COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM 

The price of taking a stance: How corporate sociopolitical activism impacts bottom line

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

As the political climate in the United States becomes increasingly charged, some businesses are looking to have their voices heard on controversial issues. The impact of corporate sociopolitical activism on a company's bottom line depends on how the activism aligns with the firm's stakeholders, according to new research published in the Journal of Marketing.

Study co-author Nooshin Warren, assistant professor of marketing in the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, says that over the last 10 years, purpose-driven corporate actions have evolved from companies contributing to widely supported causes, such as cancer research, to companies taking stances on more divisive issues, such as gun control and LGBTQ rights. The movement from philanthropic activities to sociopolitical activism has significant effects on firm value and stock market performance, which vary depending on how the activism aligns with the views of a firm's customers, employees and state regulators.

"In the past few years, we have reached the intersection of politics and doing societal good," Warren said. "Companies still have value systems and want to advance society, but the biggest difference in this case is that societal good is debatable, political and partisan."

The researchers examined a dataset of 293 instances of corporate activism between January 2011 and October 2016 by 149 firms throughout the United States. The hot-button sociopolitical issues were selected based on the Pew Research Center's 2014 Political Polarization in the American Public report and Political Polarization and Typology Survey. Some corporate activism examples included Amazon removing Confederate flag merchandise from its website, JCPenney featuring two lesbian moms in a Mother's Day advertisement and the Kroger grocery chain issuing a statement in support of its policy allowing customers to carry firearms in its stores.

Researchers surveyed 1,406 people and asked them to label each corporate activism event on a scale from "very liberal" to "very conservative." A second survey of 375 people helped researchers identify a given company's typical customers as having more liberal or conservative views. The team gauged the political leanings of company employees through political contribution data from the U.S. Federal Election Commission. The researchers then looked at the political composition of the legislature of the state where each firm is headquartered.

Put simply, Warren said, if a company's activism aligns with the values of its customers, employees and state regulators, the impact will be positive. If it misaligns, the impact will be negative.

"The strongest effects come from alignment with consumers' values, and consumers are obviously the most vital source of revenue for a firm," Warren said. "Punishment from a government can have a sudden and significant impact on a company as well. Employees, although very important, have less of an immediate impact."

The researchers measured changes in stock market value in the five-day window surrounding a corporate activism event. The team found if a company's action was misaligned with its key stakeholders, the company's stock market value decreased 2.45% compared to market expectations, as established by the Center for Research in Security Prices. If aligned with their stakeholders values, stock prices increased by .71%

The researchers further investigated the response of consumers to activism and found that as long as the activism is in line with consumers' political values, the company's quarterly and annual sales grow after the activism. When activism is highly deviated from customers and the government, sales growth suffers. This is especially true when activism highly deviates from all three key stakeholders, which resulted in a sales decline of 4%.

Warren says companies have important decisions to make concerning the current unrest over racial justice issues.

"I wish racial equality was not a polarizing issue, but given that it is, firms should carefully identify their consumers, employees and other stakeholders, and resonate with their values," Warren said. "But it is important to stay authentic, as society is watching carefully and will hold firms accountable for their actions as well as for their silence."

What Companies Should Know

If a company wants to engage in corporate activism and alleviate negative results, Warren said, it should consider five factors that the researchers showed can amplify the effects of alignment or misalignment.

The messenger. Warren says a statement means more to customers when it comes from a CEO rather than a public relations representative. She says that's especially true for "celebrity CEOs" like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Action vs. statement. Action provides more impact than statements, both positive and negative, Warren says. For example, she says Target providing transgender-inclusive bathrooms has a stronger impact than a company simply stating support for the LGBTQ community.

Number of firms. Warren says multiple companies taking a stance together can mitigate negative impact from misalignment with lawmakers, since regulators are much more likely to punish one firm than an entire industry.

Internal vs. external benefits. If a company's message or action is specifically for its own benefit or that of its employees, consumers may view that as less of a societal good, and more of a company simply thinking about its bottom line.

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The research team also included Yashoda Bhagwat, assistant professor of marketing at Texas Christian University; Joshua Beck, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Oregon; and George Watson IV, assistant professor of marketing at Portland State University.

Researchers look for answers as to why western bumblebees are declining

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

 

IMAGE: CHRISTY BELL, A PH.D. STUDENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY, OBSERVES A WESTERN BUMBLEBEE. BELL AND LUSHA TRONSTAD, LEAD INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGIST WITH THE WYOMING NATURAL... view more 

CREDIT: CHRISTY BELL

A University of Wyoming researcher and her Ph.D. student have spent the last three years studying the decline of the Western bumblebee. The two have been working with a group of bumblebee experts to fill in gaps of missing information from previous data collected in the western United States. Their goal is to provide information on the Western bumblebee to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service while it considers listing this species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

"The decline of the Western bumblebee is likely not limited to one culprit but, instead, due to several factors that interact such as pesticides, pathogens, climate change and habitat loss," says Lusha Tronstad, lead invertebrate zoologist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database (WYNDD). "Western bumblebees were once the most abundant bumblebees on the West Coast of the U.S., but they are much less frequently observed there now. Pathogens (or parasites) are thought to be a major reason for their decline."

Tronstad and Christy Bell, her Ph.D. student in the Department of Zoology and Physiology, from Laramie, are co-authors of a paper, titled "Western Bumble Bee: Declines in the United States and Range-Wide Information Gaps," that was published online June 26 in Ecosphere, a journal that publishes papers from all subdisciplines of ecological science, as well as interdisciplinary studies relating to ecology.

The two are co-authors because they are members of the Western Bumble Bee Working Group and serve as experts of the Western bumblebee in Wyoming, Tronstad says.

Other contributors to the paper are from the U.S. Geological Survey; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Canadian Wildlife Service; Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Ore.; British Columbia Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy; University of Hawaii-Hilo; U.S. Department of Agriculture; The Institute for Bird Populations; University of Vermont; Utah State University; Ohio State University; Denali National Park and Preserve; and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.

This paper is the result of the Western Bumble Bee Working Group, which is a group of experts on this species who came together to assemble the state of knowledge on this species in the United States and Canada, Tronstad says. The paper shows both what is known and knowledge gaps, specifically in the lack of samples and lack of knowledge about the species. Some prime examples of where spatial gaps in limited sampling exist include most of Alaska, northwestern Canada and the southwestern United States.

"Some areas in the U.S. have less bumblebee sampling in the past and present," Tronstad explains. "This could be for a variety of reasons such as lack of funding for such inventories, lack of bee expertise in that state, etc."

Using occupancy modeling, the probability of detecting the Western bumblebee decreased by 93 percent from 1998-2018, Tronstad says. Occupancy modeling is a complex model that estimates how often the Western bumblebee was detected from sampling events between 1998-2018 in the western United States.

"The data we assembled will be used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to inform its decision on whether or not to protect the Western bumblebee under the U.S. Endangered Species Act," Tronstad says. "At WYNDD, we collect data, and that data is used by managers. Our mission is to provide the most up-to-date data on which management decisions can be based."

Tronstad says there are several things that homeowners or landowners can do to help this species of bumblebee survive and thrive. These include:

• Plant flowers that bloom throughout the summer. Make sure these flowers have pollen and produce nectar, and are not strictly ornamental.
• Provide a water source for bees. Tronstad says she adds a piece of wood to all of her stock tanks so bees can safely get a drink.
• Provide nesting and overwintering habitat. Most bumblebees nest in the ground, so leaving patches of bare ground covered with litter or small mammal holes will benefit these bees. Be sure not to work these areas until after you see large bumblebees (queen bees) buzzing around in the spring, usually in April for much of Wyoming, so you can find out where they are nesting.

Tronstad says Bell's research will continue this summer, as Bell will investigate pathogens in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming that affect Western bumblebees there. Max Packebush, a UW sophomore majoring in microbiology and molecular biology, from Littleton, Colo.; and Matt Green, a 2018 UW graduate from Camdenton, Mo., will assist Bell in her research. NASA and the Wyoming Research Scholars Program will fund Packebush to conduct his work. The U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funded the research for this paper.

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Even when women outnumber men, gender bias persists among science undergrads

Is representation enough to improve gender diversity in science? A new study says there's more to the story

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

 

Increasing gender diversity has been a long-sought goal across many of the sciences, and interventions and programs to attract more women into fields like physics and math often happen at the undergraduate level.

But is representation enough to improve gender diversity in science? In a new study, Colorado State University researchers say there's more to the story: They've found that even when undergraduate women outnumber men in science courses, women may still be experiencing gender biases from their peers.

The CSU team, combining expertise in gender psychology, instructional intervention and physical sciences, conducted a survey-based study among both physical and life science undergraduate courses at CSU, asking students how they perceived each other's abilities within those courses. Their results were published online June 25 in the journal PLOS ONE.

"The assumption has been that if you have the numbers, if you just increase the number of women, you won't have bias," said study co-author Meena Balgopal, professor in science education in the CSU Department of Biology. "But we find that's not the case."

For their study, the researchers focused on courses with a peer-to-peer learning component, such as group lab work, partner work or breakout sessions during lectures. They recruited instructors to administer surveys asking students how they perceived each other, with questions including: Are there any students in your class you are more likely to go to if you need help with the class? Thinking about your course, do any students stand out as particularly knowledgeable? Thinking about your course, who would you consider to be the best student(s) in the class? In total, they surveyed about 1,000 students.

Outnumbered and undervalued

Here's what the researchers found: In physical science classes - where women are more traditionally underrepresented - women were indeed outnumbered, and they had higher average GPAs, statistically higher course grades, and were 1.5 times more likely to earn an A or A-plus than men. However, the researchers found that both men and women presumed that the men in the class outperformed the women. In these classes, both women and men were less likely to select a woman as someone they would seek help from, find knowledgeable, or perceive as best in the class.

They saw a similar, albeit lesser effect in life science classes, where, in contrast to physical sciences, women tend to outnumber men, particularly in biology classes. In their study results, women both outnumbered and outperformed men in terms of GPA and statistically higher course grades. In these courses, men were equally likely to identify a woman or a man in all categories such as someone they'd seek help from, or find knowledgeable, or consider best in the class, and women identified women and men equally only in the category of "best in the class."

The researchers acknowledged limitations in their study: Although the surveys allowed participants to self-identify their own genders, when they referred to classmates, the researchers only recorded how students perceived the genders of their classmates. They also found that the surveys were not representative of the overall demographics of the courses; students who chose to answer the surveys were more likely to be STEM majors, white students, physical science students, and students with overall higher class grades and GPAs.

Also, while they wanted to perform intersectional analyses for women of color or gender minorities and how their peers perceived them, they did not have a large enough sample to draw meaningful conclusions from the data.

The researchers were inspired to conduct the study after a 2016 study by University of Washington researchers found a pro-male bias for ratings of students' abilities among male students in undergraduate biology courses. The CSU team wanted to see if the same effect could be found here, and their choice of methodology was intentionally similar.

Learning from the results

Balgopal said from an instructional design point of view, their results could reveal opportunities for more thoughtful attention to things like group work, and how instructors guide active learning.

"It would be really interesting to understand where these biases originate," said Balgopal, who, along with co-author A.M. Aramati Casper, is interested in pedagogical interventions that improve classroom learning outcomes.

For first author and gender psychologist Brittany Bloodhart, the most striking aspect of the study was not that gender bias persists among undergraduate STEM students, but that it's happening at the same time when women are consistently outperforming men in these fields, rather than being negatively affected in performance.

Among the research that shows girls and women are better in STEM, it's often discounted in various ways - girls work harder, are more attentive in class, study more, etc., which leads to better grades, Bloodhart said. When women perform worse than men on standardized tests, some claim that this reflects a difference in natural ability because they consider such tests the "real" measures of STEM ability. However, many studies support the view that standardized tests are also biased, and a poor predictor of actual STEM ability.

There is also a "variability hypothesis," which says that on average, girls and women have better outcomes in STEM than boys and men, but there is less variation in women's natural STEM talent compared to men.

"Our study refutes that variability hypothesis," Bloodhart said. "We didn't find any evidence that men were more variable than women or that they were more likely to get the top scores."

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The study's authors were Bloodhart, a former CSU postdoctoral researcher and now an assistant professor at Cal State San Bernardino; Balgopal, who is a professor of discipline-based education research in the biology department; Casper, a research scientist in engineering education; Laura Sample McMeeking; associate professor and director of the CSU STEM Center, and Emily Fischer, associate professor in the Department of Atmosphere Science.

The research team first came together under the CSU Office of the Vice President for Research Pre-Catalyst for Innovative Partnerships, or PRECIP program, which provides seed funding for interdisciplinary research partnerships across campus.

The study is titled "Outperforming yet undervalued: Undergraduate women in STEM."

Link to paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234685

Women significantly more likely to be prescribed opioids, study shows

IN THE SIXTIES IT WAS VALIUM DOCTORS, PILL PUSHERS, PRESCRIBED FOR THE STRESSED OUT  HOUSEWIFE

MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC./GENETIC ENGINEERING NEWS

IMAGE: JOURNAL DEDICATED TO THE DISEASES AND CONDITIONS THAT HOLD GREATER RISK FOR OR ARE MORE PREVALENT AMONG WOMEN, AS WELL AS DISEASES THAT PRESENT DIFFERENTLY IN WOMEN. view more 

CREDIT: MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC., PUBLISHERS

New Rochelle, NY, June 29, 2020--Women are significantly more likely to receive prescriptions of opioid analgesics. Read the study, which was performed in a nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S., in Journal of Women's Health. Click here to read the article now.

Researchers from University of California Davis School of Medicine identified three main factors driving this discrepancy. These included lower, more adverse socio-economic status among women and more adverse health status-related factors. Another factor was higher rates of overall healthcare utilization.

"Our analysis found no evidence that the treatment of pain was driving women's higher rates of prescription opioids," said Alicia Agnoli, MD and coauthors.

"Future research and prevention efforts should target these factors to help combat the growing opioid epidemic," says Journal of Women's Health Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA.

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About the Journal

Journal of Women's Health published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women. Led by Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, the Journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women's healthcare issues. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Women's Health website. Journal of Women's Health is the official journal of the Society for Women's Health Research.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research. A complete list of the firm's 90 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.

Pernicious effects of stigma

Researchers uncover effects of negative stereotype exposure on the brain

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

 

The recent killings of unarmed individuals such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade have sparked a national conversation about the treatment of Black people -- and other minorities -- in the United States.

"What we're seeing today is a close examination of the hardships and indignities that people have faced for a very long time because of their race and ethnicity," said Kyle Ratner, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara. As a social psychologist, he is interested in how social and biological processes give rise to intergroup bias and feelings of stigmatization.

According to Ratner, "It is clear that people who belong to historically marginalized groups in the United States contend with burdensome stressors on top of the everyday stressors that members of non-disadvantaged groups experience. For instance, there is the trauma of overt racism, stigmatizing portrayals in the media and popular culture, and systemic discrimination that leads to disadvantages in many domains of life, from employment and education to healthcare and housing to the legal system."

Concerned by negative rhetoric directed at Latinx individuals, Ratner and his lab have investigated how negative stereotype exposure experienced by Mexican-American students can influence the way their brains process information.

In a recent paper published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, the research team focuses on how negative stereotype exposure affects responses to monetary incentives. Their finding: The brains of Mexican-American students exposed to negative stereotypes anticipate rewards and punishments differently versus those who were not so exposed. The discovery, he said, is the first step in a series of studies that could help researchers understand neural pathways through which stigma can have detrimental effects on psychological and physical health.

'I'm so tired of this'

Much existing research has focused on how experiencing stigma and discrimination triggers anger, racing thoughts and a state of high arousal. Although Ratner believes this is a reaction that people experience in some contexts, his recent work focuses on the psychological fatigue of hearing your group disparaged. "It's this feeling of 'oh, not again,' or 'I'm so tired of this,'" he said, describing a couple of reactions to the stress of managing self-definition in the face of negative stereotypes.

While noticing several years ago that experiencing stigma can produce this sense of withdrawal and resignation, Ratner was reminded of work he conducted earlier in his career relating stress to depressive symptoms.

"In work I was involved in over a decade ago, we showed that life stress can be associated with anhedonia, which is a blunted sensitivity to positive and rewarding information, such as winning money," he said. "If you're not sensitive to the rewarding things in life, you're basically left being sensitive to all the frustrating things in life, without that positive buffer. And that's one route to depression."

Given that experiencing stigma can be conceptualized as a social stressor, Ratner wanted to investigate whether negative stereotype exposure might also relate to sensitivity to reward.

Reward Processing in the Brain

Ratner and his colleagues focused on the nucleus accumbens, a sub-cortical brain region that plays a central role in anticipating pleasure -- the "wanting" stage of reward processing that motivates behaviors.

Using functional MRI to measure brain activity, the researchers asked Mexican-American UCSB students to view sets of video clips in rapid succession and then gave these students the opportunity to win money or avoiding losing money.

In the control group, the viewers were shown news and documentary clips of social problems in the United States that were relevant to the country in general -- childhood obesity, teen pregnancy, gang violence and low high school graduation numbers.

In the stigmatized group, subjects were shown news and documentary clips covering the same four domains, but that singled out the Latinx community as the group specifically at risk for these problems.

"These videos were not overtly racist," Ratner said of the stigmatizing clips. Rather, he explained, the videos tended to spend a disproportionate amount of attention on the association between specific social issues and their effects in the Latinx community, rather than presenting them as problems of American society as a whole. The clips were mostly from mainstream news agencies -- the newscasters and narrators, he said, appeared to be "presenting facts as they understood them," but the content of these clips reinforced negative stereotypes.

After repeated exposure to negative stereotypes, the research participants were asked to perform a Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task, which required them to push a button whenever they saw a star on the screen. Pressing the button fast enough resulted in either winning money or avoiding losing money.

In those individuals shown the stigmatizing clips, the nucleus accumbens responded differently to waiting for the star to appear, as compared to those who viewed the control clips, a pattern that suggests that negative stereotype exposure was "spilling-over" to affect how participants were anticipating winning and losing money.

"We saw that something about watching these stigmatizing videos was later influencing the pattern of response within this brain region," Ratner said. This suggests that the nucleus accumbens is representing the potential of winning and losing money differently in the brains of those who previously saw the stigmatizing videos than those who didn't, he explained. The researchers also found that the group that saw the stigmatizing videos reported lower levels of arousal right before starting the MID task, consistent with stigmatizing experiences having a demotivating effect.

"The nucleus accumbens is very important for motivated behavior, and sparks of motivation are important for many aspects for everyday life," Ratner said. A loss of motivation, he continued, is often experienced by those who perceive their situation as out of their control.

One reason negative stereotypes in the media and popular culture are so problematic is they make people feel stigmatized even when they are not personally targeted in their daily life by bigoted people, he explained. "It becomes something you can't escape -- similar to other stressors that are out of people's control and have been shown to cause anhedonia."

Ratner is careful to point out that this study merely scratches the surface of brain processes involved in intergroup reactions such as stigma -- how the brain processes social motivations is far more complex and necessitates further study.

"People shouldn't generalize too much from this specific finding," he said, pointing out that his sample of 40 Mexican-American college students, while not small for a brain imaging study, represents only a small segment of a far more diverse community. When his lab is back up and running following the COVID-19 related cessation, he said, he and his collaborators hope to study a larger, non-student sample.

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Scientists urge business and government to treat PFAS chemicals as a class

Researchers around the globe say "forever chemicals" should be avoided

GREEN SCIENCE POLICY INSTITUTE

 

BERKELEY, Calif.--All per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) should be treated as one class and avoided for nonessential uses, according to a peer-reviewed article published today in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

The authors--16 scientists from universities, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the European Environment Agency, and NGOs--say the extreme persistence and known toxicity of PFAS that have been studied render traditional chemical-by-chemical management dangerously inadequate. The article lays out how businesses and government can apply a class-based approach to reduce harm from PFAS, including fluoropolymers, which are large molecules.

"With thousands of PFAS in existence, assessing and managing their risks individually is like trying to drink from a fire hose," said Tom Bruton, Senior Scientist at the Green Science Policy Institute. "Phased-out PFAS that were used to make products like non-stick cookware have been replaced with other PFAS that have turned out to be similarly toxic. By avoiding the entire class of PFAS, we can avoid further rounds of replacing a banned substance with a chemical cousin which is also later banned."

Studied PFAS have been associated with cancer, decreased fertility, endocrine disruption, immune system harms, adverse developmental effects, and other serious health problems. The authors note that people are exposed to multiple PFAS at once, and there is little research on the effects of combined exposures.

Less than one percent of PFAS have been tested for toxicity, but all PFAS are either extremely persistent in the environment or break down into extremely persistent PFAS. Cleaning up contamination can take decades to centuries or more and every time an individual "forever chemical" has been studied, it was found to be harmful.

"When it comes to harm from PFAS, it is much more than our own health that's at stake. It is the health of our children, grandchildren and generations to come--indeed, of every creature on our planet," said Arlene Blum, Executive Director of the Green Science Policy Institute. "The longer we continue the unnecessary use of PFAS, the more likely the overall future harm to our world will rival, or even surpass, that of the coronavirus."

The article notes that some companies have already employed a class-based approach to PFAS. For example, IKEA phased out all PFAS in its textile products and Levi Strauss & Co. has committed to a similar phase-out.

"We're proud that our class-based approach to chemicals has helped protect our customers and the environment, for example by removing all PFAS from IKEA's textiles in 2016," said Therese Lilliebladh of IKEA. "It also helps us stay ahead of the curve and avoid falling into a problematic cycle of substituting a similar chemical for one that has been phased out."

Some government bodies have banned the entire class of PFAS for use in some products. For example, Maine and Washington have banned all PFAS in food contact materials and Denmark has banned PFAS from paper-based food packaging. The authors recommend expanding such regulation to all nonessential uses.

Contrary to recent PFAS manufacturer messaging, the authors emphasize that fluorinated polymers should be included in a class-based approach to PFAS. "These large molecule chemicals can release smaller toxic PFAS and other hazardous substances into the environment throughout their lifecycle, from production, to use, to disposal," said author Carol Kwiatkowski, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. "Fluoropolymer microplastics also contribute to global plastic and microplastics debris."

"PFAS are a complex class of chemicals, but there is a clear pattern of persistence and potential for health harm that unites them all," said retired NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum. "The use of any PFAS should be avoided whenever possible."

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CANADIAN, EH

Could your computer please be more polite? Thank you

Carnegie Mellon method automatically makes requests more polite

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY HAVE DEVELOPED AN AUTOMATED METHOD FOR MAKING COMMUNICATIONS MORE POLITE. THIS IMAGE SHOWS ONE POSSIBLE IMPLEMENTATION OF THIS METHOD: AUTOMATED SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING POLITENESS IN... view more 

CREDIT: CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

PITTSBURGH--In a tense time when a pandemic rages, politicians wrangle for votes and protesters demand racial justice, a little politeness and courtesy go a long way. Now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an automated method for making communications more polite.

Specifically, the method takes nonpolite directives or requests -- those that use either impolite or neutral language -- and restructures them or adds words to make them more well-mannered. "Send me the data," for instance, might become "Could you please send me the data?"

The researchers will present their study on politeness transfer at the Association for Computational Linguistics annual meeting, which will be held virtually beginning July 5.

The idea of transferring a style or sentiment from one communication to another -- turning negative statements positive, for instance -- is something language technologists have been doing for some time. Shrimai Prabhumoye, a Ph.D. student in CMU's Language Technologies Institute (LTI), said performing politeness transfer has long been a goal.

"It is extremely relevant for some applications, such as if you want to make your emails or chatbot sound more polite or if you're writing a blog," she said. "But we could never find the right data to perform this task."

She and LTI master's students Aman Madaan, Amrith Setlur and Tanmay Parekh solved that problem by generating a dataset of 1.39 million sentences labeled for politeness, which they used for their experiments.

The source of these sentences might seem surprising. They were derived from emails exchanged by employees of Enron, a Texas-based energy company that, until its demise in 2001, was better known for corporate fraud and corruption than for social niceties. But half a million corporate emails became public as a result of lawsuits surrounding Enron's fraud scandal and subsequently have been used as a dataset for a variety of research projects.

But even with a dataset, the researchers were challenged simply to define politeness.

"It's not just about using words such as 'please' and 'thank you,'" Prabhumoye said. Sometimes, it means making language a bit less direct, so that instead of saying "you should do X," the sentence becomes something like "let us do X."

And politeness varies from one culture to the next. It's common for native North Americans to use "please" in requests to close friends, but in Arab culture it would be considered awkward, if not rude. For their study, the CMU researchers restricted their work to speakers of North American English in a formal setting.

The politeness dataset was analyzed to determine the frequency and distribution of words in the polite and nonpolite sentences. Then the team developed a "tag and generate" pipeline to perform politeness transfers. First, impolite or nonpolite words or phrases are tagged and then a text generator replaces each tagged item. The system takes care not to change the meaning of the sentence.

"It's not just about cleaning up swear words," Prabhumoye said of the process. Initially, the system had a tendency to simply add words to sentences, such as "please" or "sorry." If "Please help me" was considered polite, the system considered "Please please please help me" even more polite.

But over time the scoring system became more realistic and the changes became subtler. First person singular pronouns, such as I, me and mine, were replaced by first person plural pronouns, such as we, us and our. And rather than position "please" at the beginning of the sentence, the system learned to insert it within the sentence: "Could you please send me the file?"

Prabhumoye said the researchers have released their labeled dataset for use by other researchers, hoping to encourage them to further study politeness.

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In addition to the students, the study's co-authors included several professors from the LTI and the Machine Learning Department -- Barnabas Poczos, Graham Neubig, Yiming Yang, Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Alan Black. The Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, Apple and NVIDIA supported this research.

Is it time to replace one of the cornerstones of animal research?

By David GrimmJun. 25, 2020 , 2:10 PM

Last year marked the 60th anniversary of one of the most influential concepts in lab animal welfare—the three Rs. To promote the humane treatment of laboratory animals, these principles urge scientists to replace animals with new technologies, reduce the number of animals used in experiments, and refine lab protocols to minimize animal suffering. First outlined in the 1959 book, The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique, the three Rs have become a cornerstone of lab animal legislation and oversight throughout the world.

But as millions of animals continue to be used in biomedical research each year, and new legislation calls on federal agencies to reduce and justify their animal use, some have begun to argue that it’s time to replace the three Rs themselves. “It was an important advance in animal research ethics, but it’s no longer enough,” Tom Beauchamp told attendees last week at a lab animal conference.

Beauchamp, an emeritus professor of ethics at Georgetown University, has studied the ethics of animal research for decades. He also co-authored the influential Belmont Report of 1978, which has guided ethical principles for conducting research on human subjects. Beauchamp recently teamed up with David DeGrazia, a bioethicist at George Washington University and a senior research fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), to lay out six principles for the ethical use of lab animals, which would replace the three Rs. The pair published both a scientific article and book on the topic late last year.

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Beauchamp and DeGrazia talked with Science about how their new approach works, why they think it’s better than the three Rs, and whether researchers will embrace it. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What’s wrong with the three Rs?

David DeGrazia: The three Rs don’t take the costs and benefits of animal research into account. They don’t ask questions like, “Is the experiment worth pursuing in the first place? Is it too expensive? Is it important enough?” It just assumes the experiment is worth doing. We want scientists to be asking these essential questions first.

The three Rs also aren’t comprehensive. They don’t discuss the basic needs of animals, for example, or set limits on how much animals can be harmed.

Q: How do your new principles solve these problems?

D.D.: The first principle is that you can only use animals if they’re the most ethically acceptable way to address the question. It goes beyond the “replacement” part of the three Rs in that scientists must not just consider alternatives to using animals, they must prove that there are no viable alternatives. An IACUC [Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee], for example, might ask an investigator to detail the science showing that animal alternatives like organ on a chip or microdosing humans aren’t viable. It puts more teeth into replacement.

Another principle would ask scientists to detail how much humans and society are likely to benefit from the research, and contrast that with how much animals are likely to suffer. Even if the benefits of using animals outweigh the costs, we want researchers to think about how they can mitigate—and even eliminate—any harms caused to animals during their experiments. Are they drawing blood more than they need to? Are they handling rodents more often than necessary?

Scientists also should be thinking about how to give these creatures the best life possible in the lab. That could include making sure they have companions, exercise, and other stimulating activity.

Tom Beauchamp: Finally, there should be an upper limit to how much we can harm animals, regardless of the benefits of the science. No animal should be put in a position of experiencing severe suffering for a lengthy period of time.

D.D.: If we, hypothetically, addict mice to cocaine, and then see how much of an electric shock they’re willing to endure to get their fix, we’re forcing them to live between the misery of addiction and the suffering of shocks. That’s way too much harm to cause for whatever the purpose of the study is.

This is the only principle for which we say there might be some rare exceptions. For example, an exception might be if there’s a raging pandemic and the only way to test a vaccine is to have a control group that suffers for a week or more without treatment.

Q: What has been the response of scientists so far?

D.D.: I’d say the response from researchers was halfway between warm reception and polite skepticism. The feedback has been limited so far, but I’ve been encouraged by the positive tone.

At the same time, some people have expressed concern about how to quantify things like the benefit to people or the harm to animals. I’m sure we will get criticism about the principles imposing extra regulations and slowing down science. But it won’t slow down science if we’re stopping research that doesn’t provide real benefits.

Q: Do you think your principles will have as much impact as the three Rs?

D.D.: Our framework can’t change the scientific culture by itself. These things take time. But our hope is that, like the three Rs, our principles will become part of the mainstream vocabulary of scientists and ultimately change their behavior. If so, I think we’ll see much better science, because the models are so well-chosen, and all of the animal subjects will have decent lives.

Q: What are your next steps?

T.B.: The best way for us to push things forward is to give talks and hope that will lead to more people reaching out to us. [Their proposal came up at a recent NIH workshop on nonhuman primate research.]

Q: Have you thought about a catchy name, like “the three Rs”?

D.D.: Not yet. Maybe “The six principles”? [Laughs]. We’re still working on it.

*Correction, 25 June, 3 p.m.: This article originally mentioned an alternative to animal testing called “lab on a chip.” It should have been “organ on a chip.” The story has been

Pop-up protests to abolish police wind up outside Winnipeg police headquarter

Supporters gathered on 8th day in a row of rallies organized by Justice 4 Black Lives Winnipeg

CBC News · Posted: Jun 29, 2020

of Justice 4 Black Lives Winnipeg organized eight days of pop-up protests in the city. On the final day, supporters of the movement rallied outside the Winnipeg Police Service Headquarters. (CBC)

For the eighth consecutive day, supporters of the Justice 4 Black Lives Winnipeg movement gathered to listen to speeches and chant in the city's downtown.

About 200 people met on Monday afternoon outside the Winnipeg Police Service Headquarters, near the intersection of Graham Avenue and Smith Street, calling for more accountability and to defund the police.

"We do not want reform. We want the Winnipeg police gone," organizers wrote in an Instagram post before the rally.

The latest pop-up protest was the eighth event in a row organized by Justice 4 Black Lives Winnipeg.

It was dedicated to five people who were shot and killed by police and two people who died while in police custody: Machuar Madut, Jason Collins, Eishia Hudson, Stewart Kevin Andrews, Randy Cochrane, Sean Thompson and Chad Williams.

"These folks demand justice. They lost their lives too soon," reads the post.

All seven were Black, Indigenous and people of colour. Some of their family members are still demanding answers about their loved ones' death.

Family of man fatally shot by Winnipeg police says he overcame 'troubled past' to care for kids

Hearing to determine participants for inquest into death of South Sudanese man killed by Winnipeg police

People rallied Tuesday outside the Winnipeg Police Headquarters to draw attention to people who died while in police custody and who were killed by police. (CBC)

Many attendees at the rally were carrying signs with supportive slogans and wearing masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"These folks did not deserve to die. And the Winnipeg police need to be held accountable for their actions. We want to remind folks again that the police consistently show they are not capable of helping those in crisis," organizers posted on Instagram.

"We want to thank everyone who has shown up or watched the live streams every single day. We appreciate you and we see you."

Vehicles and buses passed by people huddled in front of the main entrance to the blue glass building that houses the officers in blue uniforms and other staff.

A car passes on the road outside the Winnipeg Police Service Headquarters as a Justice 4 Black Lives Winnipeg rally took place on Tuesday. (CBC)

In a tweet, Winnipeg Police Service said criminal record checks, fingerprinting and in-person crime reporting service will not be available on Monday afternoon.

In a statement, a police spokesperson said they had no additional comment on the closures or the rally just outside their main entrance.

Organizers had asked reporters not to attend and did not provide an interview.

Week of pop-up protests condemns anti-Black racism in Manitoba
CBC Asks: Black Lives Matter — where do we go from here?

Thousands of people descended on the Manitoba Legislature to demand justice for Black lives on June 5. That also marked the day organizers released their list of 10 demands for the city and the province to address anti-Black racism and police brutality.

With files from Peggy Lam
CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|About CBC NewsReport Typo or Error

China passes sweeping Hong Kong national security law: report
By Helen Regan, CNN Tue June 30, 20

(CNN)Beijing has reportedly passed a wide-reaching national security law for Hong Kong, which many fear could be used to override existing legal processes and further erode the city's civil and political freedoms.

Beijing's top lawmaking body, the National People's Congress (NPC), passed the law unanimously on Tuesday morning local time, bypassing Hong Kong's legislature, according to Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK, citing unnamed sources.

Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency previously reported the law would criminalize offenses such as secession, subversion against the central Chinese government, terrorism, and colluding with foreign forces.

A draft had not been made public ahead of its passage, meaning the majority of people in Hong Kong have not seen details of a law that will now govern their lives.


China is about to pass a controversial national security law in Hong Kong. Here's what you need to know

The passing of the legislation has not been officially confirmed and details remain unclear. But RTHK reports that possible maximum sentencing for crimes under the law will be "much higher" than 10 years imprisonment.

Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam refused to comment on the progress of the bill in her weekly press conference on Tuesday morning, saying it would be "inappropriate" to respond to questions while the NPC meeting is still in session.

The legislation was widely criticized by opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong, human rights groups and politicians worldwide, with many saying it will cement Beijing's direct control over the semi-autonomous city. Many worry it could be used to target political dissidents, activists, human rights lawyers and journalists -- a fear that stems from China's judicial track record and the central government's continuing crackdown on civil society under President Xi Jinping.

The passing of the law comes a day before July 1, the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from British colonial rule to China in 1997. It has become an annual day of protests in the city, but for the first time since handover police have not given permission to protesters to hold peaceful demonstrations.

"One country, two systems"

The law's passing is expected to fuel further anger and protests in the city, which was rocked by over six months of increasingly violent anti-government unrest last year.

Opponents of the law say it marks the end of the "one country, two systems" -- a principle by which Hong Kong has retained limited democracy and civil liberties since coming under Chinese control.

Crucially, those freedoms include the right to assembly, a free press, and an independent judiciary, rights that are not enjoyed on the Chinese mainland.

Chinese Communist Party officials and state media have defended the law as vital to protecting national security in the wake of last year's protests and a 17-year failure by the Hong Kong government to pass similar legislation, since the last effort was met with mass protests in 2003.

Hong Kong protester voices fear over national security law 

In a blueprint of the legislation revealed by Chinese state media Xinhua on June 22, mainland Chinese officials will be allowed to operate in Hong Kong for the first time and give Beijing the power to override local laws.

In a statement last week, Lam said the law would ensure "the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong," and that it would "only target an extremely small minority of people." She said the proposed bill was "in line with the rule of law" and the "rights and freedoms which are applicable in Hong Kong under the Basic Law and relevant international covenants."

According to the blueprint, Beijing will establish a national security office, staffed by mainland security services to supervise local authorities in policing the law. A national security commission will also be set up, with a Beijing-appointed adviser and operating under "the supervision of the central government."

Additionally, Hong Kong's top official, the Chief Executive, will pick which judges hear national security cases, while mainland Chinese authorities will be able to "exercise jurisdiction" over cases in special circumstances -- a controversial clause that raises the prospect that certain crimes in Hong Kong could result in trials on the mainland.
Ultimately, the blueprint makes clear that national security law trumps local laws. If there is a conflict with existing Hong Kong law, the national security law will prevail.

Reaction from Hong Kong and around the world

Many in the city have decried the lack of transparency over the legislation. In a letter to the Hong Kong government, Philip Dykes, chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association said the secrecy of the law was "genuinely extraordinary" and called on the government to make clear how citizens' minimum rights will be guaranteed.

Joshua Wong, an activist who who helped lead massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2014 said on Twitter that it "marks the end of Hong Kong that the world knew before."

He said Hong Kong "will continue to fight for our freedoms and democracy for the city's next generations. When justice fails, our fight goes on."

Following news of the legislation passing, Wong announced he was standing down from democracy group Demosisto, which he formed in 2016, because of the threat posed by the law. He was joined by fellow activist leaders Nathan Law, who was removed from the local legislature in 2016, and activist Agnes Chow.

Wong and other activists have met with foreign diplomats and testified before the US Congress on Hong Kong's freedoms since the large-scale pro-democracy protests broke out last summer.

China to impose tit-for-tat visa restrictions on US officials over Hong Kong

Rights group Amnesty International said the legislation "represents the greatest threat to human rights in the city's recent history."

"From now on, China will have the power to impose its own laws on any criminal suspect it chooses," said the head of Amnesty International's China Team, Joshua Rosenzweig.

"The speed and secrecy with which China has pushed through this legislation intensifies the fear that Beijing has calculatingly created a weapon of repression to be used against government critics, including people who are merely expressing their views or protesting peacefully," he said.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen said reports on China passing the security law "proves that 'one country, two systems' is not credible." Tsai said that Taiwan will start an office from July 1, which will "provide humanitarian aid for our friends in Hong Kong."

In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called the passing of the law "regrettable."

On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an end to the exports of US-origin defense equipment to Hong Kong. Pompeo said the move was necessary to protect American national security as the tensions between the US and China continue to escalate.

"As Beijing moves forward with passing the national security law, the United States will today end exports of US-origin defense equipment and will take steps toward imposing the same restrictions on US defense and dual-use technologies to Hong Kong as it does for China," Pompeo said. "The United States is forced to take this action to protect US national security. We can no longer distinguish between the export of controlled items to Hong Kong or to mainland China."

This is the first action the US government has taken to upend the special status trade relationship between the US and Hong Kong, following the determination that Hong Kong was no longer autonomous from China due to Beijing imposing the national security law on the city.

It comes as Beijing on Monday said it would impose visa restrictions on certain Americans in response to Washington's move last week to place similar limits on Chinese officials over Hong Kong.