Pig-to-human transplants come a step closer with new test


Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.

Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so they could observe it for two days. The kidney did what it was supposed to do — filter waste and produce urine — and didn't trigger rejection.

“It had absolutely normal function,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at NYU Langone Health. “It didn’t have this immediate rejection that we have worried about.”

This research is “a significant step,” said Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not part of the work. It will reassure patients, researchers and regulators “that we’re moving in the right direction.”

The dream of animal-to-human transplants — or xenotransplantation — goes back to the 17th century with stumbling attempts to use animal blood for transfusions. By the 20th century, surgeons were attempting transplants of organs from baboons into humans, notably Baby Fae, a dying infant, who lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

With no lasting success and much public uproar, scientists turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes to bridge the species gap.

Pigs have advantages over monkeys and apes. They are produced for food, so using them for organs raises fewer ethical concerns. Pigs have large litters, short gestation periods and organs comparable to humans.

Pig heart valves also have been used successfully for decades in humans. The blood thinner heparin is derived from pig intestines. Pig skin grafts are used on burns and Chinese surgeons have used pig corneas to restore sight.

In the NYU case, researchers kept a deceased woman's body going on a ventilator after her family agreed to the experiment. The woman had wished to donate her organs, but they weren’t suitable for traditional donation.

The family felt “there was a possibility that some good could come from this gift,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery himself received a transplant three years ago, a human heart from a donor with hepatitis C because he was willing to take any organ. “I was one of those people lying in an ICU waiting and not knowing whether an organ was going to come in time,” he said.

Several biotech companies are in the running to develop suitable pig organs for transplant to help ease the human organ shortage. More than 90,000 people in the U.S. are in line for a kidney transplant. Every day, 12 die while waiting.

The advance is a win for Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, the company that engineered the pig and its cousins, a herd of 100 raised in tightly controlled conditions at a facility in Iowa.

The pigs lack a gene that produces alpha-gal, the sugar that provokes an immediate attack from the human immune system.

In December, the Food and Drug Administration approved the gene alteration in the Revivicor pigs as safe for human food consumption and medicine.

But the FDA said developers would need to submit more paperwork before pig organs could be transplanted into living humans.

“This is an important step forward in realizing the promise of xenotransplantation, which will save thousands of lives each year in the not-too-distant future,” said United Therapeutics CEO Martine Rothblatt in a statement.

Experts say tests on nonhuman primates and last month’s experiment with a human body pave the way for the first experimental pig kidney or heart transplants in living people in the next several years.

Raising pigs to be organ donors feels wrong to some people, but it may grow more acceptable if concerns about animal welfare can be addressed, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, who will help develop ethics and policy recommendations for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

“The other issue is going to be: Should we be doing this just because we can?” Maschke said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press

EXXON UNION BUSTING

Vote on removing union from Exxon Texas refinery could come next month

Exxon Mobil begins lockout of workers from Texas plant

BEAUMONT, Texas (Reuters) - The U.S. National Labor Relations Board is expected to schedule a mid-November vote on removing the United Steelworkers union from Exxon Mobil's Beaumont, Texas, refinery, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Exxon locked out union members on May 1 after it and the USW were unable to agree on a new, six-year labor contract for the refinery and oil-blending and packaging plant. A vote on Exxon's proposed contract is ongoing and results are due this evening.

At least 30% of the plant's 650 members separately signed a petition calling for an NLRB vote to decertify the local union. Decertification is the formal name for the removal process.

An Exxon spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on the vote timing. The NLRB did not reply to a request for comment.

The NLRB will first consider the union's charge that Exxon improperly aided the removal petition before releasing any results from the vote, the person familiar with the matter said.

The USW in April filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging Exxon had violated federal law by providing an employee with decertification materials, employee email addresses and use of a company computer and email system to campaign for decertification.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; writing by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

German publisher Axel Springer completes Politico takeover


BERLIN (AP) — German publisher Axel Springer SE said Tuesday it has completed its acquisition of U.S.-based political news outlet Politico.

The announcement came a day after Axel Springer ousted the top editor of its flagship publication in Germany over misconduct allegations.

The removal of Julian Reichelt from his post as chief editor of tabloid Bild was seen by some commentators in Germany as a possible nod toward concerns from its majority owner, U.S. investment firm KKR, following media reports that the 41-year-old had acted inappropriately toward female employees.

Axel Springer said in a statement that the acquisition of Politico, tech news site Protocol, E&E News and Agency IQ from founder Robert L. Allbritton was completed after it received the necessary regulatory approvals.

A purchase price wasn't announced, but German media have reported it to be about $1 billion.

“We have always believed deeply in the digital journalism business model and Politico is a prime example of how to make it work," Axel Springer quoted its chief executive Mathias Doepfner as saying.

"We will work with Politico to further elevate its growth potential and aim to help expand its offering internationally,” he said.

Axel Springer has increasingly moved beyond its traditional European publishing market in recent years, including by investing in specialist online portals such as recruiting site Stepstone.

The Associated Press

Florida Man Finds Tooth of Megalodon, Biggest Shark to Ever Live, While Diving

A Florida man was left delighted last week after finding a tooth fossil from a megalodon, the largest shark to ever live.

A stock 3D illustration of a megalodon shark swimming. The sharks went extinct around 3 million years ago.

Michael Nastasio said he was "so happy" when he found a 6-inch-long megalodon tooth while fossil hunting off the coast of Venice.

The megalodon, also known as Otodus megalodon, was a huge shark and apex predator of the seas that is thought to have gone extinct around 3.6 million years ago.

The earliest fossils date from around 20 million years ago, suggesting that for around 13 million years the enormous fish dominated the oceans, according to the U.K.'s Natural History Museum. The museum describes the shark as the largest to ever live.

Researchers have never found a complete megalodon skeleton, but based on the sheer size of the animal's fossilized teeth, it is estimated that it grew to between 49 and 59 foot in length. The largest megalodon teeth to be found have been in excess of 7 inches.

On his huge 6-inch find, Nastasio said in a Facebook post that he had been hunting for a tooth of that size for around a decade. He is the boat captain at the Florida diving company Black Gold Fossil Charters.

"I'm so happy right now and literally still shaking," he wrote. "I was the last one in the water and saw it within the first five minutes of my dive. The tooth measures 6 1/16 [inches]."

He also posted photos that show him holding the tooth, which looks to be around the same size as his hand.

Megalodon shark teeth can be valuable depending on their size. Fossil website FossilEra allows people to buy and sell megalodon teeth, and while some examples can go for a few hundred dollars, others, such as a serrated 6.21-inch tooth, are valued at nearly $3,000.

Megalodon teeth have been found on every continent except Antarctica. Many examples have been found off the east coast of North America, as well as in rivers in North and South Carolina and Florida.

Earlier this year a three-pound, 6.45-inch tooth was found at a construction site in South Carolina. Outside of the U.S., a 4.3-inch long tooth was found this year in the U.K. on the Naze—a headland on the coast of Essex.

Megalodon teeth are relatively common fossils because sharks produce so many of them. Depending on what they eat, they can get through up to 40,000 teeth in their lifetime. Their teeth are also the hardest part of their skeleton.

Coal report on Albertans' views to be delayed one month, says panel chairman

EDMONTON — A report detailing how Albertans feel about open-pit coal mining in the Rockies will be delayed by a month, says the head of the committee preparing the document.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Ron Wallace said the report, the first of two his panel is expected to generate, will now be delivered to Energy Minister Sonya Savage by Nov. 15. That's the same due date as the second report, which is to contain recommendations on coal development.

"It was because of the overwhelming response and the need to accommodate that response with extra time that we had to approach the minister with the request for an extension," Wallace said in an interview Tuesday.

Savage confirmed the move in a post to the committee's website.

"To ensure we are able to devote the necessary attention to the input received, the committee was granted permission from the Minister of Energy to extend the deadline of the engagement report to match the deadline of our final report," the post said.

The extension comes as American researchers conclude that North America now has so many steelmaking coal proposals in the works that some mines may not meet profit forecasts, raising the danger they might be closed early.

"They're promising lots of job creation," said Ryan Driskell Tate of Global Energy Monitor, a U.S.-based research group. "There are lots of promises made early on that are not necessarily fulfilled."

Wallace's five-member panel has been canvassing the province for what people think about how — or if — coal development should proceed. It was established as a result of a massive public outcry at changes that removed protections for large swaths of the Rocky Mountains and their foothills that resulted in a flood of coal exploration permits being issued on some of Alberta's most cherished landscapes.

The panel was due Friday to deliver a summary of what it heard in a report to the minister. But Wallace said it received too much high-quality information to pull anything together before mid-November.

With submissions still trickling in, Wallace said the panel has received 177 detailed papers from environmental groups, coal companies, municipalities and First Nations. It held 67 meetings and took in 1,028 emails.

Most, he said, were "strongly opposed" to the industry's expansion.

"I would characterize the report as a reflection of an enormous pent-up demand for the public to speak to government," he said.

Meanwhile, Tate said a spike in coal prices has led to 15 steelmaking coal projects across North America that have advanced beyond initial exploration, 11 of them in British Columbia and Alberta.

Tate said if all those projects are built, the amount of coal exported to China and other Asian countries would have to more than double.

"They don't have very obvious consumers," he said. "Prices are one question. I'm not even entirely sure they have a stable market."

Tate said the current price spike is due to a diplomatic spat between China, the world's biggest steelmaking coal consumer, and Australia, its biggest producer. If the differences are resolved and China starts buying Australian coal again, prices could drop, he said.

Climate policies are also expected to reduce steelmaking coal demand. The report notes the International Energy Agency says meeting Paris Agreement goals would probably cut demand in half by 2040.

The outlook for Albertans is risky, Tate said.

"Albertans will be dependent on the net-zero (carbon) targets of other countries."

Worse, he said, is the risk of stranded assets — mines that have made their environmental impact but are shuttered by poor profitability before the promised economic benefits are realized.

"This is a volatile market that is undergoing a lot of changes," said Tate.

Provided with a copy of Tate's report, Alberta Energy spokeswoman Jennifer Henshaw said no decisions on coal will be made until after Wallace's panel delivers its recommendations.

"The report will provide valuable insight and guidance as we determine the next steps to ensure modern coal policy is developed," she said.

The Coal Association of Canada did not respond to a request for comment on the Global Energy Monitor study.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2021.

— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

China's Xi faces resistance to property-tax plan - WSJ

(Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping is facing resistance over a nationwide property tax aimed at curbing housing speculation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of government deliberations.

Meeting commemorating 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution in Beijing

Earlier this year, Xi assigned to Han Zheng, the most senior of China's four vice premiers, the task of rolling out the levy much more widely, according to the report.


However, Beijing is now settling for a limited tax plan because of strong pushback, while a proposal involving state-provided affordable housing is emerging as an alternative, the WSJ reported.

An initial proposal to test-run the tax in some 30 cities has been scaled back to around 10, the report said.

In an essay in the ruling Communist Party journal Qiushi, published by the official Xinhua news agency on Friday, Xi had called for China to "vigorously and steadily advance" legislation for a property tax.

China has mulled such a tax for over a decade but faced resistance from stakeholders including local governments themselves, who fear it would erode property values or trigger a market sell-off.

In internal debates, the feedback to Xi's property-tax plan from both the party's elites and its rank-and-file members has been overwhelmingly negative, the WSJ report said, citing the people familiar with the deliberations.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

Explainer-Is China finally ready to roll out a property tax?

Security guards walk into a building in front of apartment blocks in Beijing

Ryan Woo, Liangping Gao and Samuel Shen
Tue, October 19, 2021

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's long-mooted - and long-resisted - property tax is set to gain new momentum as President Xi Jinping throws his support behind what experts say would be one of the most profound changes to the country's real estate policies in a generation.

The idea of a levy on home owners first surfaced in 2003 but has failed to take off due to concerns that it would damage property demand and tank prices, hurting household wealth and future real estate projects, and triggering a fiscal crisis for local governments addicted to land sales for income.

But the push by China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong to narrow disparities between ultra-rich urbanites and the rural poor under the banner of "common prosperity" may provide the needed political will to push through a nationwide property tax, currently on the legislative agenda for 2021-2025.

WHY A PROPERTY TAX?

A property tax may finally tame surging home prices.

Average home prices have soared more than 2,000% since the privatisation of the housing market since the 1990s in a fast-urbanising China, and in recent years, creating an affordability crisis especially among millennials.

The seemingly unstoppable price gains have also ignited speculative purchases, sparking frenzied construction, often funded by rampant borrowing that has now ensnared developers - including the severely indebted China Evergrande Group - and stoked fears of wider risks to the economy.

WILL THE TAX BE LEVIED NATIONWIDE?

In pilot programmes rolled out in 2011, the megacities of Shanghai and Chongqing have taxed homeowners, albeit just those possessing higher-end housing and second homes, at rates from 0.4% to 1.2%.

But the pilots have not widened to more cities.

Richer regions are expected to implement property taxes first, with experts in recent weeks identifying the wealthy province of Zhejiang as one such candidate, as well as the southern boomtown of Shenzhen and the island province of Hainan.

"It would be a major policy change in the history of China's real estate development," said Betty Wang, senior China economist at ANZ in Hong Kong. "It would be a medium- to long-term policy change."

WHAT ABOUT THE TAX RATE?

A 0.7% rate is plausible, although in practice, China is likely to take a tiered approach with differentiated rates depending on the city, said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics.

"In the U.S., some wealthy counties have effective property tax rates in excess of 2%-3%, while in others it is much lower. But the average effective rate across the U.S. is 1.1%. So it should be feasible to reach 0.7% in urban China," he said.

A 0.7% rate would have generated 1.8 trillion yuan ($281 billion) of tax revenue in 2020 and exceeded the net land sales of local governments last year, he added.

That hypothetical revenue would be equal to the size of Finland's gross domestic product.

HOW MAY LOCAL GOVERNMENTS BE AFFECTED?

A property tax will give local authorities a new source of income that they can re-invest in public services and infrastructure investment.

It may generate fiscal revenue equal to 70%-80% of land sales revenues, said Lu Wenxi, chief analyst at property agency Centaline.

If sustained, it can help local governments slowly cut their reliance on land sales, Lu said.

But local governments may not necessarily be the ones getting this new revenue, reducing their incentive to collect such taxes, said Rocky Fan, economist at Sealand Securities.

If local governments make use of the funds locally, that would go against the idea of "common prosperity", which requires a centralised redistribution mechanism, he said.

GRAPHIC: Mainland China's Reliance on Land Sales (by province) - https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-ECONOMY/PROPERTY-LANDSALES/gkvlgxwbzpb/chart.png

WHAT ABOUT DEVELOPERS?

A property tax will increase investors' holding costs of real estate assets. That would channel some housing stocks into the market from home owners, increasing supply.

As such, developers will face a slowdown in the inventory digestion rate and cash collection, further pressuring their cash-flow and stressing their liquidity, said a mid-size developer based in eastern China.

WILL CHINA'S CAPITAL MARKETS BE AFFECTED?

A property tax will boost the cost of holding real estate, triggering asset reallocation towards capital markets, said Sealand's Fan.

Real estate accounts for nearly 60% of urban household assets, compared with 20.4% allocated to financial assets including stocks and bonds, according to China's central bank. In contrast, U.S. households hold over 40% of their wealth in financial assets.

"(With a property tax) people won't be hoarding properties. Instead, they will allocate their money elsewhere, in capital markets, benefiting companies," Fan said.

But while the levy would diffuse financial risks in China's bloated property market in the long term, careful implementation is needed to blunt the short-term impact, he warned.

"You need to give the market time to digest, and respond to the policy. A stampede would trigger a property price crash, endangering financial health."

($1 = 6.4111 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Liangping Gao in Beijing and Samuel Shen in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Clare Jim in Hong Kong; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

SEC report questions trading apps after GameStop frenzy

GAMIFICATION OF WALL ST IS CASINO CAPITALISM SAYS CRAMER CNBC

An SEC report questioned whether "game-like" features on some trading apps

 had contributed to the frenzy over GameStop.

US securities regulators studying the mysterious surge in GameStop shares in January called Monday for deeper examination of "game-like" features on some trading platforms.

A Securities and Exchange Commission report examining volatility in GameStop and other so-called "meme" stocks, said the wild market moves last winter highlighted the need for "potential study and further consideration" of ways to ensure "fair, order and efficient" markets.

"Consideration should be given to whether game-like features and celebratory animations that are likely intended to create positive feedback from trading lead investors to trade more than they would otherwise," said the 45-page SEC report, which stopped short of recommendations.

The report comes on the heels of earlier comments from SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who has previously criticized "gamification" on the online platform Robinhood, which is popular with younger investors.

Robinhood has been credited with introducing a generation of new individual investors to the stock market, but the platform is also known for features that critics say can make it addictive.

The SEC report describes GameStop's torrid rise of a little under $20 a barrel at the end of 2020 to a high of $483 on January 12 amid frenzied trading.

The surge was seen in some financial media as driven at least in part by a desire of retail investors communicating on the Reddit platform collaborating in an effort to retaliate against short sellers.

Seasoned investors viewed GameStop's movements as divorced from fundamental questions about the company's financial performance and its prospects.

The SEC report did not draw conclusions on the root cause of GameStop's volatility, saying, "Whether driven by a desire to squeeze short sellers and thus profit from the resultant rise in price, or by belief in the fundamentals of GameStop, it was the positive sentiment, not the buying-to-cover that sustained the weeks-long price appreciation of GameStop stock."Trading app Robinhood says facing US regulator inquiries

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Facebook to pay $14 mn in US worker discrimination suit

Facebook has agreed to settle a US government lawsuit alleging it discriminated

 against US workers.

Facebook has agreed to pay up to $14 million to settle a US government lawsuit accusing the tech giant of favoring immigrant applicants for thousands of high-paying jobs, authorities announced Tuesday.

US prosecutors alleged Facebook "channeled" jobs to visa holders by avoiding advertising on its careers website, accepting only physically mailed applications for some posts, or refusing to consider US workers at all.

The December 2020 lawsuit represented a new front in the mounting judicial and anti-trust regulatory pressure on the social media giant, which reaches billions of people globally on its platforms.

"Facebook is not above the law, and must comply with our nation's federal civil rights (protections)," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement.

The firm, in a statement, said it "strongly" believed it was meeting the federal government's standards, but agreed to end the litigation and "move forward".

"These resolutions will enable us to continue our focus on hiring the best builders from both the US and around the world," a spokeswoman said.

Under the Department of Justice settlement, Facebook will pay $4.75 million to the United States, and up to $9.5 million to eligible people impacted by the company's alleged discrimination.

The leading social network is also required to train its employees on the anti-discrimination measures in US immigration law and do more to recruit US workers.

The lawsuit targeted more than 2,600 positions with an average salary of some $156,000, offered from January 2018 to September 2019.

Prosecutors alleged the internet giant reserved positions for candidates with H1-B "skilled worker" visas or other temporary work visas.

Skilled-worker visas are precious to Silicon Valley tech firms hungry for engineers and other highly-trained talent, with Asia home to many keenly sought workers.

The settlement comes as Facebook faced a storm of criticism since a whistleblower leaked internal studies showing the company knew its sites could be harmful to young people's mental health.

US authorities have struggled to regulate social media platforms like Facebook amid criticism that the tech giants trample on privacy and provide a megaphone for dangerous misinformation.

Facebook taps advisers for audits on bias and civil rights

---

© 2021 AFP

UC San Diego study: E-cigarettes don’t help smokers stay off cigarettes

Cigarette smokers who quit smoking but substitute e-cigarettes, or other tobacco product, are more likely to relapse

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

IMAGE: JOHN P. PIERCE, PH.D., DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR AT THE HERBERT WERTHEIM SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN LONGEVITY SCIENCE AT UC SAN DIEGO view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have suggested that smokers who are unable to quit smoking may benefit by switching from smoking cigarettes to vaping e-cigarettes if they switch completely and are able to avoid relapsing to cigarette smoking.

However, there have been few studies on whether smokers are able to transition to e-cigarettes—battery-operated devices that heat a liquid made of nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals to make an aerosol that users inhale into their lungs—without relapsing back to cigarette smoking.

Published in the Oct. 19, 2021 online issue of JAMA Network Open, an analysis by the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center reports that e-cigarette use—even on a daily basis—did not help smokers successfully stay off cigarettes.

“Our findings suggest that individuals who quit smoking and switched to e-cigarettes or other tobacco products actually increased their risk of a relapse back to smoking over the next year by 8.5 percentage points compared to those who quit using all tobacco products,” said first author John P. Pierce, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center.

“Quitting is the most important thing a smoker can do to improve their health, but the evidence indicates that switching to e-cigarettes made it less likely, not more likely, to stay off of cigarettes.”

Researchers used data from the nationally representative Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) longitudinal study, undertaken by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the FDA Center for Tobacco Products under contract with Westat. The team identified 13,604 smokers between in 2013 and 2015 who were followed over two sequential annual surveys to explore changes in use of 12 tobacco products.

At the first annual follow up, 9.4% of these established smokers had quit. Now considered “former smokers,” 62.9% of these individuals remained tobacco free, while 37.1% had switched to another form of tobacco use. Of these recent smokers who switched to another product, 22.8% used e-cigarettes, with 17.6% of switchers using e-cigarettes daily.

Recent former smokers who switched to e-cigarettes were more likely to be non-Hispanic white, have higher incomes, have higher tobacco dependence scores and view e-cigarettes as less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

“Our goal in this study was to assess whether recent former smokers who had switched to e-cigarettes or another tobacco product were less likely to relapse to cigarette smoking compared to those who remained tobacco free,” said senior author Karen Messer, Ph.D., professor and chief of the Division of Biostatistics at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health.

At the second annual follow up, the authors compared the former smokers who were tobacco free to those who had switched to e-cigarettes or other tobacco products. Individuals who switched to any other form of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes, were more likely to relapse compared to former smokers who had quit all tobacco, by a total of 8.5 percentage points.

Among recent former smokers who abstained from all tobacco products, 50% were 12 or more months off cigarettes at the second follow up and were considered to have successfully quit smoking; this compared to 41.5% of recent former smokers who switched to any other form of tobacco use, including e-cigarettes.

While individuals who switched were more likely to relapse to smoking, they were also more likely to attempt to quit again and be off cigarettes for at least three months at the second follow up. A further follow-up survey is needed to identify whether this is evidence of a pattern of chronic quitting and relapsing to cigarette smoking, or whether it is part of progress toward successful quitting, said the researchers.

“This is the first study to take a deep look at whether switching to a less harmful nicotine source can be maintained over time without relapsing to cigarette smoking,” said Pierce. “If switching to e-cigarettes was a viable way to quit cigarette smoking, then those who switched to e-cigarettes should have much lower relapse rates to cigarette smoking. We found no evidence of this.”

Co-authors include: Ruifeng Chen, Sheila Kealey, Eric C. Leas, Martha M. White, Matthew D. Stone, Sara B. McMenamin, Dennis R. Trinidad, David R. Strong and Tarik Benmarhnia, all of UC San Diego.

This research was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (1R01CA234539) and the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California Office of the President (28IR-0066).

Disclosures: The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Full study when embargo lifts: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.28810?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=101921

---

JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Incidence of Cigarette Smoking Relapse Among Quitters Who Switched to E-Cigarettes or Other Tobacco Products: A Cohort Study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Oct-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Food safety crises at smaller restaurant chains can hurt giants

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

EVERETT, Wash. –  When it comes to a food safety crisis like an E.coli outbreak, little restaurant brands have an outsized influence.  

A recent study published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that a theoretical crisis at one restaurant made people hesitant to eat at other restaurants even though they were not directly involved in the event.

The negative spillover effect was also greater from the bottom up than the top down, meaning a crisis at a small restaurant chain hurt the big-name brands more.

“This finding shows the power of small apples to spoil the whole barrel,” said Soobin Seo, an assistant professor at Washington State University’s Carson College of Business and lead author on the study. “This is a warning sign. It is not good news for restaurants overall when somebody else is in crisis.”

The findings underscore the need for restaurants to be prepared to respond to a crisis, Seo added, whether it is their own or a competitor’s. The restaurant industry is particularly vulnerable to spillover from crises, the authors note, partly because of the perception that restaurants get their ingredients from the same places.

“When people hear about bad news about one automobile company, they can easily buy from another,” Seo said. “But in the restaurant industry, even though the other brands did nothing wrong, customers feel hesitant after an outbreak, and it doesn't hurt them if they do not go to out to eat for a few days. Crises are psychologically much more influential when it comes to restaurants, and that is why there are more financial impacts.”

For the study, Seo and co-author SooCheong Jang from Purdue University presented 380 participants with different crisis scenarios. They first read a theoretical news story about an outbreak of a food-borne illness that occurred at either a “high-equity” fast food brand such as McDonald’s or Wendy’s, or a smaller “low-equity” brand such as Carl’s Jr. or Hardee’s. The study used brand names of real restaurants so they would be easily recognizable, but the outbreaks were fictional. The participants were then asked their intention to visit other restaurants that were not involved in the incident.

The researchers found that knowledge of an outbreak at a high-equity, fast food restaurant caused people to be reluctant to go to its direct competitor, so an outbreak at McDonald’s, for example, would cause people to hesitate to visit Wendy’s. However, it did not have much effect on the less well-known restaurants like Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Yet, in the scenarios where a low-equity brand had the outbreak, reaction spilled over to its low- and high-equity competitors. The low-equity brand crisis even impacted those outside their fast food establishment style, such as the casual dining restaurant Outback Steakhouse.

Given the extent of the spillover, Seo advised restaurants to plan their response well ahead of any incident.

“No matter what level of crisis, your responsibility or credibility, it's always better to act immediately and honestly with the public: to have a proactive strategy to assure the safety of food,” she said.  

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Hospitality Management

DOI

10.1016/j.ijhm.2021.103047 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Who spoils the barrel? Negative spillover effect on competitor brands during food crises

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Aug-2021

Co-worker interventions can moderate customer sexual harassment in service industry

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: SERVICE-INDUSTRY WORKERS CAN BE SHIELDED FROM CUSTOMER SEXUAL HARASSMENT VIA BYSTANDER INTERVENTIONS FROM THEIR FELLOW EMPLOYEES, SAYS NEW RESEARCH CO-WRITTEN BY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN EXPERTS YIJUE LIANG, LEFT, AND YOUNGAH PARK. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO COLLAGE BY L. BRIAN STAUFFER

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Although the #MeToo movement raised public awareness of sexual harassment in Hollywood and other high-profile industries, comparatively little attention has been paid to the rampant sexual harassment experienced by frontline service workers such as waitresses, baristas, bartenders and retail clerks. A new paper co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts who study occupational stress and employee well-being finds a potential avenue to blunt the unwanted advances and unwelcome behavior by customers.

Bystander employees who intervene when their co-workers are victims of customer sexual harassment can be a potential shield to protect their colleagues, with bystander empathy playing a significant role, says research from Yijue Liang and YoungAh Park.

“The service industry is rife with customers who sexually harass workers, and it’s a big problem for managers and employees,” said Liang, a graduate student at Illinois. “There’s been a lot of focus on sexual harassment that comes from within an organization, but there hasn’t been as much focus on sexual harassment that comes from outside an organization, from people who aren’t subject to the company’s rules and regulations. The service industry and its employees have less guidance about how to deal with customer sexual harassment compared with something like intraoffice sexual harassment.

“Also, employers may tolerate harassment from customers because they fear driving customers away.”

“Customer sexual harassment is a persistent problem that harms worker well-being in many service-sector industries,” said Park, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois. “In turn, bystander interventions in the workplace are critical for preventing and stopping customers’ inappropriate behaviors as well as mitigating the detrimental effects of such harassment on workers. We hope this research will bring more attention to employers’ and organizations’ roles in protecting employees from customer sexual harassment and supporting their employees’ bystander intervention.”

Liang and Park conducted two online surveys with a diverse pool of more than 280 service employees who interacted with customers daily, taking measures of customer sexual harassment observation and their experience, age, gender, empathy, moral ideologies and financial reliance on customers’ tipping.

Results demonstrated that when bystander employees observe more frequent customer sexual harassment in their workplace, they will develop stronger empathy toward their targeted co-workers and will be more proactive in bystander intervention actions such as disrupting the harassment and comforting their co-worker.

More importantly, for employees with higher measures of moral idealism – a strong belief that “right” actions always lead to desirable outcomes – their empathy toward co-workers from frequent observation of customer sexual harassment was more strongly associated with their bystander intervention, the researchers said.

Customer sexual harassment can be especially prevalent in jobs in which the business places a premium on customer satisfaction and tipping accounts for the bulk of a worker’s wages.

For employees whose pay relied less on customer tips, their empathy was more strongly associated with bystander intervention, as opposed to those with a heavy reliance on tips, which had a weaker relationship between empathy and intervention actions, according to the paper.

“Awareness of the problems with U.S. tipping culture and customs appears to be growing, as more and more data seem to show that reliance on tipping not only increases workers’ vulnerability to mistreatment at work but also worsens racial and gender inequality and worker exploitation,” Liang said. “We strongly encourage employers and employees’ advocacy groups to actively discuss and create a public discourse about how to reduce workers’ pay reliance on tipping – for example, by providing a higher minimum wage or replacing tipping with a fixed hourly wage – to better protect service workers from customer sexual harassment.”

The paper was published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Occupational Health Psychology

DOI

10.1037/ocp0000305 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Because I know how it hurts: Employee bystander intervention in customer sexual harassment through empathy and its moderating factors

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Sep-2021

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAler

Can 5G be used as surveillance radar? US military funds research

Grant and Award Announcement

BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Faculty members at Binghamton University, State University of New York have received two grants to study whether 5G can be used similarly to radar by creating images based on how the carrier waves bounce off objects or people. 

5G – the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks — has been connecting millions of wireless devices since 2019, offering more pervasive connections, greater bandwidth and higher download speeds than its four predecessors.

Two researchers from Binghamton University are researching another use for those ubiquitous signals in addition to watching cat videos and posting photos of your delicious lunch on social media.

Associate Professors Yu Chen and Xiaohua Li — both faculty members at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering — have received two grants to study whether 5G can be used similarly to radar by creating images based on how the carrier waves bounce off objects or people.

One $297,082 grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Dynamic Data and Information Processing (DDIP) program will fund the project, while an additional $295,282 grant from the Department of Defense’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) will allow the purchase of necessary equipment.

The research will combine 5G-based sensing technologies with optical cameras for Environmental Resilience Surveillance Edge Service (ERSES-5G) networks. The networks would be kept secure using another development called Environmental Fingerprint-based Consensus Blockchain (ENFChain), authenticating data sources, bookmarking data transactions and encrypting the data to deter hackers.

“We can leverage the advanced features of 5G communication,” Chen said. “It has a shorter delay and is more reliable because of the density of its base stations and antennas. At the same time, we will explore the security, safety and robustness of the system. We are going to integrate new technology like machine learning and blockchain into the system.

“The Air Force has to make sure the system deployed in a battlefield must be secure. Enemies always try to compromise your system, steal your information and insert false information to mislead you.”

Chen and Li hope to build what they call “full-spectrum surveillance,” integrating optical cameras and other devices in addition to this new 5G sensing so that it will work in all weather conditions. Figuring out the limitations of such a network is also a priority.

“Our millimeter-wave camera using 5G signals works similarly to an infrared camera,” Li said. “We can make the imaging work in all weather conditions, in the daytime or at night. It can help an optical camera system.”

The military applications are obvious, allowing troops on the ground in urban areas to see enemy combatants around corners or in dark spaces where they otherwise would be hidden. Eventual civilian uses could include anything from home healthcare to commercial security systems.

This 5G project builds on research that Chen and Li have done separately and together over the past decade, exploring intelligent surveillance, wireless information security and cognitive radio networks. Both researchers point to long and fruitful relationships with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, N.Y., and other U.S. military funders for their success in landing these two grants.

“Our system is first of its kind, which I believe can increase the visibility of Binghamton University,” Chen said. “We are pushing the frontier of smart applications for the Air Force and the Department of Defense to protect the interests of our nation. With that support, along with our close collaborations with researchers such as Alexander Aved from the AFRL, we can explore deeper and have Binghamton’s reputation build up in this area. Everybody tries to propose something new, but our unique combination of experts should result in success.”

The AFOSR grant is titled “Integrated 5G Imaging and Communication Surveillance as an Edge Service Secured by a Lightweight Environmental Fingerprint Consensus Blockchain.” The DURIP grant is “5G-MiWIS: A Testbed for an Environmental Resilient 5G Millimeter Wave Imaging Technology based Surveillance System.”

Scientists teach AI to predict bankruptcy

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Researchers of the HSE Graduate School of Business have presented a new method of forecasting bankruptcies in businesses using machine learning. The method makes it possible to fully utilize information on a company’s financial state and to make more accurate predictions than traditional statistical approaches. The research has been published in the journal Expert Systems with Applications.

The ability to accurately assess the financial risks of dealing with a business is vital to both the economy and society. This is particularly true when forecasting bankruptcy, which can result in significant financial losses and hurt the national economy.

The causes of business bankruptcy have long been of interest to research economists. Their work includes empirical and theoretical studies into the processes that lead to business failure in order to identify problems at an early stage. Data on companies’ economic performance indicators is also used to develop new forecasting methods.

Currently, bankruptcy forecasting is particularly prominent in the business world. In research published in the journal Expert Systems with Applications, HSE Graduate School of Business Professor Yuri Zelenkov and student Nikita Volodarskiy have proposed a new approach to the problem that utilizes machine learning.

Predicting a company’s bankruptcy is a type of ‘classification task,’ which involves determining whether a given business belongs to one of two categories: those which remain in operation and those which go bankrupt within a certain period of time.

The proposed method was developed using a set of historical data on successful and failed companies. The AI is trained using a set of business performance indicators. It then searches for complex patterns in companies’ development and their current state. After being trained on a particular company, the method can be used to predict a business’s future trajectory with some degree of accuracy.

Such tasks suffer from the problem of imbalanced classification—statistically, bankruptcy is a rare occurrence (happening to only 5–10% of companies according to the available data), and training sets include much more information on successful companies. Machine-learning methods have insufficient information to understand which sets of attributes can lead to future bankruptcy.

The authors of the research have developed a method that is less sensitive to imbalances in the data. It involves training a large number of individual classification algorithms, then selecting the most effective among them and combining them to achieve a higher degree of forecasting accuracy.

‘We managed to build a fast algorithm that can be trained using unbalanced data to make much more accurate predictions than traditional methods. Notably, the user can manage prediction errors of each class in a visual form. Since the model is exclusively based on companies’ financial indicators, its results are still reliable even in the extreme conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interest in machine-learning methods will only continue to grow in the future, and we believe that at some point, it will fully replace traditional methods for forecasting business bankruptcies. At the same time, our method isn’t only focused on bankruptcy—it can be used for any kinds of classification tasks that involve imbalanced data. We are currently planning its future research and development,’ explained Professor Yuri Zelenkov of the HSE University Department of Business Informatics

Weizmann Institute of Science joins giant Magellan telescope, a top priority for science worldwide

Renowned research institution will advance the world’s most powerful telescope, strengthening international desire to see farther into space with more detail than ever before

Business Announcement

GMTO CORPORATION

 

VIDEO: THE GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE WELCOMES THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE INTO ITS INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM, JOINING THIRTEEN UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS FROM FIVE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. view more 

CREDIT: GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE – GMTO CORPORATION

PASADENA, CA — On September 14, 2021, the GMTO Corporation welcomed the Weizmann Institute of Science into its international consortium of distinguished universities and research institutions building the Giant Magellan Telescope. The new partnership reinforces that completing the largest and most powerful Gregorian optical-infrared telescope ever engineered is a top priority for the global scientific community. The unprecedented abilities of the Giant Magellan Telescope coupled with the Weizmann Institute of Science’s world-leading scientific expertise and resources in astrophysics will revolutionize the way humanity understands the universe and our place in it.

“The addition of the Weizmann Institute of Science is a giant win for our international consortium,” said Walter Massey, board chair of the GMTO Corporation and former director of the National Science Foundation. “We just became stronger and more capable. We are now one step closer to pointing the world’s largest mirrors toward the heavens and unlocking its many cosmic secrets.”

The Weizmann Institute of Science is a distinguished multidisciplinary research institution from Israel. Their Nella and Leon Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics promotes research in nearly all aspects of astronomy, expanding the Giant Magellan Telescope’s research capabilities by capitalizing on the Center’s outstanding team of astrophysicists and benefiting from renowned Israeli innovation. Before officially joining the GMTO Corporation, faculty at the Weizmann Institute of Science helped develop one of the first scientific instruments for the telescope, a spectrograph that is designed to study Earth-like planets around solar-type stars. Based on the institute’s leadership in astrophysics, particle physics and space mission design, the Weizmann Institute of Science, through its flagship initiative, aims to provide new levels of insight into the central questions of fundamental physics, while contributing to wide-ranging practical applications. The Giant Magellan Telescope is critical to the initiative.

“Joining the GMTO consortium is a huge leap forward for the Weizmann Institute of Science,” said Professor Avishay Gal-Yam, head of the Deloro Center for Space and Optics at the Weizmann Institute. “It is a privilege to join a global team on the forefront of astrophysics research, which will allow us to accelerate our own observatory capabilities, develop instruments that will elevate the way the world’s leading astrophysics teams explore the universe and share expertise with the top partners in the field of astrophysics.”

Construction of the next-generation telescope is well underway on Las Campanas Peak at the southern edge of Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the best locations on Earth to explore the universe. It will use seven of the world’s largest mirrors and the most advanced adaptive optics technology to see billions of lightyears into the universe with ten times the resolution of the famed Hubble Space Telescope. This extraordinary image clarity will enable scientists around the globe to obtain new clues to the fundamental nature and evolution of the universe — including the search for life on distant exoplanets.

CAPTION

Rendering of the Giant Magellan Telescope at night.

CREDIT

Giant Magellan Telescope – GMTO Corporation

The Weizmann Institute of Science is the thirteenth member of the GMTO Corporation, joining Arizona State University, Astronomy Australia Ltd., Australian National University, Carnegie Institution for Science, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo – FAPESP, Harvard University, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin, University of Arizona, and the University of Chicago. The international consortium anticipates commissioning the Giant Magellan Telescope in the late 2020s.

To learn more about the Weizmann Institute for Science, visit weizmann.ac.il. To learn more about the GMTO Corporation, the international nonprofit organization building the Giant Magellan Telescope, visit gmto.org.