It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Amazon feature has Alexa speaking in voice of late relative
Whether you find it comforting or creepy rather depends on your disposition, but Amazon has found a way to get Alexa to speak in the voice of anyone — including a deceased relative.
The feature was explained by Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for the Alexa team, during Amazon’s Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, June 22.
Prasad said engineers had deployed A.I. technology to create a way for its digital assistant to mimic a voice after listening to “less than a minute” of recorded audio of the person speaking, while before hours of studio recordings would’ve been required.
In a demonstration video played at the event, a child says, “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me The Wizard of Oz?” After acknowledging the child’s request in its usual voice, Alexa began speaking in a voice very similar to that of the child’s grandmother.
Prasad said engineers are still working on improving what is essentially a deepfake feature, and declined to say when Amazon might release it so that interested customers can get long-gone Grandad back up and running.
If raising the dead seems a bit much, you could also get Alexa to speak in the voice of someone living, such as your child, brother, sister, mom, dad, best buddy, or even yourself.
But at Wednesday’s event, Prasad highlighted the fact that the feature could be used to retain the memory of a loved one who has passed away, noting how many people have lost special people during the pandemic.
“While A.I. can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make the memories last,” he said.
The feature is one step away from enabling people to have natural and meaningful conversations with the dearly departed that include opinions and references to past events linked to that person, similar to an early Black Mirror episode (Be Right Back, season 2) where a woman is able to communicate with her late partner through messaging.
Amazon has made a small move toward this with Alexa’s Conversation Mode, which is aimed at offering more natural voice experiences with the digital assistant. Marry this with the voice of a deceased relative, and feed in some personality data for Amazon’s A.I. to process, and science fiction could soon become science fact.
Researchers Are Figuring Out Why Some People Can 'Hear' Voices of The Dead
Scientists have identified the traits that may make a person more likely to claim they hear the voices of the dead.
According to research published in 2021, a predisposition to high levels of absorption in tasks, unusual auditory experiences in childhood, and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations all occur more strongly in self-described clairaudient mediums than the general population.
The finding could help us to better understand the upsetting auditory hallucinations that accompany mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, the researchers say.
The Spiritualist experiences of clairvoyance and clairaudience – the experience of seeing or hearing something in the absence of an external stimulus, and attributed to the spirits of the dead – is of great scientific interest, both for anthropologists studying religious and spiritual experiences, and scientists studying pathological hallucinatory experiences.
In particular, researchers would like to better understand why some people with auditory experiences report a Spiritualist experience, while others find them more distressing, and receive a mental health diagnosis.
"Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences which are positive, start early in life and which they are often then able to control," explained psychologist Peter Moseley of Northumbria University in the UK when the study first came out.
"Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about distressing or non-controllable experiences of hearing voices too."
He and his colleague psychologist Adam Powell of Durham University in the UK recruited and surveyed 65 clairaudient mediums from the UK's Spiritualists' National Union, and 143 members of the general population recruited through social media, to determine what differentiated Spiritualists from the general public, who don't (usually) report hearing the voices of the dead.
Overall, 44.6 percent of the Spiritualists reported hearing voices daily, and 79 percent said the experiences were part of their daily lives. And while most reported hearing the voices inside their head, 31.7 percent reported that the voices were external, too. The results of the survey were striking.
Compared to the general population, the Spiritualists reported much higher belief in the paranormal and were less likely to care what other people thought of them.
The Spiritualists on the whole had their first auditory experience young, at an average age of 21.7 years, and reported a high level of absorption. That's a term that describes total immersion in mental tasks and activities or altered states, and how effective the individual is at tuning out the world around them.
In addition, they reported that they were more prone to hallucination-like experiences. The researchers noted that they hadn't usually heard of Spiritualism prior to their experiences; rather, they had come across it while looking for answers.
In the general population, high levels of absorption were also strongly correlated with belief in the paranormal - but little or no susceptibility to auditory hallucinations. And in both groups, there were no differences in the levels of belief in the paranormal and susceptibility to visual hallucinations.
These results, the researchers say, suggest that experiencing the 'voices of the dead' is therefore unlikely to be a result of peer pressure, a positive social context, or suggestibility due to belief in the paranormal. Instead, these individuals adopt Spiritualism because it aligns with their experience and is personally meaningful to them.
"Our findings say a lot about 'learning and yearning'. For our participants, the tenets of Spiritualism seem to make sense of both extraordinary childhood experiences as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing mediums," Powell said when the study was published.
"But all of those experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if one tries hard enough."
Future research, they concluded, should explore a variety of cultural contexts to better understand the relationship between absorption, belief, and the strange, spiritual experience of ghosts whispering in one's ear.
Check your phone. Are there any unanswered texts, snaps or direct messages that you're ignoring? Should you reply? Or should you ghost the person who sent them?
Ghosting happens when someone cuts off all online communication with someone else, and without an explanation. Instead, like a ghost, they just vanish. The phenomenon is common on social media and dating sites, but with the isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic—forcing more people together online—it happens now more than ever.
To address these questions, my research team recruited 76 college students through social media and on-campus flyers. The sample is 70% female. Study participants signed up for one of 20 focus groups, ranging in size from two to five students. Group sessions lasted an average of 48 minutes each. Participants provided responses to questions asking them to reflect on their ghosting experiences. Here's what we found.
The results
Some students admitted they ghosted because they lacked the necessary communication skills to have an open and honest conversation—whether that conversation happened face to face or via text or email.
From a 19-year-old female: "I'm not good at communicating with people in person, so I definitely cannot do it through typing or anything like that."
From a 22-year old: "I do not have the confidence to tell them that. Or I guess it could be because of social anxiety."
Millions have been ghosted by romantic partners, friends or potential employers.
In some instances, participants opted to ghost if they thought that meeting with the person would stir up emotional or sexual feelings they were not ready to pursue: "People are afraid of something becoming too much … the fact that the relationship is somehow getting to the next level."
Some ghosted because of safety concerns. Forty-five percent ghosted to remove themselves from a "toxic," "unpleasant" or "unhealthy" situation. A 19-year-old female put it this way: "It's very easy to just chat with total strangers so [ghosting is] like a form of protection when a creepy guy is asking you to send nudes and stuff like that."
One of the least-reported yet perhaps most interesting reasons for ghosting someone: protecting that person's feelings. Better to ghost, the thinking goes, than cause the hurt feelings that come with overt rejection. An 18-year-old female said ghosting was "a little bit politer way to reject someone than to directly say, "I do not want to chat with you.'"
That said, recent data suggests that U.S. adults generally perceive breaking up through email, text or social media as unacceptable, and prefer a person-to-person conversation.
And then there's ghosting after sex.
In the context of hookup culture, there's an understanding that if the ghoster got what they were looking for—often, that's sex—then that's it, they no longer need to talk to that person. After all, more talk could be interpreted as wanting something more emotionally intimate.
According to one 19-year-old female: "I think it's rare for there to be open conversation about how you're truly feeling [about] what you want out of a situation. … I think hookup culture is really toxic in fostering honest communication."
But the most prevalent reason to ghost: a lack of interest in pursuing a relationship with that person. Remember the movie "He's Just Not That Into You"? As one participant said: "Sometimes the conversation just gets boring."
The consequences
Attending college represents a critical turning point for establishing and maintaining relationships beyond one's family and hometown neighborhood. For some emerging adults, romantic breakups, emotional loneliness, social exclusion and isolation can have potentially devastating psychological implications.
Breaking up is hard to do.
Our research supports the idea that ghosting can have negative consequences for mental health. Short term, many of those ghosted felt overwhelming rejection and confusion. They reported feelings of low self-worth and self-esteem. Part of the problem is the lack of clarity—not knowing why communication abruptly stopped. Sometimes, an element of paranoia ensues as the ghostee tries to make sense of the situation.
Long term, our study found many of those ghosted reported feelings of mistrust that developed over time. Some bring this mistrust to future relationships. With that may come internalizing the rejection, self-blame and the potential to sabotage those relationships.
However, just over half the participants in our study said being ghosted offered opportunities for reflection and resilience.
"It can be partly positive for the ghostee because they can realize some of the shortcomings they have, and they may change it," said an 18-year-old female.
As for the ghoster, there were a range of psychological consequences. About half in the focus groups who ghosted experienced feelings of remorse or guilt; the rest felt no emotion at all. This finding is not entirely surprising, given that individuals who initiate breakups generally report less distress than the recipients.
Also emerging from our discussions: The feeling that ghosters may become stunted in their personal growth. From a 20-year-old male: "It can [become] a habit. And it becomes part of your behavior and that's how you think you should end a relationship with someone. … I feel like a lot of people are serial ghosters, like that's the only way they know how to deal with people."
Reasons for ghosting out of fear of intimacy represent an especially intriguing avenue for future research. Until that work is done, universities could help by providing more opportunities for students to boost confidence and sharpen their communication skills.
This includes more courses that cover these challenges. I am reminded of a psychology class I took as an undergraduate at Trent University that introduced me to the work of social psychologist Daniel Perlman, who taught courses about loneliness and intimate relationships. Outside the classroom, college residential life coordinators could design seminars and workshops that teach students practical skills on resolving relationship conflicts.
In the meantime, students can subscribe to a number of relationship blogs that offer readers research-based answers. Just know that help is out there—even after a ghosting, you're not alone.
This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of the Milky Way. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this glittering scene using its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars. As this image demonstrates, the hearts of globular clusters are densely packed with stars. Terzan 9 is dotted with so many glittering stars that it resembles a sea of sequins, or a vast treasure chest crammed with gold.
This starry snapshot is from a Hubble program investigating globular clusters located toward the heart of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way's central region holds a tightly packed group of stars known as the galactic bulge, which is rich in interstellar dust. This dust makes globular clusters near the galaxy's center difficult to study, as it absorbs starlight and can even change the apparent colors of stars in these clusters. Hubble's sensitivity at both visible and infrared wavelengths allows astronomers to measure how star colors change due to interstellar dust. Knowing a star's true color and brightness allows astronomers to estimate its age, and thereby estimate the globular cluster's age.
Distilling liquor might be a relatively simple process—heating a fermented liquid and keeping only the boiled alcohol—but it is dangerous and illegal without a license.
To extract only alcohol from a mixture of many ingredients, scientists must explore boiling points and the intermolecular forces that shape them:
Gun violence policy is focusing on mental health but Federal records still lack some states
by Nick Penzenstadler
Credit: CC0 Public Domain/Pixabay
Federal officials say the FBI's database of people prohibited from purchasing firearms only works if it has "complete, accurate and timely information."
Mental health records are a key prong in the system. But three states—New Hampshire, Montana and Wyoming—still refuse to submit them.
As U.S. Senators iron out gun reform initiatives, many Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas have repeatedly pointed to legislation that stops people with criminal records or mental health challenges from obtaining firearms.
Cornyn backed a 2018 bill that sought to shore up the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, in the wake of a Texas church shooting that left 27 dead. The fatalities included the gunman, an Air Force airman, whose criminal records that would have barred him from purchasing guns had not been submitted to NICS.
"For years, agencies and states haven't complied with the law, failing to upload these critical records without consequence," Cornyn said while celebrating the "Fix NICS" solutions that pushed for faster and more accurate submissions. "Just one record that's not properly reported can lead to tragedy."
President Donald Trump signed that bill, which has pumped $615 million into states to close loopholes and shore up reporting into the FBI's system.
States have made significant progress reporting into the database of 26 million records, including for 6.9 million people found by a judge to be mentally ill.
Without state laws mandating participation, Montana and Wyoming have submitted 36 and 17 mental health records respectively. New Hampshire has submitted 657. By comparison, Hawaii—with about the same population as New Hampshire—has submitted nearly 10,000 mental health records.
Records from the three states' government-run mental health facilities show that many hundreds more people have been involuntarily committed—all of whom should have been submitted into NICS.
History of this program
The national background check system was established as part of the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Gun stores, pawn shops and others licensed dealers nationwide must use it when someone wants to purchase a firearm.
Prospective gun buyers must fill out a form from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives attesting to certain questions, then their name is run through the FBI system.
The FBI says more than 300 million checks have been made over time, leading to more than 2 million denials.
Holes in the mental health reporting system gained attention in 2007 after a shooting at Virginia Tech left 32 dead. Two years earlier, a court had found the student shooter "an imminent danger to self or others" after he was accused of stalking two female classmates, resulting in temporary detention that should have disqualified him from purchasing firearms.
At the time, only about half of the states reported mental health records to NICS. By 2012, that number had shrunk to about 19 states that reported fewer than 100 records and by 2014 it fell to eight. In 2016, it fell to four until Alaska increased its reporting.
"We know that a background check is only as good as the records it contains, so efforts to improve reporting of records into NICS are critical for public safety," said Kelly Drane, research director with Giffords Law Center, a gun violence prevention group. "Research has shown that as states improve reporting of prohibiting mental health events into the background check system, we see a reduced risk of violent crime arrest for individuals that are prohibited."
The "Fix NICS" law written by Cornyn and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy was dubbed a "baby step" by gun control advocates, but won the support of both large gun lobbies, the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation continues to lobby in New Hampshire, Montana and Wyoming to tighten up the reporting.
"We are committed to ensuring the background check system reflects the most accurate data available," said Mark Oliva, the foundation's spokesman.
Strange bedfellows continue
Efforts to broaden background checks to be "universal"—applying to private sales—have failed to pass at both state and federal levels. But gun rights lobbyists and gun safety groups both have coalesced around strengthening NICS.
Opposition to doing so has created some "strange bedfellows," said Susan Stearns, executive director of the New Hampshire branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Stearns' group opposed a measure in 2017 to report mental illness to NICS, largely because it did not include a way to get off the list.
The alliance's "position has always been: If they're a danger to themselves or others, they should be prevented from accessing lethal means, period," Stearns said. "But you shouldn't lose Constitutional rights for your lifetime."
Stearns said people in a mental health crisis often recover yet could be permanently prevented from participating in shooting sports and hunting.
New Hampshire officials submit court records for anyone deemed incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, but not those who are involuntarily committed to a health facility.
The alliance was lukewarm about a bill by former Democratic state Sen. Margie MacDonald in Montana, too, even though her bill included a pathway to be removed from the list after five years.
MacDonald tried in 2014 and again in 2019 to pass a bill requiring that the records be submitted. Ultimately, she said Republican opposition fueled by hardline gun rights groups in the state sunk her effort.
"It's disheartening, dismaying and very dangerous," she said.
MacDonald hosted a Virginia Tech victim's father for a 2014 hearing in Helena, Montana. The mother of a woman killed in 2008 by a man who purchased a firearm just days after being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital testified as well. He had lied on the ATF's form, answering "no" to whether he had ever been found to be mentally ill.
Lying on the form can prompt fines and up to 10 years in prison.
Data released to the Washington Post from the Department of Justice shows that cases tied to lying on the form are exceedingly rare: 243 in the fiscal year 2020, out of millions of checks.
In Wyoming, former Rep. Sara Burlingame, D-Cheyenne, sponsored an effort in 2019 to mandate NICS mental health reporting that also failed. She said she faced "top-notch misinformation testimony" from groups like the Wyoming Gun Owners backed by the Dorr Brothers.
Burlingame said Wyoming's ranking as the worst place for suicides per capita is reason enough to keep firearms away from people in crisis.
"This is tied to older white men, isolated and having access to firearms," Burlingame said. "If that doesn't inspire people to create a culture that preserves our cultural right to firearms and moral obligations, I don't know what will.
As Australia continues to take on refugees from Ukraine, education experts are calling for essential supports as new research from the University of South Australia shows that rural and regional schools can be under-resourced and ill-prepared to support refugee children and their families.
In a review published in the International Journal of Inclusive Education, UniSA researcher Jennifer Brown found that rural schools are key sites of support for refugee students and their families, but too often operate in racialized communities that are unfamiliar with diverse student needs.
She says Australia's policy of settling refugees into rural areas must be accompanied with thoughtful, timely, and relevant access to professional learning for staff.
"In Australia and around the world, refugee resettlement policy favors a 'dispersal' approach, where refugees are settled into rural and regional locations as a means of extending populations from metropolitan centers and rejuvenating rural locations," Brown says.
"Rural schools are on the front line of resettling refugees, yet many schools feel under-supported and uncertain about how best to help. So, while current policies are dispersing refugees across rural areas, they're not accounting for, nor proving appropriate support to schools, services, and communities.
"Consequently, refugee children and families are not receiving appropriate help or support. Worse still, many face racialized attitudes from within the community, views that are often mirrored in schools."
Brown's study is located within a broader Australian Research Council Linkage Project examining how schools foster refugee student resilience. Under the leadership of UniSA researchers including refugee education expert Dr. Melanie Baak, the project examines the schooling policies, structures and practices that will enable resilience and success for refugee students.
Dr. Baak, says that to create change, policymakers must better understand the nuances of regional and rural communities and help them welcome refugees.
"Understanding the unique needs and strengths of refugee-background students and their families is central to enabling schools to support these new populations," Dr. Baak says.
"Unless communities are properly educated and aware of the benefits of diversity and the plight of refugees, we will continue to deliver sub-optimal services.
"Appropriate resourcing for rural schools is a starting point, but training and opportunities for intercultural learning and engagement must also occur within communities if we are really to deliver change."Motivating public engagement for at risk groups: The case of refugees
More information: Jennifer L. Brown, Educating in the context of 'Dispersal': rural schools and refugee-background students, International Journal of Inclusive Education (2022). DOI: 10.1080/13603116.2022.2041112
The concern that media access may be harmful to children and adolescents has been a topic of public debate since long before the existence of the smartphone.
This debate has picked up pace with the increased use of digital technology. The researcher Jean Twenge, for example, wrote a book in 2014 that would become very influential, in which she argued that smartphones contribute toward lowering the quality of life of adolescents.
A new study published in New Media & Society indicates that this is incorrect.
"We actually find the opposite, that is to say a positive correlation between the self-reported quality of life of adolescents and the amount of time they spend online," says Niamh NÃ Bhroin, Media Researcher at the University of Oslo.
Together with Elisabeth Staksrud, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Oslo, NÃ Bhroin participates in the European research project "Youth Skills."
The objective of the project is to facilitate a conversation between researchers and decision-makers about so-called digital exclusion and how this is linked to vulnerability and digital skills. One key question relates to what the concept of good digital skills encompasses.
Happy young internet users
The basis for this new study is that Norwegian children and adolescents spend the most time online in all of Europe, while also scoring the highest when reporting how happy they are with life. This is one of the conclusions from the study EU Kids online in 2018.
In the new analysis, published in the journal New Media & Society, NÃ Bhroin and her colleagues take a closer look at how time online is linked to how children and adolescents feel.
They look at both how time online influences self-reported quality of life, and the factors that affect the relationship between the two. This includes what children spend time doing online, including social media and games, but also social factors such as family, school and socioeconomic status.
The researchers have adjusted for factors such as age and gender. They then investigate how these different factors can influence how happy children are with life in the context of how much time they spend online. Researchers have only done this to a limited extent in the past.
Family and school more important than the number of hours
1,001 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 16 were interviewed.
The results indicate that family circumstances, for example whether there are strict rules about screen time or whether time is spent facilitating and discussing how children use digital media, influence quality of life.
"Our findings indicate that for children with a supportive family and school environment, a high number of screen hours is a positive rather than a negative thing when it comes to a good quality of life," says NÃ Bhroin.
'Screen time' has become a catch-all term
So how is it that the contentious screen time is not as harmful to children and adolescents as many feared?
"We think this is because 'screen time' is often used as a catch-all term for everything children and adolescents do online. Since the use of digital media is so integrated into the everyday lives of children and adolescents, the term now covers a lot," NÃ Bhroin notes and elaborates:
"Digital tools are used to communicate with friends and family, for entertainment and for education. It is likely that too much focus on the negatives and possible risks, rather than harmful effects, help dampen the focus on the real extent of the positive day-to-day experiences children and adolescents generally have online."
According to the researchers, this means that it is time to take a broader look at the vulnerabilities of children and adolescents when it comes to online use.
What makes children and adolescents vulnerable online?
"We know from previous research that the degree of media influences in various situations is linked to several other factors, such as personality, attitudes, social circumstances and cognitive and emotional development," says Elisabeth Staksrud.
"This means that people can react differently to the same content."
She believes that there are reasons to think that this also applies to online use. One of the goals of the Youth Skills project is to identify what makes you vulnerable online and what skills can help reduce such vulnerability.
"If you have negative experiences online, for example in connection with unwanted sexual communication, this could contribute to lowering your quality of life," she explains.
"But there might be ways in which this can be managed in order to reduce the risk of harm. We therefore need to learn more about such mechanisms."
Who is most susceptible to experiences like these and how can they become less vulnerable have now become essential research questions.
Broader understanding of digital skills
"One of the things we are hoping for is to learn more about how children and adolescents understand and develop digital skills," Staksrud says.
"But this will likely involve broadening the way in which we understand digital skills," she adds.
"No complete agreement exists about what digital skills are, but it is often understood as technical skills. As researchers, we need to ask critical questions about this. We are therefore investigating this phenomenon in a broad sense, and perhaps we will find that it also covers completely different things, such as social skills and mental resilience."Children's mental health and the digital world: How to get the balance right
More information:Tijana Milosevic et al, Time spent online and children's self-reported life satisfaction in Norway: The socio-ecological perspective,New Media & Society(2022).DOI: 10.1177/14614448221082651
Whitby, North Yorkshire, U.K. Credit: David Hawkes/Unsplash
A new Charitable Journalism Project report—Local News Deserts in the UK—examines the effects of the collapse of local news through the eyes of people in seven places across Britain.
Lead researcher Dr. Steven Barclay, from City, University of London's Department of Journalism, shows that years of economic instability, corporate acquisitions and hollowing out of newsrooms have weakened social cohesion and local accountability.
Democratic participation and access to justice have suffered.
The report's six main findings are:
Social media are now the dominant channels of local news and information
Social media can cause local division and be a source of misinformation
Local newspapers are no longer perceived as "community glue"
There is a lack of knowledge of local affairs that is linked to a dearth of local reporting
There is evidence of democratic disenchantment and apathy
The report, co-authored with Professor Steven Barnett, Dr. Martin Moore and Dr. Judith Townend, gives concrete examples of several shocking issues affecting democracy:
Local newspapers no longer act as "community glue." That has meant a drop in social cohesion and the lack of reliable information has driven an uptick in distrust among communities [Sections 2, 3 and 5]
National institutions and local public services—including the NHS, police, education and the environment—were thought to be both under-reported and misrepresented [Section 4]
There was widespread lack of awareness among respondents about how the NHS is organized locally, and it was reported that key services such as the NHS was "reluctant" to be scrutinized [pp. 16–17]
Digital poverty and poor new-media literacy drives vulnerability to misinformation for those in poverty, disabled people and the elderly [Section 2]
The average size of a police force communications team regionally is 20, often rivaling or outweighing the number of active journalists in a region [p. 17]
The BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporter scheme helps but positions are poorly paid and, even in the highly competitive journalism job market, one LDR position (in Northamptonshire) had been open for more than a year [p. 16]
Overwhelmingly, respondents wanted a rejuvenation of trustworthy, democracy-supporting local news [Section 6].
The report launch took place at the House of Commons on 15 June 2022 (chaired by Baroness Bonham Carter, with an invited audience of journalists and interested parties), with a news report subsequently appearing in The Guardian.
Dr. Barclay told the newspaper that a frequent complaint in "news deserts" was that local journalists on mainstream outlets no longer based themselves in the beat they covered.
He gave the example of the Whitby Gazette, which used to have a strong presence in the Yorkshire seaside town [pictured] but has now closed its office there.
He said: "Whitby was a really classic example of a newspaper that was very widely read within the town and was part of its identity. People identified with the Gazette—they said they knew the editor of the Gazette and drank with him in the pub."
Dr. Barclay noted that numerous people interviewed for the study were acutely aware of—and saddened by—the demise or decline of local news outlets.
"What I found in my research is people wanted a trusted source of local news and information that's both professional and authentically local," he said.
"People don't necessarily want their local news to be big stories—they want scrutiny of local government but they also want stories about the local fete and the primary school reopened and make them feel happy about the place where they live."Problem of local news deserts is widespread, study finds
Arizona wildfire near Kitt Peak observatory 40% contained
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
A lightning-caused wildfire that led to an evacuation of the Kitt PeakNational Observatory southwest of Tucson is 40% contained, authorities said.
More than 300 firefighters were working the wildfire Saturday. If all goes as planned, authorities said the blaze could be fully contained by next Sunday.
The wind-whipped fire started June 11 on a remote ridge on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) southeast of Kitt Peak.
It had grown to 27.5 square miles (71 square kilometers) before rain fell on the area Saturday. The fire was about 30 square miles (78 square kilometers) by Sunday.
Flames had reached Kitt Peak by Thursday, and officials evacuated a small community north of the mountain.
Four non-scientific buildings on the west side of the observatory property—a house, a dorm, and two minor outbuildings—were destroyed. But authorities said early indications show the fire didn't damage the telescope.
Structure protection crews have successfully placed defensible lines around all remaining structures at Kitt Peak, according to firefighters.
The University of Arizona, which has had a telescope at the site since 1962, is a tenant of the observatory.
In northern New Mexico, authorities who are concerned about the threat of post-wildfire floods as the state enters monsoon season have warned residents of San Miguel and Mora counties to be ready to evacuate due to flooding risks, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The largest area facing flooding threats is where a fire that began two months ago has so far burned 533 square miles (1,381 square kilometers). The fire is 72% contained.
4 buildings at observatory in Arizona lost in wildfire
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Four non-scientific buildings at the Kitt Peak National Observatory southwest of Tucson were lost in a wildfire, but early indications show other buildings on the property didn't appear to be damaged, authorities said Saturday.
Buell T. Jannuzi, who leads the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, said the fire didn't appear to have damaged the telescope and science buildings at the observatory, though a closer examination of the site hadn't yet been made due to safety concerns.
"This is the most threatening fire I can remember at Kitt Peak in the last 25 years," Jannuzi said.
The fire reached the observatory early Friday. Crews were planning to assess the damage at the observatory later Saturday if conditions allowed for safe entry into the area.
Kitt Peak National Observatory is operated by NOIRLab, the National Science Foundation's center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy. The University of Arizona, which has had a telescope at the site since 1962, is a tenant of the observatory.
The lightning-caused fire, which led to an evacuation of the observatory earlier this week, had grown to 27 square miles (71 kilometers) by Saturday. There was zero containment of the fire, which started on June 11 on a remote ridge on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.
In northern New Mexico, authorities who are concerned about the threat of post-wildfire floods as the state enters monsoon season have warned residents of San Miguel and Mora counties to be ready to evacuate due to flooding risks, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The largest area facing flooding threats is where a fire that began two months ago has so far burned 533 square miles (1,381 square kilometers). The fire is 72% contained.
