Beyond the Light Show:The Effects of Fireworks on Animals and People
Here is what to know about the harm fireworks cause and recommendations from experts on how people can celebrate while reducing the impact.
A Stress for Animals
The intense, erratic sounds and lights from fireworks frighten animals, both wild and domesticated. Fear and stress responses have been documented in pets, zoo animals and wildlife. Wild animals may flee when fireworks start: Weather radars have recorded masses of birds taking flight, and studies have shown fleeing by sea lions and seals.
This rush to escape costs the animals energy and can lead to longer-term damage, said Bill Bateman, a professor of ecology at Curtin University in Australia and the author on a review of global research on the impact of fireworks on the environment. The animals may abandon habitats completely, or return with less energy for regular survival.
These effects are worse when fireworks occur during migration and breeding seasons. Independence Day in the United States, for example, falls in the breeding season for many coastal birds. Shorebirds are particularly at risk because of their proximity to fireworks and beach crowds, said Nicole Michel, director of quantitative science at the National Audubon Society.
Birds frightened by fireworks may abandon their nests, leaving chicks or eggs behind and exposed to threats like predators.
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Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
15 'Jurassic World Rebirth' callbacks to 'Jurassic Park'
Warning: This article contains spoilers about . Jurassic World Rebirth screenwriter David Koepp may have actively worked to not feature so many callouts in the film to previous installments of the franchise, but director Gareth Edwards? Not so much. "It's funny, you spend your life as a filmmaker trying not to copy your heroes, and it just keeps happening," Edwards tells Entertainment Weekly. Rebirth, the seventh Jurassic movie (in theaters now), is littered with Easter eggs and visual callbacks to past entries — some more overt than others. There are also references to past works of Steven Spielberg; Edwards points out a Back to the Future magazine is sitting in the gas station where the Delgados are hunted by Mutadons. "At one point we got told to dial them down, to be honest," he recalls. "Frank Marshall [producer], David Koepp, Steven Spielberg, they've all been involved in a lot of those films that we're referencing. They would be the three that would be like, 'Stop being so referential. This is your movie, go do your own thing.' But you're probably the three people in the world that can't fully appreciate how amazing all these other films are because you made them. As someone who's a fan of those films, I get a kick out of this." Here are 15 of those Jurassic Park-specific callbacks that can be seen in Jurassic World Rebirth. When we first meet Rupert Friend's Martin Krebs, the Big Pharma representative looking to hire "situational security" expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to assemble a team and retrieve dinosaur DNA, the camera zooms in for a close-up of his reflection in his car's side mirror. It reads "objects in mirror are closer than they appear." A famous scene from 1993's Jurassic Park features a similar side-mirror close-up as Laura Dern's Ellie Sattler, Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm, and Bob Peck's Robert Muldoon flee from a stampeding T. rex in their Jeep. Edwards reveals he originally shot a scene featuring the side-mirror bit for the end of the film when Martin is driving away from the Mutadons in a Jeep. "It got cut out," the director says, but notes, "It's on the DVD extras, a very short moment." "I was like, 'I'm not gonna get that gag in, am I?'" he recalls. "So then when we went to New York, it was the last thing we filmed in the whole movie, as we scouted, I just said to the person who provides the vehicles, 'Is there any way you could just get the "objects appear closer" on the wing mirror?'" Jonathan Bailey's introduction as paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis comes when Zora and Martin find him in the nearby museum. A black banner with red and white lettering descends behind a dinosaur skeleton exhibit. One of the most famous scenes from Jurassic Park is a shot from the ending of a T. rex roaring in the destroyed theme park lobby as a banner with the same color scheme and typography falls to the ground. Traversing through the dino-infested jungles of Ile Saint-Hubert, Henry mentions that he studied under Dr. Alan Grant, the character Sam Neill played across three movies in the Jurassic franchise, starting with the flagship film. Edwards shares with EW how the team added subtle Easter eggs to Bailey's Henry to enhance this connection. "I designed a little patch that went on his bag that was the Snakewater canyon," he says, referring to the fossil dig site from the opening of Jurassic Park. "It was as if it was a national park badge of that dig site, as if [Henry] had worked there as a kid." Costume designer Sammy Sheldon Differ then noticed a triangular piece of metal on Alan's belt in that first movie. "It's a digging sort of spade," Edwards says. "You just open it and it's for scratching away at the dirt and stuff. We had that on Jonathan's belt. We liked the idea that Alan Grant had given it to him as a gift when he retired, or whatever the canon would be." Koepp pulled a line of dialogue from Michael Crichton's books and gave it to Bailey's Henry. "Which is, 'You used technology to bring back something from 65 million years ago, but it's a different planet,'" Koepp paraphrases. "The oxygen levels are different, solar radiation is different, the temperatures are different, everything is different about it. What makes you think that it's all going to go fine?" Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), Teresa Delgado's (Luna Blaise) stoner boyfriend, wanders off to take a leak. With his back turned, a raptor strikes a familiar and terrifying pose (one featured many times through the Jurassic films) as it prepares to pounce on him. The scene takes a turn when a Mutadon (a mutant raptor-pterosaur hybrid) snatches the raptor before it can carry out the deed. Zora's team walks into an open field of tall grass where they stumble upon two Titanosaurs mid mating ritual. They all gaze up in wonder and awe, trigging John Williams' classic Jurassic Park theme music. It's a very similar scene to the first film, with the same music, when Neill's Alan and Dern's Ellie stare gobsmacked at the sight of a living brachiosaurus eating leaves from the top of a tree. The Delgado family takes a rest in the jungle. Teresa and her little sister Isabella (Audrina Miranda) take a snooze as they rest their heads against their dad, Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), who's sitting on the ground, resting his back against a thick tree root. Alan has a similar moment with Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex (Ariana Richards) in Jurassic Park. The trio takes a snooze just before a veggie-eating dinosaur comes looking for snacks in their tree. A scene from Crichton's first novel involving a raft and a swimming T. rex was cut from Spielberg's Jurassic Park, but Koepp, who also co-wrote that film with the author, revisited the material for Jurassic World Rebirth. In the book, it's Alan and the two kids traveling downriver en route to the visitor center when they encounter the gargantuan predator. In the new film, it's the Delgado family attempting to flee a T. rex. After extracting DNA from the egg of a baby Quetzalcoatlus, Henry drops the syringe, which teeters on the edge of the mountain side. To get it, the paleontologist, dangling from Zora's rope, attempts multiple times to swing himself along the rocks to grab it. The sequence visually calls back to Alan's desperate moment in Jurassic Park where he attempts to swing himself out of harm's way on a rope before an attacking T. rex can push a Jeep on top of them. There are multiple moments in 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park involving the combination of a gas station and a dinosaur: on Isla Sorna when Goldblum's Ian & Co. encounter raptors, and later in the film, when a T. rex pokes its head at a station in San Diego. In Jurassic World Rebirth, it's a group of Mutadons that terrorize the Delgados and Zora's remaining team at an abandoned gas station on Ile Saint-Hubert. Edwards actually takes credit for the gas station scene, which was a different location in the original script. "My first movie at film school, my graduation film, was set in a gas station with creatures," he explains. "I loved American movies, and in England, nothing feels like America at all apart from a gas station.... Then my first movie, Monsters, this low-budget film set in Central America, the third act is at a gas station. Then I started getting paranoid. 'Do I just not have any other ideas?'" Fleeing the Mutadons, the Delgados take refuge in the convenience store attached to the gas station. Isabella and her dino pal, Dolores, hide in the freezer, causing a Mutadon to get confused by seeing its own reflection in the glass. The creature then stalks the family as they hide among the aisles. Tim and Lex were similarly hunted by raptors in the kitchen of the theme park's managerial offices on Isla Nublar during the events of Jurassic Park. A Mutadon is also a hybrid of a raptor and a pterosaur, further emphasizing the similarities between the two films. "I wanted a moment like that in our film," Edwards says. "I was trying to find an excuse, and I was wondering what it could be. I ended up doing the gas station. You feel like you're going to have to refuel these cars. Once you get in there, you're trying to think of any gags you can. I liked this idea of reflections. At one point, I wanted it to be flooded, and then I started going, 'This is a bit too straightforward.' Then the production designer and the art department built all that refrigerator stuff. When I looked at the set, I thought, 'Well, that's a great hiding place.'" To help the others get away from the Distortus rex, Mahershala Ali's Duncan Kincaid waves a red flare at the monster as a distraction. The D. rex attacks and for a moment, it's presumed Duncan didn't survive, but he's later recovered floating in the river. This might as well be his Jeff Goldblum moment. As Ian in Jurassic Park, the actor waves a red flare at the T. rex in a misguided attempt to help the others escape. The dinosaur leaves him gravely injured, but Dern's Ellie later finds him alive among the wreckage. Koepp points to another moment from Crichton's books that made its way into the script for Jurassic World Rebirth. He cites The Lost World, where a Jeep careens down a mountain as raptors attack. "I use bits of that," he says. "There's a Jeep careening down a mountain [in Rebirth] and menaced by, at first, a Mutadon." That would be Martin's vehicle, though his escape plan backfires when he finds himself in the clutches of the D. rex. A big Easter egg that calls back to Jurassic Park has been staring us down the entire time. Isabella Delgado sports a T-shirt that features a pelican. "It's the same breed at the end of Jurassic Park," Edwards confirms to EW, referring to the flying pelican scene at the very end of that movie. "And in Spanish it says, 'Life finds a way,' but it's an old T-shirt, so you don't really notice, hopefully." Speaking of are the new pelicans. The end of Jurassic World Rebirth ends in a similar manner as the first film, only instead of the survivors gazing out peacefully from their helicopter at a flock of pelicans, they are looking at a pod of jumping dolphins from their the original article on Entertainment Weekly
CNN
41 minutes ago
- CNN
Clicks! Likes! Sugar! Gambling! In a world of quick pleasures, an addiction expert says it might be time for a ‘dopamine fast'
Maybe you'd like to spend time on hobbies or hang out with friends, but nothing feels as exciting and engaging as it used to –– so you just squander another hour on social media. Your problem may have to do with your dopamine levels. In many parts of the world, people are fed media, activities and foods that can cause dopamine to surge and throw the balance off, and that could affect your mental health, according to Dr. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic and author of 'Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.' Lembke spoke with CNN about what dopamine is, what it does and how you can find better balance. This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. CNN: What is dopamine exactly? Dr. Anna Lembke: Dopamine is a chemical we make in our brain. Specifically, it's a neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters allow for fine-tuned regulation of electrical circuits. Basically, our brain is a bunch of electrical circuits, a bunch of wires in the form of neurons that conduct electrical signals that allow for information processing — the job of our brains. Dopamine has many functions, but in the last 75 years or so, it's been identified as a key player in pleasure, reward and motivation. It's not the only neurotransmitter involved in that process, but it has become a kind of common currency for neuroscientists to measure the reinforcing potential of different substances and behaviors. CNN: How does dopamine impact our mental health? Lembke: It plays a central role in the phenomenology of addiction. Addiction is a brain disease where there's dysregulation in a specific reward pathway, a specific circuit in the brain, and dopamine plays a critical role in the brain's reward pathway. When we do something that's reinforcing, that releases dopamine in the reward pathway and tells our brain, 'Oh, that's something you need to do more of. That's important for survival.' The highly reinforcing substances and behaviors that we have engineered and have access to now are overwhelming the system. (They) release so much dopamine all at once in the reward pathway that the brain has to adapt or compensate by downregulating dopamine transmission. The result is that, over time, we can enter into a chronic dopamine-deficit state, where we have essentially changed our hedonic or joy set point. Now we need more of our reward — and more potent forms –– not to feel good, but just to stop feeling bad. And when we're not 'using,' we're experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance or behavior like anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria and craving. CNN: Does this just affect people who have an addiction to drugs or alcohol? Lembke: We're all now kind of on the spectrum of compulsive overconsumption, moving toward addiction, which is resetting our hedonic threshold –– or joy set point. We need more and more of these reinforcers to feel any pleasure at all, and when we're not using, we're dysphoric, we're irritable, we can't sleep. CNN: What kinds of things risk putting us into dopamine deficit? Lembke: A lot of different things release dopamine in the reward pathway, including things that are good for us, like learning or spending time with friends. It's not that dopamine is the villain here, that dopamine release is bad –– not at all. The problem is that we've now engineered old-fashioned drugs to be more potent than ever before, and we've also created drugs that never existed before, like digital media, like 'drugified' foods. We've even taken healthy behaviors like exercise and drugified them by (tracking) ourselves and ranking ourselves and adding in social media and social comparisons. We're now seeing more and more and more people addicted to social media, online pornography, online gambling, video games and all manner of addictive digital media. There's emerging evidence that these digital media activate the same reward pathways as drugs and alcohol and cause the same kinds of dysregulations as we see in other addictions. It's the same thing with sugar. Ultraprocessed foods cause dopamine release, and the reward pathway leads to the same kinds of behaviors as when people get addicted to drugs and alcohol. There's a growing consensus that it's basically the same disease process, just with a different object of desire or reward. CNN: How can we find out if a substance or behavior is problematic? Lembke: When we look at what makes something addictive, there are several factors. One is potency, which refers to how much dopamine is released in the reward pathway and how quickly it's released. But other factors are simple things like access. We know that the easier it is to access a reinforcing substance or behavior, the more likely people are to use it and hence get addicted to it. We now live in this world of very easy, frictionless access to a lot of rewarding substances and behaviors. Digital media in particular is a 24/7 mobile access — anytime, anywhere, to an almost infinite source. The other thing that makes something addictive is the quantity and frequency of exposure. The more dopamine hits the brain gets, the more likely it is to change and adapt in a way that can create a disease of addiction. (Social media algorithms are) actually engineered to overcome tolerance and create novelty, to encourage people to keep searching for the same or similar rewards as what they've already viewed but hopefully a little bit better. The criteria for diagnosing addiction are pretty much the same across different definitions. You're looking for the four C's: out-of-control use, compulsive use, craving and consequences — especially continued use despite consequences — as well as the physiologic criteria that indicate biological dependence. Those would be tolerance, needing more (or more potent forms) over time to get the same effect, and withdrawal when you try to stop using. CNN: What can we do to address dopamine deficit? Lembke: What I recommend is a 30-day abstinence trial, colloquially called a 'dopamine fast,' from the drug of choice. Not from all rewards but just from the problematic substance or behavior to see how difficult it is to stop — and also to see if you feel better after four weeks. Why four weeks? Because that's, on average, the amount of time it takes to reset reward pathways, at least phenomenologically. I always warn people, they're going to feel worse before they feel better. But if they get through the first 10 to 14 days, often they will feel much better. After the abstinence trial, when people want to go back to using, they just need to be very specific about what they're going to use, how much, how often, in what circumstances, how they're going to track it, and what their red flags will be for slipping back into old habits. Then they can reevaluate whether they can really use in moderation. When it comes to food, obviously, people can't abstain, and nor should they try. But they can abstain from sugar. They can abstain from ultraprocessed foods. How do we engage in pleasurable things but stop before we get to dopamine deficit? Lembke: It's not about not having pleasure in life; it is about resetting the balance so that simple pleasures are rewarding again. That is not going to happen if people are constantly indulging in these frictionless, high-potency rewards. I talk a lot about 'self-binding' and making sure we don't constantly surround ourselves with easy access to these high-potency, cheap pleasures so we don't get into that problem in the first place. But it takes intentionality because we live in a world where we're constantly being invited to consume, and we're told that the more we consume, the happier we'll be. So, it does take planning and intentionality to create barriers between ourselves and the many drugs out there. Self-binding can mean physical barriers. If the issue is food, not having ultraprocessed food or sugary food in the house. If it's cannabis, not having pot in the house, not having alcohol. Now, if it's some form of digital media, you can use time as a self-binding strategy: 'I'm only going to use on these days for this amount of time with these people.' Other people are a very important form of self-binding. We tend to do what those around us are doing, so try to hang out with people who are using substances and behaviors in a way that you want to use them. Sign up for CNN's Stress, But Less newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide will inform and inspire you to reduce stress while learning how to harness it.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Clicks! Likes! Sugar! Gambling! In a world of quick pleasures, an addiction expert says it might be time for a ‘dopamine fast'
FacebookTweetLink Maybe you'd like to spend time on hobbies or hang out with friends, but nothing feels as exciting and engaging as it used to –– so you just squander another hour on social media. Your problem may have to do with your dopamine levels. In many parts of the world, people are fed media, activities and foods that can cause dopamine to surge and throw the balance off, and that could affect your mental health, according to Dr. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic and author of 'Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.' Lembke spoke with CNN about what dopamine is, what it does and how you can find better balance. This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. CNN: What is dopamine exactly? Dr. Anna Lembke: Dopamine is a chemical we make in our brain. Specifically, it's a neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters allow for fine-tuned regulation of electrical circuits. Basically, our brain is a bunch of electrical circuits, a bunch of wires in the form of neurons that conduct electrical signals that allow for information processing — the job of our brains. Dopamine has many functions, but in the last 75 years or so, it's been identified as a key player in pleasure, reward and motivation. It's not the only neurotransmitter involved in that process, but it has become a kind of common currency for neuroscientists to measure the reinforcing potential of different substances and behaviors. CNN: How does dopamine impact our mental health? Lembke: It plays a central role in the phenomenology of addiction. Addiction is a brain disease where there's dysregulation in a specific reward pathway, a specific circuit in the brain, and dopamine plays a critical role in the brain's reward pathway. When we do something that's reinforcing, that releases dopamine in the reward pathway and tells our brain, 'Oh, that's something you need to do more of. That's important for survival.' The highly reinforcing substances and behaviors that we have engineered and have access to now are overwhelming the system. (They) release so much dopamine all at once in the reward pathway that the brain has to adapt or compensate by downregulating dopamine transmission. The result is that, over time, we can enter into a chronic dopamine-deficit state, where we have essentially changed our hedonic or joy set point. Now we need more of our reward — and more potent forms –– not to feel good, but just to stop feeling bad. And when we're not 'using,' we're experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance or behavior like anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria and craving. CNN: Does this just affect people who have an addiction to drugs or alcohol? Lembke: We're all now kind of on the spectrum of compulsive overconsumption, moving toward addiction, which is resetting our hedonic threshold –– or joy set point. We need more and more of these reinforcers to feel any pleasure at all, and when we're not using, we're dysphoric, we're irritable, we can't sleep. CNN: What kinds of things risk putting us into dopamine deficit? Lembke: A lot of different things release dopamine in the reward pathway, including things that are good for us, like learning or spending time with friends. It's not that dopamine is the villain here, that dopamine release is bad –– not at all. The problem is that we've now engineered old-fashioned drugs to be more potent than ever before, and we've also created drugs that never existed before, like digital media, like 'drugified' foods. We've even taken healthy behaviors like exercise and drugified them by (tracking) ourselves and ranking ourselves and adding in social media and social comparisons. We're now seeing more and more and more people addicted to social media, online pornography, online gambling, video games and all manner of addictive digital media. There's emerging evidence that these digital media activate the same reward pathways as drugs and alcohol and cause the same kinds of dysregulations as we see in other addictions. It's the same thing with sugar. Ultraprocessed foods cause dopamine release, and the reward pathway leads to the same kinds of behaviors as when people get addicted to drugs and alcohol. There's a growing consensus that it's basically the same disease process, just with a different object of desire or reward. CNN: How can we find out if a substance or behavior is problematic? Lembke: When we look at what makes something addictive, there are several factors. One is potency, which refers to how much dopamine is released in the reward pathway and how quickly it's released. But other factors are simple things like access. We know that the easier it is to access a reinforcing substance or behavior, the more likely people are to use it and hence get addicted to it. We now live in this world of very easy, frictionless access to a lot of rewarding substances and behaviors. Digital media in particular is a 24/7 mobile access — anytime, anywhere, to an almost infinite source. The other thing that makes something addictive is the quantity and frequency of exposure. The more dopamine hits the brain gets, the more likely it is to change and adapt in a way that can create a disease of addiction. (Social media algorithms are) actually engineered to overcome tolerance and create novelty, to encourage people to keep searching for the same or similar rewards as what they've already viewed but hopefully a little bit better. The criteria for diagnosing addiction are pretty much the same across different definitions. You're looking for the four C's: out-of-control use, compulsive use, craving and consequences — especially continued use despite consequences — as well as the physiologic criteria that indicate biological dependence. Those would be tolerance, needing more (or more potent forms) over time to get the same effect, and withdrawal when you try to stop using. CNN: What can we do to address dopamine deficit? Lembke: What I recommend is a 30-day abstinence trial, colloquially called a 'dopamine fast,' from the drug of choice. Not from all rewards but just from the problematic substance or behavior to see how difficult it is to stop — and also to see if you feel better after four weeks. Why four weeks? Because that's, on average, the amount of time it takes to reset reward pathways, at least phenomenologically. I always warn people, they're going to feel worse before they feel better. But if they get through the first 10 to 14 days, often they will feel much better. After the abstinence trial, when people want to go back to using, they just need to be very specific about what they're going to use, how much, how often, in what circumstances, how they're going to track it, and what their red flags will be for slipping back into old habits. Then they can reevaluate whether they can really use in moderation. When it comes to food, obviously, people can't abstain, and nor should they try. But they can abstain from sugar. They can abstain from ultraprocessed foods. How do we engage in pleasurable things but stop before we get to dopamine deficit? Lembke: It's not about not having pleasure in life; it is about resetting the balance so that simple pleasures are rewarding again. That is not going to happen if people are constantly indulging in these frictionless, high-potency rewards. I talk a lot about 'self-binding' and making sure we don't constantly surround ourselves with easy access to these high-potency, cheap pleasures so we don't get into that problem in the first place. But it takes intentionality because we live in a world where we're constantly being invited to consume, and we're told that the more we consume, the happier we'll be. So, it does take planning and intentionality to create barriers between ourselves and the many drugs out there. Self-binding can mean physical barriers. If the issue is food, not having ultraprocessed food or sugary food in the house. If it's cannabis, not having pot in the house, not having alcohol. Now, if it's some form of digital media, you can use time as a self-binding strategy: 'I'm only going to use on these days for this amount of time with these people.' Other people are a very important form of self-binding. We tend to do what those around us are doing, so try to hang out with people who are using substances and behaviors in a way that you want to use them. Sign up for CNN's Stress, But Less newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide will inform and inspire you to reduce stress while learning how to harness it.
