It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 26, 2020
Agricultural conservation schemes not enough to protect Britain's rarest butterflies
UNIVERSITY OF YORK
IMAGE: A WILDFLOWER-SOWN SET-ASIDE STRIP MANAGED THROUGH AN AGRI-ENVIRONMENT SCHEME AGREEMENT. view more
CREDIT: KATIE THREADGILL
Conservation management around the margins of agriculture fail to protect butterfly species at greatest risk from the intensification of farming, a new study says.
The research, from the University of York, says the subsidised schemes are likely to help common, more mobile grassland species like the Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus) or the Meadow brown (Maniola jurtina) but not rarer species like the Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) or the Dingy skipper (Erynnis tages).
Agri-environment schemes financially reward farmers managing land in ways which aim to reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture. Common options include setting aside small areas of land out of production, including leaving grassland strips at the edges of agricultural fields.
The study examined whether these strips helped support insects including grassland butterfly populations. It used ecological models to look at whether the schemes improved butterfly survival locally and also if set aside land helped species expand their range and move across landscapes. This expansion is important so that species can move in response to climate change.
Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus), a common grassland species of the type predicted to benefit from agri-environment schemesKatie Threadgill, PhD student from the Department of Biology said: "These kind of set aside schemes help mobile, common butterfly species move across landscapes but they do not help all species.
"The greatest benefits were seen in species which were either highly mobile or which live in high densities. High density species which could travel further were already successful expanders regardless of set-asides although expansion rates were still improved when set-asides were added. Overall, set-aside strips did increase rates of range expansion across landscapes by up to 100% for some species but they did not boost long term butterfly survival locally.
Prof Jane Hill, who co-supervised the project added: "Small-scale set-asides have the potential to improve connectivity, which will help some species move to cope with climate change, and connect up habitat patches for others."
The study concluded that set-asides are unlikely to benefit low dispersal, low density species which are probably at greatest risk from agricultural intensification.
Katie Threadgill added: "Our results suggest that small set-aside strips alone are not an appropriate solution for preventing extinctions in the long term, but can provide other benefits"
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The paper, "Agri-environment conservation set-asides have co-benefits for connectivity" is published in Ecography
Sledge dogs are closely related to 9,500-year-old 'ancient dog'
UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN THE FACULTY OF HEALTH AND MEDICAL SCIENCES
Dogs play an important role in human life all over the world - whether as a family member or as a working animal. But where the dog comes from and how old various groups of dogs are is still a bit of a mystery.
Now, light has been shed on the origin of the sledge dog. In a new study published in SCIENCE, researchers from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, show that the sledge dog is both older and has adapted to the Arctic much earlier than thought. The research was conducted in collaboration with the University of Greenland and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona.
'We have extracted DNA from a 9,500-year-old dog from the Siberian island of Zhokhov, which the dog is named after. Based on that DNA we have sequenced the oldest complete dog genome to date, and the results show an extremely early diversification of dogs into types of sledge dogs', says one of the two first authors of the study, PhD student Mikkel Sinding, the Globe Institute.
Until now, it has been the common belief that the 9,500-year-old Siberian dog, Zhokhov, was a kind of ancient dog - one of the earliest domesticated dogs and a version of the common origin of all dogs. But according to the new study, modern sledge dogs such as the Siberian Husky, the Alaskan Malamute and the Greenland sledge dog share the major part of their genome with Zhokhov.
'This means that modern sledge dogs and Zhokhov had the same common origin in Siberia more than 9,500 years ago. Until now, we have thought that sledge dogs were only 2-3,000 years old', says the other first author, Associate Professor Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Globe Institute.
The Original Sledge Dog
To learn more about the origins of the sledge dog, researchers have further sequenced genomes of a 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf and ten modern Greenlandic sledge dogs. They have compared these genomes to genomes of dogs and wolves from around the world.
'We can see that the modern sledge dogs have most of their genomes in common with Zhokhov. So, they are more closely related to this ancient dog than to other dogs and wolves. But not just that - we can see traces of crossbreeding with wolves such as the 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf - but not with modern wolves. It further emphasises that the origin of the modern sledge dog goes back much further than we had thought', says Mikkel Sinding.
The modern sledge dogs have more genetic overlap with other modern dog breeds than Zhokhov has, but the studies do not show us where or when this occurred. Nevertheless, among modern sledge dogs, the Greenland sledge dogs stands out and has the least overlap with other dogs, meaning that the Greenland sledge dog is probably the most original sledge dog in the world.
Common Features with Inuit and Polar Bears
In addition to advancing the common understanding of the origin of sledge dogs, the new study also teaches the researchers more about the differences between sledge dogs and other dogs. Sledge dogs do not have the same genetic adaptations to a sugar and starch rich diet that other dogs have. On the other hand, they have adaptations to high-fat diets, with mechanisms that are similar to those described for polar bears and Arctic people.
'This emphasises that sledge dogs and Arctic people have worked and adapted together for more than 9,500 years. We can also see that they have adaptations that are probably linked to improved oxygen uptake, which makes sense in relation to sledding and give the sledding tradition ancient roots', says Shyam Gopalakrishnan.
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Climate extremes will cause forest changes
UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG
IMAGE: PREMATURE LEAF SENESCENCE OF A BEECH TREE DURING THE 2018 EVENT, FOLLOWED BY LACKING LEAF FLUSHING AND CANOPY DIEBACK IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR. view more
CREDIT: (PHOTOS: ANSGAR KAHMEN / UNIVERSITY OF BASEL)
Until now, 2003 was considered as the driest and hottest year since the beginning of instrumental climate recording. This record can now be considered obsolete: "The past five years were among the warmest in Central Europe since record, and 2018 was the most extreme one," says Professor Bernhard Schuldt from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany.
The average temperature from April to October 2018 was on average 3.3 degrees Celsius above the long-term average and 1.2 degrees higher than in 2003, Schuldt and a research team report in the journal Basic and Applied Ecology. This had dramatic consequences for the forests in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Water transport through the wood collapses
"At such temperatures, our Central European vegetation reaches its limits," says the JMU professor. Together with other researchers from Germany and Switzerland, the plant ecologist was able to confirm with physiological measurements: When it is too hot, the tree simply loses too much water via its surface. As a result, the negative tension in the wood's conducting tissue becomes too steep, which ultimately leads to hydraulic failure interrupting the water transport.
Already during the course of the summer, severe drought-related stress symptoms were observed in most ecologically and economically important tree species, including widespread leaf discoloration and premature lead shedding.
Spruce and beech trees most affected
Moreover, unexpectedly strong drought-legacy effects were detected in 2019: many broad-leaved trees did not unfold their leaves - they had died. Others that survived the 2018 event where not able to withstand the following drought in 2019, or became increasingly susceptible to infestation with bark beetles or fungi.
"Spruce was most severely affected, mainly because this mountainous species has been planted outside its natural habitat in Central Europe," explains Schuldt. "Unexpected was, however, the extent to which beech trees were affected. Here in Northern Bavaria, I have seen several stands with complete dieback, especially on sites with shallow soil". Until this event, beech has been considered as "future tree species", even though its drought tolerance has been controversially discussed since the hot drought in 2003.
This year's climatic condition in spring again started too warm and too dry. "Now in June 2020 we have fortunately received high amounts of rainfall," the Würzburg professor is pleased to report. This has mitigated the situation, but the water deficit in the deeper soil layers has certainly not been recharged. Therefore, he assumes that affected trees will continue to die-off in the coming years due to legacy effects.
Dead old-growth beech trees in the forest of the University of Würzburg in the Steigerwald, 2019
Mixed forests with drought-stress resistant tree species are needed
So what should one do? "I think that extreme drought and heat events will become more frequent in near future due to climate change," says the JMU scientist. At least locally, forests will therefore have to be restructured. Mixed forests with tree species that are as drought-resistant as possible are needed. "However, we still have to identify what species combination is best suited, also from an ecological and economic perspective. This is going to take some time."
Monitoring forests with Earth observation data
More data are needed to manage this forest conversion as good as possible. "Although damages to our forests are obvious, it is difficult to quantify them at high temporal and spatial resolution."
Therefore, remote monitoring systems are needed to support ground-based measures. Remotely sensed airborne or satellite earth observation data with high temporal and spatial resolution will enable us to track individual tree dieback and provide these data to the scientific community. "In the US, such systems are operating in given regions, but they are currently lacking for Central Europe. We will not be able to monitor forest health from the ground at larger scales."
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Scientists modelled natural rock arcades
SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH)
IMAGE: RESEARCHERS FROM RUSSIA AND THE CZECH REPUBLIC PERFORMED NUMERICAL MODELLING OF NATURAL ROCK ARCADES USING A MATHEMATICAL MODEL THAT DESCRIBES A SUCCESSION OF ARCHES FORMING AS A RESULT OF WEATHERING... view more
CREDIT: PAVEL ODINEV / SKOLTECH
Researchers from Russia and the Czech Republic performed numerical modelling of natural rock arcades using a mathematical model that describes a succession of arches forming as a result of weathering and then turning into rock pillars without human involvement, despite their striking resemblance to architectural arcades. The results of the study were published in the journal Geomorphology.
An architectural arcade is a succession of arches of the same shape and size, each supported by pillars. The Romans widely used arcades in aqueducts, viaducts, circuses, and amphitheaters, while in the Middle Ages, English and Italian architects used them in cathedrals and open galleries. Arcades are an architectural landmark of Bologna in Italy. Interestingly, similar structures can be found in nature, as testimony to rock evolution through the ages, driven by weathering and erosion.
A group of scientists from the Skoltech Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials (CDMM) and Charles University (Czech Republic) modelled the processes leading to the formation of rock arcades due to erosion. The study used the rock erosion mechanism described earlier by the Czech and Skoltech scientists who had found that erosion in rock (sandstone, granite, quartzite, tuff, etc.) occurs in low-stress areas. It was shown that arcades appear in areas with discontinuities, such as cracks or thin layers of softer rock.
"In non-uniform rock, erosion causes the stress to shift from one part of the rock to another, forming regular high-pressure areas. As erosion continues, arches appear along the rock surface and the adjacent neighboring high-pressure areas connect to form an arcade," explains Alexander Safonov, an assistant professor at Skoltech.
The study showed that as the erosion front moves deeper into the rock, several rows of arcades are formed inside. A decrease in the rock's total weight due to erosion reduces the loads on individual arches, which can lead to partial erosion of the arcades and their evolution into colonnades.
The model describes sandstone arcades and pillars in the Czech Republic (Bohemian Paradise) and the United States (Arches National Park)) as well as arches and columns in coastal areas.
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Examining media coverage of protests worldwide
Study reveals how type and location of protest influence coverage shared on social media
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
IMAGE: SUMMER HARLOW IS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON JACK J. VALENTI SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION. view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
As anti-racism solidarity protests continue around the world, new research suggests mainstream media have a tendency to focus on the violence and spectacle of a protest rather than the substance. That mentality and approach need to change according to Summer Harlow, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Houston Jack J. Valenti School of Communication.
"How journalists cover protests and social movements matters because the more delegitimizing the coverage is the less likely the public is to support it," said Harlow, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Journalism Studies. "Reporters should focus on the real issues, not just the violence you see on television or read about in newspapers between police and protestors or the inconvenience to bystanders. It hurts a movement's ability to be successful."
Harlow and co-authors Danielle Kilgo at the University of Minnesota; Ramón Salaverría at University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain; and Victor García-Perdomo at the University of La Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia, examined the way protests are covered across mainstream, alternative and digital-only media outlets. The team analyzed more than 1,400 news articles in English and Spanish from 2015 spanning the globe related to human rights/justice, anti-government/corruption and socio-economic issues, among others. The articles had been shared on Twitter and Facebook allowing the researchers to consider the correlation between story characteristics and social media user engagement.
The researchers found the type of protest, location of protest and type of media outlet were significantly related to whether these stories stuck to the protest paradigm - a pattern of negative coverage of protests, especially when the events are anti-status quo, that demonizes protesters and marginalizes their causes.
"This goes back to traditional journalistic practices and values. If you are a journalist on a deadline, you rely on official sources such as law enforcement for information. As a result, protestors are seen as less credible and the reason why they are so upset gets lost in the coverage," explained Harlow, whose body of research centers on how news media cover protests and the relationship between journalists and activists.
Previous research shows news coverage that follows the paradigm uses four frames, three of which delegitimize the root of the cause: riot, a focus on the violence; confrontation, a focus on clashes between protestors and police; spectacle, a focus on the drama or emotions; and debate - a media frame that legitimizes viewpoints and demands by emphasizing the reasons for the protest.
In applying this framing to stories shared on social media, the study reveals articles published about socio-economic and human rights/justice protests in Europe, for example, focused less on confrontation and more on the debate. In Latin America/Caribbean and Asia, social media users leaned more towards the spectacle with a tendency to highlight the drama, oddity and circus of protests in these regions.
Harlow, who will teach a course about media and social justice this fall, says recent protests in the United States over the killing of George Floyd and in support of Black Lives Matter, offer opportunities for all media outlets to improve their coverage.
"George Floyd represents this moment where journalists can take what they've been doing all this time and change it," she said. "There's been this collective wake-up call among journalists who are now questioning the way it's always been done, and that maybe they haven't been doing it the right way."
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As anti-racism solidarity protests continue around the world, new research suggests mainstream media have a tendency to focus on the violence and spectacle of a protest rather than the substance. That mentality and approach need to change according to Summer Harlow, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Houston Jack J. Valenti School of Communication.
"How journalists cover protests and social movements matters because the more delegitimizing the coverage is the less likely the public is to support it," said Harlow, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Journalism Studies. "Reporters should focus on the real issues, not just the violence you see on television or read about in newspapers between police and protestors or the inconvenience to bystanders. It hurts a movement's ability to be successful."
Harlow and co-authors Danielle Kilgo at the University of Minnesota; Ramón Salaverría at University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain; and Victor García-Perdomo at the University of La Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia, examined the way protests are covered across mainstream, alternative and digital-only media outlets. The team analyzed more than 1,400 news articles in English and Spanish from 2015 spanning the globe related to human rights/justice, anti-government/corruption and socio-economic issues, among others. The articles had been shared on Twitter and Facebook allowing the researchers to consider the correlation between story characteristics and social media user engagement.
The researchers found the type of protest, location of protest and type of media outlet were significantly related to whether these stories stuck to the protest paradigm - a pattern of negative coverage of protests, especially when the events are anti-status quo, that demonizes protesters and marginalizes their causes.
"This goes back to traditional journalistic practices and values. If you are a journalist on a deadline, you rely on official sources such as law enforcement for information. As a result, protestors are seen as less credible and the reason why they are so upset gets lost in the coverage," explained Harlow, whose body of research centers on how news media cover protests and the relationship between journalists and activists.
Previous research shows news coverage that follows the paradigm uses four frames, three of which delegitimize the root of the cause: riot, a focus on the violence; confrontation, a focus on clashes between protestors and police; spectacle, a focus on the drama or emotions; and debate - a media frame that legitimizes viewpoints and demands by emphasizing the reasons for the protest.
In applying this framing to stories shared on social media, the study reveals articles published about socio-economic and human rights/justice protests in Europe, for example, focused less on confrontation and more on the debate. In Latin America/Caribbean and Asia, social media users leaned more towards the spectacle with a tendency to highlight the drama, oddity and circus of protests in these regions.
Harlow, who will teach a course about media and social justice this fall, says recent protests in the United States over the killing of George Floyd and in support of Black Lives Matter, offer opportunities for all media outlets to improve their coverage.
"George Floyd represents this moment where journalists can take what they've been doing all this time and change it," she said. "There's been this collective wake-up call among journalists who are now questioning the way it's always been done, and that maybe they haven't been doing it the right way."
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CAT LADIES Welfare concerns highlighted over 'institutional hoarding' of cats
SAGE
IMAGE: THE RISK OF CHRONIC UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTION APPEARS TO BE SIGNIFICANTLY GREATER FOR CATS IN INSTITUTIONAL HOARDING SETTINGS, AS SHOWN BY THIS INDIVIDUAL RESCUED BY THE TORONTO HUMANE SOCIETY. view more
CREDIT: COURTESY OF LINDA JACOBSON/TORONTO HUMANE SOCIETY
The compulsive hoarding of animals is a poorly understood psychiatric disorder in people. Characterised by failure to provide minimum standards of care, it can result in malnourishment, uncontrolled breeding, overcrowding and neglect. Typically there is denial of this failure and its impact on the animals and people involved. Even less well understood is the growing trend of 'institutional hoarding' by organisations masquerading to the public as legitimate shelters or rescue centres. A new epidemiological study by Dr Linda Jacobson, of the Toronto Humane Society (THS), and shelter medicine colleagues at Ontario Veterinary College and JVR Shelter Strategies, California, shows that there are significant welfare concerns for hoarded cats not just from the home environment but from institutional settings also.1
While animal hoarding is recognised to encompass a continuum of harm and severity, attention from the scientific community has mostly focused on large-scale cases and/or those involving legal seizure of animals and prosecutions. Comparatively little attention has been directed at smaller-scale cases, particularly those associated with a collaborative approach and voluntary relinquishment of animals.
Published this month in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, Dr Jacobson's study looked at 371 hoarded cats relinquished over a three-year period to the THS, an adoption guaranteed ('no-kill') shelter with a full-service veterinary hospital. Groups of cats ranged from 10 to 77 in number, with nine groups originating from home environments (designated non-institutional hoarding) and three from rescues (designated institutional hoarding). The majority of cats (95%) were surrendered voluntarily, many with the assistance of a community intermediary who was able to provide a navigable pathway between the animal hoarders and the THS.
The authors documented a range of conditions typical for hoarded cats. Almost 90% of cats were unneutered and 18% of females of breeding age were pregnant. Upper respiratory infection (URI), skin disease, ear mites and oral disease (gingivitis) were found in the largest number of groups. URI, which is associated with stress and overcrowding in cats, was the most common medical condition (38%) overall, followed by skin disease (30%). Notably, the risk of URI, and particularly chronic URI, was significantly greater for institutional hoarding compared with non-institutional hoarding settings.
As part of their study, the authors also analysed outcomes between hoarded and non-hoarded cats. Interestingly, they found similar adoption rates among their sample of 371 hoarded cats and a separate cohort of over 6000 non-hoarded cats that had been surrendered to the THS during the study period. In fact, the hoarded cats had a shorter maximum length of stay in the shelter than the non-hoarded cats. This reflects the fact that most of the hoarded cats were young and most of their medical conditions were curable or manageable, versus the complex medical or behavioural conditions among some non-hoarded cats. This finding, say the authors, underlines a shift in the expectations and abilities of shelters to successfully manage and rehome hoarded cats.
The study concludes that there is a need for a greater focus on institutional hoarding, and also points to the role that can be played by colony cat caregivers and other community intermediaries as an alternative to the legal seizure of animals in hoarding cases. Commenting, Dr Jacobson says: 'The "seize and euthanize" model is outdated and can often be successfully replaced by a least harms model.' This might help to reduce some of the unintended negative consequences associated with the traditional approach, such as delayed response times, stress for the animals and owners and overwhelming costs.
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Reference
1 Jacobson LS, Giacinti JA and Robertson JV. Medical conditions and outcomes in 371 hoarded cats from 14 sources: a retrospective study (2011¬-2014). J Feline Med Surg 2020; 22: 484-491. Free to read at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1098612X19854808
Control over work-life boundaries creates crucial buffer to manage after-hours work stress
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU
IMAGE: WORKERS WITH GREATER BOUNDARY CONTROL OVER THEIR WORK AND PERSONAL LIVES WERE BETTER AT CREATING A STRESS BUFFER TO PREVENT THEM FROM FALLING INTO A NEGATIVE RUMINATION TRAP, SAYS A... view more
CREDIT: PHOTOS AND PHOTO COLLAGE BY L. BRIAN STAUFFER
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- When work intrudes after hours in the form of pings and buzzes from smartphone alerts, it can cause spikes of stress that lead to a host of adverse effects for workers, including negative work rumination, poor affect and insomnia.
But according to research co-written by a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who study occupational stress and employee well-being, those who have greater "boundary control" over their work and personal lives were better at creating a stress buffer that helped protect them from falling into a negative-rumination trap.
Information communication technologies such as smartphones and tablets enable employees to work anywhere and anytime, thereby blurring work and nonwork boundaries. But that convenience comes at the expense of increased stress and mental health woes for workers unless they have control over the boundaries between work and nonwork life, said YoungAh Park, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.
"Most people simply can't work without a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer," she said. "These technologies are so ubiquitous and convenient that it can lead some people to think that employees have to be always on or always available. Clearly, this kind of after-hours intrusion into the home or personal life domain is unhealthy, and our research shows that an always-on mentality has a big downside in the form of increased job stress."
In the study, Park and co-authors surveyed more than 500 full-time public school teachers in grades K-6 to measure their off-the-clock work intrusion via technologies on a weekly basis for five consecutive weeks.
"We asked about their weekly work intrusion involving technology, specifically their after-hours work - whether they were expected to respond to work-related messages and emails immediately, and whether they were contacted about work-related issues after hours," she said.
The researchers found that teachers' adoption of technological boundary tactics such as keeping work email alerts turned off on smartphones was related to lower perceptions of the weekly work intrusion.
The study builds on recent scholarship on how coping with off-hours occupational demands is becoming an increasingly important issue for workers, said Yihao Liu, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois and a co-author of the study.
"Managing your work-life balance through boundary control is not only helpful for you and your family, it also could be a benefit for your co-workers, because they also have to potentially read and respond to the back-and-forth messages that people are sending after the workday is done," he said. "Setting a good boundary between work and regular life is going to help more people and more stakeholders. Overall, it's critical that individuals manage their work-life boundaries for their own health and well-being, but also for their own productivity and their colleagues' productivity."
Moreover, the researchers found that teachers' boundary control softened the work intrusion-negative rumination link and that this boundary control was an important mechanism by which two "border keepers" - principals, who effectively functioned as supervisors in the study; and parents, who could be thought of as clientele - can affect teachers' weekly stress experiences.
In other words, the weekly strain symptoms involving work intrusion can be alleviated by a supervisor who supports employees' work-life balance, Park said. Or conversely, it can be aggravated by clientele who expect employees to be always accessible and available.
"A really important point around the sense of boundary control is that stakeholders can influence employees' control," she said. "Our study suggests that school principals can play a positive role in that their support for work-life balance was associated with the teachers' greater sense of boundary control. When you have supportive leaders who model behaviors for work-life balance and work effectively with employees to creatively solve work-life conflicts, that translates into less stress for teachers through boundary control."
Although the study only included elementary school teachers in its sample, the findings about drawing clear boundaries after work ought to apply to most workers, especially now that more are working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers said.
"Our initial motivation was to study teachers because we tend to assume that their work and nonwork lives are separate and distinct," Park said. "Teachers have set schedules in a physical building, along with discrete blocks of free time over the weekends. But even with this working population, we found that after-hours work intrusion via technology can be really stressful for them. So although this finding is particular to teachers, a class of employees who we tend to assume have clear work-life boundaries, it's now an issue for everyone who is electronically tethered to their work after regular hours."
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U. of I. graduate student Lucille Headrick is a co-author of the research.
The paper will be published in the Journal of Organization behavior.
Smart phones are empowering women worldwide
Mobile-phone access is associated with increased use of contraception, lower gender inequality, and lower maternal and child mortality
MCGILL UNIVERSITY
By giving women access to information they otherwise wouldn't have, mobile phones are transforming lives. Putting smart phones in women's hands could be a powerful tool to support sustainable development goals in the developing world, according to researchers from McGill University, University of Oxford and Bocconi University.
The study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences covers 209 countries between 1993 and 2017, and shows that access to mobile phones is associated with multiple indicators linked to global social development, such as good health, gender equality, and poverty reduction. The link between mobile phone access and female empowerment is stronger in less- and least-developed countries.
Survey of women in Sub-Saharan Africa
In an effort to better understand how mobile phones empower women, the authors also conducted an individual level analysis on 100,000 women from Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe between 2015 and 2017. Though these sub-Saharan countries show slow fertility decline and infant and maternal mortality rates remain high, the adoption of mobile phones is fast spreading.
Results indicate that, other things being equal, women who own a mobile phone have a 1% higher probability of being involved in decision-making processes about contraception, 2% higher likelihood of using modern contraceptive methods, and a 3% higher likelihood of knowing where to get tested for HIV with respect to women who do not own a phone. These effects are sizeable, as they are comparable to, if not bigger than, the effects of living in an urban area compared to living in a rural area. Similar effects are estimated on higher overall decision-making power within the household.
According to the researchers, improved knowledge and enhanced decision-making power are the likely pathways through which the macro-level results emerge. The analysis of individual data also confirms that the effects are stronger in poorer and more isolated areas.
Digital divides in the developing world
Still, despite the proliferation of mobile networks, the researchers acknowledge that digital divides by gender and socioeconomic strata persist in the developing world. Women are less likely to own mobile phones on their own, use them less often when they have access, and have poorer information and communications technology skills compared to men, creating second-level (skill-related) digital divides on top of first-level (access-related) ones.
"Our results suggest that deploying mobile-phone technology might serve to complement the role of other development processes such as educational expansion and economic growth rather than a replacement for it," says Luca Maria Pesando, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Centre on Population Dynamics at McGill University.
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About the study
"Leveraging mobile phones to attain sustainable development" by Valentina Rotondi, Ridhi Kashyap, Luca Maria Pesando, Simone Spinelli, and Francesco C. Billari is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1821, McGill University is Canada's top ranked medical doctoral university. McGill is consistently ranked as one of the top universities, both nationally and internationally. It?is a world-renowned institution of higher learning with research activities spanning two campuses, 11 faculties, 13 professional schools, 300 programs of study and over 40,000 students, including more than 10,200 graduate students. McGill attracts students from over 150 countries around the world, its 12,800 international students making up 31% of the student body. Over half of McGill students claim a first language other than English, including approximately 19% of our students who say French is their mother tongue.
Research determines financial benefit from driving electric vehicles
Over a 15-year life, EVs can save thousands of dollars in fuel costs compared to gasoline vehicles
DOE/NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY
Motorists can save as much as $14,500 on fuel costs over 15 years by driving an electric vehicle instead of a similar one fueled by gasoline, according to a new analysis conducted by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
Previous studies assumed a singular value for the cost to charge an electric vehicle (EV), but this new work provides an unprecedented state-level assessment of the cost of EV charging that considers when, where, and how a vehicle is charged, and considers thousands of electricity retail tariffs and real-world charging equipment and installation costs. The cost of charging is compared against the price of gasoline to estimate total fuel cost savings over a vehicle's lifetime.
"Finding out the purchase price of a vehicle is relatively simple, but the savings related to fuel aren't readily available, especially since electricity cost varies greatly for different locations and charging options," said Matteo Muratori, a senior systems engineer at NREL and co-author of the article, "Levelized Cost of Charging Electric Vehicles in the United States." The research appears in Joule and is led by Brennan Borlaug from NREL and co-authored by Shawn Salisbury and Mindy Gerdes from INL.
The researchers developed a baseline scenario based on current vehicle use and charging behavior to estimate the average levelized cost of charging (LCOC) for electric vehicles.
The cost to charge an EV varies widely. The key factors include differences in the price of electricity, the types of equipment used (slow or fast charging), the cost of installation, and vehicle use (miles driven). The national average cost to charge a battery EV ranges from 8 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 27 cents, with an average of 15 cents. That corresponds to an average lifetime fuel cost savings of $3,000 to $10,500.
In addition to this variation, considering state-by-state differences can push savings to $14,500 (in Washington state) or, in the case of four states (Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Tennessee), fail to provide any savings when compared to a conventional gasoline vehicle under certain scenarios. The researchers examined vehicles of the same class and size and driven the same number of miles a year.
In calculating costs, the researchers also considered the nature of the charging stations. For a slow charge, a motorist can use a traditional outlet at home without any special equipment. Upgrading to a higher-powered residential charger costs about $1,800, including installation. But charging at home can be done at night when electricity prices are currently at their lowest, which is considered the best-case scenario from a cost perspective.
The average cost of 15 cents per kWh assumes 81% of charging was done at home, 14% at the workplace or public station, and 5% with a DC fast charger (DCFC), in line with current empirical data. Exclusively charging at DCFC stations increases the national LCOC to 18 cents per kWh, while the price falls to 11 cents per kWh for motorists who only charged their EV using a dedicated household outlet. The cost can be further reduced to 8 cents by charging during off-peak periods.
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This research is funded by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office.
NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
BU study: High deductible health plans are widening racial health gaps
First-of-its-kind study finds that black cancer survivors on these plans are far more likely to struggle to afford health care and medicine than their white counterparts, while black and white cancer survivors on other types of plans are equally unlikely
BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
First-of-its-kind study finds that black cancer survivors on these plans are far more likely to struggle to afford health care and medicine than their white counterparts, while black and white cancer survivors on other types of plans are equally unlikely to face these challenges.
The growing Black Lives Matter movement has brought more attention to the myriad structures that reinforce racial inequities, in everything from policing to hiring to maternal mortality. Now, a new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study points to a previously-unidentified factor widening the racial health gap: high deductible health plans.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the first-of-its-kind study finds that black cancer survivors on high deductible health plans face more cost-related barriers to care than white cancer survivors on the same plan, including needing to skip a medication or delay a refill to save money, and not being able to see a specialist.
For example, 22.8% of black versus 8.0% of white cancer survivors on high deductible plans skipped medication to save money. But among cancer survivors on other kinds of plans, 7.7% of black versus 5.4% of white patients skipped medication.
"As enrollment in high deductible health plans continues to rise, this has really concerning implications for racial equity among cancer survivors," says study lead author Dr. Megan B. Cole, assistant professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH. High deductible plans now cover nearly a third of all people who have employer-sponsored health insurance, and half of cancer survivors with private insurance.
"Enrollment in HDHPs may compound the many structural inequities that black cancer survivors are already facing, which may further drive disparities in health outcomes for survivors," Cole says. "Policies that limit deductible sizes and extend cost-sharing subsidies to high-risk groups, while limiting the types of services to which a deductible applies, may help to mitigate observed effects.
"But more broadly, we need policies that really tackle the structural inequities and institutional racism that lie at the root of these disparities."
Cole and colleagues used National Health Interview Survey data from 2013 through 2018 on 3,713 adults with a past or current cancer diagnosis, and analyzed the relationships between race, health plan type, and eight common indicators of difficulty accessing care and medicine.
In addition to skipping medication, the researchers found major disparities in other areas:
Took less medication to save money: 24.6% of black versus 8.6% of white patients on high deductible plans (compared to 8.5% of black and 5.4% of white patients on other types of plans).
Delayed filling a prescription: 28.1% of black versus 7.7% of white patients on high deductible plans (compared to 16.2% of black and 7.1% of white patients on other types of plans).
Unable to afford to see a specialist: 14.9% of black versus 6.2% of white patients on high deductible plans (compared to 4.9% of black and 2.9% of white patients on other plans).
Overall, the researchers also found that the percentage of privately-insured cancer survivors on high deductible plans rose from 37% in 2013 to 50% in 2018.
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About the Boston University School of Public Health
Founded in 1976, the Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top five ranked private schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations--especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable--locally and globally.
