Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Even 'net zero' aviation could still cause significant global warming

Efforts to make flying greener mostly count carbon dioxide emissions only, but modelling shows this ignores 90 per cent of future flights’ contribution to climate change

ENVIRONMENT 25 July 2022

By Adam Vaughan

Long queue of planes — Planes queueing for take-off in Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, China
Jingying Zhao/Getty Images

Future flights will endanger the goals of the Paris climate agreement if efforts to achieve net-zero aviation fail to account for the warming effect of streaks of clouds created by planes, a study has found.

The research comes just days after the UK government announced its Jet Zero Strategy on 19 July, with a target of reducing carbon emissions from flights to net zero by 2050.

Nicoletta Brazzola at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and her colleagues found that even if such efforts to reduce carbon emissions succeed, the aviation sector worldwide could increase global average temperatures by between 0.1°C and 0.4°C. Because the world has already warmed 1.1°C since the industrial revolution, Brazzola ’s team says the extra warming could compromise the Paris deal’s aim of holding temperature rises to 1.5°C.

The warming comes from the ways flights heat the atmosphere beyond the carbon dioxide emitted by burning jet fuel, which are the only emissions currently counted by international and most national efforts to decarbonise aviation. The main one of these non-CO2 effects is the contrails that form because of the soot, aerosols and water vapour released by aircraft engines.

“We found the mitigation efforts needed to get aviation to a place where it’s compatible with the Paris agreement are enormous,” says Brazzola.

Her team explored different future scenarios of demand for flights, technologies to power them and how much CO2 would need to be removed from the atmosphere by trees or machines to hit net zero. “Without a very strong reduction in demand and without very rapid, almost infeasible switches to clean technologies, we would in all cases need to deploy carbon removal to a very large extent,” she says.

The team’s modelling suggests that failing to account for aviation’s non-CO2 effects, as most policy-makers are, would ignore 90 per cent of future flights’ contribution to climate change.

Agreement 'brings long overdue wage increases,' union says

The Canadian Press · Posted: Jul 24, 2022 7:51 PM MT | Last Updated: July 24

A WestJet flight to Vancouver lifts off in Calgary on Jan. 21, 2021. The airline has reached a tentative labour deal with the union representing hundreds of workers at the Calgary and Vancouver airports. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

There will be no strike at WestJet this week now that the airline has reached a tentative labour deal with the union representing hundreds of workers at the Calgary and Vancouver airports.

Both the airline and Unifor Local 531 announced the deal on Sunday evening, days before nearly 800 baggage and customer service staff could have walked off the job.

Unifor announced last week that workers had voted 98 per cent in favour of a strike as early as this Wednesday if a deal could not be reached.

WestJet employees in Calgary and Vancouver back strike vote if deal can't be reached

Neither side disclosed specific terms of the tentative deal, which is still subject to ratification.

The union issued a release saying the agreement "brings long overdue wage increases and improvements to working conditions."

The deal, touted as the first between the two sides, will be presented to union members later this week.

CBC's Journal

Fossil of ‘earliest animal predator’ is named after David Attenborough

Sea creature, thought to have used tentacles to capture food, is named Auroralumina attenboroughii

Artwork emphasises the fossil Auroralumina attenboroughii.

Photograph: British Geological Survey/UKRI/PA

Linda Geddes

Science correspondent

Mon 25 Jul 2022

A hundred years from now, Sir David Attenborough’s body may have turned to dust, but a fossilised sea creature, thought to represent Earth’s earliest animal predator, will continue to bear his name.

Discovered in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, where Attenborough hunted for fossils as a child, the creature predates what was previously thought to be the oldest predator by 20m years.

Palaeontologists have named it Auroralumina attenboroughii, in honour of the TV presenter. The first part of its name is Latin for dawn lantern, in recognition of its great age and resemblance to a burning torch, and the creature is thought to have used a set of densely packed tentacles to capture food in Earth’s early oceans.

Rise of the dinosaurs traced back to their adaptation to cold

Charnwood Forest is known for its fossils. Although Attenborough dug there as a child, he avoided the rocks where Auroralumina has been discovered. “They were considered to be so ancient that they dated from long before life began on the planet. So I never looked for fossils there,” he said.

A few years later, in 1957, a fern-like impression was discovered by Roger Mason, a younger boy at Attenborough’s school. The discovery turned out to be one of the oldest fossilised animals, and was named Charnia masoni, in Mason’s honour.

“Now I have – almost – caught up with him and I am truly delighted,” said Attenborough, who has more than 40 species named after him, ranging from a Madagascan dragonfly to a dandelion-like hawkweed found only in the Brecon Beacons in south Wales.

Auroralumina is part of a trove of more than 1,000 fossils discovered in 2007, when a team of researchers from the British Geological Survey spent more than a week in Charnwood Forest, cleaning a 100-sq-metre rock surface with toothbrushes and pressure jets, before using a rubber mould to capture an impression of its lumps and bumps.

The fossil was dated at the British Geological Survey’s headquarters using tiny radioactive minerals in the surrounding rock, called zircons, that act as geological clocks.

Related to the group that includes modern corals, jellyfish and anemones, the 560m-year-old specimen is the first of its kind. Its discovery, reported in Nature Ecology and Evolution, throws into question when modern groups of animals appeared on Earth.

“It’s generally held that modern animal groups like jellyfish appeared 540m years ago in the Cambrian explosion. But this predator predates that by 20m years,” said Dr Phil Wilby, palaeontology leader at the British Geological Survey, who helped to discover it.

“It’s the earliest creature we know of to have a skeleton. So far we’ve only found one, but it’s massively exciting to know there must be others out there, holding the key to when complex life began on Earth.”
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Dr Frankie Dunn from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, who carried out the detailed study, said: “It’s nothing like anything else we’ve found in the fossil record at the time.”

Whereas the body plans of other fossils from this period bear no relation to those of living animals, “this one clearly has a skeleton, with densely packed tentacles that would have waved around in the water capturing passing food, much like corals and sea anemones do today,” she said.

Possibly, it originated from shallower water than the rest of the fossils found in Charnwood. “All of the fossils on the cleaned rock surface were anchored to the seafloor and were knocked over in the same direction by a deluge of volcanic ash sweeping down the submerged foot of the volcano, except one, A. attenboroughii,” Dunn said. “It lies at an odd angle and has lost its base, so appears to have been swept down the slope in the deluge.”

‘Canary in the coal mine’: What Tunisia’s controversial referendum means for the Arab World

As Tunisians voted Monday over whether to give the president more power, critics say the country is one step closer to a dictatorship and the end of the only surviving Arab Spring democracy.

By Maria Iqbal

Staff Reporter

TORONTO STAR
Mon., July 25, 2022

A controversial referendum Monday over a new constitution in Tunisia raised concerns that growing power for the president could drag the country back to its pre-Arab Spring dictatorship.

The constitution, which was anticipated to pass with low voter turnout, would cement power in the hands of Tunisian President Kais Saied. Since last year, the leader has given himself the power to rule by decree, fired multiple judges after freezing Parliament and dismissed his government in what some have decried as a coup.

Members of some of the main opposition parties boycotted the vote on the draft constitution, which has been criticized for lacking public consultation and would give the president the power to select and fire a prime minister and other ministers, and reduces the power of Tunisia’s judiciary and Parliament.

“The divisions in Tunisia are the canary in the coal mine for the Arab World,” said Farid Laroussi, a French professor at the University of British Columbia who focuses on historical and cultural issues in North Africa.

Tunisia was the first country to trigger the Arab Spring in late 2010, when residents took to the streets to demand the removal of former autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

“It was nearly 30 years of dictatorship falling in 20-some odd days,” said Salah-Dean Satouri, a William & Mary Global Research Institute fellow from the U.S. speaking to the Star from Tunis, the Tunisian capital. “There was a lot of hope … that Tunisia was going to progress.”

Though, unlike the other Arab Spring countries, democracy has survived in Tunisia, though there has been little progress since the revolution. The economic stagnation, unemployment and poverty plaguing the country and political paralysis resulting from a rise in opposition parties with little consensus has led to disillusionment with democracy.

For some, Monday’s vote was essentially “between the plague and cholera,” said Jabeur Fathally, an associate law professor at the University of Ottawa, referring to the opposition and current ruler.

In speaking with citizens, Satouri said Tunisians were divided on the referendum. Few turned up to the polls early Monday, and some of the ones who planned to vote in favour of the proposed constitution said they supported Saied and the new constitution out of resistance to the Ennahdha, the previous governing party, which has been blamed for the country’s economic problems.

Most of the main opposition parties advocated for a boycott of the election to signal that the referendum and the president’s attempts at centralizing power were unconstitutional. Others planned to vote in favour of the constitution despite believing that Saied hasn’t addressed Tunisia’s problems over the last year.

“Most Tunisians just want to live and if they’re going to vote ‘yes’ on this constitution, it’s because they want stability. They view Kais Saied as a stable option,” Satouri said.

Other Tunisians didn’t want to vote out of concerns that the election results would be falsified. Satouri expressed concern about the country’s future if the proposed constitution was passed.

“I’m quite worried, if I’m going to be honest, as a Tunisian American,” Satouri said. “I’m afraid that Tunisia will completely backslide out of democracy, and … contrary to what a lot of citizens believe, I don’t think it’s going to be easy to mobilize like they did in 2011.”

For Satouri’s colleague Ian DeHaven, another William & Mary Global Research Institute fellow based in Tunis, Monday’s vote was a “death knell” for democracy, but something that ha been coming for a long time.

The referendum is akin to adding “psychological legitimacy to something that has already been in place. It’s like making Kais Saied’s power de jure rather than de facto,” he said. In other words, the election will entitle Saied to greater powers by right.

Though it wasn’t known Monday when the results would be announced, if the new constitution passes, Laroussi said it could be used by Arab countries to declare that democracy doesn’t work. But the real picture is more complex.

“It is difficult to say that Tunisia is dictatorship. It’s not,” Laroussi said, pointing to the presence of elections, a free press and political opposition in the country. “But we are heading toward a strongman regime.”

With file from the Associated Press.

Maria Iqbal is a 905 Region-based staff reporter for the Star.

Reach Maria via email: miqbal@torstar.ca

Chess robot breaks 7-year-old opponent's finger at Moscow tournament

The Associated Press · Posted: Jul 25, 2022

A chess-playing robot grabs a boy's finger as he attempts to make a move at a Moscow tournament.

A chess-playing robot grabbed the finger of its seven-year-old opponent and broke it during last week's Moscow Chess Open tournament, Russian media reported Monday.

"The robot broke the child's finger," Sergei Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the Russian TASS agency. "Of course, this is bad."

A video shared on social media shows the robot taking one of the boy's pieces, and then grabbing his finger as he attempts to make a move. Four adults then rush in, struggling to free the boy before leading him away from the chessboard.

Lazarev said the chess federation had rented the robot and that it had appeared in many previous events without incident.

He said the boy was able to play again the next day and finished the tournament with his finger in a cast.

Professor, Indigenous rights activist question why Pope was gifted a headdress

After the long-anticipated apology from the Pope in Maskwacis Alta., Monday, Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations Wilton Littlechild presented the Holy Father with a headdress.

After delivering a long-awaited apology Monday, Pope Francis was presented with a traditional headdress by Chief Wilton Littlechild in Maskwacis, Alta.

But not everyone is applauding Littlechild's gesture.

After Pope Francis's apology, Littlechild — a former commissioner of the TRC — placed the headdress on the Pontiff's head, over his papal zucchetto.

The pope donned the regalia briefly before having it removed by his staff.

Samson Cree elder John Crier supports Littlechild's decision to gift the headdress to the Pope.

"The giving of the headdress is honouring a man as the honourary chief and leader in a community. So, in doing that it actually adopted him as one of our leaders in the community," said Crier.

"It's an honouring of the work that he has done and it also is recognizing from the community that here's a man that belongs to our tribe."

Related video: Pope 'deeply sorry' for 'colonizing mentality' of many Christians
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The headdress donned by the Pope, the war bonnet, is held in high regard.

In 1987, when John Paul II visited Canada he met with Indigenous leaders and urged the church's solidarity with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Yet, Pope Francis is the first Pontiff to receive a war bonnet on a visit to Canada.

Riley Yesno is a Anishinaabe writer and Indigenous rights activist based in Toronto. She says allowing the Pope to be held in such high regard is frustrating.

"The church is here because it didn't act very honourably and the church continues not to act very honourably."

Yesno says she believes Indigenous people have been gracious to the Pope but, neither the Pope nor the Catholic church has returned the gesture.

"We're gifting things to the Pope and the Pope is not returning these [gestures] on the list of things that are actually meant to happen."

Niigaan Sinclair, professor of Indigenous Studies at University of Manitoba, says allowing prominent people to take part in significant Indigenous traditions can devalue their meaning.

"To give our most sacred items to those who, perhaps demonstrate goodwill, but don't deliver on the promises is just very upsetting, and it's also very degrading to our own ceremonial items."

Sinclair says although many viewed the papal visit and the gifted headdress as a turning point, there is still pain in the community.

"It is, at times, a very complicated day. It's not a day to celebrate. It's a day to realize that the traumas are still ongoing in our community and to sit to feel that pain."

Pope's apology doesn't acknowledge church's role as 'co-author' of dark chapter: Murray Sinclair

Apology fails to recognize 'full role of the church in the residential school system,' former senator says

Rachel Bergen · CBC News · Posted: Jul 26, 2022

Former senator Murray Sinclair was the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015. He says the apology the Pope delivered Monday for the role Catholics played in Canada's residential school system was lacking.

(Tyson Koschik/CBC)

The former Manitoba senator who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada says there's a "deep hole" in the apology issued by Pope Francis Monday for the role Catholics played in Canada's residential school system.

Murray Sinclair says the historic apology, although meaningful to many residential school survivors and their families, fell short of Call to Action 58 in the final report.

It specifically called on the Pope to issue an apology "for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools."

In a written statement Tuesday, Sinclair said the intent was that survivors would not only hear remorse, "but an acceptance of responsibility for what they were put through at the hands of the church and other institutions."

While he called it a "historic apology," he said the Pope's statement "has left a deep hole in the acknowledgement of the full role of the church in the residential school system, by placing blame on individual members of the church."

Pope Francis delivered the apology Monday in Alberta at the site of the former Ermineskin residential school, one of the largest in Canada, as he started what he called his "penitential pilgrimage."

Pope Francis bows his head during a service at the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples in Edmonton on Monday as part of his papal visit across Canada. He apologized for the role of many Christians in residential schools, which doesn't go far enough, says Sinclair. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

"I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools," he said.

Sinclair said it's important to highlight that the Catholic Church was not just an agent of the state, but "a lead co-author of the darkest chapters in the history of the land."
Pope's residential school apology prompts mixed emotions from Manitoba survivors 'We won't forget': Manitoba residential school survivors respond to Pope Francis' apology

Sinclair says Catholic leaders who were driven by the Doctrine of Discovery — a 15th-century papal edict that justified colonial expansion by allowing Europeans to claim Indigenous lands as their own — as well as other church beliefs and policies enabled the government of Canada, and pushed it further in its work to commit what the TRC called the cultural genocide carried out on Indigenous people in Canada.

That was often "not just a collaboration, but an instigation," he said.

"There are clear examples in our history where the church called for the government of Canada to be more aggressive and bold in its work to destroy Indigenous culture, traditional practices and beliefs," Sinclair's statement said.

"It was more than the work of a few bad actors — this was a concerted institutional effort to remove children from their families and cultures, all in the name of Christian supremacy."
Time for action

Sinclair says reconciliation requires action, and the Catholic Church must work to assist in restoring culture, beliefs and traditions destroyed through assimilation.

"For the children and descendants of survivors, it is not enough that you have stopped abusing them," he said. Rather, the church must help them recover, and "as well as commit to never doing this again."

Students and staff at the Fort Alexander residential school are shown in an archival photo. Sinclair says there are clear examples in Canadian history where the Church called for the government of Canada to be more aggressive in its work to destroy Indigenous culture, traditional practices and beliefs. (National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation archives)

The Pope will continue his pilgrimage throughout the week to meet with First Nations, Métis and Inuit survivors in Quebec and Nunavut. Sinclair hopes the pontiff will take his words to heart.

"There is a better path that the church — and all Canadians — can indeed follow: taking responsibility for past actions and resolving to do better on this journey of reconciliation."
Pope Francis apologizes for forced assimilation of Indigenous children at residential schools 'I am deeply sorry': Full text of residential school apology from Pope Francis

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Bergen is a journalist for CBC Manitoba and previously reported for CBC Saskatoon. Email story ideas to rachel.bergen@cbc.ca

CANADA: What Pope Francis left out of residential school apology

Pope Francis prays at a gravesite at the Ermineskin Cree Nation Cemetery in Maskwacis, Alta., during his papal visit across Canada on Monday, July 25, 2022. Pope Francis delivered a historic apology to survivors of the country's residential school system, the majority of which were operated by the Catholic Church. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Prior to his visit, Indigenous leaders made specific calls about what they wanted to see in the apology and where they hoped it would lead

Stphanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

OTAWA — Pope Francis delivered a historic apology on Monday to survivors of Canada's residential schools. The majority of those government-funded institutions, in which thousands of Indigenous children suffered abuse and neglect, were run by the Catholic Church.

In the lead-up to the Pope's visit, Indigenous leaders made specific calls about what they wanted to see in the apology and where they hoped it would lead to next.

Here's what was missing:

A revocation of the Doctrine of Discovery

The Assembly of First Nations has been among the loudest bodies calling for the renouncement of the 14th-century policy.

It was a decree from the Vatican that countries including Canada used to justify the colonization of Indigenous lands.

The AFN says the doctrine ignores Indigenous sovereignty and continues to have legal impacts today.

After Pope Francis's apology, delivered before an audience of survivors and others in Maskwacis, Alta., the pontiff faced a shout from the crowd to renounce the doctrine.

An apology on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution

In his apology, the pontiff requested forgiveness "for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples."

Murray Sinclair, who served as the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, said the pope's apology "left a deep hole" by failing to recognize the role the church itself played in the residential school system and instead "placing blame on individual members."

"It was more than the work of a few bad actors — this was a concerted institutional effort to remove children from their families and cultures, all in the name of Christian supremacy," Sinclair said in a statement Tuesday.

The TRC had listed a papal apology as one of its 94 calls to action.

Cody Groat, a professor at Western University and member of Six Nations of the Grand River in southern Ontario, says Pope Francis's earlier apology to an Indigenous delegation that travelled to see him in Rome was found lacking for a similar reason — placing blame on individuals rather than on the institution.

Groat, whose grandparents attended a residential school operated by the Anglican Church, says people are going to see the language and terms the pontiff used in Monday's apology in different ways, adding he feels it's an improvement from the spring.

"When you use remarks such as apologizing on behalf of the Christian faith, it perhaps acknowledges more of a broader incident that happened within a long history of colonialism."

Any mention of sexual abuse — or genocide

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in its call for a papal apology, said it should address the Catholic Church's role in the "spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse" of Indigenous children at residential schools.

Pope Francis said children suffered "physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse," but did not mention sexual abuse.

Groat says the pontiff's words would have been carefully vetted before he delivered them and believes leaving out sexual abuse was a conscious effort.

"That is going to be something that is called out by a lot of people," he said.

"Not seeing Pope Francis directly acknowledge or apologize for sexual abuse, this is something that again, will be have to be followed up on."

Also absent from the pontiff's apology was the word "genocide." The commission concluded in its 2015 final report that Canada's residential school system amounted to a "cultural genocide."

A promise to release documents and artifacts

One of the outstanding calls the Vatican and Catholic entities in Canada are facing is to release more documents related to the operation of residential schools, and to return Indigenous artifacts.

The news last year that ground-penetrating radar had located what are believed to be hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites across Western Canada underscored the need for governments and Church authorities to turn over records that could help identify those who died, advocates and Indigenous leaders say.

Evelyn Korkmaz, a residential school survivor who attended St. Anne's residential school, noted the pope's apology didn't mention anything about handing over of church-held documents, which she said are desperately needed.

"These documents have our history," she said. "These documents hold the identification of these children. It would give their families and loved ones closure. Everybody needs closure in order to heal and move on. And this is all we're asking, is for those documents to be released. They belong here in Canada. They belong to us."

The Métis National Council had also called for artifacts held in the Vatican, which were taken from Métis people and communities, to be returned.

A commitment to reparations and compensation

The pontiff's apology and visit to Canada comes as the Catholic Church is facing criticism over not fulfilling the financial commitments it has made to survivors.

One of the main points of contention is over a "best efforts" fundraising campaign that 48 Catholic entities signed on to as part of compensating survivors under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement struck in 2006.

Of a stated $25-million goal for the fundraising effort, less than $4 million was raised before a judge ruled in 2015 that the entities were free from their obligations.

Last September, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops announced it would pledge $30 million to reconciliation-related initiatives over five years. Before Pope Francis's arrival, the bishops announced that dioceses had contributed $4.6 million to the effort so far.

Some survivors and Indigenous leaders have said the pontiff's apology should be followed by additional commitments to reparations or restitutions.

Cindy Blackstock, an advocate for child welfare and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, shared what she called a "to-do" list on social media to follow the apology.

It included: "Ensuring the church (not parishioners) provides reparations for residential school survivors, and the estates of children who died."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 26, 2022

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

Victims rights advocate Kennedy calls for resignation of Hockey Canada leaders

Former NHL player and victims rights advocate Sheldon Kennedy has called for the resignation of Hockey Canada president and chief executive officer Scott Smith, his leadership team and the organization's board of directors as scrutiny of the organization's handling of sexual abuse allegations involving its players continues.

© Provided by The Canadian PressVictims rights advocate Kennedy calls for resignation of Hockey Canada leaders

Kennedy posted his demand on Twitter in a statement responding to Hockey Canada's "action plan" released Monday to combat toxic culture.

"The same people with a new plan expecting the same results is the definition if insanity," Kennedy said in the statement, ending it with "enough is enough already."

Kennedy's statement came after the end of Tuesday's round of parliamentary hearings investigating Hockey Canada's handling of sexual assault allegations involving past world junior team players.

Kennedy said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press that a July 11 open letter from Hockey Canada, promising reforms and the reopening of an investigation into a 2018 allegation of group sexual assault, was "a good first step."

"The followup? They should be able to speak with their actions," he added. "I'm hopeful that they will.''

He made it clear Tuesday that he believes Hockey Canada hasn't done enough.

"Giving my 26 yrs of advocating for victims, I cant sit idle any longer," he said in a tweet attached to his statement.

Kennedy has been a voice for victims following his own experience being abused by then-coach Graham James in junior hockey.

Hockey Canada's action plan building on the open letter includes the implementation by the end of September of a centralized tracking and reporting system for abuse complaints. It said the results will be published annually to "hold Hockey Canada accountable.''

The organization will publish an annual social responsibility report, which will include information on complaints received at both the national team and subnational levels and a scorecard based on "key performance indicators.'' Hockey Canada said it was in the process of identifying the measures to be included in the scorecard.

Hockey Canada did not say what data on the complaints will be made public in the report, but historical allegations of sexual assault will not be included.

The parliamentary hearings will continue Wednesday, with Smith being among those scheduled to testify.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 26, 2022.

The Canadian Press

A more balanced public health approach is needed for e-cigarette use

Researchers at Rutgers seek balanced policies to ensure the devices are available for those who want to kick the cigarette smoking habit but don’t serve as a gateway to smoking or nicotine addiction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Rutgers researchers are calling for a balanced approach to examining recent trends in adult e-cigarette use.

Julia Chen-Sankey, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health, and Michelle T. Bover-Manderski, an instructor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Rutgers, said that while there are clear health concerns with e-cigarette use, particularly the adoption by those who previously hadn’t used tobacco products, there also are potential benefits that can’t be ignored.

The Rutgers researchers published an invited commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open, reviewing new data on the trend of e-cigarette use among U.S. adults. Chen-Sankey and Bover-Manderski, who are also researchers at the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies, discussed the need for a public health approach that balances the risks with the potential of e-cigarettes to facilitate cessation of combustible cigarette smoking by adults.

You reviewed a study that raised important questions about e-cigarette use among U.S. adults. What did that study find, and what questions has it raised about public health policy?

Chen-Sankey: The paper was on recent trends in adult e-cigarette use in the United States in 2017, 2018 and 2020. Among the findings was the observation that while current e-cigarette use – defined as vaping in the previous 30 days – by young adults ages 18 to 20 years declined between 2018 and 2020, it increased in other age groups. Daily e-cigarette use among current users also increased.

But perhaps most alarming, e-cigarette use increased significantly for people who never smoked combustible cigarettes. It also decreased among combustible cigarette smokers attempting to quit – despite the potential that e-cigarettes have in helping people to stop smoking.

Bover-Manderski: In terms of how these conflicting findings should be applied to health policy, there is a need to balance concerns about the dangers of e-cigarette use among young people new to tobacco products with the potential benefits that e-cigarettes may have for people who want to stop smoking combustible cigarettes.

How can we strike that balance?

Chen-Sankey: There are several policy advances and strategies that may be helpful in ensuring that the net public health benefit of e-cigarette use is not eclipsed by its harm. For instance, the recent authorization of e-cigarette products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through its Premarket Tobacco Product Applications pathway may help to establish public trust in authorized e-cigarette products.

The FDA is also likely to authorize certain e-cigarettes as modified-risk tobacco products, which may help encourage smokers to see e-cigarettes as a tool to stop smoking combustible cigarettes.

Bover-Manderski: Additionally, to boost combustible cigarette smokers’ acceptance of using e-cigarettes for smoking cessation, public health education and mass media communication strategies should focus on evidence-based results pertaining to the reduced harm associated with switching to e-cigarettes.

Why do you think some adults who smoke combustible cigarettes have turned away from vaping as a means of quitting?

Chen-Sankey: Over the past five years or so, e-cigarette products have become less appealing to combustible smokers interested in quitting but more appealing to people who have never smoked. A few factors can help explain this discouraging pattern.

For one, local and national policies intended to reduce the use of e-cigarettes among youths may simultaneously reduce adult smokers’ interest in and use of e-cigarettes when attempting to quit. Additionally, the media may have altered smokers’ understanding of vaping because of the substantially higher volume of media coverage of vaping risks for youths compared with the potential benefits of vaping for adult combustible cigarette smokers.

Bover-Manderski: It’s also likely that public health groups and health care professionals may have emphasized the risks of vaping for youths over the potential benefits for adults who use combustible tobacco.

A bright spot in the research is a substantial decline in e-cigarette use by young adults ages 18 to 20. What accounts for this dip?

Chen-Sankey: The discrepancy may be associated with the Tobacco to 21 Act that restricted the sale of tobacco and nicotine delivery products, including e-cigarettes, to this age group nationwide starting in January 2020. Another potential explanation for the disproportional reduction is national restrictions on certain flavored cartridge-based e-cigarettes implemented in February 2020, a policy that may have considerably reduced the appeal of e-cigarettes among young people.

Bover-Manderski: And of course, we can’t overlook COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns and social-distancing requirements, which may have limited this group’s opportunities to use e-cigarettes in social or group settings.

JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.23274

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Importance of a Balanced Public Health Approach When Assessing Recent Patterns in the Prevalence of Adult E-Cigarette Use in the US

Electronic cigarette use among adults in US

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: In this study involving 994,000 adults from U.S. states and territories, a slight decrease in the prevalence of current (past 30 days) e-cigarette use was found between 2018 and 2020. This decrease was mainly observed among young adults ages 18 to 20. In contrast, daily e-cigarette use consistently increased, particularly among young adults ages 21 to 24. This increase in daily use suggests greater nicotine dependence among those who use e-cigarettes, warranting continued surveillance.

Authors: Michael J. Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.23266)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is the new online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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JAMA Network Open

Ant colonies behave like neural networks when making decisions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

Ant colony — IMAGE: A COLONY OF ANTS EVACUATE THEIR NEST FOLLOWING A TEMPERATURE PERTURBATION. view more
CREDIT: DANIEL KRONAUER

Temperatures are rising, and one colony of ants will soon have to make a collective decision. Each ant feels the rising heat beneath its feet but carries along as usual until, suddenly, the ants reverse course. The whole group rushes out as one—a decision to evacuate has been made. It is almost as if the colony of ants has a greater, collective mind.

A new study suggests that indeed, ants as a group behave similar to networks of neurons in a brain.

Rockefeller’s Daniel Kronauer and postdoctoral associate Asaf Gal developed a new experimental setup to meticulously analyze decision-making in ant colonies. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that when a colony evacuates due to rising temperatures, its decision is a function of both the magnitude of the heat increase and the size of the ant group.

The findings suggest that ants combine sensory information with the parameters of their group to arrive at a group response—a process similar to neural computations giving rise to decisions.

“We pioneered an approach to understand the ant colony as a cognitive-like system that perceives inputs and then translates them into behavioral outputs,” says Kronauer, head of the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior. “This is one of the first steps toward really understanding how insect societies engage in collective computation.”

A new paradigm

At its most basic level, decision-making boils down to a series of computations meant to maximize benefits and minimize costs. For instance, in a common type of decision-making called sensory response thresholding, an animal has to detect sensory input like heat past a certain level to produce a certain costly behavior, like moving away. If the rise in temperature isn’t big enough, it won’t be worth it.

Kronauer and Gal wanted to investigate how this type of information processing occurs at the collective level, where group dynamics come into play. They developed a system in which they could precisely perturb an ant colony with controlled temperature increases. To track the behavioral responses of individual ants and the entire colony, they marked each insect with different colored dots and followed their movements with a tracking camera.

As the researchers expected, colonies of a set size of 36 workers and 18 larvae dependably evacuated their nest when the temperature hit around 34 degrees Celsius. This finding makes intuitive sense, Kronauer says, because “if you become too uncomfortable, you leave.”

However, the researchers were surprised to find that the ants were not merely responding to temperature itself. When they increased the size of the colony from 10 to 200 individuals, the temperature necessary to trigger the decision to vacate increased. Colonies of 200 individuals, for example, held out until temperatures soared past 36 degrees. “It seems that the threshold isn’t fixed. Rather, it’s an emergent property that changes depending on the group size,” Kronauer says.

Individual ants are unaware of the size of their colony, so how can their decision depend on it? He and Gal suspect that the explanation has to do with the way pheromones, the invisible messengers that pass information between ants, scale their effect when more ants are present. They use a mathematical model to show that such a mechanism is indeed plausible. But they do not know why larger colonies would require higher temperatures to pack up shop. Kronauer ventures that it could simply be that the larger the colony’s size, the more onerous it is to relocate, pushing up the critical temperature for which relocations happen.

In future studies, Kronauer and Gal hope to refine their theoretical model of the decision-making process in the ant colony by interfering with more parameters and seeing how the insects respond. For example, they can tamper with the level of pheromones in the ants’ enclosure or create genetically altered ants with different abilities to detect temperature changes. “What we’ve been able to do so far is to perturb the system and measure the output precisely,” Kronauer says. “In the long term, the idea is to reverse engineer the system to deduce its inner workings in more and more detail.”

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2123076119

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