FROM SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC TO SOCIAL FASCIST

Swedish PM Magdalena Andersson resigns after far-right election win

Issued on: 14/09/2022

03:42Swedish Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democrats, Magdalena Andersson, at a debate in Stockholm on September 10, 2022. © Reuters -TT news agency

Text by: NEWS WIRES|

Video by: FRANCE 24

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Wednesday announced that she would resign after an unprecedented right-wing and far-right bloc narrowly won Sunday's election.

Out of the Swedish parliament's 349 seats, the right-wing opposition was set to win 176, thanks in part to a surge by far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), with over 99 percent of districts counted. Speaking at a press conference, Andersson, Social Democrats party leader, noted that it was a "narrow majority, but a majority nonetheless.

"So tomorrow I will hand in my resignation as prime minister, and the responsibility for the continued process will go to the speaker," Andersson said.

Sunday's elections were so close that tens of thousands of votes from abroad and those cast in advance had to be counted to validate the results.

03:46Swedish Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democrats, Magdalena Andersson, at a debate in Stockholm on September 10, 2022. © Reuters -TT news agency

'Making Sweden great again'

Never before has a Swedish government relied on the support of the anti-immigration and nationalist SD, who became the big winners of the vote, by gaining more than three percentage points.

With 20.6 percent of votes counted so far the party emerged as Sweden's second largest party behind the Social Democrats, which have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.

However, the post of Prime Minister will in all likelihood go to the leader of the Moderate Party, Ulf Kristersson, as SD leader Jimmie Akesson is unable to unite all four parties to head the government.

"I now begin the work of forming a new and strong government," Kristersson said in a video posted to Facebook. Kristersson, a former gymnast, led a major U-turn for his party when initiating exploratory talks in 2019 with the Sweden Democrats and then deepening their cooperation. The Christian Democrats, and to a lesser extent the Liberals, later followed suit.

At the same time the thorny question remains of whether the far-right would be given cabinet posts, which Akesson said late Sunday was their "goal". In a post to Facebook on Wednesday, Akesson thanked "friends of Sweden", around the country. "Now the work begins of making Sweden great again," the party leader said.

The Sweden Democrats rose up out of neo-Nazi groups and the "Keep Sweden Swedish" movement in the early 1990s, entering parliament in 2010 with 5.7 percent of votes.
Difficult situation

Long shunned as "pariahs" on the political scene, the party has registered strong growth in each subsequent election as it made efforts to clean up its image. Its hardline stance on soaring gang shootings and integration set the tone in this year's election.

The narrow majority also means a right-wing government's hold on power would be very fragile, with the four parties fiercely opposed on a number of issues, especially the Liberals and Sweden Democrats. "This is a difficult parliamentary situation", Gothenburg University political scientist Mikael Gilljam told AFP. "And then you have parties that don't like each other, the Sweden Democrats and the Liberals" in the same right-wing bloc, he added.

In such a situation, a few disgruntled MPs could end up flipping the balance of power. Behind the SD with 73 seats, 11 more than in the last elections in 2018, the Moderates have 68 seats (-2), while the Christian Democrats have 19 (-3) and the Liberals 16 (-4).

On the left, the Social Democrats climbed to 107 seats (+7) thanks to the managing to get 30.4 percent of the vote, ahead of the Left and Centre party (24 seats each) and the Green Party (18).

Formally, the process of political changeover can only start after the announcement of Prime Minister Andersson's resignation on Thursday.

Then the speaker of the Riksdag, the Swedish Parliament, can give Ulf Kristersson the task of forming a majority between the four parties, opening a period of negotiations. The election of the new head of government cannot take place before September 27 at the earliest, when parliament re-opens.

(AFP)

Sweden's far right makes strong gains in cliffhanger election

Marc PREEL
Sat, 10 September 2022



Sweden on Monday began a days-long wait for the final results of its too-close-to-call general election, with an unprecedented right-wing and far-right bloc in position to wrest power from Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson's Social Democrats.

The Scandinavian country has seen mounting political instability in recent years as the gradual rise of the far-right has upset the traditional balance of power in parliament.

Sweden again found itself in a delicate parliamentary situation after Sunday's legislative election, with the right-wing seen holding a razor-thin lead over Andersson's outgoing left bloc.


"The close result in parliament suggests Sweden is heading for yet another messy mandate", newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter wrote on Monday.

With the vote deemed too close to call, election authorities said a final result would only be ready on Wednesday, when the last ballots from abroad and from advance voting had been counted.

Editorialist Anders Lindberg of daily Aftonbladet said it appeared "impossible for the left to win because the votes from abroad are... usually in favour of the right".


With 95 percent of votes counted on Monday, the right-wing led by conservative Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson was credited with an absolute majority of 175 of 349 seats in parliament.

Andersson's left bloc trailed with 174.

If confirmed, the Social Democrats would be out after eight years in power.

Kristersson, who vowed during the campaign to crack down on law and order amid soaring crime rates, said late Sunday he was "ready to build a new and strong government" if the results were confirmed.
- Far-right gains -

The election's big winner was, however, the anti-immigration, nationalist Sweden Democrats party, led by Jimmie Akesson.

It was credited with 20.7 percent of votes, making it the biggest party on the right and the second biggest in the country behind the Social Democrats.

"It's looking pretty damn good now", 43-year-old Akesson told cheering supporters late Sunday.

The right bloc -- made up of the Sweden Democrats, Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals -- were seen winning 49.8 percent of votes.

The left, comprised of the Social Democrats, the Left, the Greens and the Centre parties, were meanwhile credited with 48.8 percent, trailing by around 47,000 votes out of 7.8 million eligible voters.

Prime Minister Andersson, 55, has refused to throw in the towel just yet.


"We're not going to have a final result tonight", she told supporters late Sunday as her party was seen posting a strong result of around 30 percent of votes.

She called on Swedes to "have patience" and "let democracy run its course".

The election marked a major shift in Swedish politics.

For the first time, the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals tied up with the far-right, long treated as "pariahs" by other political parties.

Kristersson orchestrated the change, initiating exploratory talks in 2019 with the Sweden Democrats and then deepening their cooperation.

The Christian Democrats, and to a lesser extent the Liberals, later followed suit.

"Our goal is to sit in government. Our goal is a majority government," Akesson said late Sunday.

- Tensions on the right -

The right-wing bloc is, however, rife with internal divisions, and Kristersson could struggle to form a stable coalition government.

The Liberals have opposed the idea of the Sweden Democrats being given cabinet posts, and would prefer for them to remain in the background providing informal support in parliament.

Akesson has previously insisted his party sit in government, or else he will present a long list of costly demands in exchange for his support.

That could be too much for the Liberals to stomach.

"It would suffice for one of the Liberal party's far-right-critical MPs to dissent for Ulf Kristersson's government to find itself in serious trouble," Dagens Nyheter wrote on Monday.

Political analyst Ulf Bjereld agreed.

A Kristersson-led government "will have to deal with very strong internal tensions and some Liberals will demand that they start to cooperate with the Social Democrats instead", he told AFP.

The Sweden Democrats "have their roots in neo-Nazism and on the other side the Liberals stand for everything the Sweden Democrats don't," he added.

Analysts stressed Sweden was in need of political stability amid a busy docket in the coming months.

The country faces a looming economic crisis, is in the midst of a historic and delicate NATO application process and is due to take over the EU presidency in 2023.

map-aco-po/jv

Sweden's election: The astonishing rise of the right-wing Sweden Democrats

In an election sweep that came as a shock to some, the right-wing Sweden Democrats are now poised to be part of the governing coalition. But who are they and what do they stand for?

The Sweden Democrats gained an unprecedented number of votes this past election

As Europe awaits Swedish election results that balance on a knife's edge, some are asking: How did this happen?

In Sweden, a bastion of tolerance, a nationalist and anti-immigrant party is on the cusp of joining a right-wing coalition in government rule.

A look at the party's origins and trajectory provides some answers.

What is the current state of election results?

On Sunday, Sweden held nationwide elections for its legislature, the Riksdag. 

With more than 95% of the vote counted, a winner has not yet been declared.

Exit polls Sunday night initially indicated victory for the Social Democrats' center-left coalition, which has been in power since 2014. 

But as vote-counting progressed, the right-wing bloc consisting of the Liberals, Christian Democrats, Moderates and Sweden Democrats now seems on track to win, currently with 49.7% of the vote. 

​

While final results aren't expected before Wednesday, Social Democrats have so far received the largest percentage of votes, 30.5%. 

But currently, the Sweden Democrats are the second-strongest party, gaining 20.6% of the vote in their best-ever election performance. That makes them the biggest party on the right, in front of the Moderates who came as a close third with 19.1%. 

The cliffhanger election is not expected to be resolved until all postal and absentee ballots are counted.

What is the origin of the Sweden Democrats?

Founded in 1988, the Sweden Democrats unified various elements in Sweden's far-right milieu, including fascists and white power proponents. "Some of them also had ties to openly neo-Nazi movements," said Johan Martinsson, a political science professor at Sweden's University of Gothenburg.

Around the mid-90s, however, new party leadership publicly denounced Nazism. 

"Gradually, the party began to normalize and ban outright racism," explained Martinsson, who has written an extensive paper on the party. Openly extremist members were ejected, and its platform reshaped.

But according to Bulent Kenes, a persecuted former editor of a Turkish newspaper who has been living in Sweden since seeking asylum since 2016, "They keep a hidden agenda." He believes the party merely put a compassionate face on its neo-Nazi ideology in order to make it more socially acceptable.

A fresh face in party leadership

In 2005, current party leader Jimmie Akesson came to head the group. Only 26 at the time, the former member of the Moderate party pushed the Sweden Democrat's image away from its far-right roots, taking it in more of a populist direction.

Paralleling other right-populist movements, the party sought to portray itself as "advocating for 'ordinary people' against a corrupt elite at the height of a global recession," wrote scholar Danielle Lee Tomson in a paper on the rise of the Sweden Democrats.

The old logo of the Sweden Democrats conveys a sense of righteousness

As part of its push to project a gentler image, the party's logo was also changed: from the Swedish flag embodied as a flaming torch to the pennywort flower in flag colors of yellow and blue.

The new Sweden Democrats logo has a much softer feel

The party made its debut in the Riksdag in 2010 when it gained almost 6% of the vote.

But it struggled to gain traction and was considered a pariah in coalition-building. 

That changed after the migration crisis of 2015.

Sweden Democrats go mainstream

Due largely to the civil war in Syria, Europe was faced with a wave of largely Muslim refugees in 2015. Over the course of one year, 1.3 million people fled to Europe; Sweden took in some 163,000 asylum-seekers (Germany took in around 1 million). 

Sweden that year saw the second-highest number of asylum applications per capita in Europe, after Hungary.

Political scientist Martinsson sees this as a major factor in the party gaining traction.

"The main reason for the party's success in the last decade has been Sweden's uniquely high number of asylum-seekers and unusually rapidly changing demographics in terms of ethnicity and the share of foreign-born citizens," he told DW in an interview from Gothenburg.

With immigration as a top topic in both the 2014 and 2018 elections in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats capitalized on this concern. 

Turkish journalist Kenes, who has extensively profiled the party, said its defense of "Swedishness" brings results.

"Especially undereducated people feel a threat from the cheap labor of immigrants," he said. "They think [the governing] Social Democrats are not representing their interests anymore."

Increasingly visible criminal violence and gang activity are also playing a role in the rise of the Sweden Democrats. 

The party more than doubled its position in the 2014 election, gaining around 13% of votes. In 2018, that share became 18%.

When the center-right Moderates agreed to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats in 2019, this set the stage for eventual entrance to governing.

Caught off guard by current surge

"It is surprising for me to see them as the second-biggest party in the elections," Kenes told DW, as the Sweden Democrats had lost ground during the pandemic as voters turned more toward established parties.

Kenes fled to Sweden after being placed on a list of 'terror suspects' in Turkey

Speaking from Stockholm, he said that aside from the immigration issue, the economic effects of COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have played a part in boosting the party's popularity, particularly among the working class. 

He doesn't believe that all Sweden Democrat voters share the party's nationalist ideology but are rather "reacting to inflation and economic deterioration."

What do the Sweden Democrats stand for?

As for political scientist Martinsson, he defines the Sweden Democrats as "mainly an anti-immigration party with a nationalist ideology" but shies away from describing it as extreme- or radical-right. 

"In economic terms, the party is more centrist and pragmatic, with a mixture of left- and right-wing proposals," Martinsson said.

Journalist Kenes, however, remains convinced that the party is a threat to democracy. 

He points to a recent review indicating that 214 Sweden Democrat candidates who stood in the latest elections can be linked to right-wing extremism.

The Sweden Democrats aim for zero asylum-seekers, along with longer prison sentences and wider use of deportation. The party also has a euroskeptic stance.

Akesson has become the modern face of the Sweden Democrats

"Sweden has been a great country, a safe country, a successful country — and it can be all these things again," Politico reported Akesson as saying during a rally in Helsingborg earlier this month.

"It's time to give us a chance to make Sweden great again," he was quoted as saying.

Edited by: Kate Hairsine

Interviewers show racial bias when reporting survey respondents’ political knowledge

Political Science researcher Judd Thornton’s findings raise concern over the influence of racism and colorism in skewing the results of political surveys

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

ATLANTA—Whether Black people’s political knowledge is accurately reported in survey research depends on the race and skin tone of the interviewer conducting the assessment, according to a new study co-authored by a Georgia State University researcher.

The findings raise questions about how to ensure that political science research accurately captures the knowledge and attitudes of diverse survey respondents.

“For decades now, we’ve been underestimating the political knowledge of non-white respondents,” said Judd Thornton, associate professor in Georgia State’s Department of Political Science.

Thornton and co-author Adam Enders of the University of Louisville published their findings in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

Past research offers evidence that Black respondents answer fewer political questions correctly when asked by white interviewers as compared to Black interviewers. However, this discrepancy in performance is often attributed to respondents’ behavior without much consideration of interviewers’ contributions.

Looking to examine interviewers’ role in this effect, the authors analyzed data from the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES). The nonpartisan research group serves social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists by producing data drawn from surveys it conducts on voting, public opinion and political participation, according to its website.

During pre- and post-election surveys, interviewers administered an objective knowledge assessment in the form of political questions (such as, “Who is the U.S. Attorney General?”) and subjectively rated respondents’ overall political knowledge on a five-point scale. Interviewers also reported their own racial identity and skin tone on a 10-point scale, as well as the respondent’s race and skin tone.

In their analyses, the authors first looked at differences in Black respondents’ knowledge ratings based on interviewer race. In theory, trained interviewers’ assessments of respondent knowledge should be highly aligned with performance on the objective assessment. As a respondent gets more answers correct, the interviewer should rate the respondent as being more knowledgeable.

However, the authors found that interviewers’ assessments of respondents’ political knowledge were more closely correlated with interviewer race than the factual accuracy of the answers. Overall, Black respondents were rated as more politically knowledgeable by Black interviewers than by white interviewers even when controlling for objective performance.

“Not only is racial bias systematic,” the researchers wrote, “but it is seemingly capable of overriding other considerations that should guide interviewers’ assessments of political knowledge.”

The researchers then employed a measure of relative skin tone calculated by finding the difference between the interviewer and respondent skin tones. Whether the interviewer was Black or white ­­­­­­­­— and regardless of the respondent’s performance — respondents with darker skin tones than the interviewer received lower scores.

“The interviewers … are rating darker-skinned respondents as less knowledgeable, even controlling for objective knowledge,” said Thornton.

While previous studies have asserted that fear of negative perception from white interviewers may decrease Black respondents’ performance, these findings provide evidence of interviewer bias on subjective assessments of factual knowledge.

Given the use of interviews in determining levels of political sophistication (also known as “political awareness” or “political expertise”) and the effects of interviewer bias on reported political knowledge, the ability to capture Black public opinion and political involvement appears flawed. Thus, Black individuals are not accurately represented in the impactful political work that relies on this information.

“It seems like so many things are driven by political sophistication but if we’re not properly classifying how sophisticated individuals are, then our conclusions are going to be mistaken,” said Thornton.

---

JOURNAL

The Journal of Race Ethnicity and Politics

DOI

10.1017/rep.2021.40 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Biased Interviewer Assessments of Respondent Knowledge Based on Perceptions of Skin Tone

Store-bought milkweed plants can expose monarch caterpillars to harmful pesticides

Researchers found pesticide-contaminated plants in nurseries in 15 states

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO

 

IMAGE: MILKWEED PLANTS PURCHASED AT RETAIL NURSERIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES WERE CONTAMINATED WITH PESTICIDES HARMFUL TO MONARCH CATERPILLARS THAT RELY ON MILKWEED. A MONARCH CATERPILLAR FEEDS ON ORANGE MILKWEED (ASCLEPIAS TUBEROSA) IN ILLINOIS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY DEBORAH SEILER, COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO

Milkweed plants purchased at retail nurseries across the United States were contaminated with pesticides harmful to monarch caterpillars that rely on milkweed, a study led by researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno found. Every plant sampled was contaminated, even those that were labeled friendly to wildlife.

Researchers gathered 235 milkweed leaf samples from retail nurseries across 15 states and tested them for pesticides. A total of 61 different pesticides were found, with an average of 12 per plant and as many as 28 per plant, according to the study in collaboration with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and published Monday in the peer-reviewed science journal Biological Conservation.

Milkweed in nurseries are often purchased and planted by people hoping to support the monarch butterfly, which was recently listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ as endangered. Western monarch caterpillars depend on milkweed for food. They are specifically adapted to the plant, which is toxic to other animals, and don’t have alternative sources of food.

"In a previous study in California that primarily looked at milkweed in agriculture and urban interfaces, we had looked at a small number of plants from retail nurseries, and found that they contained pesticides," Matt Forister, a biology professor at the University who studies insect ecology and is a coauthor of the paper, said. "So we were prepared for this much larger sample of nursery plants to again uncover contamination, but it was surprising to see the great diversity of pesticides found in these plants. In many ways, they are as contaminated or even worse than plants growing on the edges of agricultural fields. That was a surprise, at least to me."

While researchers couldn’t fully assess the toxic load carried by these plants, 38% of the samples had residue levels that could harm monarchs’ ability to migrate and forage, primarily due to high levels of fungicides. Fungicides have generally been overlooked as an issue for insect conservation efforts. The negative effects on monarch caterpillars could result in smaller wing sizes and potentially other effects. The potential impacts of multiple pesticides interacting on a butterfly are unknown, but likely are not good.

“They are pesticides, they’re designed to kill,” Forister said.

“The farther along in the life stage you go, the higher concentration you need to have a sublethal effect,” Christopher Halsch, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Nevada, Reno, said. “For the caterpillars, this means a low concentration can have a more damaging effect than it would have on the butterflies.”

Plants labeled friendly to wildlife from stores and nurseries included in the present study did not have fewer pesticides in or on the leaves of the milkweed plants.

“That was the most shocking part,” Halsch said. “The fact that plants labeled as potentially beneficial or at least friendly to wildlife are not better and in some cases might be worse than other plants available for purchase. This research sheds light on how pesticides may impact western monarchs, but many other butterflies are facing even steeper population declines, and pesticides are likely one driver.”

The process of growing and shipping the plants is complicated, and reducing contamination during that process will be an important challenge to address moving forward, according to Halsch and Forister.

The study’s findings highlight the need for nurseries to ensure that plants being sold as pollinator-friendly are also pollinator-safe. 

“Everyone can take steps to address the risks we uncovered,” Aimee Code, Pesticide Program Director at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said. “Consumers can let their nurseries know they want plants that are free from harmful pesticides. Nursery outlets can talk with their suppliers and encourage safer practices, and government agencies can improve oversight.

"And it’s important to keep gardening for pollinators for the long term, just take steps to reduce pesticide exposure: cover new plants the first year, water heavily, discard the soil before planting, as it may be contaminated, and avoid pesticide use.” 

Monarch butterflies are widely celebrated, not least along the California coast, where large congregations of western monarchs overwinter in groves of trees. Over the last few decades, western monarch numbers have plummeted from millions in the 1980s to as few as 1,800 individuals, although this winter fortunately recorded a population increase. If that positive trend continues, with time the population could be brought back to former healthy levels. 

---

JOURNAL

Biological Conservation

ARTICLE TITLE

Milkweed plants bought at nurseries may expose monarch caterpillars to harmful pesticide residues

Counting cravings for coffee and soft drinks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

Counting cravings for coffee and soft drinks

Craving a glass of wine or a cold beer at the end of the day may not seem unusual but people can also experience cravings for soft drinks and coffee, new research has revealed.

Led by Flinders University PhD student Joshua McGreen, the study found the number of cravings a person experiences can indicate how many soft drinks they would eventually drink, with cravings triggered by a number of factors beyond thirst.

“Craving refers to the intense desire to consume a specific substance, such as a drug, alcohol or food and it’s been well established in research that cravings for all three can predict future use,” says Mr McGreen from Flinders’ College of Education, Psychology and Social Work. 

“However, what’s less known is the link between cravings and consumption for non-alcoholic beverages, including sugar-sweetened and caffeinated beverages.

“It is important to investigate this link because cravings could be a potential target for helping people reduce how much they drink, with both soft drinks and caffeine having the potential to cause health issues if over-consumed.”

Published in the journal Eating Behaviours, the study analysed data from 128 participants aged between 17 and 25 years old, who completed a craving diary and daily consumption measure over a one-week period.

Cravings were reported for a range of beverages, including tea, juice and flavoured milk, but by far the most craved drinks were water, coffee and soft drink. 

When investigating the link between cravings and consumption, stronger cravings were shown to be associated with a greater likelihood of drinking more – especially for soft drink.

“Tiredness was the most common craving trigger for coffee. For soft drinks, visual clues such as advertising or seeing other people having a drink were the most common triggers, followed by food and then thirst,” says Mr McGreen.

Water was both the most craved beverage and the most consumed, with thirst being the most common trigger.

“Although water may not be considered a substance that is typically craved, the participants clearly experienced a strong desire to consume it, in line with the World Health Organization’s formal definition of craving,” says Mr McGreen.

“However, the number of cravings for water during the week did not indicate how much would be drunk. Instead, that was predicted by how much participants liked water and whether they were male.

“This contrasts to coffee and soft drink, where the number of cravings for each predicted how much would be drunk over the week.”

With soft drink consumption increasing rapidly over the past 50 years to become a major public health problem, the study is significant as it indicates that cravings may be a target for reducing people’s soft drink consumption.

“Our study clearly shows that for soft drinks and coffee, cravings can indicate how much a person will go on to consume, but it also indicates that thirst is not the driving factor,” says Mr McGreen.

“For soft drinks, the craving triggers were predominantly external, including advertising or seeing other people drink, so this is potentially where we could turn our focus to if we are to reduce global soft drink consumption and reap the public health benefits.”

The paper, ‘Beyond thirst: Cravings for non-alcoholic beverages including soft drink’ by Joshua McGreen, Eva Kemps and Marika Tiggemann, is published in the journal Eating Behaviors. DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2022.101662. This research was supported under the Australian Research Council's Discovery Project funding scheme (project number DP180100545). 

---

JOURNAL

Eating Behaviors

DOI

10.1016/j.eatbeh.2022.101662 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Beyond thirst: Cravings for non-alcoholic beverages including soft drink

Location, location, location: Study reveals effects of Airbnb

A new study reveals the impacts Airbnb listings have on different areas and residential rent prices

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

The impact of Airbnb rentals on different neighbourhoods reveals a need for designated zoning laws, say Business School researchers Dr William Cheung and Associate Professor Edward Yiu.

Their paper, published in Tourism Management, explores the effects of touristification on rent, catalysed by Airbnb. Touristification, says Dr Cheung, is a process that sees unplanned tourism transform a space into one that caters mainly to tourists, provoking displacement pressures on local neighbourhoods.

The researchers' study shows that while increases in Airbnb listings raise rents in apartment-heavy areas like the central city, more Airbnb rentals can reduce residential rental prices within low-density, house-dominated neighbourhoods.

The impact of short-term Airbnb rentals is much more problematic in residential neighbourhoods, says Dr Cheung. “In low-density residential neighbourhoods locals are more likely to notice strangers or increases in noise, and their area may not have the resources to cater to influxes of visitors. When visitors begin to swamp a community, local residents will be less willing to pay rent for that location and will move elsewhere.

“Whereas in the central city, residents are unlikely to notice this kind of change in population, and the area is typically more equipped to handle more people.

"Tourists are also prone to paying higher rents to enjoy convenience, and in high-density inner city areas, rents will be higher as visitors compete with individuals who would like to live in the city centre in order to enjoy better accessibility.”

Dr Cheung says the study shows that the effects of Airbnb listings in an apartment submarket are very different to those in a house submarket. “To partly resolve this, and in line with our findings, we propose a policy agenda for considering neighbourhood compatibility with short-term rental accommodation.”

As apartment-type properties in high density areas are more compatible with Airbnb, designated zoning could provide cities like Auckland with more flexibility to supply tourism accommodation while avoiding creating severe urban conflicts in low-density suburbs, says the researcher.

“Identifying properties and neighbourhoods compatible with Airbnb is essential for strategic tourism development and management, allowing tourism to continue without negatively impacting local communities.”

The study authors utilised more than 22,000 Airbnb and 200,000 residential rental listings to provide evidence on how touristification creates a tourism-led rent gap in high-density locales and a conflicts-led negative rent gap in low-density neighbourhoods.

“We used the Melbourne region as the case study because both the Airbnb and residential property rental markets are very active in this area.”

Dr Cheung says the findings are relevant to many cities, particularly Auckland, which has a high number of Airbnb listings. “Tourists affect the rental market, retail sales, and the diversity of neighbourhoods in both positive and negative ways, and it’s important to develop policies to manage and regulate short-term rental accommodation by type or location.”

 

 

 

---

JOURNAL

Tourism Management

DOI

10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104567 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Touristification, Airbnb and the tourism-led rent gap: Evidence from a revealed preference approach

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Oct-2022

Brain patterns reveal why elderly drivers are prone to mistaking the gas pedal for the brake pedal

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NAGOYA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: STUDY FOUND THE LEFT DORSOLATERAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX (YELLOW) SHOWED GREATER ACTIVATION WHEN PRESSING A PEDAL DIAGONALLY WITH A FOOT, COMPARED TO PRESSING THE PEDAL STRAIGHT. view more 

CREDIT: DR. NOBUYUKI KAWAI, REIKO MATSUSHITA

Scanning the brains of elderly people and college students while performing braking and acceleration simulations, researchers in Japan have found that older participants have longer reaction times, slower decision times, and greater brain activation in the parts of the brain involved with inhibition and switching tasks. These findings suggest insights into the causes of accidents involving elderly drivers who mistake the brake for the accelerator. 

As reported in the media, accidents have increased in which older drivers mistakenly step on the accelerator instead of the brake. Concerned that cognitive decline may be a leading cause of such incidents, the National Police Agency of Japan, a country with one of the oldest populations in the world, requires adults over 75 years of age to take periodic cognitive tests. However, few studies have investigated executive functions and brain activity among older adults in terms of foot responses during braking and accelerating.  

To address this gap, a group led by Professor Nobuyuki Kawai of the Graduate School of Informatics at Nagoya University in Japan scanned the brains of elderly people and students while performing pedal-pressing simulations. The researchers were particularly interested in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with inhibition and switching responses.  

To simulate the response of a person’s feet and hands when driving a car, they created a new task in the laboratory called the bimanual and bipedal response selection and response-position compatibility task. During this task, a signal directed participants to press the left or right button with their left or right foot, or their left or right hand. Sometimes participants pressed the pedal in front of them, whereas at other times they had to press it diagonally. This was done to  allow the researchers to assess how the participants responded in situations where the cognitive load was higher. Administering this task to both university students and elderly participants, the researchers then monitored blood flow in their brains. The results were published in Behavioural Brain Research. 

They found that older participants had longer reaction times, slower decision times, and greater brain activation than younger people. Furthermore, pressing the diagonal pedal required longer reaction times and greater brain activation than pressing directly ahead in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Interestingly, this was only found when people were asked to use their feet but not their hands. In short, older people had to do more active thinking than younger people when deciding which ‘pedal’ to press with their feet. 

“This indicates that the cognitive load is higher when pushing the pedal diagonally with the foot, such as when pressing the brake,” explains Professor Kawai. “When you push a diagonal pedal with your foot, you are using the frontal lobe more than when you push the pedal straight in front. In particular, the left dorsolateral frontal lobe, which is important for response switching, is more active when the foot is pressed at an angle than when the pedal is pressed straight. In these tasks, older adults have higher neural activity throughout the frontal lobe than college students.” 

This study’s findings suggest that to compensate for the decline in cognitive functions, greater brain activation may be necessary in elderly people. Older people may struggle in situations with a high cognitive load, such as parking a vehicle in a narrow space. “This study suggests that the performance of older adults is vulnerable in these situations,”  Professor Kawai explains. “Elderly drivers should not be overconfident that their driving is fine. Even elderly people who are normally able to drive without any problems, when a cognitive load is applied, such as when switching from one parking space to another or when talking to a passenger, things may be different and there is a chance of pressing the wrong pedal. We believe that it is important to educate elderly drivers about this fact.”   

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI. 

---

JOURNAL

Behavioural Brain Research

DOI

10.1016/j.bbr.2022.113976 

Unlocking human-like perception in self-driving vehicles

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG

How can mobile robots perceive and understand the environment correctly, even if parts of the environment are occluded by other objects? This is a key question that must be solved for self-driving vehicles to safely navigate in large crowded cities. While humans can imagine complete physical structures of objects even when they are partially occluded, existing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that enable robots and self-driving vehicles to perceive their environment do not have this capability. Robots with AI can already find their way around and navigate on their own once they have learned what their environment looks like. However, perceiving the entire structure of objects when they are partially hidden, such as people in crowds or vehicles in traffic jams, has been a significant challenge. A major step towards solving this problem has now been taken by Freiburg robotics researchers Prof. Dr. Abhinav Valada and PhD student Rohit Mohan from the Robot Learning Lab at the University of Freiburg, which they have presented in two joint publications.

A task whose solution promises more safety

The two Freiburg scientists have developed the amodal panoptic segmentation task and demonstrated its feasibility using novel AI approaches. Until now, self-driving vehicles have used panoptic segmentation to understand their surroundings. This means that they can so far only predict which pixels of an image belong to which “visible” regions of an object such as a person or car, and identify instances of those objects. What they lack so far is being able to also predict the entire shape of objects even when they are partially occluded by other objects next to them. The new task of perception with amodal panoptic segmentation makes this holistic understanding of the environment possible.

Amodal refers to the case that any partial occlusion of objects must be abstracted and instead of viewing them as fragments, there should be a general understanding of viewing them as a whole. Thus, this improved ability of visual recognition will lead to enormous progress in improving the safety of self-driving vehicles.

Potential to revolutionize urban visual scene understanding

In a new paper published at the IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR), the researchers have added the new task to established benchmark datasets and made them publicly available. They are now calling on scientists to participate in the benchmarking with their own AI algorithms. The goal of this task is the pixel-wise semantic segmentation of the visible regions of amorphous background classes such as roads, vegetation, sky, and the instance segmentation of both the visible and occluded object regions of countable classes such as cars, trucks, and pedestrians.

The benchmark and datasets are publicly available on the website, including two proposed novel learning algorithms. “We are confident that novel AI algorithms for this task will enable robots to emulate the visual experience that humans have by perceiving complete physical structures of objects,” Valada explains. “Amodal panoptic segmentation will significantly help downstream automated driving tasks where occlusion is a major challenge such as depth estimation, optical flow, object tracking, pose estimation, motion prediction, etc. With more advanced AI algorithms for this task, visual recognition ability for self-driving cars can be revolutionized. For example, if the entire structure of road users is perceived at all times, regardless of partial occlusions, the risk of accidents can be significantly minimized.”

In addition, by inferring the relative depth ordering of objects in a scene, automated vehicles can make complex decisions such as in which direction to move toward the object to get a clearer view. In order to make these visions a reality, the task and its benefits were presented to leading automotive industry professionals at AutoSens, which was held at the Autoworld Museum in Brussels.

Overview of facts:

• Abhinav Valada is an assistant professor and head of the Robot Learning Lab at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Freiburg as well as a member of the BrainLinks-BrainTools centre.
• He primarily conducts research on topics at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and computer vision, such as fundamental problems in robot perception, state estimation, and planning using machine learning approaches to enable robots to reliably operate in more complex domains and diverse environments. His goal is to develop scalable, lifelong learning robotic systems.
• Robot Learning Lab: Valada's team focuses on developing scalable robot learning algorithms for mobility and manipulation. They combine modern machine learning techniques such as deep learning and reinforcement learning, with robotics to expand the abilities of robots to operate in diverse real-world environments.
• Original publications: Mohan, Rohit, Abhinav Valada: “Amodal Panoptic Segmentation”, IEEE/ CVF International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 21023-21032, 2022.
  Mohan, Rohit, Valada, Abhinav: “Perceiving the Invisible: Proposal-Free Amodal Panoptic Segmentation”, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 9302-9309, 2022.
• For more information: http://amodal-panoptic.cs.uni-freiburg.de
• Explanatory video: “Amodal Panoptic Segmentation”

Healthcare researchers must be wary of misusing AI

A commentary in Nature Medicine advocates the proper application of artificial intelligence in healthcare and warns of the dangers when machine learning algorithms are misused

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE-NUS MEDICAL SCHOOL

SINGAPORE / ROTTERDAM, 13 September 2022 – An international team of researchers, writing in the journal Nature Medicine, advises that strong care needs to be taken not to misuse or overuse machine learning (ML) in healthcare research.

“I absolutely believe in the power of ML but it has to be a relevant addition,” said neurosurgeon-in-training and statistics editor Dr Victor Volovici, first author of the comment, from Erasmus MC University Medical Center, The Netherlands. “Sometimes ML algorithms do not perform better than traditional statistical methods, leading to the publication of papers that lack clinical or scientific value.”

Real world examples have shown that the misuse of algorithms in healthcare could perpetuate human prejudices or inadvertently cause harm when the machines are trained on biased datasets.

“Many believe ML will revolutionise healthcare because machines make choices more objectively than humans. But without proper oversight, ML models may do more harm than good,” said Associate Professor Nan Liu, senior author of the comment, from the Centre for Quantitative Medicine and Health Services & Systems Research Programme at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.

“If, through ML, we uncover patterns that we otherwise would not see—like in radiology and pathology images—we should be able to explain how the algorithms got there, to allow for checks and balances.”

Together with a group of scientists from the UK and Singapore, the researchers highlight that although guidelines have been formulated to regulate the use of ML in clinical research, these guidelines are only applicable once a decision to use ML has been made and do not ask whether or when its use is appropriate in the first place.

For example, companies have successfully trained ML algorithms to recognise faces and road objects using billions of images and videos. But when it comes to their use in healthcare settings, they are often trained on data in the tens, hundreds or thousands. “This underscores the relative poverty of big data in healthcare and the importance of working towards achieving sample sizes that have been attained in other industries, as well as the importance of a concerted, international big data sharing effort for health data,” the researchers write.

Another issue is that most ML and deep learning algorithms (that do not receive explicit instructions regarding the outcome) are often still regarded as a ‘black box’. For example, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists published an algorithm that could predict coronavirus infections from lung photos. Afterwards, it turned out that the algorithm had drawn conclusions based on the imprint of the letter ‘R’ (for ‘Right Lung’) in the photos, which was always found in a slightly different spot on the scans. 

“We have to get rid of the idea that ML can discover patterns in data that we cannot understand,” said Dr Volovici about the incident. “ML can very well discover patterns that we cannot see directly, but then you have to be able to explain how you came to that conclusion. In order to do that, the algorithm has to be able to show what steps it took, and that requires innovation.”

The researchers advise that ML algorithms should be evaluated against traditional statistical approaches (when applicable) before they are used in clinical research. And when deemed appropriate, they should complement clinician decision-making, rather than replace it. “ML researchers should recognise the limits of their algorithms and models in order to prevent their overuse and misuse, which could otherwise sow distrust and cause patient harm,” the researchers write.

The team is working on organising an international effort to provide guidance on the use of ML and traditional statistics, and also to set up a large database of anonymised clinical data that can harness the power of ML algorithms. 

---

JOURNAL

Nature Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41591-022-01961-6 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Steps to avoid overuse and misuse of machine learning in clinical research

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Sep-2022

Concussions at school may affect academic performance

Prevention and management of concussions at school are important, says study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Adolescents who experience a concussion in the past 12 months could be 25% more likely to be in poor academic standing than youths who have no concussions, suggests a study published online in the journal Injury Prevention.

A concussion is a temporary brain injury caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head or by a hit to the body which causes the brain to move rapidly back and forth. Common signs of a concussion include loss of consciousness, dizziness, glazed look in the eyes, headache, amnesia, vomiting, memory problems, and loss of focus.

In the USA, almost two million youth concussions happen every year which can lead to lasting physical, cognitive and emotional changes but there is a lack of clear, standard guidance across the country about how to reintegrate students with concussion back into academic work.

There is also a lack of evidence about what impact concussions can have on the adolescent’s academic performance.

Therefore, a team of researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle set out to investigate whether or not there was an association between concussion history and academic standing among high school students.

They analysed data on 10,756 adolescents from the 2019 Youth Risk Behaviour Survey – a semi-annual survey that monitors health risks among students across the USA.

Of the more than 10,000 high school students analysed, 14.9% reported they had at least one sports and activity related concussion in the past 12 months.

Most adolescents who reported no concussions were female (50.9%), while most who reported one or more than two concussions were male (53.1% and 63.5% respectively).

Students who self-identified as black or African American represented a higher proportion of students with two or more concussions (15.6%) compared with students with zero or one concussions (10.6% and 9.4% respectively).

Overall, a large majority of adolescents (78.8%) reported to be in good academic standing.

The researchers calculated that having at least one concussion in the past 12 months was associated with a 25% higher risk of poor academic standing and this association was stronger with a history of repeated concussions.

The association varied by race/ethnicity, but the authors said future studies were needed to examine the interaction of race/ethnicity on the association.

The authors acknowledge that their study had some limitations in that it did not allow them to assess the change in academic standing before and after the reported concussions, self-reporting from the students about their concussion and outcome was not checked for verification, and the study did not incorporate socioeconomic variables such as family income and location of residence.

Nevertheless, the authors conclude: “History of concussion was significantly associated with poor academic standing and experiencing multiple concussions could be particularly harmful on student outcomes.

“School-based injury prevention efforts, including promotion of helmet use, school screening for concussions and adherence to return-to-play and return-to-learn guidelines, to reduce multiple concussion in sports, particularly for racial and ethnic groups most affected, may prove beneficial to students with concussion.”

---

JOURNAL

Injury Prevention

DOI

10.1136/ip-2022-044568 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Association of concussion with high school academic standing: sex, school grade and race as stratifiers

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Sep-2022

Mild traumatic brain injury increases risk of behavioral and emotional problems in kids

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER

University of Rochester researchers have been at the forefront of efforts to understand how blows to the head impact the brain, including how concussions change brain structure . Now researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience have found that kids who experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI), even a mild one, have more emotional and behavioral problems than kids who do not.

“These hits to the head are hard to study because much of it depends on recall of an injury since the impacts do not all require a visit to a doctor,” said Daniel Lopez, a Ph.D. candidate in the Epidemiology program and first author of the study out today in NeuroImage. "But being able to analyze longitudinal data from a large cohort and ask important questions like this gives us valuable information into how a TBI, even a mild one, impacts a developing brain."​

Researchers used MRI and behavioral data collected from thousands of children who participated in the Adolescence Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. They revealed children with a mild TBI experienced a 15-percent increased risk of an emotional or behavioral problem. The risk was the highest in children around ten years old. Researchers found that children who had a significant hit to the head but did not meet diagnostic criteria for a mild TBI also had an increased risk of these behavioral and emotional problems.     

The University of Rochester Medical Center is one of 21 research sites collecting data for the National Institutes of Health ABCD Study. Since 2017, 340 children from the greater Rochester area have been part of the 10-year study that is following 11,750 children through early adulthood. It looks at how biological development, behaviors, and experiences impact brain maturation and other aspects of their lives, including academic achievement, social development, and overall health.

Researchers hope future ABCD Study data will better reveal the impact these head hits have on mental health and psychiatric problems. “We know some of the brain regions associated with increased risk of mental health problems are impacted during a TBI,” said Ed Freedman, Ph.D., associate professor of Neuroscience and co-principal investigator of the ABCD Study at the University of Rochester. Freedman also led this study. “With more time and data, we hope to gain a better understanding of the long-term impact of even a mild TBI.”

Additional co-authors include Zachary Christensen, John J. Foxe, Ph.D., Laura Ziemer, and Paige Nicklas, all members of the Frederick J. and Marion A Schindler Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab that is part of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester. The research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the UR Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center.

---

JOURNAL

NeuroImage

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119626