Thursday, November 04, 2021

Labor unions push White House to add worker protections to Biden Covid vaccine mandate

President Joe Biden looks on as AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler speaks during an event in honor of labor unions on September 8, 2021 in the East Room of the White House at Washington, DC.
Oliver Contreras | AP

October 31, 2021

Some of the nation’s largest labor unions are pushing the Biden administration to expand its vaccine mandate for private companies to include additional protections for workers, including mask requirements and other safety measures to minimize the spread of Covid-19.

The AFL-CIO and about two dozen other major unions representing teachers, service employees, meat processing plant, auto and steel workers spoke with the Biden administration on its proposed safety rule in an Oct. 18 teleconference call with White House officials with the Office of Management and Budget.

“We stressed the importance of mitigation measures,” Rebecca Reindel, who represented the AFL-CIO on the call, told CNBC. “We really need to be getting ahead of the transmission piece of the virus. It takes a while to get vaccinated — we need protections in the meantime,” Reindel said.

Three of the biggest labor groups, specifically the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, told CNBC they asked the administration to expand employee protections, requiring employers to improve ventilation and enforce mask rules and social distancing. Reindel said companies should also be required to conduct a risk assessment, in consultation with labor, to determine which combination of mitigation measures are needed to best protect their employees in the workplace.

President Joe Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Labor Department to write a rule requiring private companies with 100 or more employees to ensure they are all vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19.

OMB and Labor Department officials have held dozens of calls and meetings with industry lobbyists over the past two weeks as OMB reviews the mandate, OMB records show. The vaccine and weekly testing requirements will go into effect soon after OMB completes its review.

The AFL-CIO has called for sweeping measures to protect workers from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. However, OSHA, which polices workplace safety, hasn’t yet issued any broad-based Covid safety rules.

Instead, OSHA issued requirements over the summer limited to health-care workers. Most health-care providers had to develop plans to mitigate the risk of Covid, ensure employees wear masks indoors, keep people six feet apart when indoors, install barriers at work stations when employees aren’t six feet apart, and ensure proper ventilation — among a number of other requirements.

The AFL-CIO and the United Food and Commercial Workers took the Biden administration to court, arguing that the OSHA standard “fails to protect employees outside the healthcare industry who face a similar grave danger from occupational exposure to COVID-19.” The unions specifically cited meatpacking, groceries, transportation and corrections as industries where workers need the Labor Department to issue an enforceable safety standard on Covid.

The unions and Labor Department filed a joint motion in September to put the case on pause until the Biden administration’s vaccination and weekly testing mandate is issued. The parties are required by the court to issue a joint status report on Monday.

“The harsh reality is that current COVID safety guidelines are simply not enough and have left millions of essential workers to fend for themselves,” Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, said in August after OSHA issued voluntary guidance recommending masks for vaccinated employees working in areas where transmission was high. “What we need now is a clear enforceable COVID workplace safety standard that will protect America’s essential workers still on the frontlines of this deadly pandemic.”

Perrone said his union is now waiting to see whether mitigation measures are included in the vaccine and testing mandate. “If we still have concerns, we will move forward,” he said, referring to the court case. The group represents 1.3 million employees across the grocery, retail, meatpacking, food processing, cannabis, chemical and distillery industries, including workers at Tysons Food, Kroger, Macy’s, Cargill and Pfizer. People in those industries are largely considered essential frontline workers by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The UFCW warned in an August letter to the Labor Department that vaccination – while important – does not eliminate the danger posed by Covid to workers as the highly transmissible delta variant spreads, the efficacy of vaccines wanes over time and new mutations of the virus emerge.

The AFL-CIO, in a May report, found 1,833 Covid outbreaks, nearly 90,000 infections and 378 deaths in the meatpacking, food processing and farming industries from the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020 through this April. A report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found that infections among meatpacking workers were nearly three times higher than previously reported.

“There are going to be certain people who are not going to take [the vaccine] and get tested, and then if you don’t have mitigation measures in place, like masks, you’re sort of defeating your purpose,” Perrone told CNBC.

The Service Employees International Union asked the Biden administration in September to expand the vaccine mandate to include additional protections. The union represents represents 2 million workers in essential services such as janitors, health and other occupations.

“Layered mitigation measures, including but not limited to masking and distancing, as well as quarantine after exposure or positive tests remain necessary to protect against outbreaks,” Leslie Frane, the union’s executive vice president, wrote in a September letter to OSHA head James Frederick.

SEIU and UFCW have also called for paid leave for workers to get vaccinated and recover from the shot, paid leave for workers to quarantine and recover from the virus, and free Covid tests for workers with testing options at the worksite. The Biden administration said in September that it will also require businesses with more than 100 employees to provide paid time off for vaccination and recovery.

The United Auto Workers declined to specifically comment on whether it wants the vaccine and testing mandate to include Covid mitigation measures. The big three automakers have already implemented extensive safety protocols against Covid. While it supports vaccination generally, the union opposes requiring them as part of a federal or employer mandate. The union will review the vaccine and testing mandate when it is published, UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg told CNBC.

“We’re waiting for the standards because we have over 700 contracts and we’re going to have to go through them and see how they impact our contracts,” he said.

WELL OF COURSE HE DOES

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Lisbon Web Summit: Apple’s Software Boss Warns Against Draft EU Policy on App Store

November 4, 2021

Apple software boss Craig Federighi took the stage at the Web Summit in Lisbon to voice the iPhone maker’s objections to EU draft guidelines that could allow customers to install software from outside its App Store.

Apple contends that such a move would make phones the target of malware or hijacking by cybercriminals and the company is sending top executives to Europe to garner public support and show its resolve in stopping the proposal becoming law.

The Digital Markets Act under consideration in Brussels would force phone makers to allow third-party software to be installed on their devices from outside official app stores.

Big Tech critics say Apple and others use their control over software to entrench their dominant positions, while Apple argues its policies are a matter of keeping users safe.

Apple calls such unofficial app installations “side-loading”. Such a function is already available on Android phones that make up a majority of devices around the world. Apple warned of malicious apps infecting shopper gadgets and made doomsday predictions.

“Sideloading is a cybercriminal’s best friend,” Federighi pressed the case on stage, addressing thousands of attendees at Europe’s largest technology conference.

One compromised device could overflow into entire networks, and malware could jeopardize government systems, enterprise networks and public utilities, he said.

The draft rules need a green light from EU lawmakers and EU countries before they become law, likely in 2023.

Apple charges commissions of up to 30 percent for purchases made within the App Store and loosening its grip on it might allow developers to avoid paying those commissions.

Companies such as Spotify, which have been fighting Apple on different fronts, from privacy changes on iOS devices to high commissions, have called Apple’s policies as “anticompetitive.”

“The discussion about sideloading is just a sideshow, which is really designed to deflect the conversation away from the things that Apple is doing that are clearly anticompetitive,” Spotify Chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez said in an interview.

“No one is arguing that Apple should lower their standards for privacy and security… it’s perfectly logical that Apple would set and enforce certain standards with respect to privacy,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

Elements may have been forged on Earth, as well as in space

November 2, 2021

Core of the matter: can elements be synthesized deep within the Earth? (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Johan Swanepoel)

Creating elements lighter than iron might not require the extreme conditions found inside very massive stars. According to a group of physicists in Japan and Canada, it is possible that oxygen, nitrogen and all other elements with atomic numbers up to 25 have also been produced inside the Earth. Their eye-catching claim relies on the idea that fusion reactions occur in the Earth’s lower mantle, where they are catalyzed by neutrinos and excited electrons.

According to the Big Bang model, the only elements present in the early universe were hydrogen, helium and tiny amounts of lithium. It is thought that elements with atomic numbers between four (beryllium) and 25 (manganese) are instead made through the progressive fusion of heavier nuclei inside massive stars. This process comes to a halt because the generation of iron (atomic number 26), in contrast with that of lighter elements, does not give off excess energy and so is unable to prevent stars from collapsing under their own weight. The resulting supernovae, however, yield high-speed neutrons that are captured by nuclei to create elements heavier than iron.

In the latest work, Mikio Fukuhara of Tohoku University and colleagues in Japan and Canada propose that these lighter elements can also be produced deep inside the Earth. The inspiration for this idea comes from the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere. As the researchers point out, the atmosphere is thought originally to have been made up almost exclusively of carbon dioxide. But its composition then changed radically, resulting in the dominance of nitrogen – which today accounts for about 78% of the molecules in the atmosphere – as well as large amounts of oxygen (some 21%), while carbon dioxide is a mere 0.2%.

Accumulation of nitrogen-14

Many scientists, says Fukuhara, reckon that much of the nitrogen was contained in material from the solar nebula, a gaseous cloud that condensed and conglomerated to form the Sun and its planets. Additional nitrogen then came as planetesimals rich in the element crashed into our planet. But he argues that that hypothesis cannot explain the rapid accumulation of nitrogen-14 which is thought to have taken place between 3.8–2.5 billion years ago.

The answer, Fukuhara reckons, might be terrestrial nuclear fusion. In a model published last year, he proposed that nitrogen, oxygen and water – whose concentration has also shot up over time – could have been forged in endothermic reactions inside the Earth’s mantle. Those reactions would involve carbon and oxygen nuclei confined inside the crystal lattice of calcium carbonate rocks.

As he pointed out, even the very high temperatures and pressures at depths of several thousand kilometres would not be enough to force those nuclei together against their mutual repulsion. But he claims that the presence of subatomic particles known as neutral pions can increase the nuclear attraction to the point where fusion occurs. Those pions, he says, would be generated by electrons excited by the rapid fracturing and sliding of carbonate crystals – caused by volcanic eruptions. Alongside the excited electrons would be neutrinos, captured as they stream through the Earth in large numbers from the Sun or other stars, or alternatively from nuclear reactions in the Earth’s core.

The latest work builds on this research by showing how such catalyzed fusion reactions could explain the production not only of nitrogen, oxygen and water, but all of the 25 lightest elements. To demonstrate the plausibility of this mechanism, the researchers calculated the minimum energy required to initiate the reaction in each case and then analysed the crystal structure of a mineral found in the mantle that contains the reacting elements.
Temperature, pressure and catalysis

As they report in a paper published in AIP Advances, they carried out the latter part of the analysis for three sets of nuclei – magnesium and iron, aluminium and magnesium, and aluminium and silicon. In all three cases they concluded that the combination of temperature, pressure and catalysis would indeed reduce the interaction distance between the nuclei such that they could fuse – yielding sulphur and titanium, sodium and silicon, and oxygen and potassium, respectively.

Isotope ratios yield clues to element synthesis

Fukuhara and colleagues point out that their proposed fusion mechanism remains a hypothesis and should be put to the test in experiments carried out at high temperatures and pressures. But they maintain that if confirmed their results would have a profound impact on geophysics. “To the best of our knowledge,” they write, “theories of element creation have not been previously developed in the context of an ‘Earth factory’”.

They add that they are performing additional calculations to work out whether the mechanism they have identified also applies to elements heavier than iron. Plus, they hint at a possible application of their work, arguing it offers the potential to create elements needed for space exploration. “We need not to look for oxygen, water and other elements in planets and satellites,” says Fukuhara.

Physics World sought comment on the research from several experts in nuclear physics and geoscience but received no substantive replies.

This article was originally published by Physicsworld.com.

Moons are planets too

by Brian Koberlein, Universe Today

What makes a planet a planet? The answer turns out to be rather contentious. The official definition of a planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is that a planet must satisfy three conditions:

It must orbit the sun.
It must be in hydrostatic equilibrium.
It must have cleared its orbital neighborhood.

By this definition there are just eight planets in our solar system, most notably excluding Pluto. This has stirred all manner of controversy, even among astronomers. Several alternative definitions have been proposed, but a new study argues we should look to history for the solution.

The early definition of a planet was an object that moved against the stars over time. In historical astrology, there were stars, transitory objects such as comets, and planets. Thus, the sun and moon were considered planets, but not the Earth. With the rise of the heliocentric model, objects that orbit the sun were planets, meaning that Earth was a planet, but so was the moon. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, this was the standard. When Galileo discovered four moons of Jupiter, he referred to them as the Medicean planets. When Cassini discovered Saturn's moon Titan, he referred to it as a new planet.

The use of "moon" as a general object also dates to this time. Galileo coined the term in 1632. For Galileo, a moon is a planet that orbits another planet, named after the first of that name. Planet and moon were not exclusionary terms. As Galileo demonstrated in 1611, stars shine of their own light, while planets only shine through reflected sunlight.

This simple definition held well into the 1800s. When astronomers discovered Ceres in 1801, it was clearly a planet. The same with Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. All were planets because they certainly weren't stars. But after a dozen worlds were found between Jupiter and Mars, many astronomers argued that they should be not planets, but asteroids.

This began a gradual shift to the idea that planets were large bodies orbiting the sun. Asteroids and moons should not be considered planets. When Pluto was discovered in 1930, it was clearly a planet because it was neither an asteroid nor a moon. But by the end of the 20th century, the simple definition became problematic. We found out that many large moons such as Io are geologically active. Titan has an atmosphere even thicker than Earth's. Pluto has mountains and complex geology but is even smaller than the moon. None of these meet the IAU definition of a classical planet, but it's hard to argue that they are not worlds as complex as Mars or Venus.

So what makes a planet a planet? Based on their work, the team argues that the IAU definition is a poor one. The general public dislikes it because the definition excludes Pluto, but more importantly, many scientists ignore the definition and still refer to bodies such as Titan, Pluto, Ceres, and others as planets. What seems to be the most consistent defining factor is that of complex geology and geophysics.

If we define planets by their geophysical qualities, then the Galilean moons are planets, as is Pluto, as is Pluto's moon Charon, as is our own moon. Anything with a diameter larger than about 500km would be a planet, meaning that our solar system alone has more than a hundred planets.Astronomers may have discovered first planet to orbit 3 stars

More information: Philip T. Metzger et al, Moons Are Planets: Scientific Usefulness Versus Cultural Teleology in the Taxonomy of Planetary Science. arXiv:2110.15285v1 [physics.hist-ph], arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285

Provided by Universe Today

Social media is reshaping British universities’ value systems in a scramble for likes and shares

Universities’ value judgements about research are becoming ‘coupled’ to social media platforms as they compete for funding by demonstrating their influence beyond academia, an analysis suggests.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Universities’ value judgements about research are becoming ‘coupled’ to social media platforms as they compete for funding by demonstrating their influence beyond academia, an analysis suggests.

The study, by researchers at the University of Cambridge, focused on how universities use social media in ‘impact’ case studies, which are a requirement of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF is a periodic assessment of university research, run by UK higher education funding bodies; the current review ends next year.

Researchers examined 1,675 submissions from the previous exercise in 2014. They found that universities consistently use platform metrics – such as follower numbers, likes and shares – to claim that their research is making an impression.

The authors describe this as a ‘naïve and problematic’ grasp of what both the data and ‘impact’ actually mean. But they suggest that in a competitive funding environment in which that meaning is in any case unclear, universities are reaching for social media metrics as easy-to-access measures of success that they hope might attract funding.

That process links the opaque, algorithm-driven value systems of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to universities ‘evaluative infrastructures’. The study adds that this is just one example of how digital platforms are changing higher education, often unnoticed – and with uncertain consequences.

The study was undertaken by Dr Mark Carrigan and Dr Katy Jordan, at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge; Dr Carrigan has since become a lecturer at the Manchester Institute of Education.

“Social media platforms seem to be acquiring a role in how numbers manage higher education, as a sort of proxy for impact capacity,” Carrigan said. “We are starting to see academics seeking more followers and more shares not to support their research, but because it might be good for their careers.”

“Those metrics, however, result from social media companies manipulating content and user behaviour to maximise engagement with their platforms – a priority which then starts to become loosely coupled to universities’ own evaluative judgements about research.”

While the study in no way questions the importance of demonstrating impact as part of the REF assessment process, it does suggest that many universities have struggled since 2014 to understand the rather open-ended requirement. Impact is defined as: “an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment, or quality of life, beyond academia.” This will be worth 25% of the score awarded submissions in REF 2021.

The researchers scanned 1,675 REF case studies from a public database for each of 42 terms relating to social media to identify patterns in the way social media was used. They also then analysed 100 randomly-selected case studies in closer detail.

Universities consistently mentioned social media in about 25% of their REF submissions. A handful of terms appeared far more than all the others: Google Scholar, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, “podcasts”, “blogs” and (as a general term) “social media”. They appeared most in case studies from the arts and humanities (46.3%) and least in the biological and medical sciences (13.1%).

Although some references were entirely valid, a surprisingly high number of case studies attempted to claim impact by simply recording statistical information from social platforms. These included citations and research rankings from sources such as Google Scholar, and more generally follower counts, comments, views, downloads, likes, mentions and shares.

The researchers describe the fact that so many universities took this flawed approach as a symptom of institutional isomorphism: a phenomenon in which organisations imitate each other when dealing with uncertain goals, creating a false notion of ‘best practice’.

“The statistical data only represents social media activity; at best it’s preliminary to claiming real impact,” Carrigan said. “At the same time, it’s becoming part of what universities nevertheless consider effective digital engagement, and potentially gets absorbed into the business case for what researchers are expected to do.”

Because successful engagement on social media corresponds not to the needs of people affected by the research itself, but the requirements of companies running the platforms, the authors suggest that this ‘loose coupling’ may lead to various problems if it goes unaddressed.

Researchers from less-popular disciplines, for example, may struggle to meet institutional demands to build a following for their work. Perhaps more worryingly, social media often reproduces and intensifies various inequalities. Other research has, for instance, found that white males are less likely to be harassed online than other demographic groups, and these academics may therefore find it easier to be rewarded for high levels of engagement than other colleagues.

The study notes that this is just one example of how higher education has embraced digital platforms ‘at a dizzying rate’ – without necessarily noting the implications. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has witnessed a rapid “online pivot” towards remote learning. Platforms such as Teams and Zoom are now widely used for lectures and seminars, while others support learning management (Moodle), student engagement (Eventus) and alumni engagement (Ellucian). So far their wider effects on the culture and priorities of universities seem to have been largely overlooked.

The researchers point out that social media itself can be used profitably in research – for example to build networks with ‘end users’ of research projects – but argue that this potential should be more systematically integrated into academics’ professional skills training.

“Higher education social media policies need to catch up with the fact that this is going on,” Jordan said. “At the moment, the main incentive academics are offered for using social media is amplification: the idea that your research might go viral. We should be moving towards an institutional culture that focuses more on how these platforms can facilitate real engagement with research.”

The study is published in Postdigital Science and Education.

JOURNAL

Postdigital Science and Education

DOI

10.1007/s42438-021-00269-x

ARTICLE TITLE

Platforms and Institutions in the Post-Pandemic University: A Case Study of Social Media and the Impact Agenda

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Nov-2021

Researcher traces concept of taste in literature to 16th century

by University of Kansas

Turns out we can thank a guy named Bacon for the concept of "taste," as in properly discerning the relative value of cultural goods.

That is what Jonathan Lamb contends in a new article, "What Books Taste Like: Bacon and the Borders of the Book" in the journal Textual Cultures.

The University of Kansas associate professor of English argues that a key shift occurred with Francis Bacon's famous 1597 aphorism about eating books: "Some bookes are to bee tasted, others to bee swallowed, and some few to bee chewed and digested: That is, some bookes are to be read only in partes; others to be read, but cursorily, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention."

That's far earlier than the Oxford English Dictionary's citation for the earliest use of the word "taste" with the meaning of aesthetic discrimination. Indeed, writers for the next century would quote and adapt Bacon's line, Lamb said, a process that would culminate in a shift from "taste" in the sense of "to sample" to "taste" in the sense of discrimination and distinction.

This sort of tracing of trends in published word usage over time was made possible only recently and, in the case of the Early English Books Online database, with access that KU Libraries affords, Lamb said. The new article is based on research Lamb has been doing over the past two years for a book he has tentatively titled "How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare's England."

Lamb said he has been searching Early English Books Online "and finding the language of books anywhere I could. So when Bacon says some books are to be tasted, that's just one of about 5,000 examples I have collected of language like this. It includes things like 'the book of nature." People needed a way to talk about the natural world, and the book gave them a structured metaphor to do it. Another example is the phrase 'to turn over a new leaf." Most people today think it refers to a leaf on a tree, but it was a popular bookish metaphor in the 17th century."

Bacon's remark about tasting books struck a chord with his contemporary readers, Lamb said.

"What makes Bacon's version special," Lamb wrote, "is, first, that he crosses the idea of tasting as sample with the idea of eating as comprehension and, second, that dozens of writers repeated his line and used it as a prompt ... By rerouting the notion of taste from a quality of books to a faculty of readers ... Bacon opens the door for the modern notion of taste as aesthetic discrimination—what you mean when you say you have good 'taste' in music."

Lamb wrote that this led, nearly 75 years later, to the work of John Milton, cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as the first usage of this latter concept of taste.

Lamb wrote: "The OED calls this kind of taste 'a sense of what is appropriate, harmonious, or beautiful," specifically 'the faculty of perceiving and enjoying what is excellent in art, literature, and the like." The OED dates this notion of taste to 1671, in Milton's "Paradise Regained," which refers to "Sion's songs, to all true tasts excelling, Where God is prais'd aright.'"

Lamb said that Bacon deserves as least inspirational credit for the modern meaning of taste as refined sensibility.

More information: Jonathan P. Lamb (97–105), What Books Taste Like, Textual Cultures (2021). DOI: 10.14434/tc.v14i1.32841

Provided by University of Kansas

Bacon as Shakespeare — Shakespearean Authorship Trust

Did Sir Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's plays? – Historical articles and illustrationsHistorical articles and illustrations | Look and Learn

Baconian Evidence for Shakespeare Authorship (sirbacon.org)

Who Wrote Shakespeare? The Alternative Authorship Candidates (nosweatshakespeare.com)

batchelorlecture (sirbacon.org)

“Truth to tell, for three hundred years the world of Poesy and Dramatic Art has been obsessed by an UNCOUTH HALLUCINATION.
“Will not the spell be one day raised, or are we to see Titania, year after year, continuing to fondle so gross an ass, and crowning her vulgar joy with flowers and garlands?”
“Perhaps one ‘farre offe golden morning’ Titania will awake from her dreaming, and realise THAT FOR UPWARDS OF THREE CENTURIES SHE HAS DOATED ON A CLOWN.” Harold Bayley.

On Thursday afternoon, April 28th, 1910,

an Address entitled Francis Bacon wrote “Shakespeare”

was delivered by Mr. H. CROUCH BATCHELOR,

at 10, Wetherby Terrace, S. W., at a Sessional Meeting of THE LADIES’ GUILD OF FRANCIS ST. ALBAN. Mr. WILLIAM WRIGHT SPONG in the Chair.

Harnessing Thor's hammer: How forensic science is unlocking the mysteries of fatal lightning strikes

by Wits University

New research by scientists from South Africa and the U.K. could help forensic teams understand whether people or animals were the victims of fatal lightning strikes based solely upon an analysis of their skeletons. Their study is published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy, and titled "Harnessing Thor's Hammer: Experimentally induced lightning trauma to human bone by high impulse current."

Climate change is increasing and there is evidence to suggest the incidence and severity of thunderstorms and lightning strikes could increase. Sadly, fatal strikes are common on wild animals, livestock, and people—with African countries having some of the highest fatality rates in the world.

In South Africa, more than 250 people are killed annually by lightning, whereas 24, 000 people worldwide die each year. When a lightning death is suspected, the forensic pathologist determines cause of death by looking for signs of lightning-trauma to skin and organs of the deceased. However, when the body is skeletonised, soft tissues are absent and cause of death by lightning cannot be attributed.

This new research provides a tool to investigate cause of death when skeletonised remains are recovered as part of accident or death investigation.

According to Dr. Nicholas Bacci, Lecturer in the School of Anatomical Sciences at Wits University and lead author of the paper, "identifying a fatality caused by lightning strike is usually done though marks left on the skin, or damage to the internal organs—and these tissues don't survive when bodies decompose. Our work is the first research that identifies unique markers of lightning damage deep within the human skeleton and allows us to recognize lightning when only dry bone survives. This may allow us to recognize accidental death versus homicide in cases where cause is not apparent, whilst at the same time allowing us to build a more complete picture of the true incidence of lightning fatalities."

The research was undertaken as collaboration between specialists in forensic anthropology, anatomy, lightning physics, and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in South Africa, Northumbria University in the UK, and the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA).

The researchers generated artificial lightning in the laboratory, which was then applied directly to human bone, extracted from donated cadavers who had died of natural causes.

Dr. Hugh Hunt from the Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory (JLRL) at Wits University explains "we used equipment to generate high impulse currents in the lab, (up to 10,000 Amps), which mimicked the effect of lightning passing through the skeleton. Natural lightning can often have significantly higher peak currents but this allowed us to have much greater control over the experiment than trying to somehow place human tissue in the path of a natural lightning strike," says Hunt, a Senior Lecturer and Head of the JLRL in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering.

What the experiments showed was a pattern of damage to bone that was uniquely caused by short duration lightning current.

VIDEO Harnessing Thor's Hammer – How forensic science is unlocking the mysteries of fatal lightning strikes. Credit: Patrick Randolph-Quinney, Forensic Science Research Group, Northumbria University, Tanya Augustine & Nicholas Bacci, School of Anatomical Sciences, Wits University, and Hugh Hunt, Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory, Wits University

Senior author Dr. Patrick Randolph-Quinney, associate professor from the Forensic Science Research Group at Northumbria University, and the Center for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey at Wits University, explains, "Using high-powered microscopy we were able to see that there is a pattern of micro-fracturing within bone caused by the passage of lightning current. This takes the form of cracks which radiate out from the center of bone cells, or which jump irregularly between clusters of cells. The overall pattern of damage looks very different when compared to other high energy trauma, such as that caused by burning in fire."

"Even though this experiment was conducted under controlled conditions in the lab, we see the same trauma in animals killed by natural lightning. We were able to compare the human results with bone from a poor giraffe killed by lightning—and the pattern of trauma is identical even though the micro-structure of human bone is different from animal bone. This is the smoking gun that we were looking for in forensic lightning pathology," he adds.

Real-world problem

Notably, the research brought together different disciplines with a common focus on trying to understand the effects of lightning on the body, with the long-term aim of making the environment safer for those at risk of being killed by lightning.

Associate Professor Ken Nixon from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits University and member of the Board of Directors of the African Center for Lightning and Electromagnetics Network says, "This is a multi-disciplinary project, which highlights how forensic scientists can work with physicists and engineers to explore a real-world problem, which is implicated in the deaths of many people annually, and especially in countries such as South Africa, Zambia and Uganda."

"At a time when global climate change is driving increases in the number and severity of thunderstorms and lightning strikes, we need more research like this, bringing together different fields with real experience of dealing with lightning. Ultimately, our aim at Wits is to make our built environment and countryside safer for those exposed to the lethal effects of lightning energy in South Africa, and to provide life-saving knowledge for those around the globe who are increasingly put in harm's way of this natural phenomenon," he says.

This research would not have been possible without state-of-the-art imaging technologies based in the School of Anatomical Science in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits, and the micro-CT facility at the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa at Pelindaba.

"Researchers in South Africa are absolutely at the forefront of bringing together cutting-edge imaging methods to discover new and ground-breaking knowledge about the skeleton of modern and ancient humans," notes Dr. Tanya Augustine, an anatomist based at Wits Medical School, who co-led the research and is corresponding author on the paper.

"Over the last few years, teams at Wits and NECSA have unlocked the secrets of cancer in the hominin fossil record, provided evidence for cause of death in australopithecines, and now these techniques are allowing us to unlock the mysteries of fatal lightning strikes," she addsHow does positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike so far away from its origin?

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE PDF OF THE STUDY HERE

More information: Harnessing Thor's Hammer: Experimentally induced lightning trauma to human bone by high impulse current, Forensic Science International Synergy, DOI: 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2021.100206

Provided by Wits University

Local collaborators of war journalists are even more vulnerable due to the pandemic

by University of Amsterdam

They are indispensable in journalism, but their work is often overlooked: fixers, the locally-based collaborators who assist foreign war correspondents with their work. Since the outbreak of covid-19, these local contact persons, who are already in a vulnerable position, have come under extra pressure. That is the conclusion of media scholar Johana Kotisova in a paper that she recently presented during the Future of Journalism conference.

From Ukraine to Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip: wherever foreign reporters are active in conflict zones, they are largely dependent on the help of fixers. These locally-based media workers provide help, for example, through interpreting or translating, arranging accommodation and transport, and making contact with possible sources. Their knowledge of the local culture and infrastructure are indispensable to foreign correspondents.

Nevertheless, their important work is often overlooked, argues Johana Kotisova, who is researching the position and emotional strain on fixers and stringers (local freelance journalists). "People have great admiration for war correspondents, but a lot less attention is paid to the locals who assist them, even though they are playing an increasingly important role in journalism."

Danger and shrinking budgets

In recent years, journalism in conflict zones has relied more and more heavily on local collaborators. As a result of shrinking budgets, media organizations have less and less money available to station correspondents abroad and moreover the security situation for journalists has deteriorated in many regions. In order to continue being able to report on conflict zones, foreign media are making increasing use of the services of local fixers and stringers.

"Large media companies outsource risky work to vulnerable local media workers, who are often underpaid," says Kotisova.

Because of the coronavirus crisis, the role of local collaborators has become even more important, argues Kotisova in her paper. "Due to travel restrictions, many foreign journalists were no longer able to travel to conflict zones themselves and they relied on the reports from their local contact persons. As a result of that, many fixers started reporting directly and became de facto journalists themselves." This has given them more autonomy in an editorial sense, says Kotisova. "Above all, however, the pandemic has worsened an existing problem: that large media companies outsource risky work to vulnerable local media workers, who are often underpaid and can count on receiving little protection."

Fixers cannot escape

Irrespective of the pandemic, many fixers and stringers are faced with threats and violence in their work, which sometimes even results in death. They are often, for example, blamed for inappropriate or insensitive behavior of the foreign correspondents with whom they collaborate, says Kotisova. 'And in contrast to their foreign colleagues, local media workers are not able to flee by taking an airplane to their home country, because they are already there. They cannot go anywhere. A harrowing example of this is the current situation in Afghanistan, where interpreters and fixers who collaborated with Dutch journalists are now stuck and fear for their lives.' The dangers which fixers and stringers are exposed to create great emotional and mental strain. Moreover, these media professionals are in a vulnerable position in an economic sense, because they work freelance and are not employed by a media company.

"Fixers cannot flee to their home country, because they are already there. A harrowing example is the current situation in Afghanistan, where interpreters and fixers fear for their lives," says Kotisova.

Due to outbreak of the coronavirus, fixers and stringers are even more heavily burdened than normal, concludes Kotisova. She interviewed, among others, fixers in Ukraine and Israel/Palsestine about the consequences of the pandemic for their work and wellbeing. Many of them indicated that they were saddled with a whole range of extra duties, because they had to take over the journalistic work of foreign correspondents. That entailed additional pressure and risks. In addition, the isolation that arose from the pandemic, in combination with the already uncertain freelance existence, resulted in additional vulnerability among this group.

Insurance schemes and psychological help

Kotisova's research also reveals that the coronavirus has accelerated changes to international news gathering. Many media companies and correspondents intend to continue collaborating with fixers and stringers in conflict zones even after the pandemic. The researcher points out that this should, however, go hand in hand with a better position for local collaborators: "Now that media companies have started collaborating even closer with fixers and stringers, it is also their ethical duty to take care of them, instead of just their "Western" employees. Examples include protection and support in terms of insurance schemes, training courses and psychological help."

About the research project

In her project "Fixers, Stringers, and Foreign Crews: The distribution of risks and emotions in crisis reporting," Kotisova investigates the collaboration, emotions, and power relations among reporters, producers, fixers, and stringers working for foreign media in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine. The research is based on in-depth interviews with fixers, local producers, stringers, and foreign reporters. Its goal is to increase our knowledge and raise awareness on media workers' precarity and emotional labor and to contribute to more ethical global journalism.Journalism scholar team finds early foreign correspondents often came from socially less advantaged groups

More information: Project Website: fixersandjournalists.humanities.uva.nl/

Provided by University of Amsterdam

CANADIAN Study finds excess use of non-emergency restraint among older psychiatric patients

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

Restrictive interventions like acute control medications and restraints are more likely to be used in non-emergency situations among older psychiatric inpatients than younger ones, a study shows.

Researchers found a clear pattern of higher rates of these controls being used in older adults in Ontario psychiatric hospitals between 2005 and 2018.

“When considering non-emergency use of control interventions, this approach to care was most common in older adults, with the highest rates of restraint among the oldest-old,” said John Hirdes, a professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences and the study’s senior investigator.

The researchers examined 226,119 Ontario inpatient records during these years to determine how often older psychiatric inpatients are restrained in non-emergency situations compared to younger age groups, and to identify the factors associated with this non-emergency use in older psychiatric inpatients. They used data from the interRAI Mental Health assessment instrument—a comprehensive standardized assessment used routinely in psychiatric settings.

The rate for the oldest age group, 85 and over, was 1.6 times higher than among 45- to 64-year-olds (13.3 per cent compared to 8.3 per cent). Higher rates were also associated with being admitted from long-term care, being male, risk of falls, physical disability, and psychiatric symptoms. However, an important positive trend is the reduced use of restraints in older adults after the initiation of a province-wide quality improvement initiative that began in 2011.

“The use of control interventions is associated with many negative physical and psychological outcomes, particularly in older adults who are physically vulnerable,” Hirdes said. “Before resorting to these interventions, person-centred and non-pharmacological management strategies should be used to support older psychiatric inpatients with functional impairment, aggressive behaviour, cognitive impairment and delirium.”

Historically, nursing homes had rates as high as 64 per cent, but the inappropriate use of physical restraints and antipsychotics has dropped dramatically due to a different quality improvement focus, he said. Today, rates of physical restraint in Canadian nursing homes are below 5 per cent.

“Staff education and support programs could improve practice and ultimately protect older people from potential inappropriate treatment Hirdes said. “The use of control interventions in inpatient psychiatric units should be incorporated as a quality improvement activity to monitor changes at various service provision levels, and their use should be reported publicly as is already done in long-term care.”

The study, “Determinants of Non-emergency Use of Control Interventions in Older Canadian Psychiatric Inpatients: Analysing the InterRAI Mental Health Electronic Health Records,” was co-authored by Gary Cheung, Tina Mah, Yoram Barak and John Hirdes. It was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry