Poetry and meditation power new research understanding - study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

A new study reveals that ‘poetic meditation’ can enhance qualitative data analysis by offering researchers improved sensory experience and an ability to approach data analysis from unexpected directions.

The authors of the study explain that meditation allows researchers to train their body for data collection – improving their capacity to capture unexpected insights and deal with uncertainty and transformation as they incorporate novel interpretations into their research.

The skills enable researchers to understand novel cultural practices. Poetic meditations may prepare the researchers to see the world with different eyes.

Publishing their findings in Journal of Marketing Management, researchers at the University of Birmingham and Kedge Business School, Bordeaux, France, outline a radical new process to help researchers to enhance their work.

Pilar Rojas-Gaviria, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Scientific wonder prompts us to ask questions about the purpose of consumption, the way markets are created and extended, and how life and human experience are attached to both.

“Academics have always developed theses to resolve questions and explain events, but mindfulness practice can make our bodies an instrument of research – gathering data from different environmental sources. Poetry offers qualitative researchers a useful tool to refigure their surroundings and shed new light on the data they work with.”

Poetic meditation allows researchers to reveal unexpected or previously unnoticed features of market and consumption environments - rather than simply reproducing existing categories and theories.

By recording and presenting poetic meditations through audio media, the researchers demonstrate poetry’s potential to stimulate new ideas that can influence how academics approach data collection or analysis.

The researchers demonstrate the technique with two poetic meditations focusing on the colours green and red. These audio presentations settle the listener into a relaxed state, before taking the listener on an intellectual journey into poetry and philosophy, and ending with a period of meditation.

Robin Canniford, from Kedge Business School, commented: “We believe this technique can inspire researchers to include sound recordings and data presentations in their publications – creating a different approach to communicating and understanding their findings.

“Creating a poetic meditation might be a first step in a researcher’s journey that uncovers new sensations, interpretations, and questions - reaching towards unconventional and impactful responses in our research, even when answers seem to be far in the future.”

Poetry in marketing is already proven to be an effective research method to challenge conventional thinking in areas such as branding. It has helped marketers understand markets and consumers - engaging in conversations that capture how people consume products and services.

ENDS

For more information, please contact Tony Moran, International Communications Manager, on +44 (0)782 783 2312. For out-of-hours enquiries, please call +44 (0) 7789 921 165.

Notes for editors

• The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions, its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries
• ‘Poetic meditation: (re)presenting the mystery of the field’ by Pilar Rojas-Gaviria and Robin Canniford is published in Journal of Marketing Management. The paper can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2022.2112611

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JOURNAL

Journal of Marketing Management

DOI

10.1080/0267257X.2022.2112611 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Poetic meditation: (re)presenting the mystery of the field

Research shows that early retirement can accelerate cognitive decline

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – Early retirement can accelerate cognitive decline among the elderly, according to research conducted by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York. 

Plamen Nikolov, assistant professor of economics, and Shahadath Hossain, a doctoral student in economics, both from Binghamton University, examined China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) and the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) to determine how retirement plans affect cognitive performance among plan participants. CHARLS, a nationally representative survey of people ages 45 and above within the Chinese population, directly tests cognition with a focus on episodic memory and components of intact mental status. 

With a higher life expectancy and a decline in fertility in developing countries, the elderly population has become the most significant demographic source in Asia and Latin America, generating an urgent need for new, sustainable pension systems. However, Nikolov’s research suggests that these retirement plans can have fortuitous downstream consequences. In a new study, Nikolov’s team shows that the access to retirement plans can play a significant role in explaining cognitive decline at older ages.

“Because of this large demographic boom, China introduced a formal pension program (called NRPS) in rural parts of the country. The program was introduced because of China’s rapidly rising aging population and in an effort to alleviate poverty in old age,” said Nikolov. “In rural parts of the country, traditional family-based care for the elderly had largely broken down, without adequate formal mechanisms to take its place. For the elderly, inadequate transfers from either informal family and community transfers could severely reduce their ability to cope with illness or poor nutrition.”

The researchers obtained administrative government data from the Chinese government on the implementation of the pension program. They obtained access to an additional survey data source, which detailed the behavior and socioeconomic characteristics of participants in the new retirement program. Nikolov and his research team discovered that the new program led to significant adverse effects on cognitive functioning among the elderly. The most significant indicator of cognitive decline was delayed recall, a measure widely implicated in neurobiological research as an important predictor of dementia. The pension program had more negative effects among females, and Nikolov said the results support the mental retirement hypothesis that decreased mental activity results in worsening cognitive skills. 

While Nikolov and co-authors found that pension benefits and retirement lead to improved health, the program also induced a stark and much more negative influence on other dimensions: social activities, activities associated with mental fitness and social engagement. 

“Participants in the program report substantially lower levels of social engagement, with significantly lower rates of volunteering and social interaction than non-beneficiaries. We find that increased social isolation is strongly linked with faster cognitive decline among the elderly. Interestingly, we found that the program improved some health behaviors. Program participants reported a reduced incidence of regular alcohol drinking compared to the previous year. Overall, the adverse effects of early retirement on mental and social engagement significantly outweigh the program’s protective effect on various health behaviors,” said Nikolov. “Or alternatively, the kinds of things that matter and determine better health might simply be very different from the kinds of things that matter for better cognition among the elderly. Social engagement and connectedness may simply be the single most powerful factors for cognitive performance in old age.”

Many policy decisions entail careful consideration of causes and effects. But understanding cause and effect in the context of economic or policy issues is often hampered because controlled experiments — such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) — might not always be practically or ethically possible. In such cases, "Economists often turn to a method called natural experiments," Nikolov explained. Natural experiments entail using random events or situations when real life mimics controlled experiments. Based on this method, Nikolov and his team studied how the decision to retire impacted cognition because the research team could compare how people of similar age and socioeconomic characteristics fared compared to similar individuals, but in areas where the pension program did not exist. 

“Individuals in the areas that implement the NRPS score considerably lower than individuals who live in areas that do not offer the NRPS program,” Nikolov said. “Over the almost 10 years since its implementation, the program led to a decline in cognitive performance by as high as almost a fifth of a standard deviation on the memory measures we examine.”

Surprisingly, the estimated program impacts were similar to the negative findings regarding the same phenomenon but in higher income countries such as America, England and the European Union, which Nikolov said demonstrates that retirement affects people across different areas in more similar patterns than we previously understood. 

“We were surprised to find that pension benefits and retirement actually resulted in reduced cognitive performance. In a different study, we found a very robust finding that the introduction of pension benefits and retirement led to positive health benefits via improvements in sleep and the reduction of alcohol consumption and smoking,” he said. “The fact that retirement led to reduced cognitive performance in and of itself is a stark finding about an unsuspected, puzzling issue, but a finding with extremely important welfare implications for one’s quality of life in old age.”

Nikolov said he hopes this research will help create new policies to improve the cognitive functioning of older generations during retirement. 

“We hope our findings will influence how retirees view their retirement activities from a more holistic perspective and pay particular attention to their social engagement, active volunteering, and participating in activities fostering their mental acuity,” Nikolov said. “But we also hope to influence policymakers. We show robust evidence that retirement has important benefits. But it also has considerable costs. Cognitive impairments among the elderly, even if not severely debilitating, bring about a loss of quality of life and can have negative welfare consequences. Policymakers can introduce policies aimed at buffering the reduction of social engagement and mental activities. In this sense, retirement programs can generate positive spillovers for the health status of retirees without the associated negative effect on their cognition.”

Nikolov plans to continue research on this topic and examine how the introduction of pension benefits led to responses of labor force participation among the elderly in rural China. 

The paper, “Do Pension Benefits Accelerate Cognitive Decline in Late Adulthood? Evidence from Rural China," was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.”

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JOURNAL

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

DOI

10.1016/j.jebo.2022.11.025 

ARTICLE TITLE

Do pension benefits accelerate cognitive decline in late adulthood? Evidence from rural China

Legionella bononiensis: a new Legionella species has been identified

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA

 

IMAGE: TEM MICROSCOPE IMAGE OF LEGIONELLA BONONIENSIS BACTERIUM view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA

They called it Legionella bononiensis: it is the 64th species of Legionella identified worldwide, the second to be isolated in Italy since the discovery of the pathogen. It was discovered in 2019 in a hotel facility by researchers from the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Molecular Biology (MAb) at the University of Bologna.

The MAb Laboratory, based at the Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences of the University of Bologna, is involved in the environmental surveillance of Legionella bacteria, the bacterial species that causes legionellosis, a disease that mainly affects the respiratory tract. This activity is carried out by combining traditional techniques and state-of-the-art molecular methods, such as mass spectroscopy, gene sequencing and the latest Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques.

“During planned surveillance activities in a hotel facility, the laboratory staff isolated atypical colonies, which had peculiar morphological and phenotypical characteristics,” explains Sandra Cristino, researcher at the University of Bologna and head of the MAb Laboratory. “We analysed the collected samples using all the standardised methods suggested by reference standards, as well as the scientific literature. However, the results obtained were discordant and did not allow the identification of bacteria at a species level.”

To obtain more precise answers, the researchers then turned to genetic sequencing, the reference test for identifying microorganisms isolated environmentally or clinically. The results linked the discovered bacteria to a reference strain of the Legionella quateirensis species.

Yet, it was not a definitive answer: further investigation was needed. The scholars then further delved into the sequencing activity by analysing other Legionella-specific genes. In addition to these studies, scholars conducted phenotyping (i.e., analysis of the characteristics of the microorganism), Whole Genome Sequencing (a technology that allows the sequencing of the entire genome) and mass spectroscopy with MALDI-TOF technology (which allows the identification of pathogenic microorganisms with great accuracy) studies.

“The obtained results confirmed what we had observed in culture: we were dealing with a new species, phylogenetically distant from Legionella quateirensis, which has never been documented in scientific literature,” Cristino continues. "We then began the process of officially recognising the strain by depositing samples at two culture collections in two different countries, as required by the leading journal that allows the description of new species of prokaryotes.”

Culture collections are collections of microbial cultures where pure microbial strains are deposited to ensure their preservation and maintenance. They are important resources for the work of researchers in the medical and life sciences fields. The new Legionella bacterium was officially deposited in two of the world's most prestigious culture collections: the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), in the United States, and the Leibniz-Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ), in Germany.

The official recognition of the strains made it possible to send the results obtained to the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM), the internationally recognised scientific journal for the registration of new species. Given the location of the new bacterial strain, scientists proposed the name Legionella bononiensis, and after about a year of review by the commission that safeguards the appropriateness of the name assigned to the new species, the recognition of the scientific community finally arrived.

The research team of the University of Bologna officially announced the discovery of the new species during the 10th International Legionella Congress held in Yokohama, Japan. This work is part of the research line of the 35th cycle of the PhD programme in Earth, Life and Environmental Sciences (STVA) of the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Bologna. PhD student Luna Girolamini is the first author of the publication in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM).

Meanwhile, the work of the scientists at the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Molecular Biology (MAb) does not stop. “It is essential to continue studying the pathogenicity and infectivity of the newly discovered strain, as well as the pattern of antibiotic resistance, in order to be able to carry out public health prevention activities,” Cristino confirms. “In addition, the lab is working on two new isolates, which turn out to be two new species of the genus Legionella.”

The research group of the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Molecular Biology (MAb) at the 10th International Legionella Congress held in Yokohama, Japan.

CREDIT

University of Bologna

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JOURNAL

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC AND EVOLUTIONARY MICROBIOLOGY

DOI

10.1099/ijsem.0.005512 

ARTICLE TITLE

Legionella bononiensis sp. nov., isolated from a hotel water distribution system in northern Italy

Rodent extinctions in Hispaniola may have been caused by humans

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: HUMANS HAVE INHABITED HISPANIOLA FOR ROUGHLY SIX THOUSAND YEARS, DURING WHICH TIME THE ISLAND'S RODENT DIVERSITY DWINDLED FROM 11 SPECIES TO JUST 1. BY DETERMINING EXACTLY WHEN THESE SPECIES LAST APPEAR IN THE FOSSIL RECORD, AUTHORS OF A NEW STUDY PINPOINT THE HISTORICAL EVENTS THAT LED TO THEIR EXTINCTION. view more 

CREDIT: FLORIDA MUSEUM PHOTO BY KRISTEN GRACE

The island of Hispaniola once had among the highest diversity of rodents in the Caribbean, supporting 11 species that coexisted for thousands of years. Today, only one rodent species remains within the island’s two countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and its prospects for survival are uncertain. There are many theories as to why so many species went extinct, but it’s unclear exactly when each disappeared, making it difficult to determine the cause.

A new study helps bring the history of this group into clearer focus. Researchers from the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural in the Dominican Republic performed carbon-dating analyses on the fossilized remains of six hutia species, close relatives of capybaras that resemble a mix between a squirrel and beaver. They also examined thousands of bones stored at the Florida Museum of Natural History that were initially collected over 40 years ago, analyzing them for any similarities that might help explain the recent wave of rodent extinctions.

“These hidden gems are what made this study possible,” said Lazaro Viñola Lopez, a doctoral student at the University of Florida and lead author on the study.

Despite the preponderance of material available for study, radiocarbon dating on fossils collected in the tropics can be tricky business. The region’s high humidity, moisture and heat accelerates the degradation of collagen in the fossils needed to date them, leaving scientists with open questions about their antiquity.

“They mineralize and lose all organic material really quickly, so there are limitations to what you can date,” Lopez said.

The fossils used for this study, however, were excavated from caves and sinkholes, where they were sheltered from harsh conditions and safe from marauding scavengers. Sinkholes often act as traps for animals, which fall in and are unable to escape, while many of the bones found in caves were directly transported there by predators like the Hispaniolan giant barn owl (Tyto ostologa). These large predators declined alongside the hutias and may have succumbed to extinction when their food source disappeared.

Hutias and the biological communities they supported flourished on Hispaniola for nearly 20 million years, and it was previously unclear when they began to disappear. Early theories speculated that the species went extinct due to rapid climate change at the end of the ice ages in the late Pleistocene more than 10,000 years ago. More recent theories posit that the arrival of Indigenous people in the Caribbean and the later arrival of Europeans may have played a stronger role.

However, researchers have been unable to make an accurate estimate as to when they went extinct without knowing a “last appearance date,” or the age of the youngest specimen to have been discovered.

Prior to this study, researchers had only a handful of radiocarbon dates for hutia fossils on which to base their assumptions. Here, the authors add carbon dates for an additional six species, all of which survived the period of climate change originally theorized to have done them in.

This directly implicates humans in their disappearance.

It is estimated that the first humans arrived on Hispaniola somewhere between 4,000 – 6,000 years ago. This lines up with a handful of older extinctions from the six dated species, including Rhizoplagiodontia lemkei, which was determined to have died out less than 6,000 years ago.

Beginning roughly 3,000 years ago, another group of Indigenous people moved into the Caribbean from present-day Venezuela. These early islanders hunted hutias and even set up an inter-island exchange of the animals, but these practices seem to have been carried out sustainably.

Instead, European colonization appears to have been the main cause of hutia decline. Radiocarbon dates indicate that seven species went extinct within the last 2,000 years. Of these, at least three coincided with the arrival of Europeans.

Lopez suspects that gradual habitat destruction, rising human population numbers, and the introduction of invasive species eventually led to the demise of hutias along with several other mammal and bird species.

“When Europeans came to the island they brought several animals with them, like rats, dogs and cats,” he said. “Is it possible that these species went extinct because of competition with these new animals? That’s just one of the questions we can ask now because of this study.”

According to Lopez, the results serve as a jumping-off point for many future studies into Caribbean rodents.

“We are just scratching the surface,” he explained. “Right now, we only have nine new biometric dates. Imagine what we could do with 20, or even 50 dates. With a more detailed chronology, we can start to theorize about the past relationships between these species and the humans on the island.” 

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JOURNAL

Quaternary Science Reviews

DOI

10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107828 

ARTICLE TITLE

Endemic rodents of Hispaniola: biogeography and extinction timing during the Holocene

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Jan-2023

A Concordia urban forest-mapping project wraps up with help from public and private data

Trees on privately owned land add significant biodiversity to Montreal’s NDG neighborhood

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: KAYLEIGH HUTT-TAYLOR AND CARLY ZITER: “WE ALL HAVE UNIQUE MOTIVATIONS FOR WHY WE ARE PLANTING A TREE IN A PARTICULAR SPOT.” view more 

CREDIT: CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

A Concordia project cataloguing the diversity of the urban forest in a Montreal residential neighbourhood is now complete, and the researchers behind it say the results highlight the importance of a diverse city tree population.

The project found that private residences and institutions such as schools and places of worship usually had different tree populations from those planted by municipal authorities in city parks and roadways or sidewalks. While the city-planted trees tended to be bigger and more resilient to stressors like drought or salt, the often-smaller private trees served other functions such as providing fruit, flowers or aesthetic beauty.

“Our findings likely reflect the different motivations, goals and aims among decision-makers of where trees were planted,” says MSc student Kayleigh Hutt-Taylor, who co-led the project with assistant professor of biology Carly Ziter. A municipal land manager will have a different set of priorities from a resident with a small backyard, for instance.

“This leads to measurable differences in which trees are planted where, because we all have unique motivations for why we are planting a tree in a particular spot.”

The full findings are published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

More species the better

The researchers solicited residents and institutions such as schools and churches around Concordia’s Loyola Campus in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood. They asked them to measure the circumference of the trees on their property, photograph their bark and leaves and submit their data to the Montreal Tree Project website for analysis.

Over the summer of 2020, they received 98 submissions from landowners in the neighbourhood and used the City of Montreal’s open data public tree inventory to analyze trees in public spaces. In total, almost 4,300 trees on both private and public lands were counted.

Norway and silver maples accounted for more than 30 per cent of the tree population, making it the most common species in the area surveyed. Five species accounted for nearly half of the total tree population: the maples, the eastern white cedar, the littleleaf linden and the green ash.

Private residences were found to have the highest richness in species diversity while institutional lands — mostly schools and churches — were found to have the lowest. This high diversity of trees on private land represents the critical contribution landowners make toward the urban forest. Nevertheless, the researchers say, even areas with lower species diversity play an important role in providing services such as shade, temperature regulation and fighting air pollution.

“From an ecological standpoint, having a diverse tree population leads to a more multifunctional landscape,” says Hutt-Taylor, now the project coordinator of nature-based solutions at Concordia’s Loyola Campus. “It can also provide a more resilient forest to events like climate change, changes in the environmental fabric of the city as well as to pests and disease.”

She points to the damage the invasive emerald ash borer inflicted on the that particular species as an example of the importance of a diverse population: “If the emerald ash dominated the landscape, we could have lost 50 per cent of our trees.”

Recruiting citizen scientists

“When it comes to understanding and strengthening our urban forests, trees on private land are a critical, but sometimes overlooked, piece of the puzzle. Citizen science offers a way to collect this data while engaging members of the community,” Ziter adds.

For residents who are inspired to plant trees in their backyards, Hutt-Taylor suggests they opt for trees that are both native to their region and are of a different species to the trees in their neighbours’ yards.

“It’s a nice way to create a more diverse population of trees within the landscape and to have that promoted across our neighbourhoods.”

Read the cited paper: “Private trees contribute uniquely to urban forest diversity, structure and service-based traits.”

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JOURNAL

Urban Forestry & Urban Greening

DOI

10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127760 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Private trees contribute uniquely to urban forest diversity, structure and service-based traits

Temple-led study examines the perspectives of recently firearm-injured people on news media reports of firearm violence

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM

(Philadelphia, PA) – News media reports of interpersonal firearm violence on television and in print publications are generally presented through an episodic lens that focuses on the individual event, as opposed to one that frames the incident within larger social and structural context.

Now, for the first time, new research published in the journal Social Science and Medicine Qualitative Research in Health and led by corresponding author Jessica H. Beard, MD, MPH, FACS, Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Trauma and Critical Care and Director of Trauma Research at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, uncovers the impact of this episodic framing on recently firearm-injured people, and explores how they perceive the meaning and impact of news media reporting about their injuries and firearm violence in their communities.

From July-October 2021, Dr. Beard and her research team recruited adult English-speaking patients who attended the outpatient trauma surgery clinic at Temple University Hospital within two months of sustaining a firearm injury (penetrating gunshot wound). Approximately 85 percent of the patients approached during that time agreed to participate in the study. Of the 26 patients who participated:

• Their median age was 27 years old.
• 21 self-identified as male.
• 19 self-identified as Black/African-American, 4 as Latinx/Hispanic, 2 as multiracial/mixed race, 1 as white.
• 16 said they were aware of news coverage about their shooting.
  • Of these, 13 reported TV coverage, 11 social media coverage, 3 newspaper coverage.
• None were interviewed by a journalist about their shooting.

During their interviews with the participants, the research team found that participants who did not “make the news” generally felt relieved. Participants whose shootings made the news described largely negative viewpoints of the coverage. They identified multiple harms of current media coverage of firearm violence including:

• Feeling dehumanized
• Reliving the trauma
• Frustration when there were inaccuracies
• Perceiving a threat to their personal safety
• Harm to their reputation
• A negative impact on public perceptions of safety and community

One participant described how it felt to be the subject of an episodic report on her shooting: “They didn’t ask me any questions. There was no calls made to me or talk to me personally […] They didn’t tell the story from my perspective. It was like she was shot and that’s it. I would prefer if they asked me specific feelings about me […] if they actually interviewed me, yeah, instead of just writing it like I’m a nobody.”

Another participant connected episodic reports with fear and firearm purchasing, which spiked in 2021: “You report the gun violence, but why not do a follow-up report […] for the victims, the survivors, the families that had to bury these people, the whole process? Just don’t do a guy got shot over there, a guy got shot over here. You’re making people more fearful. You’re more fearful, you’re going to arm yourself more.”

“These interviews reveal the need for journalists to stop episodic snapshot reporting of individual incidents of interpersonal firearm violence and concentrate on producing more in-depth reporting that presents root causes and solutions, and gives voice to those who are directly impacted,” said Dr. Beard. “It’s time for reporting on firearm violence to be part of the solution,” she added.

Other researchers involved in the study include Iman N. Afif, MD, MPH, and Elizabeth D. Dauer, MD, in the Division of Trauma Surgery and Surgical Critical Care at the Katz School of Medicine; Jennifer Midberry, PhD, in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University; Jim MacMillan, BS, of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting; and Sara F. Jacoby, PhD, MPH, in the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

The study was funded by the Stoneleigh Foundation and the Lehigh University Department of Journalism and Communication.

About the Lewis Katz School of Medicine

Founded in 1901, the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University attracts students and faculty committed to advancing individual and population health through culturally competent patient care, research, education, and service. The School confers the MD degree; MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Science; the MA in Urban Bioethics; the MS in Physician Assistant studies; a certificate in Narrative Medicine; a non-degree post-baccalaureate program; several dual degree programs with other Temple University schools; continuing medical education programs; and in partnership with Temple University Hospital, 40 residency and fellowship programs for physicians. The School also manages a robust portfolio of publicly and privately funded transdisciplinary studies aimed at advancing the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease -- with specialized research centers focused on heart disease, cancer, substance use disorder, metabolic disease, and other regional and national health priorities. To learn more about the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, please visit: medicine.temple.edu.

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DOI

10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100212 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

"Like I'm a nobody:" firearm-injured peoples' perspectives on news media reporting about firearm violence

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Jan-2023

COI STATEMENT

The study was funded by the Stoneleigh Foundation and the Lehigh University Department of Journalism and Communication.

Sunsetting EU laws risks rights of more than 8.6 million UK workers, think tank warns

Government plans to rush the ‘sunsetting’ of EU laws by the end of 2023 will put the rights and protections of more than 8.6 million UK workers at risk, the Work Foundation warns

Reports and Proceedings

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Government plans to rush the ‘sunsetting’ of EU laws by the end of 2023 will put the rights and protections of more than 8.6 million UK workers at risk, the Work Foundation warns.

New analysis from the Work Foundation at Lancaster University reveals that workers on part-time, fixed-term or agency worker contracts will be most at risk if the Government presses ahead with post-Brexit plans to amend, replace or scrap thousands of pieces of retained EU Law by 31 December without greater parliamentary scrutiny.

Working time directives and entitlement to paid holiday are amongst the regulations that could be weakened as a result of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022, as well as laws which ensure people in insecure work – including agency workers, part-time workers and those on fixed-term contracts – are not treated unfairly when compared to their peers in full-time or permanent employment.

Part-time workers

A new Work Foundation briefing, published today, shows that 8.2 million part-time workers in the UK fall into the most at-risk category – with women more vulnerable than men. In the UK, 72% of part time workers are women, whereas only 40% of full-time UK workers are women.

The current Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 protects this large, part-time workforce from not being any worse off than full-time worker equivalents. Without this retained EU legislation, they could be treated differently to peers when it comes to:

• Pay and leave – including for holiday, sickness absence, maternity, paternity, adoption and Shared Parental Leave
• Pension opportunities and benefits
• Training and career development
• Promotions, career breaks and job transfers
• Redundancy selection and pay.

Workers on fixed-term contracts

The three quarters of a million workers on fixed term contracts in the UK (56% are women) are also amongst the most vulnerable, and would face an uncertain future without protection from the EU-derived Fixed-Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002. This important piece of legislation helps employees to insist that their fixed-term contract is converted into a permanent one in certain circumstances – and has led to significant improvements in pay and conditions with better access to workplace pensions for many temporary staff in the UK, according to the TUC.

Agency Workers

There are nearly three quarters of a million agency workers currently in the UK and they are the third group that will be most impacted by the Retained EU Law Bill. Of these workers, nearly a third work part-time and 28,000 are on a fixed-term contract – so also have protection from part-time and fixed-contract regulations derived from the EU. They also have the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 which could be lost at the end of this year, which provide agency workers with the right to the same “basic working and employment conditions” as direct employees.

Ben Harrison, Director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said: “UK workers are already facing the worst cost of living squeeze in generations and the prospect of rising unemployment. The last thing millions need is a year of uncertainty in relation to their basic employment rights – but that is exactly what the Government’s current approach to integrating EU regulations into UK law provides.

“Women are likely to bear the brunt of this additional anxiety as they make up the majority of part-time, fixed-contract and agency work. Work Foundation analysis has already shown that women are nearly twice as likely to be in severely insecure work as men, and the situation worsens for mothers, disabled women and women from Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds.

“Determining the future of such crucial protections to an arbitrary political deadline, alongside thousands of other regulations, creates significant instability and risks there being unintended consequences for workers and employers across the UK.

“The irony is that these regulations do need to be improved, and this Government had previously committed to a new Employment Bill during this Parliament in order to deliver on pledges to strengthen worker rights post –Brexit.

“While it is entirely to be expected that the UK would begin to diverge from EU regulations and policies over time in the aftermath of Brexit, rushing such changes through only serves to increase the anxiety and uncertainty faced by millions of workers in 2023.”

Many fundamental workers’ rights embedded in UK legislation originate from the EU. Some of the rights that could be lost or diluted by the Bill at the end of this year include:

• Holiday pay
• Protection of pregnant workers, and rights to maternity and parental leave
• Rights relating to working time, including rights to daily and weekly rest, maximum weekly working time, paid annual leave and measures to protect night workers
• Protection of part-time and fixed-term workers
• Agency worker rights
• Data protection rights
• Protections of terms and conditions for workers whose employment is transferred to another employer
• Collective consultation with worker representatives when redundancies are proposed
• Protection of workers’ rights on the insolvency of their employer
• Rights to a written statement of terms and conditions.

“In addition to the thousands of EU regulations that could face their ‘sunset’ in December without consultation, there is additional UK employment legislation which is likely to be affected,” Ben Harrison continues.

“Take the Equality Act, for example. It doesn’t originate from the EU, but cases have so far been determined on the basis of EU decision-making. So, even though the Equality Act will remain, its interpretation and application will no longer have to consider EU practice. This means we could see different decisions made around cases to close the gender pay gap, for example.

“The intricacies of all these issues need careful consideration and extensive consultation.”

The Work Foundation says the EU Bill will affect ‘too many people's lives and employers’ fortunes’ and calls upon Government to deliver the promised Employment Bill and enhance workplace protections, bringing UK workplaces into the 21st Century. It says sick pay, enforcement of rights, flexible working and other family friendly policies all need to be improved.

Commenting on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022, TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: "This Bill is a recipe for chaos.

"Rights and protections that workers fought hard for could be swept away at the stroke of midnight on 1 January 2024.

“Ministers are rocking the foundations underpinning vital workplace rights - like holiday pay, safe working hours and protection from discrimination. And they are endangering vital consumer and environmental protections too.

“This Bill must be withdrawn before lasting damage is done.”

The briefing, ‘A year of uncertainty: The Retained EU Law Bill 2022 and UK workers’ rights’ is published today and freely available on the Work Foundation website: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/work-foundation/publications/a-year-of-uncertainty

Ends

Predicting a recession

Researchers develop new model to predict US recessions and slowdowns in GDP growth

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

 

IMAGE: MATTHEW GLENDENING view more 

CREDIT: FROM UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

Columbia, Mo.— In the United States, publicly traded companies are required to report their recent financial performance, whether good or bad, to the public. The accuracy of these reports is critical for investors, analysts and regulators. A new study, conducted at the University of Missouri and Indiana University, suggests that when businesses submit misleading financial statements, it can be an early warning sign of a looming recession.

Matthew Glendening and Ken Shaw, MU professors of accounting, worked together with co-authors Daniel Beneish and David Farber, professors of accounting at Indiana University, to determine how misrepresentation in financial statements affects the economy. They developed a new model to predict U.S. recessions and slowdowns in GDP and found that recessions and economic slowdowns are more probable when there is a higher likelihood that financial statements have been manipulated.

“Accounting matters, and manipulated accounting information can negatively impact the economy,” Glendening said. “When financial reporting is not adequately monitored and companies manipulate financial information, it can have potentially damaging consequences. Not only do investors use this information, but other firms do so as well. In many cases, firms make employment and investment decisions based on this information, which can be way too optimistic.”

The study found that high levels of potential manipulation in financial statements can improve recession prediction 5 to 8 quarters away, and can also predict downturns in GDP growth at a similar forecast horizon.

To assess the prevalence of financial statement manipulation in the economy, the researchers used a measure widely known as the M-Score, which was created by Professor Beneish in the late 1990s. The M-Score measures the likelihood that a company has manipulated its financial statements, and is based on eight variables, including how fast a company’s sales are growing compared to its accounts receivable. The M-Score is considered to be one of the most economically viable measures for investors to use to determine the likelihood that businesses have manipulated their financial statements. Famously, the M-Score provided one of the earliest warnings about the Enron accounting scandal.

“When companies misreport information, it can take years before they are caught, if they’re caught at all — and many are not,” Glendening said. “Our model shows that the likelihood of financial statement manipulation helps predict the outlook of the economy.”

Shaw said previous research used measures of financial misreporting at the individual firm level, but no one has previously aggregated the data to come up with an economy-wide measure of financial misreporting.

“The M-Score has been around for a long time, but it took us four co-authors working together to show it has predictive value for the status of the economy, which is something everybody has a stake in,” Glendening said.

Shaw said the authors’ ultimate goal is to provide research that is not only informative but can be used by regulators and managers.

“We want to answer questions of interest to real people in the real world,” Shaw said. “We try to do something of value in our research and see if there’s a way that we can help people.”

“Aggregate Financial Misreporting and the Predictability of U.S. Recessions and GDP Growth” was recently accepted for publication in The Accounting Review, the premier scholarly journal of the American Accounting Association.

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JOURNAL

The Accounting Review

DOI

10.2308/TAR-2021-0160 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Aggregate Financial Misreporting and the Predictability of U.S. Recessions and GDP Growth