When Aimee Gray woke up on a Sunday morning in October 2017, she decided she was finally going to get a new pair of shoes. She鈥檇 worn holes in her favorite Skechers, so when she and her husband聽headed into town for groceries, she stopped in the shoe store and treated herself to two new pairs.

As they drove back to the home they rented on Bennett Ridge Road, in the hills southeast of Santa Rosa, California, her husband聽remarked on the strange, warm wind that had been blowing through town all weekend. Later that night, as she lay in bed, Gray聽heard it whipping through the trees until she finally drifted off.

Just before 2 A.M., Gray woke up to her mastiff barking frantically. She thought, It鈥檚 a windy night, I know鈥攇o back to bed, Brighton. But Brighton wouldn鈥檛 stop, so Gray got up. As soon as she opened the bedroom door, smoke hit her in the face. She ran to the other side of the house. 国产吃瓜黑料 the big picture window overlooking the valley, everything was red with fire. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e the best damn dog in the world,鈥� she told Brighton, patting her on the head.

It was a mad scramble to evacuate. The couple threw a few pairs of underwear in a bag, then loaded Brighton and their other mastiff, Reese, in the truck. Gray lifted her daughter, just shy of two at the time, from聽her crib, telling her the family was going on a fun trip with the dogs. Gray changed out of her pajamas into the clothes she鈥檇 been wearing the day before and put on her favorite pair of Skechers, the ones with the holes worn through. 鈥淚 had this moment of, wait, hold the phone鈥攜ou have brand-new shoes,鈥� she said聽and put on one of the pairs she鈥檇 bought a few hours before.

As Gray slipped out the front door, she was nearly knocked over by a powerful gust of wind. The air was thick with acrid smoke, and she noticed flames creeping toward聽their front porch; embers fell from the trees, threatening to ignite the house. Flames were already overtaking neighbors鈥� houses.

Huge swaths of Santa Rosa were ablaze. The wind had blown a tree into a power-line conductor and started the Nuns Fire, torching the hills around Gray鈥檚 neighborhood. A little farther north, a faulty electric system near Tubbs Lane ignited a second blaze, the Tubbs Fire. Fifty-mile-an-hour winds quickly stoked both into uncontrollable infernos. Tubbs rapidly became what was at the time one of the most destructive wildfires in state history, killing 22 people and destroying some 5,600 structures. Nuns, and the nearby fires it merged with,聽went on to burn over 56,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,500 structures.

Driving away from her house, Gray says, the only road out was enveloped in fire. She wondered whether she could make it. Would the heat pop her tires? But there was no other way off the ridge, so she gunned it through the flames. 鈥淚 will never, until the day I die, forget how hot it felt to have that fire right at the car window,鈥� she says.

The next few days were a blur. As friends shared stories through Facebook posts and text messages, Gray learned which neighbors got out, which ones hid in their swimming pool to avoid the flames, and who died. Residents weren鈥檛 allowed to visit their burned homes as the National Guard secured the area and local officials performed safety checks on utilities, but one intrepid neighbor snuck up the ridge to report back about the damage. According to him, nearly all of Gray鈥檚 street was gone. Of the roughly 120 houses he checked on, Gray says, some 90 had burned to the ground. But still, the Grays received no calls from the city, no official confirmation. Finally, four days later, a satellite-imaging company released photos of the area. When the family scrolled to their neighborhood, 鈥渨e saw with our own eyes that there was nothing there,鈥� says Gray.

They moved in with friends nearby, and Gray put on a brave face. 鈥淚 remember posting all these super positive things on Facebook,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 part of my personality: Hey, I鈥檓 OK, don鈥檛 worry about me. I鈥檝e always been the worrier, the comforter, taking care of people.鈥�

But one November morning a few weeks later, as she walked outside to grab something from her car, she smelled smoke. 鈥淎ll of a sudden, I started dry heaving聽and ran back to the house to get fresh air,鈥� she says. The neighbors were burning wood in their fireplace. She went to the bathroom to splash water on her face, and as she closed her eyes, she saw flames, sending her into a fit of sobs. She decided she needed help. A therapist told her that some of her symptoms sounded like post-traumatic stress disorder. 鈥淚 knew some things about PTSD,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut I certainly never thought in a million years that I鈥檇 be experiencing it.鈥�

The post The Long-Lasting Mental Health Effects of Wildfires appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

A few minutes before 7 a.m. on July 14, Page Weil, 34, stopped to catch his breath halfway up Happy Hour Crag, in Boulder Canyon, on聽 (5.7). The water resources engineer had passed the initial series of friendly block ledges and plugged a cam into a crack on the trad route聽as protection in case of a fall. The next few moves would be trickier, with the almost-smooth wall split by the聽thin, vertical seam. After gingerly testing several holds, Weil finally decided to commit to the crack, pulling on the sides with his fingertips as he smeared his toes against the slick granite, propelling himself upward.聽

To trad climb is to be faced with hundreds of such split-second micro decisions, the consequences of which can be fatal. That emphasis on human judgment and its fallibility intrigued , a psychology professor at North Carolina State University. An attention and behavior researcher, she set out to model how and why rock climbers make decisions, and she鈥檇 recruited Weil and 31 other trad climbers to contribute data to the project.聽聽

The idea for the study first came about at the crag. In 2011, McLaughlin, , a psychology professor at Colorado State University, and John Keller, an engineer at Alion Science and Technology, converged in Las Vegas for the聽 conference, an annual event that brings together various professionals practicing聽user-focused product design. With Red Rocks just a few minutes away, the three avid climbers were eager to get some time on the rock before the day鈥檚聽sessions, says Keller, even if it meant starting at 3 a.m.聽

McLaughlin had long been impressed by Wickens鈥檚 research, which focused on developing computational models of decision-making by studying professionals like scrub nurses and airline pilots. By recording聽their gaze patterns and interviewing them about their thought processes during surgery or while landing a plane, Wickens identified a model of human behavior that predicts what people pay attention to, as well as the factors that can disrupt their attention.聽

After climbing together, McLaughlin realized that the decisions made while climbing and flying a plane were similar, and subject to the same lapses in judgment. For example, both climbers and pilots require a substantial amount of specialized training to hone their crafts, yet both fall prey to overconfidence, switching into autopilot when their tasks become routine, especially if they鈥檙e tired or facing聽a time limit. 鈥淏oth are subject to 鈥榞et done-itis,鈥欌�� says McLaughlin. 鈥淵ou want to summit or you want to land. You want to get home.鈥� Some of the results are obvious: for example, studies have found that commercial pilots get distracted when they鈥檙e聽made to work around loud noises or with a tight deadline, and as a result, they make worse decisions and work聽less confidently. After a plane crash, McLaughlin says, we know that attention (or lack thereof) could have played a role in the outcome.聽The American Alpine Club's annual聽Accidents in North American Climbing聽report cites decision making as one probable cause of climbing accidents. What McLaughlin wanted was to聽figure聽out how attention actually worked, and if there were techniques to prevent it from slipping in crux situations.聽 聽

In July, the team set out to find answers. McLaughlin recruited local climbers to climb I, Robot with a GoPro camera mounted on the front of their helmets and a 360-degree camera on top. Throughout the fall, the researchers will probe the footage they collected to create a heat map that shows which hand and foot holds climbers used, which they did not, and what they looked at while on the rock.聽McLaughlin also interviewed each climber to get a glimpse into their mental game. After Weil topped out, McLaughlin guided him over to a flat patch of rock for a debrief, where the two rewatched Weil鈥檚 GoPro footage as he narrated what was going through his head during the climb. By comparing climbers鈥� thoughts with footage of what they actually did, the researchers plan to build models of how climbers鈥� attention shifted聽throughout the climb and how that shift manifested itself on the wall.聽

Uncovering these patterns of behavior may help predict or even prevent accidents, says Wickens. For example, researchers might observe that climbers are more likely to wait longer to place protection if they find the climb to be easy or boring. Wickens likens a potential climbing analysis聽to investigations of plane crashes. 鈥淎 retrospective analysis can diagnose how the pilot鈥檚 scan was abnormal or maladaptive鈥攚hat were they doing differently that may have contributed to the situation?鈥� he says.聽Of course, determining the exact cause of climbing accidents will be impossible unless climbers record every climb, and not every accident can be traced back to a lack of attention, but by collecting data about climbers鈥� decision making, Wickens hopes we鈥檒l be better able to infer why and how some accidents happened.聽

When it comes to trad climbing, experience isn鈥檛 just about how long you鈥檝e been climbing, or your strength鈥攊t鈥檚 also about your adeptness with gear placement and your confidence, both of which improve with practice. In the beginning, they take a colossal amount of mental resources. 鈥淎ttention is a discrete resource; once it鈥檚 consumed, you can鈥檛 get more of it,鈥� says McLaughlin. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e novice, so much is consumed by 鈥楬ow the hell do I get gear to sit right?鈥� or 鈥榃hich piece do I place?鈥� and then some is consumed by 鈥極h my god, I鈥檓 going to fall,鈥� whereas an expert just requires less attention.鈥澛�

Unsurprisingly, McLaughlin predicts that novice tradsters will be more likely to have tunnel vision on the wall, looking only at the chunk of rock in front of them, rather than searching for placements. In contrast, expert trad climbers quickly identify holds and placements. Some can just look at a crack and know what gear to place. 鈥淲hen I鈥檓 walking on the sidewalk, I think about gear placements,鈥� McLaughlin says. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 stop it. You鈥檙e like, 鈥楾hat鈥檚 a good hold,鈥� or 鈥業 could get a #3 cam in there.鈥欌��

While nothing can replace direct climbing experience, McLaughlin envisions that her climbing data could be used to develop training programs, simulations, or even augmented-reality devices that teach novices to identify good holds. A computer model would highlight spots far out to the side, or just above their heads鈥攁reas that a beginner might otherwise miss.聽

Beyond their applications to climbers, these results could improve our understanding of human decision-making under stressful, changing conditions, says Keller. Currently, human factors researchers have fairly accurate models of how people direct their attention in controlled, static environments. Take when a pilot is landing a plane鈥攖he terrain outside a plane may be changing, but the instrument panels and controls remain the same. A climber, on the other hand, is faced with new terrain throughout her task. If McLaughlin鈥檚 models are successful, they could serve as a jumping-off point for understanding human behavior in other dynamic environments: say, a paratrooper trying to land or a rescue worker combing through rubble. 鈥淚magine augmented reality where likely-to-be-missed but important attributes get highlighted through the special glasses they are wearing,鈥� McLaughlin says. The same algorithms McLaughlin, Keller, and Wickens use to highlight good holds can also be applied to highlight subtle cues a person might miss in a disaster situation, like a small strip of human clothing or slight movement beneath debris. 鈥淚f we know what attracts attention, we can design systems to make sure they put their attention in the right place,鈥� McLaughlin says. That 鈥渞ight place鈥澛爉ay not be a single physical location, but perhaps a mental one: models of human attention could indicate how to help people focus that attention so聽they make better decisions and maybe avoid accidents.

If that all sounds far-fetched, well, it is for now.聽McLaughlin has only scratched the surface of what will be a massive, multi-month data analysis. On average, Wickens says, climbers completed I, Robot in between 12 to 15 minutes. Given that the human eye moves around three times a second, the researchers will have thousands of data points to crunch. 鈥淲e鈥檒l be able to cut and slice this info many different ways,鈥� Keller says. The researchers plan to release their findings later this fall.聽

In the meantime, if you want to get better at climbing, your best bet is to do it the old-fashioned way: hit the crag.

The post What Climbers Can Teach Us About Focus appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.