Food insecurity in First Nations

by University of Montreal

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Ten years in the making, a study co-led by a researcher at Université de Montréal warns that many First Nations face three to five times the rate of food insecurity than the Canadian population overall—especially families with children.

While the causes are many—environmental degradation, socioeconomic inequality, systemic and regulatory barriers, and more—the fact remains that healthy and traditional foods are in short supply in Canada's First Nations communities, according to the study.

Its findings, along with with recommendations for decision-makers, were released Oct. 21.

We asked Malek Batal, a professor in the nutrition department of UdeM's Faculty of Medicine and a Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Health Inequalities, to discuss the problem and his role in addressing it.

As a principal investigator, you worked with colleagues at the University of Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations to draft the First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study. Why did it take a decade to produce?

I came along in 2010 but the study had begun in 2008, spearheaded by Olivier Receveur at UdeM with other colleagues. We consulted with a lot of people: nearly 6,500 in all, from 92 First Nations across the country. And the story that emerged was incredibly complex but also astonishingly simple: everyone thinks traditional foods are better than store-bought ones, but getting proper access to them is incredibly difficult. That's one reason why nutrition is problematic on reserves—and the solution to it is by no means easy to come up with.

How do you and your co-authors of the FNFNES report recommend remedying the situation?

It's all set out in the nine-page report of findings and recommendations we just released, as well as in a new 20-page summary we prepared for eight AFN regions. In a nutshell, we say that traditional food is by and large very safe to consume and is by far healthier. However, many barriers exist between First Nations and their preferred food, including government regulations, industry and, most importantly, the increasing threat of climate change. We also point to the lack of sovereignty over food resources and health services in general.

What was your role specifically in drafting the FNFNES study and what did you learn in the process?

We're three principal investigators on the study: Laurie Chan from UofO, Tonio Sadik from the AFN and myself. I was responsible for the nutrition, food environment and food security aspects, while Laurie oversaw the environmental aspects (analysis of food samples for contaminants, as well as water samples for pharmaceuticals, and metals and hair for mercury), and Tonio and the AFN team ensured respectful and continuous engagement with First Nations.

We believe our study was pioneering in using First Nations Principles of OCAP (ownership, control, access, and possession) and insisting on a strong participatory approach. We learned that, for a successful research project, it is essential to engage the community fully and to identify community champions who are full partners of the research team. It is no longer a relationship of us (researchers) and them (the community) but us as university and community researchers working together.

Will there be a follow-up?

Yes, our core partners are collaborating on another multi-year research project called the Food, Environment, Health and Nutrition of First Nations Children and Youth (FEHNCY) study. Like the FNFNES, this study is being federally funded, in this case by the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Indigenous Services Canada. It's expected to take 10 years to complete. We have added biomonitoring to this study in partnership with colleagues from Université Laval as well as a housing component with colleagues from UofO and McGill University. The team is much larger this time around and the team at UdeM has expanded as well, as my colleague Geneviève Mercille is on board to more fully investigate the market food environment on reserve.

We will be looking at the relationships between the food environment, diet and health outcomes of children and youth. Because FNFNES showed us that food insecurity was higher in households with children, we will investigate further what influences food security has at the household level and how we can ensure that children and their parents enjoy this basic human righ—that is, sufficient good-quality food. We understand that this work is a great responsibility as it is highly sensitive and important for policy. For example, our team has been invited to testify in front of parliamentary committees on food security issues as a result of our findings with FNFNES and I believe First Nations partners also count on this work in their endeavor to improve food and health conditions on and off reserve.Largest-ever study published on First Nations food security and environment

More information: First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study: Key Findings and Recommendations for Decision-Makers, www.fnfnes.ca/docs/CRA/FNFNES_ … ions_20_Oct_2021.pdf

Provided by University of Montreal 

Poor diets imperilling people and the planet: report

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Nearly half the world's population suffer from poor nutrition linked to too much or not enough food, a global assessment said Tuesday with wide-ranging impacts on health and the planet.

The Global Nutrition Report (GNR), a yearly survey and analysis of the latest data on nutrition and related health issues, found that 48 percent of people currently eat either too little or too much—resulting in them being overweight, obese or underweight.

At current rates, the report finds, the world will fail to meet eight out of nine nutrition targets set by the World Health Organization for 2025.

These include reducing child wasting (when children are too thin for their height) and child stunting (when they are too short for their age), and also adult obesity.

The report estimates nearly 150 million children under five years old are stunted, more than 45 million are wasted and nearly 40 million are overweight.

It also finds more than 40 percent of adults (2.2 billion people) are now overweight or obese.

"Avoidable deaths due to poor diets have grown by 15 percent since 2010 and poor diets are now responsible for a quarter of all adult deaths," Chair of the GNR's Independent Expert Group Renata Micha told AFP.

"Our global findings show that our diets have not improved over the last ten years and are now a major threat to people's health and to the planet."

Foods matter

This year's GNR is the first to look at global diets and how food choices are affecting people and the planet.

It finds people are failing to consume enough health-promoting foods like fruits and vegetables, particularly in lower-income countries.

Higher-income countries had the highest intake of foods with harmful health impacts like red meat, dairy and sugary drinks.

Consumption of harmful foods is on the rise, the report found, with red and processed meat already at almost five times the maximum recommendation of one serving a week.

The report notes that current global nutrition targets do not mention diet, with the exception of limiting sodium, and recommends new, more holistic targets.

"The science supports a food-based approach or diet-pattern approach in assessing the impacts on health and the environment," Micha said.

In line with other estimates, the GNR calculated global food demand generated some 35 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018.

"Animal-source foods have generally higher environmental footprints per product than plant-based foods," the report said.

"Consequently, they were responsible for the majority of food-related greenhouse gas emissions and land use, with particularly large impacts from beef, lamb and dairy."

The report called for urgent funding to improve nutrition across the globe, particularly as COVID-19 has pushed an estimated additional 155 million people into extreme poverty.

The GNR estimates the nutrition spending will need to increase by nearly $4 billion annually until 2030 to meet stunting, wasting, maternal anaemia and breastfeeding targets alone.Healthier UK diets linked to lower greenhouse gas emissions

© 2021 AFP

How climate change goaded the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settlement and farming societies

by Tel-Aviv University

The prehistoric archaeological site Jordan River Dureijat ("Jordan River Stairs") on the 

shores of the Paleo Lake Hula. The prehistoric archaeological site Jordan River

 Dureijat ("Jordan River Stairs") on the shores of the Paleo Lake Hula.

 Credit: Prof. Gonen Sharon, Tel-Hai College

Based on the identification of plant remains, Tel Aviv University and Tel-Hai College researchers provide the first detailed reconstruction of the climate in the Land of Israel at the end of the last ice age (20,000-10,000 years before present). The researchers claim that significant climate changes characterizing the period, manifested by sharp differences in temperature and precipitation not only seasonally but throughout the year, were a significant influence in the transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer society to permanent settlement and an agricultural way of life. The study also provides the first information pertaining to the history of the region's flora and its response to past climate change. Against the backdrop of the Glasgow climate conference, the researchers believe that understanding the response of the region's flora to the dramatic past climate changes can help in preserving the regional variety of plant species and in planning for current and future climate challenges.

The research was conducted by Dr. Dafna Langgut of the Department of Archaeology and The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University; Prof. Gonen Sharon, Head of the MA Program in Galilee Studies at Tel-Hai College, and Dr. Rachid Cheddadi, expert in evolution and palaeoecology of University of Montpellier, Institute of Evolutionary Sciences (ISEM) Montpellier, France. The groundbreaking study was recently published in the leading scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

The study was conducted at the prehistoric archaeological site Jordan River Dureijat ("Jordan River Stairs") on the shores of the Paleo Lake Hula. The site is unique for its exceptional preservation conditions yielding finds that enabled discovery of the primary activity of its early local residents—fishing. Botanic remains preserved also enabled researchers to identify the plants that grew 10,000—20,000 years ago in the Hula Valley and its surroundings.

Dr. Dafna Langgut. Credit: Sasha Flit/Tel Aviv University

Two major processes in world history took place during this period: the transition from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle that occurs during a period of dramatic climate change. Prof. Sharon, supervisor of the Madregot Hayarden excavation, explains that "in the study of prehistory, this period is called the Epipalaeolithic period. At its outset, people were organized in small groups of hunter-gatherers who roamed the area. Then, about 15,000 years ago, we are witness to a significant change in lifestyle: the appearance of settled life in villages, and additional dramatic processes that reach their apex during the Neolithic period that followed. This is the time when the most dramatic change of human history occurred—the transition to the agricultural way of life that shaped the world as we know it today."

Dr. Dafna Langgut collecting sediment samples for fossil pollen investigation. 

Credit: Prof. Gonen Sharon, Tel-Hai College.

Dr. Langgut, an archaeobotanist specializing in identification of plant remains, elaborates on the second dramatic process of this period, the climatic changes that occurred in the region. "Although at the peak of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, the Mediterranean Levant was not covered with an ice sheet as in other parts of the world, the climatic conditions that existed nevertheless differed from those of today. Their exact characteristics were unclear until this study. The climatic model that we built is based on reconstruction of the fluctuation of the spread of plant species indicating that the main climatic change in our area is expressed by a drop in temperature (up to five degrees Celsius less than today), whereas the precipitation amounts were close to those of today (only about 50 mm less than today's annual average).

However, Dr. Langgut explains that about 5,000 years later, in the Epipalaeolithic period (about 15,000 years ago) a significant improvement in climate conditions can be seen in the model. An increased prevalence of heat-tolerant tree species, such as olive, common oak, and Pistacia, indicate an increase in temperature and precipitation. During this period, the first sites of the Natufian culture appear in our region. It could very well be that the temperate climate assisted in the development and flourishing of this culture, in which permanent settlement, stone structures, food storage facilities, and more first appear on the global stage.

The next stage of the study deals with the end of the Epipalaeolithic period, about 11,000-12,000 years ago, known globally as the Younger Dryas period. This period is characterized by a return to a cold, dry climate like that of the ice age, causing somewhat of a climate crisis around the world. The researchers claim that until this study, it was unclear whether and to what extent there was any expression of this period in the Levantine region.

Chart of Fossil pollen grains. Credit: Dr. Dafna Langgut

According to the researchers "the findings that arise from the climate model presented in the article show that the period was characterized by climatic instability, intense fluctuations, and a considerable drop in temperatures. Nevertheless, while reconstructing the precipitation, a surprising phenomenon was discovered: the average quantities of rainfall reconstructed were only slightly less than those of today; however, the precipitation was distributed over the entire year, including summer rains."

The researchers claim that such distribution assisted in the expansion and thriving of annual and leafy plant species. The gatherers who lived in this period now had a wide, readily available variety of gatherable plants throughout the entire year. This variety enabled their familiarity just before domestication. The researchers are of the opinion that these findings contribute to a new understanding of the environmental changes that took place on the eve of the transition to agriculture and domestication of animals.

Dr. Langgut concludes that "this study contributes not only to understanding the environmental background for momentous processes in human history such as the first permanent settlement and the transition to agriculture, but also provides information on the history of the region's flora and its response to past climatic changes. There is no doubt that this knowledge can assist in preserving species variety and in meeting current and future climate challenges."Sediments from lake in Japan reveal stable climate led to origin of agriculture

More information: Dafna Langgut et al, Climate and environmental reconstruction of the Epipaleolithic Mediterranean Levant (22.0–11.9 ka cal. BP), Quaternary Science Reviews (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107170

Journal information: Quaternary Science Reviews 

Provided by Tel-Aviv University 

How lighting affects office workers

by Eindhoven University of Technology

Experiments with different lighting situations (wall, desk and ceiling).

Credit: Eindhoven University of Technology

Although we usually do not realize this, lighting is an essential part of our daily lives. After all, without light, no sight. Next to enabling us to see safely and comfortably move from place A to B, lighting also has a large impact on how we perceive and appreciate spaces. Ph.D. student Adrie de Vries has investigated how lighting affects the experience and performance of knowledge workers in an open-plan office. He will defend his thesis on Wednesday 24 November at the departent of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences.

We all know the effect of bars or cafés who turn on the 'cleaning light' to signal the customers that the party is over, turning a space from a cozy bar, to a boring, unappealing space. Moreover, lighting has an impact on the synchronization of our biological clock. This is not something we notice directly, but considering that we spend more than 90 percent of our time indoor, 'shielding' ourselves from daylight, the office lighting can play a key role to provide an artificial (partial) alternative. But how does office lighting affect these different aspects?

Wall, desk and ceiling

To investigate this, Adrie de Vries used three separate experiments to analyze how office workers perceived and experienced different lighting effects on the wall, the desk and the ceiling respectively. He also tried to relate this to task performance of knowledge workers. Although these types of investigations are typically done in highly controlled and often unrealistic environments, he chose environments that closely mimicked realistic, multi-user offices to ensure that the findings would also be representative and applicable to real world cases.

First, the effect of lighting the wall was studied and was found to have a clear effect on how people experienced the space. Increasing the light level on the wall rendered not only a brighter but also a more attractive environment. Moreover, although he did not find any effects on task performance, people did feel more alert in the spaces with more light on the walls and they stayed more alert there as well.

In contrast, varying the amount of light on the desk (with a constant amount of light on the wall) mainly impacted how well people could read from paper, and how bright people perceived the space, but did not impact alertness, task performance, or the attractiveness of the office space.

For the ceiling illumination, he found an increase in attractiveness and brightness when more light was directed to the ceiling. Additionally, the spaces were judged more attractive when spreading the light more evenly over the ceiling.

Appreciative vs. indifferent

Another important finding was that not all participants were equally sensitive and appreciative to changes in brightness. Although people having different opinions of what they like is not new, the fact that the researcher could clearly separate them in a sensitive, appreciative group and an indifferent, mildly negative group, was a new and useful finding for future research.

Finally, De Vries investigated if he could predict the brightness perceptions of individuals with accurate measurements of the lighting. He found that measurements of specific parts of the field of view provided a reasonable prediction of how bright people would assess the space and that both the average and the contrast in the field of view mattered.

Integrative design and diversity

The researcher concludes that illuminating the walls, ceilings and desks can all result in brighter spaces, however, in this case, only lighting the walls and ceiling resulted in more attractive spaces. Additionally, lighting for example the walls can also support occupants in maintaining their alertness instead of becoming more sleepy. This shows that lighting does more than simply provide sufficient light to read, but also impacts how we experience spaces, and how we "feel."

Importantly though, although it was possible to draw several overall conclusions, we are dealing with a highly diverse workforce, which can and will have different requirements for their "great place to work."

Smart strategy can save open-plan offices up to 25 percent of energy on lighting

More information: Lighting up the 'great place to work': pure.tue.nl/ws/portalfiles/por … 0211124_Vries_hf.pdf

Provided by Eindhoven University of Technology 

Coal plants are closing faster than expected, governments can keep the exit orderly

by James Ha, Alison Reeve, The Conversation

Credit: Shutterstock

The international climate summit in Glasgow aimed to "consign coal power to history". But while some major coal-consuming countries have agreed to phase out the fossil fuel in the 2030s, Australia is not one of them.

Under its recently released plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the federal government modeled a scenario where the electricity sector still burns coal in 2050—but only a very small amount.

Despite the federal government's insistence on keeping coal alive, the states are making progress phasing it out. But a messy, state-by-state approach is almost certainly a higher-cost outcome for consumers than if Australia had a credible, enduring climate and energy policy at the national level.

As recent Grattan Institute analysis finds, if the phase out of coal is managed well, we can keep the lights on and slash emissions at low cost.

Coal economics don't suit today's grid

Australia exports far more coal than we consume. But we still have 25 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations, 23 of which produce power for the National Electricity Market (the NEM). These coal-fired power stations are aging—two-thirds of this capacity is scheduled to close by 2040.

Market conditions are making it hard for these plants to stay profitable, as renewable energy has flooded into the NEM in recent years. Rooftop solar has dramatically cut demand for grid-electricity in the middle of the day, effectively eating coal's lunch.

On days with abundant wind and sunshine, wholesale electricity prices routinely drop so low they become negative, financially penalizing any generators making power at those times.

What's more, coal-fired power stations are less flexible than batteries, hydroelectric dams, and responsive gas-fired generators. This makes it hard for coal plants to ramp up output when electricity prices are high, or ramp down when prices are low or negative.

The economics of coal-fired generators are simply not well-suited to a system with lots of solar and wind-powered electricity.

Coal stations shutting earlier than expected

Poor economics—combined with higher maintenance costs and increased risk of technical failure—make it difficult to justify keeping aging coal plants open.

So far this year, three coal-fired power stations have had their closure dates brought forwards: Yallourn in Victoria, and Eraring and Mt Piper in NSW.

Faster closure means less coal generation capacity in future years. For example, the early closures of Yallourn and Eraring will reduce the expected coal generation capacity in 2030 by 1.5 gigawatts.

But the current closure schedule would still leave at least six coal-fired power stations operating in Australia after 2040.

As noted by the CSIRO in July, this is incompatible with Australia pursuing the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century.

So what are the states doing?

South Australia closed its last coal-fired power station in 2016, and NSW is set to be next with the Mt Piper station due to close in 2040. That leaves Victoria and Queensland.

Victoria's Loy Yang A and B power stations use brown coal, making them some of the cheapest but most polluting plants to operate. Victoria has also legislated its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 and, by 2030, Victoria plans to use 50% renewable energy.

Pushing even more renewable energy into the state boosts the odds of the remaining coal-fired power stations leaving. In fact, the owners of each of the Loy Yang plants have hinted that their closure dates will come forward.

Queensland is more complicated, as it has Australia's youngest fleet of coal-fired power stations. Five of them are due to close after 2040.

But of those five, four are partly or fully owned by the Queensland government. That means the timing of their closures is as much a political as an economic question.

Queensland also boasts some of the best renewable resources in the country, including vast tracts of land suitable for renewable energy projects. Combined with its 50% renewable energy target by 2030, the state government has the levers it needs to pull coal-fired generation out of the system by 2040 or earlier.

We need strong, national policy

Grattan Institute analysis finds that a mostly renewable system with no coal—and only a limited role for gas—can maintain a reliable electricity supply while slashing emissions cheaply.

This is because the cost of wind and solar have plummeted, and energy storage such as batteries can help to smooth out daily fluctuations in demand and supply. For rare, sustained periods of high demand, low solar and low wind (which occur every few winters), gas is the lowest-cost backstop solution, at least until the economics of hydrogen become much better.

Achieving this outcome by 2040 or earlier will require significant, timely investment in the transmission network within and between states, allowing states to share their supplies and reducing the overall cost to consumers. Keeping a lid on the costs of transmission projects is also crucial—the risk of cost overruns is higher the more complex the project.

There will, of course, be challenges to ensure an orderly coal exit. For example, unexpected closures or breakdowns of coal plants can lead to shortages in electricity supply because investors in the electricity market don't have enough time to build new capacity.

A national policy to coordinate coal exit would reduce uncertainty for the electricity system.

Grattan has previously recommended coal plant operators nominate a window of time within which their plant will close, combined with a payment of at least $100 million into an escrow fund. The operators' money would be released only if the plant closes within its nominated window—if it exits unexpectedly, the money would be kept by the market operator to deal with any reliability problems.

Governments could also require that nominated closure windows occur before 2040, not after, if they want to achieve a coal-free NEM by that date. Alternatively—and more efficiently—they could establish an emissions standard for the NEM with tradeable certificates, allowing market participants to meet the emissions standard in the lowest cost way.

Unfortunately, current political reality indicates neither side of politics wants to be seen to support any policy resembling a carbon price, even though carbon pricing has the overwhelming support of Australian economists and the business community.

So, the renewable energy targets of the states are most likely to determine how quickly the NEM becomes coal-free. But if governments can muster the courage, our work shows that it's possible to achieve a vastly lower-emissions electricity system in less than two decades.Electricity has become a jigsaw and coal is unable to provide the missing pieces

Provided by The Conversation 

Shopping trolleys save shoppers money as pushing reduces spending, finds new study

by City University London

A standard shopping trolley with a horizontal handlebar—such as you would likely find in a

 supermarket—may result in less consumer spending than that of a shopping trolley with

 parallel bars—like that of a wheelbarrow. Credit: Bayes Business School

Shoppers are likely to save money in the run up to the holiday season if they use standard shopping trolleys, new research has found.

The study, led by Bayes Business School, explores how using the standard shopping trolley with a horizontal handlebar—such as you would likely find in a supermarket—activates the triceps muscle of the arm, whereas using a newly-designed trolley with parallel handles—like that of a wheelbarrow—activates the biceps muscle.

Psychology research has proven that triceps activation is associated with rejecting things we don't like—for example when we push or hold something away from us—while biceps activation is associated with things we do like—for example when we pull or hold something close to our body.

When testing the newly designed trolley on consumers at a supermarket, report authors Professor Zachary Estes and Mathias Streicher found that those who used shopping trolleys with parallel handles bought more products and spent 25 per cent more money than those using the standard trolley.

The findings indicate that retailers are likely to accumulate greater sales and profits by providing customers with shopping carts with parallel handles, while consumers are likely to exercise more control over their spending if they use the standard shopping trolley.

Whereas shoppers using the standard trolley spent an average of £22 in store, those with a parallel trolley spent £29 over the course of their visit—a difference of more than £7.

Interviews found that leading shopping trolley manufacturers had not previously considered using parallel handles on their carts and were surprised to know that the position of the handles was able to impact sales.

This weekend marks one of the busiest on the annual calendar, with Black Friday sales beginning in many stores on 26th November. Statistics show that UK consumers account for more than ten per cent of all global Black Friday searches online this year, with sales forecast to break records and surpass £9 billion over the course of the weekend.

Additionally, following a drop in in-person sales in 2020, because of the pandemic, offline Black Friday sales are expected to grow by 7.3 per cent in 2021, with an estimated £3.4 billion to be spent in stores.

It follows news last week that retail sales rose by 0.8 per cent in October in preparation for the festive season, 0.5 per cent above forecasted projections.

Professor Estes, a Professor in Marketing at Bayes Business School, said: "It is shocking to find that making a small change to the position of handles can have such a large impact on shoppers' spending. Indeed, the handles literally cause us to flex our shopping muscles.

"While Covid-19 heavily impacted Black Friday sales in 2020, we can expect stores to be overrun with consumers stocking up ahead of the festive season this coming weekend, yet it appears retailers are missing a trick if they are to boost their sales even further.

"Conversely, the results of this study may be very useful for consumers, with Christmas just around the corner. If shoppers want to minimize their shopping trips and buy their gifts in one go, they can flex their biceps to pull things into their cart. If they wish to minimize spending, standard shopping carts may act as a welcome and unexpected restraint to keep unnecessary purchases out of the cart."

The research was published in the Journal of Marketing.Amazon says 2020 shopping season has been their biggest ever with big Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales

More information: Zachary Estes et al, EXPRESS: Getting a Handle on Sales: Shopping Carts Affect Purchasing by Activating Arm Muscles, Journal of Marketing (2021). DOI: 10.1177/00222429211061367

Journal information: Journal of Marketing 

Provided by City University London 

Consumer activism poses a threat to brands using damaging ad campaigns

by University of Portsmouth

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Major brands risk losing wealth and power if they rely on old fashioned ideas in their advertising, thanks to the 'woke' generation calling them out.

A new study, led by Karen Middleton at the University of Portsmouth, found consumer activism against perceived dangerous portrayals of women—or any other group—posed a growing and serious threat to brands.

The study, published in Psychology & Marketing, examined the social media backlash against a KFC television advertisement showing boys ogling a woman's breasts.

Some consumers called it sexist and damaging, others defended it as "just a bit of fun."

The researchers say that in the wake of the #MeToo movement, brands risked losing market share if they brushed off 'socially aware' objections.

Middleton said: "Our findings show how necessary it is for brands to consider the wider impact of their advertising. They are increasingly up against a force of social activism which relies on well-argued rhetoric to call out anything seen as damaging to another group in society.

"Our study examined people's reactions to an advertisement by a global brand portraying a woman in a sexist way, but the same social activism could and often is rallied when advertisements use outdated tropes which are damaging to any vulnerable group, not just women."

She describes 'woke' as social activism on a grand scale.

She said: "There hasn't been a great deal of focus on the power of social activism on advertising, but it appears to be becoming a force to be reckoned with. It's not true that any publicity is good publicity—a complaint against any brand that then goes viral poses a serious risk to that brand's wealth and power.

"Consumers as activists are no longer a wild card; it's evident that the so-called woke generation is exercising its power to hold large and previously unassailable brands or organizations to account. This is a group of socially active and aware people who are increasingly intolerant of transgressions, particularly in relation to social justice.

"There's no longer any alternative for brands—if they hope to avoid being called out loudly on social media for contributing to social injustice, they need to consider the overall impact of what they say and do. If they are relying on old fashioned tropes, it's now much more likely they'll be called out."

Social media has given a global platform to anyone who wants to share their dissatisfaction or even do serious harm to a brand, as H&M, Peleton and Pepsi can all testify.

In each of those cases, the advertisements were swiftly withdrawn, but the costs have been high: Peleton's advertisement, seen by some as sexist, led to an overnight drop in brand value of more than £1 billion; H&M, accused of racism, has since hired a diversity director; Pepsi has been subject to a stream of memes and spoofs on social media for what was seen as a cultural misstep when it used a "privileged, white" model as a peacemaker between civil rights activists and police.

Middleton said: "The effect of social activism on advertising is under-examined. Despite sexism, racism or other offenses increasingly being called out, advertisers cannot turn to a body of research to learn from, and activism is swift and often highly damaging.

"In the case of sexism, as in the advertisement at the heart of our study, it has long been shown female sexual objectification can have a range of pernicious consequences, including the normalization of male aggression towards and belittling of women.

"Research has shown sexist content leads to both men and women having a diminished view of women's competence, morality and humanity. The same sexism applies to men in advertising, too, when they are portrayed as, for example, emotionally unintelligent or unable to control their impulses simply because they are male. These old-fashioned stereotypes do no one any favors."

The researchers examined thousands of tweets, Facebook posts, and news articles in the three weeks following the first airing of the advertisement. They found a well organized consumer protest at the advertisement alongside counter-arguments from consumers who were not offended by it.

Those who were not offended by the advertisement argued that gender stereotyping was 'just a bit of fun,' or 'normal behavior,' or that it was unfair to say to a boy who looks at breasts was committing violence against women.

Those who argued that it was sexist said the evidence had shown that images do influence people's behavior and attitudes. They said brands had a responsibility to be careful not to use harmful stereotypes or perpetuate archaic myths.

Woke washing: what happens when marketing communications don't match corporate practice

More information: Karen Middleton et al, How consumers subvert advertising through rhetorical institutional work, Psychology & Marketing (2021). DOI: 10.1002/mar.21612

Provided by University of Portsmouth 

Pentagon creates new office to probe UFO reports

An image from of US military pilot's sighting of an "unidentified aerial phenomena" that 

 some think is evidence of UFOs.

The Pentagon is creating a new office to investigate unidentified flying objects amid concerns that after broad probes it cannot explain mysterious sightings near highly sensitive military areas.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, working with the US director of national intelligence, ordered the new investigatory body to be established in the US Defense Department's intelligence and security office, the Pentagon said late Tuesday.

The order came five months after a classified US intelligence report on possible alien UFOs came up inconclusive: it could explain some reported incidents but was unable to account for other phenomena, some filmed by pilots near military testing areas.

The new office will focus on incidents in, or near, designated "special use airspace" (SUA) areas strictly controlled and blocked from general aviation due to security sensitivities.

The US military is worried some of the unidentified aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots in the past may represent technologies of strategic rivals unknown to US scientists.

"Incursions by any airborne object into our SUA pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The Defense Department "takes reports of incursions—by any airborne object, identified or unidentified—very seriously, and investigates each one," it added.

The new office was dubbed the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), the successor to the US Navy's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

It will be overseen by a panel of experts from the military and intelligence community.

A mostly classified official review of UFO reports released in June determined that most of around 120 incidents over the past 20 years could be explained and had nothing to do with unknown or secret US or foreign technology.

But it could not explain some beguiling reports and videos made by military personnel.

Last year, the Pentagon released a still inexplicable video taken by navy pilots of objects moving at incredible speeds, spinning and mysteriously disappearing.

China's July test of a globe-circling hypersonic vehicle that was able to launch a separate missile while traveling at more than five times the speed of sound alerted Washington that Beijing might have technologies the United States has yet to develop.

Evidence on UFOs 'largely inconclusive': US intelligence report

© 2021 AFP

Robots in Europe vote for the radical right

by Bocconi University

Robots in Europe vote for the radical right. Credit: Bocconi University

Exposure to automation led to an increase in support for radical-right parties in Western European countries between the late 1990s and 2016, according to a newly published study byBocconi professors Massimo Anelli, Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig. They find that individuals that, due to their characteristics and to those of the labor market in which they are inserted, are more exposed to the automation shock are significantly more likely to vote for a radical right party. The observed difference in vote for the radical right between individuals at the 25th percentile in terms of exposure to automation, and individuals at the 75th percentile is 3.5 percentage points—a very strong effect if we consider that the average support for the radical right in the sample is around 5%.

In regions with an average difference between high- and low- exposure individuals, such as Lombardy (Italy) in 2006, persons with the highest and the lowest automation exposure are expected to differ by more than 3 percentage points in their probability of supporting a radical right party. Where the industrial composition and the pace of robot adoption induce larger differences in exposure across individuals (for instance, the North region of France in 2002, one of the most unequal/polarized in terms of exposure) the gap rises to up to 6.5 points. In addition, the authors document that individual exposure to the automation shock leads to poorer perceived economic conditions, lower likelihood of having a permanent contract, and lower satisfaction with the government and democracy. Importantly, the relationship between vulnerability to automation on the labor market and support for the radical right is estimated net of the effects of other known correlates of support for this type of party, such as opposition to immigration, traditionalism, or perception of a threat to one's social status.

The study "Individual Vulnerability to Industrial Robot Adoption Increases Support for the Radical Right" is newly published in PNAS.

The authors use data from the European Social Survey and the EU Labor Force Survey. They propose a measure of exposure to robot adoption that combines several pieces of information: the occupational composition of labor markets in European regions prior to the recent surge of robotization; measures of the automatability of each occupation; the skill level of individuals; their demographic characteristics; and the pace of robot adoption in a given country at a given point in time. Professors Colantone and Stanig previously studied the rise of economic nationalism in Europe and had so far highlighted the role played by globalization and import competition. With this paper, they shed light on an additional explanatory factor in the recent success of nationalist and radical-right parties in Europe: robot adoption. As highlighted by Prof. Colantone, although globalization and automation "increase economic growth and contribute to the progress of our economy and society, these are facets of structural change that determine distributional consequences: put simply, winners and losers. This generates a political backlash. In particular, our studies show that the losers of globalization and automation tend to display similar reactions in terms of voting." Yet, when it comes to automation Prof. Colantone sees a silver lining. Indeed, while import competition from emerging markets led to the decline of entire industrial districts, automation has helped firms to develop: "Firms that are adopting robots are the dynamic firms, they are successful, so at least in principle they are producing resources that can be used to finance redistribution policies and the restructuring of regional economies. So, we can be optimistic in that sense."

Robots in Europe vote for the radical right. Credit: Bocconi University

Companies' adoption of robots is partly due to shortages in middle-aged labor

More information: Massimo Anelli et al, Individual vulnerability to industrial robot adoption increases support for the radical right, 

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by Bocconi University