who presumably maintain the lifestyle of our ancestors.

This brings us back to the question of which is more important, intuitive or analytical thinking. In the Star Trek universe, the Vulcans have no emotions and are totally rational creatures. Yet if this were truly the case, Mr. Spock wouldn’t be able to order lunch in the ship’s galley, let alone interact successfully with his crewmates, because our day-to-day social decisions have no rational solution and we have only our intuitions to guide us.

On the other hand, the craziness of the current election season shows us only too clearly the lows to which we humans can sink when we chuck rational thought out the window and rely solely on our intuitions. I can hear our hunter-gatherer ancestors calling from their graves: “Take the time to think analytically, would you?”

Reference

Liebenberg, L. (2013). The origin of science: On the evolutionary roots of science and its implications for self-education and citizen science. Capetown, South Africa: CyberTracker.

David Ludden is the author of The Psychology of Language: An Integrated Approach (SAGE Publications).

In the past we knew how to run for our livelihood

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Business Day – 8 NOVEMBER 2016 – by SHAUN SMILLIE

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Louis Liebenberg tracker Karel Benadie (Rolex/Eric Vandeville)

In the midday heat of the central Kalahari, Louis Liebenberg found himself taking part in the final days of a tradition dating back 2-million years. The anthropologist was near a place called Lone Tree, tracking a healthy kudu with a band of San Bushmen, when the decision was made to run the animal down.

Initially, Liebenberg was told to go back to camp as chasing game in 40°C plus heat bought with it the dangers of heat stroke. But the academic convinced them to let him tag along — a decision that nearly cost him his life.

For the next couple of hours, Liebenberg watched as the San tracked the animal at a run, as the hunt developed into a tussle between the fleet-footed kudu and the hunters with the advantage of a far more efficient cooling system.

Every time they caught up with the animal, it would run off. But the kudu’s exhaustion and heat stress began to show in its tracks — it was kicking up more sand and its stride was shortening. It tried to seek shade in
the thickets.

One of the hunters, !Nate, got close enough to the kudu to easily kill it with the thrust of a spear. But he gave up on his quarry when he realised that the academic they had reluctantly invited on the hunt was showing signs of heat stroke. Liebenberg had to be helped back to camp.

The anthropologist had become one of the few outsiders to experience what has since been known as a persistence hunt. What he observed convinced him that humans had probably evolved the feat of endurance running over 2-million years to chase down game.

Understanding that humans are running beings allows scientists to reassess the capability of all humans.

Liebenberg asked the San why, after years of extensive study, no one knew about persistence hunts. They replied that no academic had ever bothered to ask. People only wanted to know about their bows and arrows, they said.

The San, Liebenberg explains, are able to carry out the hunts because of a unique set of adaptations that gave them the edge over the kudu. Besides being able to sweat more than any other species, they are hairless, have long limbs and have a very energy-efficient run.

Man is so efficient in this discipline, that humans have been known to outrun horses over long distances. But the problem, says Prof Dan Lieberman of Harvard University, is that increasingly sedentary lifestyles are masking this talent.

“We are now learning how much we get into trouble by avoiding this kind of activity,” he explains. “Not running [or doing its modern equivalent in the gym] increases the rate at which we age, and causes us to get sick from a wide range of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, Alzheimer’s and more.”

The new frontier in understanding endurance running is examining the effects it has on the brain. It is already well known that running helps in combating depression.

But human brains might have been given a far more important evolutionary nudge from running and hunting, Liebenberg believes. Cognitive thinking, he suspects, has its origins in persistence hunting.

There are two theories about why humans developed the ability to run. One is that they had to travel quickly over long distances to get to predator kill sites so they could scavenge meat before other carnivores arrived. The other theory is that they developed it to hunt.

“The ability to speculate, with its creative hypothetico-deductive reasoning are the origins of scientific theory,” says Liebenberg.

But scientists believe that there are other psychological adaptations, that emerged back when human ancestors were learning to run. One of these is the holy grail of sports performance — a bubble of super concentration that is usually seen when competitors are facing life-threatening conditions.

It is known as the flow, a trance-like state in which athletes are totally focused. Sport scientist Prof Tim Noakes says the flow is seen among downhill skiers, and surfers who take on monster killer waves.

“It is a case of, if they are not in the flow, they will die.”

Noakes says athletes in other disciplines are tapping into the flow. He believes that Wayde van Niekerk was in the flow when he won gold in the 400m race at the Rio Olympics.

“When he finished that race, he didn’t seem to know where he was, he was so focused,” he says. “It might as well be that the flow developed back when we were hunting.”

Liebenberg’s persistence hunt more than 25 years ago was probably one of the last. The San who took him on the hunt, are now old and the new generation, plagued by alcohol abuse, prefer using dogs and horses to chase down game.

In other parts of the world, this method of hunting is
rarely practised.

Some Tarahumara Native Americans still hunt deer this way and the Hadza in Tanzania are known to take part in occasional persistence hunts.

“I suspect, however, that within a generation persistence hunting will be gone because of habitat change, regulations and the loss of [tracking] skill,” Liebenberg says.

But the biological and psychological mechanics that enabled these ancient hunts still lie within all humans and experts believe they can still be tapped in the search for a healthier life.

Botswana loses a national treasure

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Nate-News-article

2016-Nate-Newspaper-article

In Memory of !Nate Brahman

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nate

It was with great sadness that I learnt that !Nate Brahman had passed away on 20 January 2016, the week before I arrived at Lone Tree to visit him. I have known !Nate since 1985 and he played a key role in inspiring our efforts to create employment opportunities for trackers, including the development of the Tracker Certification and the CyberTracker software. In 1990 I ran the persistence hunt with !Nate, who risked his own life to save mine when I suffered from life-threatening heat exhaustion. !Nate featured in a number of TV documentaries, including the famous BBC film on the persistence hunt presented by David Attenborough. For more than 30 years he has been one of my closest friends, longer than any other friend I have known. We would like to express our condolences to !Nate’s wife !Nasi, his children, his family and friends. His passing is a great loss to tracking.

Louis Liebenberg

Distance running may be an evolutionary ‘signal’ for desirable male genes

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New research shows that males with higher ‘reproductive potential’ are better distance runners. This may have been used by females as a reliable signal of high male genetic quality during our hunter-gatherer past, as good runners are more likely to have other traits of good hunters and providers, such as intelligence and generosity.

“Persistence hunting may have been one of the most efficient forms of hunting, and as a consequence may have shaped human evolution” – Danny Longman

Read University of Cambridge News Article here

Can Persistence Hunting Signal Male Quality?

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Daniel Longman, Jonathan C. K. Wells, Jay T. Stock

Abstract

Various theories have been posed to explain the fitness payoffs of hunting success among hunter-gatherers. ‘Having’ theories refer to the acquisition of resources, and include the direct provisioning hypothesis. In contrast, ‘getting’ theories concern the signalling of male resourcefulness and other desirable traits, such as athleticism and intelligence, via hunting prowess. We investigated the association between androgenisation and endurance running ability as a potential signalling mechanism, whereby running prowess, vital for persistence hunting, might be used as a reliable signal of male reproductive fitness by females. Digit ratio (2D:4D) was used as a proxy for prenatal androgenisation in 439 males and 103 females, while a half marathon race (21km), representing a distance/duration comparable with that of persistence hunting, was used to assess running ability. Digit ratio was significantly and positively correlated with half-marathon time in males (right hand: r = 0.45, p<0.001; left hand: r= 0.42, p<0.001) and females (right hand: r = 0.26, p<0.01; left hand: r = 0.23, p = 0.02). Sex-interaction analysis showed that this correlation was significantly stronger in males than females, suggesting that androgenisation may have experienced stronger selective pressure from endurance running in males. As digit ratio has previously been shown to predict reproductive success, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that endurance running ability may signal reproductive potential in males, through its association with prenatal androgen exposure. However, further work is required to establish whether and how females respond to this signalling for fitness.

Read article here

Published: April 8, 2015, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121560

A New Generation of Master Trackers

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Today we are pleased to announce that Adriaan Louw, South Africa, and Mark Elbroch, USA, have been awarded Master Tracker certificates in recognition of their exceptional contribution to the growth of the art of tracking. They represent a new generation of Master Trackers who is taking the art of tracking into the future – a tradition that goes back hundreds of thousands of years and which may otherwise have died out with the last hunter-gatherers.

CyberTracker will in future recognize five categories of Master Trackers. We honour them not so much as individuals on their own, but for the contribution they have made collectively to the art of tracking as a whole. The different categories of Master Trackers complement one another. Together they have contributed to the growth of tracking in a way that no single individual could have achieved working alone. Significant attributes of the Master Tracker includes humility, wisdom, generosity and the desire to contribute to the growth of others.

The full range of attributes of the Master Tracker categories will in due course be documented and published on the CyberTracker website. A brief summary of the most important attributes include:

Elder Master Tracker

The Master Tracker certificate was created in honour of the memory of the elder generation of indigenous hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari. The Elder Master Trackers were hunter-gatherers who may have passed away before they were officially recognized under the CyberTracker evaluation system, or those who may still be alive but due to old age and poor eyesight may no longer be able to track as well as they did when they were younger. These include the late !Nam!kabe Molote of Lone Tree, Botswana, !Namka and /Xantsue of Bere, Botswana, /Dzau /Dzaku and Xa//nau of Groot Laagte, Botswana, Bahbah, Jehjeh and Hewha, Ngwatle Pan, Botswana, Tso!oma, Ganamasi and Mutsabapu of Old Xade, Central Kalahari, Botswana, !Nani //Kxao, Ghau ≠Oma and Tsisaba Debe of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Namibia.

Indigenous Master Tracker

The Indigenous Master Tracker was or still is an indigenous hunter, using the persistence hunting method and/or the traditional poison bow-and-arrow in a hunter-gatherer context.

Master Tracker: Exceptional Practical Skill and Expertise

A Master Tracker who did not practice traditional hunting, but have demonstrated exceptional practical skill and expertise in tracking. In future the minimum requirements will include at least ten years experience after achieving the Senior Tracker certificate, during which time he or she mentored younger trackers, thereby making a contribution to the growth of tracking.

Master Tracker: Exceptional Contribution to the Growth of the Art of Tracking

A Master Tracker who contributed to the growth of tracking through the mentoring, evaluation and certification of a significant number of trackers. The minimum requirements include at least ten years experience after achieving the Senior Tracker certificate, during which time he or she mentored younger trackers, and issued a large number of tracker certificates, thereby making a significant contribution to the growth of tracking.

Master Tracker: Original Contribution to the Art of Tracking

A Master Tracker who contributed to the growth of tracking through original publications, including books and/or scientific papers, or developing new technology and/or applying technology to tracking in an innovative way, or achieving a PhD that involved the application of tracking. The minimum requirements include at least ten years experience after achieving the Senior Tracker certificate, during which time he or she published original new knowledge on the art of tracking and/or applying innovative technology to tracking, thereby making a significant contribution to the growth of tracking.

Louis Liebenberg, 23 March, 2015

Early Days of CyberTracker

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This video from ABC News: Tracking Animals With GPS from the year 2000 takes us back to the early days of CyberTracker. At that time, we had one CyberTracker running on an Apple Newton unit in the Karoo National Park in South Africa and just started our second project with the Kwe San Bushmen in Namibia, using the PalmPilot.

Video: ABC News – Tracking Animals With GPS