Graphene is a proven supermaterial, but manufacturing the versatile form of carbon at usable scales remains a challenge

The Conversation
November 30, 2022

Graphene (Shutterstock)

“Future chips may be 10 times faster, all thanks to graphene”; “Graphene may be used in COVID-19 detection”; and “Graphene allows batteries to charge 5x faster” – those are just a handful of recent dramatic headlines lauding the possibilities of graphene. Graphene is an incredibly light, strong and durable material made of a single layer of carbon atoms. With these properties, it is no wonder researchers have been studying ways that graphene could advance material science and technology for decades.

I never know what to expect when I tell people I study graphene – some have never heard of it, while others have seen some version of these headlines and inevitably ask, “So what’s the holdup?”

Graphene is a fascinating material, just as the sensational headlines suggest, but it is only just starting to be used in real-world applications. The problem lies not in graphene’s properties, but in the fact that it is still incredibly difficult and expensive to manufacture at commercial scales.


Pure graphene is a uniform, single-atom-thick crystal of carbon arranged in a hexagonal pattern, as seen in this electron microscope image. 

M.H. Gass/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

What is graphene?

Graphene is most simply defined as a single layer of carbon atoms bonded together in a hexagonal, sheetlike structure. You can think of pure graphene as a one-layer-thick sheet of carbon tissue paper that happens to be the strongest material on Earth.

Graphene usually comes in the form of a powder made of small, individual sheets that are roughly the diameter of a grain of sand. An individual sheet of graphene is 200 times stronger than an equally thin piece of steel. Graphene is also extremely conductive, holds together at up to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 C), can withstand acids and is flexible and very lightweight.

Because of these properties, graphene could be extremely useful. The material can be used to create flexible electronics and to purify or desalinate water. And adding just 0.03 ounces (1 gram) of graphene to 11.5 pounds (5 kilograms) of cement increases the strength of the cement by 35%.

As of late 2022, Ford Motor Co., with which I worked as part of my doctoral research, is one of the the only companies to use graphene at industrial scales. Starting in 2018, Ford began making plastic for its vehicles that was 0.5% graphene – increasing the plastic’s strength by 20%.


Researchers made the first piece of graphene by peeling layers of carbon off of graphite – or pencil lead – with tape. Rapid Eye/E+ via Getty Images

How to make a supermaterial

Graphene is produced in two principal ways that can be described as either a top-down or bottom-up process.

The world’s first sheet of graphene was created in 2004 out of graphite. Graphite, commonly known as pencil lead, is composed of millions of graphene sheets stacked on top of one another. Top-down synthesis, also known as graphene exfoliation, works by peeling off the thinnest possible layers of carbon from graphite. Some of the earliest graphene sheets were made by using cellophane tape to peel off layers of carbon from a larger piece of graphite.

The problem is that the molecular forces holding graphene sheets together in graphite are very strong, and it’s hard to pull sheets apart. Because of this, graphene produced using top-down methods is often many layers thick, has holes or deformations, and can contain impurities. Factories can produce a few tons of mechanically or chemically exfoliated graphene per year, and for many applications – like mixing it into plastic – the lower-quality graphene works well.


Graphene flakes made from top-down methods are usually more than one atom thick and have impurities like folds and tears, as seen in this image. 

Дагесян Саркис Арменакович/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Top-down, exfoliated graphene is far from perfect, and some applications do need that pristine single sheet of carbon.


Bottom-up synthesis builds the carbon sheets one atom at a time over a few hours. This process – called vapor deposition – allows researchers to produce high-quality graphene that is one atom thick and up to 30 inches across. This yields graphene with the best possible mechanical and electrical properties. The problem is that with a bottom-up synthesis, it can take hours to make even 0.00001 gram – not nearly fast enough for any large scale uses like in flexible touch-screen electronics or solar panels, for example.
So what’s the holdup?

Current production methods of graphene, both top-down and bottom-up, are expensive as well as energy and resource intensive, and simply produce too little product, too slowly.


Some companies do manufacture graphene and sell it for US$60,000 to $200,000 per ton. There are a limited number of uses that make sense at these high costs.

While small amounts of top-down or bottom-up graphene can satisfy the needs of researchers, for companies even just the process of prototyping a new material, application or manufacturing process requires many pounds of graphene powder or hundreds of graphene sheets and a lot of time and effort. It took significant investment and more than four years of study, development and optimization before graphene hit the production line at Ford.

Current production can barely cover experimentation, much less widespread use.

Improving manufacturing

For a material that has been around since only 2004, a lot of progress has been made in scaling up the production and implementation of graphene.

There are hints that graphene is starting to break through at a commercial level. There are a huge number of graphene-related startups looking at a wide range of uses ranging from energy storage to composites to nerve stimulation. Major companies – such as Tesla, LG and chemical giant BASF – are also investigating how graphene could be used, in rechargeable batteries, flexible or wearable electronics and next-generation materials.

Graphene is ripe for a breakthrough that will bring down the cost and increase the scale of production, and this is an area of intense academic research. One new technique discovered in 2020, called flash joule heating, is especially promising. Researchers have shown that passing large amounts of electricity through any carbon source reorganizes the carbon-carbon bonds into a graphene structure. Using this process, it is possible to make many pounds of high-quality graphene for a relatively low cost out of any carbon-containing material like coal or even trash. A company called Universal Matter Inc. is already commercializing the process.

Once the cost of graphene comes down, the commercial applications will follow. The appetite for graphene is huge, but it is going to take some time before this material lives up to its potential.

Kevin Wyss, PhD Student in Chemistry, Rice University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Where did the Earth’s oxygen come from? New study hints at an unexpected source

The Conversation
November 29, 2022

Earth (AFP Photo/NASA)

The amount of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere makes it a habitable planet.

Twenty-one per cent of the atmosphere consists of this life-giving element. But in the deep past — as far back as the Neoarchean era 2.8 to 2.5 billion years ago — this oxygen was almost absent.

So, how did Earth’s atmosphere become oxygenated?

Our research, published in Nature Geoscience, adds a tantalizing new possibility: that at least some of the Earth’s early oxygen came from a tectonic source via the movement and destruction of the Earth’s crust.

The Archean Earth

The Archean eon represents one third of our planet’s history, from 2.5 billion years ago to four billion years ago.

This alien Earth was a water-world, covered in green oceans, shrouded in a methane haze and completely lacking multi-cellular life. Another alien aspect of this world was the nature of its tectonic activity.

On modern Earth, the dominant tectonic activity is called plate tectonics, where oceanic crust — the outermost layer of the Earth under the oceans — sinks into the Earth’s mantle (the area between the Earth’s crust and its core) at points of convergence called subduction zones. However, there is considerable debate over whether plate tectonics operated back in the Archean era.

One feature of modern subduction zones is their association with oxidized magmas. These magmas are formed when oxidized sediments and bottom waters — cold, dense water near the ocean floor — are introduced into the Earth’s mantle. This produces magmas with high oxygen and water contents.

Our research aimed to test whether the absence of oxidized materials in Archean bottom waters and sediments could prevent the formation of oxidized magmas. The identification of such magmas in Neoarchean magmatic rocks could provide evidence that subduction and plate tectonics occurred 2.7 billion years ago.

The experiment

We collected samples of 2750- to 2670-million-year-old granitoid rocks from across the Abitibi-Wawa subprovince of the Superior Province — the largest preserved Archean continent stretching over 2000 km from Winnipeg, Manitoba to far-eastern Quebec. This allowed us to investigate the level of oxidation of magmas generated across the Neoarchean era.




The 2750- to 2670-million-year-old granitoid rocks collected from the largest preserved Archean continent may help reveal the origin story of the Earth’s oxygen. (Dylan McKevitt), Author provided

Measuring the oxidation-state of these magmatic rocks — formed through the cooling and crystalization of magma or lava — is challenging. Post-crystallization events may have modified these rocks through later deformation, burial or heating.

So, we decided to look at the mineral apatite which is present in the zircon crystals in these rocks. Zircon crystals can withstand the intense temperatures and pressures of the post-crystallization events. They retain clues about the environments in which they were originally formed and provide precise ages for the rocks themselves.


Small apatite crystals that are less than 30 microns wide — the size of a human skin cell — are trapped in the zircon crystals. They contain sulfur. By measuring the amount of sulfur in apatite, we can establish whether the apatite grew from an oxidized magma.



Map of the Superior Province that stretches from central Manitoba to eastern Quebec in Canada. (Xuyang Meng), Author provided


We were able to successfully measure the oxygen fugacity of the original Archean magma — which is essentially the amount of free oxygen in it — using a specialized technique called X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure Spectroscopy (S-XANES) at the Advanced Photon Source synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
Creating oxygen from water?

We found that the magma sulfur content, which was initially around zero, increased to 2000 parts per million around 2705 million years. This indicated the magmas had become more sulfur-rich. Additionally, the predominance of S6+ — a type of sulfer ion — in the apatite suggested that the sulfur was from an oxidized source, matching the data from the host zircon crystals.


These new findings indicate that oxidized magmas did form in the Neoarchean era 2.7 billion years ago. The data show that the lack of dissolved oxygen in the Archean ocean reservoirs did not prevent the formation of sulfur-rich, oxidized magmas in the subduction zones. The oxygen in these magmas must have come from another source, and was ultimately released into the atmosphere during volcanic eruptions.

We found that the occurrence of these oxidized magmas correlates with major gold mineralization events in the Superior Province and Yilgarn Craton (Western Australia), demonstrating a connection between these oxygen-rich sources and global world-class ore deposit formation.



The driving of ocean water deep into the Earth, caused by the sliding of oceanic plates under the Earth’s continental plates, may generate free oxygen as well as the mechanism to release it — volcanoes. (Shutterstock)

The implications of these oxidized magmas go beyond the understanding of early Earth geodynamics. Previously, it was thought unlikely that Archean magmas could be oxidized, when the ocean water and ocean floor rocks or sediments were not.

While the exact mechanism is unclear, the occurrence of these magmas suggests that the process of subduction, where ocean water is taken hundreds of kilometres into our planet, generates free oxygen. This then oxidizes the overlying mantle.


Our study shows that Archean subduction could have been a vital, unforeseen factor in the oxygenation of the Earth, the early whiffs of oxygen 2.7 billion years ago and also the Great Oxidation Event, which marked an increase in atmospheric oxygen by two per cent 2.45 to 2.32 billion years ago.

As far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the solar system — past or present — with plate tectonics and active subduction. This suggests that this study could partly explain the lack of oxygen and, ultimately, life on the other rocky planets in the future as well.

David Mole, Postdoctoral fellow, Earth Sciences, Laurentian University; Adam Charles Simon, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan, and Xuyang Meng, Postdoctoral Fellow, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Inside the far-right evolution of Elon Musk

Meaghan Ellis, AlterNet
December 01, 2022

Elon Musk's SpaceX has donated some 25,000 ground terminals to Ukraine for use of its Starlink satellite internet, according to Musk

A new analysis is shedding light on the political devolution of Elon Musk as far-right ideologies threaten to erode Twitter amid the billionaire's takeover of the social media platform

In a piece published by Axios, national security reporter Zachary Basu began with a timeline of Musk's political progression just in the last six months of this year.

"Elon Musk's public musings over the last six months have cemented an unmistakable new reality: The world's richest man, and owner of the de facto public square, has become more and more Republican," Basu began.

READ MORE: 'Sounds just like Trump': Elon Musk blasted for tweeting demonstrably false meme supporting conservatives

While Musk's transformation may not seem pivotal to some, Basu notes that it is important to take the business mogul's voting history into consideration. For decades, Musk has been a supporter of the Democratic Party.

"It's a stunning political transformation for the Obama, Clinton, and Biden-voting CEO of the most successful electric-vehicle company on Earth," Basu pointed out, adding, "And it's one with major real-world implications, given the significant influence Musk now wields in shaping the rules of online public debate."

In another turn of events, Musk also admitted that he would be open to voting for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) if he opted for a presidential bid in 2024.

Despite speculation of Musk switching parties, he has insisted that there is a need for "balance" in politics. According to Basu, Musk has also insisted that he "is 'neither conventionally right nor left' — but he also says the threat to free speech allegedly posed by Democrats has triggered a 'battle for the future of civilization' that trumps all other policy issues."

READ MORE: Early data shows big shifts in followers among Republicans and Democrats weeks after Twitter deal

However, Basu pointed out that Musk has become increasingly critical of Democratic leaders and lawmakers over the last several months. "Musk has frequently trolled Democrats and engaged with right-wing commentators who view him as a like-minded culture warrior," he wrote, citing a recent tweet from Musk.


"The woke mind virus has thoroughly penetrated entertainment and is pushing civilization towards suicide," Musk tweeted last week. "There needs to be a counter-narrative."

But despite Musk's growing support of Republican ideologies, Basu pointed out one potential problem that could arise in the near future: the prospective conflict of interest between Musk's business dealings and his political views.

Basu concluded by writing, "One sleeping giant threatens the Musk-GOP symbiosis: The Tesla CEO has massive business interests in China, a regime viewed by Republicans as the No. 1 geopolitical threat facing the U.S."

Chinese users play cat-and-mouse with censors amid protests

Wed, November 30, 2022 

HONG KONG (AP) — Videos of hundreds protesting in Shanghai started to appear on WeChat Saturday night. Showing chants about removing COVID-19 restrictions and demanding freedom, they would only stay up for only minutes before being censored.

Elliot Wang, a 26-year-old in Beijing, was amazed.

“I started refreshing constantly, and saving videos, and taking screenshots of what I could before it got censored,” said Wang, who only agreed to be quoted using his English name, in fear of government retaliation, . “A lot of my friends were sharing the videos of the protests in Shanghai. I shared them too, but they would get taken down quickly.”

That Wang was able to glimpse the extraordinary outpouring of grievances highlights the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between millions of Chinese internet users and the country’s gargantuan censorship machine.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country’s internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access to almost all foreign news and social media, and blocks topics and keywords considered politically sensitive or detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately.

But images of protests began to spread on WeChat, a ubiquitous Chinese social networking platform used by over 1 billion, in the wake of a deadly fire in the western city of Urumqi Friday. Many suspected that lockdown measures prevented residents from escaping the flames, something the government denies.

The sheer number of unhappy Chinese users who took to the Chinese internet to express their frustration, together with the methods they used to evade censors led to a brief period of time where government censors were overwhelmed, according to Han Rongbin, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Public and International Affairs department.

“It takes censors some time to study what is happening and to add that to their portfolio in terms of censorship, so it’s a learning process for the government on how to conduct censorship effectively,” said Han.

In 2020, the death from COVID-19 of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was arrested for spreading rumors following an attempt to alert others about a “SARS-like” virus, sparked widespread outrage and an outpouring of anger against the Chinese censorship system. Users posted criticism for hours before censors moved to delete posts.

As censors took down posts related to the fire, Chinese internet users often used humor and metaphor to spread critical messages.

“Chinese netizens have always been very creative because every idea used successfully once will be discovered by censors the next time,” said Liu Lipeng, a censor-turned-critic of China’s censorship practices.

Chinese users started posting images of blank sheets of white paper, said Liu, in a silent reminder of words they weren't allowed to post.

Others posted sarcastic messages like “Good good good sure sure sure right right right yes yes yes,” or used Chinese homonyms to evoke calls for President Xi Jinping to resign, such as “shrimp moss,” which sounds like the words for “step down” as well as “banana peel”, which has the same initials as Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But within days, censors moved to contain images of white paper. They would have used a range of tools, said Chauncey Jung, a policy analyst who previously worked for several Chinese internet companies based in Beijing.

Most content censorship is not done by the state, Jung said, but outsourced to content moderation operations at private social media platforms, who use a mix of human and AI. Some censored posts are not deleted, but may be made visible only to the author, or removed from search results. In some cases, posts with sensitive key phrases may be published after review.

A search on Weibo Thursday for the term “white paper” turned up mostly posts that were critical of the protests, with no images of a single sheet of blank paper, or of people holding white paper at protests.

It's possible to access the global internet from China by using technologies such as virtual private networks that disguise internet traffic, but these systems are illegal and many Chinese internet users access only the domestic internet. Wang does not use a VPN.

“I think I can say for all the mainlanders in my generation that we are really excited,” said Wang. “But we’re also really disappointed because we can’t do anything... They just keep censoring, keep deleting, and even releasing fake accounts to praise the cops.”

But the system works well enough to stop many users from ever seeing them. When protests broke out across China over the weekend, Carmen Ou, who lives in Beijing, initially didn’t notice.

Ou learned of the protests only later, after using a VPN service to access Instagram.

“I tried looking at my feed on WeChat, but there was no mention of any protests,” she said. “If not for a VPN and access to Instagram, I might not have found out that such a monumental event had taken place.”

Han, the international affairs professor, said that censorship “doesn't have to be perfect to be effective”

"Censorship might be functioning to prevent a big enough size of the population from accessing the critical information to be mobilized,” he said.

China’s opaque approach to tamping down the spread of online dissent also makes it difficult to distinguish government campaigns from ordinary spam.

Searching Twitter using the Chinese words for Shanghai or other Chinese cities reveals protest videos, but also also a near-constant flood of new posts showing racy photos of young women. Some researchers proposed that a state-backed campaign could be seeking to drown out news of the protests with “not safe for work” content.

A preliminary analysis by the Stanford Internet Observatory found lots of spam but no “compelling evidence” that it was specifically intended to suppress information or dissent, said Stanford data architect David Thiel.

“I’d be skeptical of anyone claiming clear evidence of government attribution,” Thiel said in an email.

Twitter searches for more specific protest-related terms, such as “Urumqi Middle Road, Shanghai,” produced mainly posts related to the protests.

Israeli data analysis firm Cyabra and another research group that shared analysis with the AP said it was hard to distinguish between a deliberate attempt to drown out protest information sought by the Chinese diaspora and a run-of-the-mill commercial spam campaign.

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. It hasn’t answered media inquiries since billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform in late October and cut back much of its workforce, including many of those tasked with moderating spam and other content. Musk often tweets about how he’s enacting or enforcing new Twitter content rules but hasn’t commented on the recent protests in China.

___

AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London and AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this story.

Zen Soo, The Associated Press

Proposed language law changes pose more 'barriers' for Indigenous people, AFN says


Tue, November 29, 2022 



OTTAWA — Proposed changes to the Official Languages Act are likely to create more "arbitrary barriers" for Indigenous people hoping to work in federal institutions and advance to higher levels, says the Assembly of First Nations.

The national advocacy organization, representing more than 600 First Nations across the country, issued its warning to a parliamentary committee that is studying amendments to the law.

Last spring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government introduced plans to reform the Official Languages Act to modernize the legislation, including more measures to promote the use of French.

In a brief submitted to the committee, the Assembly of First Nations says the bill "continues the federal government’s approach of privileging English and French while devaluing Indigenous languages."

Among the amendments proposed to the existing language law, last touched in 1988,is the extension of language rights to federally regulated private businesses in Quebec or regions elsewhere in Canada that have a francophone population.

It also specifies that managers and supervisors in federal institutions within Ottawa and Gatineau, Que., should be able to communicate in both French and English.

Only about 10 per cent of First Nations people can speak both official languages, according to the assembly's submission, so the proposed changes risk limiting who can access those jobs.

"First Nations peoples should not be forced to learn additional colonial languages to be eligible for positions within federal institutions," the document says.

"The government of Canada's approach to languages has privileged English and French over Indigenous languages. This is a modern reflection of Canadian colonialism's exclusion of Indigenous Peoples."

The document recommends that Parliament, in considering changes to the law, should exempt Indigenous employees in federal institutions from bilingual language requirements.

Despite presenting its concerns to the official languages committee that is studying the bill, the Assembly of First Nations has not appeared as a witness. And a list of 45 witnesses scheduled to appear does not include representatives of other Indigenous groups.

Members of Parliament on the committee have already begun debating a Liberal motion to see the bill and all of its amendments move onto the next stage of the legislative process.

Liberal MP Marc Serré, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of official languages, said Tuesday that "we're going to look at passing the bill the way it is now."

Serré said that organizations were invited to provide their thoughts in writing, and that the government heard from Indigenous individuals and groups during earlier consultations. But it was not clear whether he was aware of the assembly's submission or the concerns that it contained.

Conservative MP Joël Godin, who is also a member of the committee, said Indigenous languages are separate from the matter of improving Canada's laws around providing services in French and English.

Godin also said it appears the governing Liberals don't want to hear from any other witnesses who could speak about the concerns brought forward by the AFN.

The office of the president of Treasury Board said in a statement Tuesday that the government recognizes that speaking an Indigenous language is an asset and it is analyzing data collected on the use of Indigenous languages by public servants in the delivery of services to Canadians.

"The Government of Canada understands that some Indigenous public servants may consider official language requirements a barrier to career progression in the federal public service," reads the statement.

"We are developing a new second language training framework for the public service that is responsive to the needs of all learners, including the specific needs of Indigenous persons. We are also working with Indigenous employees to address any barriers they may face to learning French and English."

Tensions over bilingual language requirements are nothing new for some Indigenous employees.

Earlier this year, the federal Treasury Board rejected a call to extend an $800 annual bonus for public servants who are required to speak French and English at work to those who speak an official language and an Indigenous language.

Some have also called for the public service to exempt Indigenous employees from having to speak both languages as a way to increase Indigenous representation within its ranks, particularly in senior positions.

The federal Liberals have said they want to preserve and promote the use of Indigenous languages. In 2019, their government passed legislation aimed to help communities do just that, after previous policies such as the residential school system sought to eradicate the languages' existence.

But the assembly says in its submission that the 2019 legislation fails to provide anything close to the language protections offered to French in the Official Languages Act.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 29, 2022.

Stephanie Taylor and Michel Saba, The Canadian Press

Smaller Canadian cities rank high on environmental scorecard that has a few surprises


Wed, November 30, 2022 


HALIFAX — A new environmental scorecard says Canada's biggest cities have lower scores than most small and medium-sized municipalities, but a closer look at the data reveals some surprises.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Environment International, rates 30 of the country's largest cities and towns on nine indicators related to health, including air quality, heat and cold waves, ultraviolet radiation, and access to green spaces. The results are compiled in the new Canadian Environmental Quality Index, produced by Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Daniel Rainham, the study's senior author and a professor in Dalhousie's faculty of health, says Canada's largest cities — Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton — posted relatively low scores, but he says some of their neighbourhoods scored on the high end, especially in Toronto.

"It's not an easy story to tell," Rainham said in an interview. "Even though the average values may tell you one thing, there's a lot of variability within those cities."

As an example, he noted that Toronto has some of the unhealthiest neighbourhoods in Canada, though he said the city ranked highest among the biggest cities as a whole. That variability is worthy of more study, Rainham said.

Medium-sized cities scored the highest, including Victoria, Sherbrooke, Que., and the Ontario cities of London, Guelph, Barrie, Kitchener and Kingston. As well, Halifax, Regina and Moncton, N.B., made the top 10.

Again, all of these smaller cities' results come with a caveat: "Even though they may be high on the list, they may have neighbourhoods that are not doing as well," Rainham said. "At a city level, all have some extremes."

At the other end of the scale, one small city — Kelowna, B.C. — received a lower score than all of the big cities, except Edmonton and Calgary. But some of Kelowna's neighbourhoods rated at the very top of the scale.

"You wouldn't really think that Kelowna, being nested in the beautiful fruit-and-berry valleys and wineries, would have a low score, but we're really talking about urban Kelowna," Rainham said. "But it also has one of the highest neighbourhood values as well."

The study focused on towns and cities with populations near or over 100,000.

In the middle of the pack in descending order are Winnipeg, St. John's, Hamilton, Ottawa and the Ontario cities of Windsor, St. Catharines and Oshawa.

Aside from Canada's five largest cities, the bottom of the list in descending order includes the Quebec communities of Gatineau, Quebec City, Trois-Rivières and Chicoutimi, as well as Milton, Ont., Abbotsford, B.C., Saskatoon and Kelowna in 28th place. Calgary and Edmonton are in the basement.

The study also took into account the amount of green vegetation in each neighbourhood. That's important because studies show a link between good health and being close to nature. The same correlation is true for those who live close to the water, another factor measured in the study.

Researchers also measured the proximity of residents to fuel-fired power plants, and the length of roads in each neighbourhood. But there is nothing about noise or water quality because Canada does a poor job of collecting such data.

Rainham said the long-term goal is to make all of the data available to the public by allowing residents to look at an electronic map and zoom in to their neighbourhoods.

The study was paid for by the Public Health Agency of Canada. It was co-written by Zoe Davis, at the University of Melbourne's School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, in southern Australia, and Margaret de Groh, who works with Canada's public health agency.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2022.

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press

In a Wisconsin town, voters fear for WHITE America under attack


Tue, November 29, 2022 



HUDSON, Wis. (AP) — In a picturesque corner of western Wisconsin, a growing right-wing conservative movement has rocketed to prominence.

They see the broader America as a dark place, dangerous, where democracy is under attack by a tyrannical government, few officials can be trusted and neighbors might have to someday band together to protect one another. It’s a country where the most basic beliefs -- in faith, family, liberty -- are threatened.

John Kraft looks beyond his quiet rural community and sees a country that many Americans wouldn’t recognize.

And it’s not just about politics anymore.

“It’s no longer left versus right, Democrat versus Republican,” says Kraft, a software architect and data analyst. “It’s straight up good versus evil.”

He knows how he sounds. He’s felt the contempt of people who see him as a fanatic, a conspiracy theorist.

But he’s a hero in a growing right-wing conservative movement that has rocketed to prominence in this part of western Wisconsin.

Just a couple years ago, their talk of Marxism, government crackdowns and secret plans to destroy family values would have put them at the far fringes of the Republican party.

But not anymore. Today, despite midterm elections that failed see the sweeping Republican victories that many had predicted, they remain a cornerstone of the conservative electoral base. Across the country, victories went to candidates who believe in QAnon and candidates who believe the separation of church and state is a fallacy. In Wisconsin, a U.S. senator who dabbles in conspiracy theories and pseudoscience was re-elected - crushing his opponent in St. Croix County.

Take Mark Carlson. He's a friendly man who exudes gentleness, loves to cook, rarely leaves home without a pistol and believes that despotism looms over America.

“There’s a plan to lead us from within towards socialism, Marxism, communism-type of government,” says Carlson, a St. Croix county supervisor who recently retired after 20 years working at a juvenile detention facility.

He was swept into office earlier this year when insurgent right-wing conservatives created a powerful local voting bloc, energized by fury over COVID lockdowns, vaccination mandates and the unrest that shook the country after George Floyd was murdered by a policeman in Minneapolis, just 45 minutes away.

In two years they have taken control of the county Republican party, driving away leaders they deride as pawns of a weak-kneed establishment, and helped put well over a dozen people in elected positions in county and town governments and school boards.

In their America, the U.S. government orchestrated COVID fears to cement its power, the IRS is buying up huge stocks of ammunition and former President Barack Obama may be the country’s most powerful person.

Today, polls indicate that well over 60% of Republicans in the U.S. don’t believe President Joe Biden was elected in 2020. Around a third refuse to get the COVID vaccine.

Carlson, a bearded, middle-aged, gun-owning white guy who voted for former President Donald Trump, knows he looks like a caricature to some. But he's not.

“I’m just a normal person,” he says, sitting on a sofa, next to a picture window overlooking the large garden that he and his wife tend. “They don’t realize that we mean well.”

He can be confounding. He calls peaceful Black protesters “righteous” for taking to the streets after Floyd’s murder. He makes organic yogurt. He drives a Tesla. He’s a conservative Christian who loves AC/DC. In an area where Islam is sometimes viewed with open hostility, he says he’d back the small Muslim community if they wanted to open a mosque here.

Sometimes you'll hear people around here talk about what they intend to do if things go really bad for America.

There are the solar panels if the electricity grid fails. There’s extra gasoline for cars and diesel for generators. There are shelves of non-perishable food, sometimes enough to last for months.

There are the guns, though that is almost never discussed with outsiders.

“I’ve got enough,” says one man, sitting in a Hudson coffee shop.

“I would rather not get into that with a reporter,” says Kraft.

The suggestions of violence worry people like Paul Hambleton, who lives in Hudson and works with the county Democratic party.

“Something’s really wrong out here,” says Hambleton.

He spent years teaching in small-town St. Croix County, where the population has grown from 43,000 in 1980 to about 95,000 today. He watched as the student body shifted. Farmers’ children gave way to the children of people who commute to work in the Twin Cities. Racial minorities became a small but growing presence.

He understands why the changes might make some people nervous.

“There is a rural way of life that people feel is being threatened here, a small town way of life,” he says.

But he’s also a hunter who saw how hard it was to buy ammunition after the 2020 protests, when firearm sales soared across America.

For nearly two years, the shelves were almost bare.

“I found that menacing,” says Hambleton. “Because no way is that deer hunters buying up so much ammunition.”

Tim Sullivan, The Associated Press

US Abortion rights groups look to next fights after 2022 wins

Wed, November 30, 2022 



CHICAGO (AP) — Emboldened by the results of November's midterms, abortion rights supporters say they are preparing for even bigger fights in state legislatures and pivotal elections to come, including 2024 races for Congress and president.

Victories for abortion rights ballot measures and candidates who support abortion provided a roadmap for how to win future campaigns, Democrats and leaders of several organizations say. Mobilization efforts brought together women of different races, ages and ideologies who disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this summer to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, forming more diverse and larger coalitions.

The election also changed the way people talk about abortion, they say. Long seen as a polarizing issue Democrats were advised to pivot away from, it’s now considered a fundamental topic that must be addressed — and one that will help them win.

“We think, based on the enthusiasm and what we saw on our exit polling and in the election results, that this is an enduring issue,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. The group, along with Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and EMILY’s List, committed $150 million to the 2022 election.

“We got very, very far. But we could do a lot more and we’ll have to build toward that for 2024,” she said.

Heading into the November election, skeptics — including some within the Democratic Party — believed the Supreme Court's June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade had faded as a motivator for voters, overtaken by concerns about inflation, crime or President Joe Biden’s unpopularity.

But in the first nationwide election since the ruling, voters protected abortion rights via ballot measures in five states. Democrats performed better than anticipated, keeping control of the Senate and winning races for governor and other top statewide offices, and among the biggest winners were Democratic candidates who made preserving abortion rights a centerpiece of their campaigns.

VoteCast, a broad survey of the midterm electorate, found 7 in 10 voters said the high court’s ruling on abortion rights was an important factor in their midterm decisions. VoteCast also showed the decision was broadly unpopular. About 6 in 10 say they are angry or dissatisfied by it. And roughly 6 in 10 say they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

“The election showed how motivating this is for people and I don’t think that is going away any time soon," Jen Klein, the Biden administration’s Gender Policy Council director, said of abortion rights.

A key takeaway for supporters of abortion rights was that voters care about, and vote based on, more than a single issue. And for many women, reproductive rights is an economic issue, activists said.

House Democrats, who lost the majority but held more seats than expected to give the GOP a narrow advantage, mentioned abortion in 51% of the TV and radio ads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran in its most competitive districts, according to a post-election DCCC memo. The economy, extremism and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol also were mentioned, though less often, in DCCC ads.

“There were a lot of skeptics, a lot of pundits saying we’re going to lose. They said abortion was polarizing, don’t talk about it, it’s not going to mobilize women,” recalled Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of Supermajority, a multiracial, progressive organization formed after Donald Trump’s 2016 election to organize women and turn out the vote. “They could not have been more wrong. You now have an electorate that feels powerful."

With near-total bans on abortion in place in over a dozen states, abortion-rights groups expect many of their next efforts will be in state legislatures, where Republicans continue to push for restrictions. They also are active in the runoff for U.S. Senate in Georgia between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and GOP football legend Herschel Walker.

Other next tests include a spring election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court that could shift the balance of the court in a state where abortion is banned, and the November 2023 governor's race in Kentucky. Several Republicans are vying to challenge Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who supports abortion rights, in a conservative-leaning state where voters in November rejected a Republican-backed ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion.

Then will come 2024, when the nation will choose a president and which party controls Congress.

Abortion opponents, meanwhile, also are looking at what worked — and what didn't — in the midterms, and debating their strategy going forward.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, argued that to the extent abortion rights opponents lost, it was more a sign of how advertising money was spent than the direction the country is moving on the issue in light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Democrats, notably vulnerable incumbents in competitive U.S. House races, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising pointing to their Republican opponents’ strict opposition to abortion rights. Meanwhile, Republican campaigns and related groups spent a fraction on abortion-specific messaging, allowing attacks — at times misrepresentations of GOP positions and records — to receive little or no response.

“The lesson I hope is learned — some lessons are hard ones — is that that doesn’t happen again,” Dannenfelser said. “Our goal is for there to be a lessons-learned lightbulb moment, and that there is a shift from the ostrich strategy of putting your head in the sand.”

The money bought what Dannenfelser called “unanswered lies.”

For example, a national Democratic House campaign group aired ads to help two-term Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, stating her Republican challenger Tyler Kistner supported banning abortion without exceptions for women who become pregnant as the result of rape or incest. That is despite Kistner stating he supported such exceptions in June.

Kistner’s campaign aides protested during press interviews during the campaign. But neither Kistner nor Republican groups aired ads responding. Still, Kistner, who ran unsuccessfully against Craig in 2020, made no mention of his abortion position on his campaign website this year, unlike two years ago.

“When party committees and their leaders are saying, ‘No matter what they say, don’t talk about abortion,’ then the lies stick,” Dannenfelser said.

With a divided Congress, the focus for Dannenfelser’s group shifts to closely evaluating Republican candidates for president, she said. That means sorting out of the field candidates who see no federal role to restrict abortion, she said.

“The one thing that is unacceptable is the idea that they have no job to do if they are elected,” she said.

Other Republicans say the lesson may be that the GOP should move away from supporting strict prohibitions. They point to elections like one this summer in conservative Kansas, where voters overwhelmingly supported abortion rights.

“I think there are quiet conversations about whether the party at a national level should be paying careful attention about what happened for instance in a state like Kansas," said Jennifer Young, a Republican health care lobbyist.

___

Associated Press reporters Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Colleen Long and Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report.

Sara Burnett, The Associated Press


RIGHT WING CANCEL CULTURE

AG: Penalize doctor who spoke of Ohio 10-year-old's abortion


Wed, November 30, 2022 



INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana's Republican attorney general on Wednesday asked the state medical licensing board to discipline an Indianapolis doctor who has spoken publicly about providing an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled from Ohio after its more-restrictive abortion law took effect.

The complaint alleges Dr. Caitlin Bernard violated state law by not reporting the girl’s child abuse to Indiana authorities and violated patient privacy laws by telling a newspaper reporter about the girl’s treatment.

That account sparked a national political uproar in the weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, with some news outlets and Republican politicians falsely suggesting Bernard fabricated the story and President Joe Biden nearly shouting his outrage over the case during a White House event.

Bernard and her lawyers maintain the girl’s abuse had already been reported to Ohio police and child protective services officials before the doctor ever saw the child. A 27-year-old man has been charged in Columbus, Ohio, with raping the girl.

Bernard’s lawyers argue Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is stridently anti-abortion, has been spreading false or misleading information about the doctor with his investigation allegations for several months.

The attorney general’s complaint asked the licensing board to impose “appropriate disciplinary action” but doesn’t specify a requested penalty. State licensing boards ensure physicians have the appropriate training and education to practice in the state and can suspend, revoke or place on probation a doctor's license.

“Dr. Bernard violated the law, her patient’s trust, and the standards for the medical profession when she disclosed her patient’s abuse, medical issues, and medical treatment to a reporter at an abortion rights rally to further her political agenda,” the office said in a statement. “Simply concealing the patient’s name falls far short of her legal and ethical duties here.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday condemned Rokita’s request.

“This is not about the concerns of the victim,” she said. “This is not about the victim at all. This is an elected official going after a doctor for helping a child who was raped and seeking health care.”

The attorney general’s office filed the action as an Indianapolis judge considers whether to block the attorney general’s office from trying to obtain patient medical records for its investigation. The judge's ruling is expected later this week.

Kathleen DeLaney, a lawyer for Bernard, pointed to testimony from that investigation, including from Bernard, who on Nov. 21 testified that both child abuse authorities and law enforcement in Ohio were involved in the case before the child came to Indiana for treatment.

Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Katharine Melnick also testified that day and said child abuse would be reported by hospital social workers, not doctors, and such reports would be referred to law enforcement where the crime occurred.

“Though I am disappointed he has put my client in this position, we are not surprised given Mr. Rokita’s consistent efforts to use his office to seek to punish those with whom he disagrees at the expense of Indiana taxpayers,” DeLaney said in a statement Wednesday.

Bernard treated the girl in Indianapolis in late June, as she said doctors determined the girl was unable to have an abortion in neighboring Ohio. That’s because Ohio’s “fetal heartbeat” law took effect with the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision. Such laws ban abortions from the time cardiac activity can be detected in an embryo, which is typically around the sixth week of pregnancy, before many realize they are pregnant.

Deputy Attorney General Caryn Nieman-Szyper said during a court hearing last week that Bernard wouldn’t be under investigation if she had not disclosed the girl’s rape to a reporter to advance her own advocacy of abortion rights. Nieman-Szyper said Bernard had not shown she had permission from the girl’s family to discuss her care in public, exposing the child to national attention.

Bernard testified that she spoke with an Indianapolis Star reporter about the girl’s impending abortion at an event protesting the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

After the newspaper cited that case in a July 1 article about patients heading to Indiana for abortions because of more restrictive laws elsewhere, Rokita told Fox News that he would investigate Bernard’s actions, calling her an “abortion activist acting as a doctor.”

Rokita has kept the investigation going even after rape charges were filed in Ohio and public records obtained by The Associated Press show Bernard met Indiana’s required three-day reporting period for an abortion performed on a girl younger than 16.

___

Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed from Washington, D.C. Arleigh Rodgers is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/arleighrodgers

Tom Davies And Arleigh Rodgers, The Associated Press

Moderna exec says COVID trials improved diversity recruiting

Caroline Humer
Wed, November 30, 2022 

Reuters NEXT Newsmaker event in New York City


By Caroline Humer

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Moderna Inc's top scientist said on Tuesday that the vaccine maker has learned how to better recruit from diverse populations for its clinical trials from running its COVID-19 vaccine studies.

Moderna Chief Medical Officer Paul Burton, speaking at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, said that in 2020 the company needed to slow enrollment in its initial COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial in order to include more people in communities of color.

"We recognized that to get good uptake to get real acceptance, you need to have representation of all sorts of people from different communities," Burton said, noting that the company was eventually able to enroll 37% of its 35,000-person trial from communities of color.

Moderna has worked to match that diverse enrollment in its other ongoing trials, Burton said. He said enrollment of people of color in its Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Cytomegalovirus (CMV) vaccine trials was probably over 35%.

Burton also said the company had used new technologies to allow people to take part in studies from home, which he said could help democratize research by reaching even further flung populations.

To view the Reuters NEXT conference live on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, please click here.

(Writing by Michael Erman; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
Tax implications of Rogers-Shaw deal discussed at hearing before tribunal


Wed, November 30, 2022 



OTTAWA — Canada's competition watchdog is warning that the tax revenue implications of Rogers Communications Inc.'s $26-billion proposed takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. will not necessarily benefit consumers, while one economist says he is not concerned about the deal lessening competition.

During the cross-examination of economics expert and witness Roger Ware during the hearing before the Competition Tribunal on the deal Wednesday, counsel for the Competition Bureau tried to make the case that if there are job losses resulting from the merger, there would ultimately be a reduction in tax revenue, noting the possibility of job cuts that is typical of mergers.

The Competition Bureau said anyone out of a job would likely spend less, which would be a cost to the government in the form of a loss in tax revenue.

Ware's argument is that the tax revenue that would accrue from any increase in the profits of Rogers and Shaw stemming from the merger would be income for the government and all Canadians.

Ware also said competition analysis assumes that freed resources, as a result of a merger, will be employed elsewhere in the economy.

Mark Israel, a competition economist at consulting firm Compass Lexecon, spoke before the tribunal as well, arguing that the proposed merger represents a "pro-competitive realignment" of wireline and wireless assets.

He said there will be no reduction in the number of competitors in the telecom market because of the way the deal is structured.

Israel also said Shaw Mobile subscribers will benefit from the increased quality of Rogers' wireless network.

He added that the proposed sale of Shaw-owned Freedom Mobile to Quebecor Inc.-owned Videotron Ltd. would make Videotron a disruptive competitor in Western Canada with strong economic incentives to compete vigorously.

The marginal cost savings for Videotron would put downward pressure on prices, Israel said.

Quebecor agreed to buy Freedom in a $2.85 billion deal earlier this year.

The proposed sale of Freedom to Videotron is part of Rogers' strategy to get its broader deal across the finish line.

The sale of Freedom to Videotron would see Quebecor buy all of Freedom's branded wireless and internet customers as well as all of Freedom’s infrastructure, spectrum and retail locations in a move that would expand Quebecor’s wireless operations nationally.

The hearing before the Competition Tribunal is expected to last until mid-December and aims to resolve the impasse between the Commissioner of Competition, who wants to block the deal, and Rogers and Shaw.

The Competition Bureau is one of three regulatory agencies that must approve the deal, in addition to the CRTC and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

Rogers wants to close the Shaw deal by the end of the year, with a possible further extension to Jan. 31, 2023.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B, TSX:SJR.B, TSX:QBR.B)

The Canadian Press