CSU52

Inside Workers vote down City of Edmonton's latest collective agreement offer

Story by Madeleine Cummings • CBC

The city's latest proposal, touted as its "best and final offer," included a 7.25-per cent wage increase from 2021 through 2025, as well as items such as a commitment to hybrid work.

© Natasha Riebe/CBC

Several thousand City of Edmonton workers have voted overwhelmingly against their employer's latest proposed contract, leaving the door open for Civic Service Union (CSU) 52 members to go on strike as early as next week.

Last month, the city applied to the Alberta Labour Relations Board for an employer proposal vote, allowing workers to vote directly on what the city called its "best and final" offer. Voting took place Monday through Thursday. The union made the results public Friday afternoon.

Most eligible members — 87.6 per cent — voted against the city's proposal, CSU 52 president Lanny Chudyk said in a statement. The union said 87.5 per cent of eligible members voted.

"[The offer] was insufficient," Chudyk later told CBC News.

"The city made it very plain to senior leadership in this union — myself particularly — that they felt we were out of touch with our membership. They knew what our membership wanted and they would take that deal."

Chudyk said he told the city he would be available all weekend to discuss the situation. But if he doesn't hear from the City of Edmonton within the next 48 hours, he'll probably issue a strike notice Monday morning.

"I'm not prepared to wait forever. My membership is pushing me very hard to issue strike notice," he said.

The City of Edmonton is carefully considering its next steps, acting chief people officer Cindil Taylor said in a separate statement Friday.

"We're disappointed with the outcome of the employer proposal vote," Taylor said. "We put forward an offer that is compelling even in light of our current financial realities.

"Our primary outcome remains to reach a balanced agreement for CSU 52 members, the city and for taxpayers."

CSU represents about 5,000 people who work throughout the City of Edmonton and various municipal agencies, such as the Edmonton Police Service. The union represents some Edmonton Public Library staff, too, but they are represented in a separate collective agreement.

The employees affected by the ongoing negotiations have not had a wage increase since 2018 and have worked without a contract since December 2020, when the previous agreement expired.

The city's latest proposal, touted as its "best and final offer," included a 7.25-per cent wage increase from 2021 through 2025, as well as items such as a commitment to hybrid work.

The offer included no wage increase for 2021, Chudyk said Friday. Union members were steadfast that they would not accept any zeros, in part because other civil employees were getting raises.

The union has presented the city with its own "fair and reasonable proposal," he said, but that it's up to the city now to avoid a strike.

Both parties have previously said they want to avoid a work stoppage, and echoed those sentiments again Friday.

More than 90 per cent of CSU members — those at the heart of current bargaining, as well as library staff — voted in favour of a strike mandate last month.

"The employer is well aware of what is required to conclude these negotiations positively and avoid a strike," Chudyk said.

The union's next steps will be guided by the city's "willingness to revisit their stance," he said.

Employers require 72 hours' notice of a strike, so if the CSU issues a strike notice Monday morning, job action would start Thursday.

As of Friday afternoon, a strike appeared imminent, Chudyk said. But that could change if the city were to come up with an offer "we could reasonably discuss and take back to our membership."

Canada confirms it will restore UNRWA funding

International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen says Canada is restoring funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, after pausing it in January when Israel claimed some of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attack.

 

Canada resumes UNRWA funding paused after alleged staff role in Israel attacks

Story by Naomi Barghiel • 1d • 

Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen speaks in the Foyer of the House of Commons before Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024.© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Global News

Canada resumes UNRWA funding paused after alleged staff role in Israel attacks

Duration 1:47  View on Watch

Canada has resumed funding of the United Nations agency charged with delivering aid to Palestinians after issuing a temporary pause in January following allegations that staff members may have been involved in the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel.

International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen said in a press release Friday that the UN has implemented several “significant processes to address the allegations."


"Following allegations that some UNRWA staff were involved in Hamas’s heinous terrorist attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, the UN has put in place several significant processes to address the allegations and reinforce its zero tolerance for terror within the UN, including UNRWA," the statement said.

Video: Canada resumes UNRWA funding paused due to allegations agency staff played a role in Oct. 7 attack

"Canada has reviewed the interim report of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) on this matter and looks forward to the final report. Canada commends the independent review of UNRWA currently underway, led by Catherine Colonna, and anticipates reviewing the report assessing UNRWA’s neutrality mechanisms."

"While these investigative processes continue, UNRWA has taken immediate measures to strengthen oversight, accountability and transparency," the statement continued.

Hussen says Canada is working to overcome challenges in delivering humanitarian aid and life-saving relief to civilians in Gaza, who need help “as quickly as possible.”

Canada is also helping deliver critical supplies into Gaza by providing support to Jordan and the World Food Programme (WFP) with airdrops, Hussen said. The support includes $100,000 in funding Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation and "substantial" funding to the WFP. The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will also provide approximately 300 cargo parachutes to the Royal Jordanian Air Force.

UNRWA has been providing food, water and shelter to over two million people in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Canada temporarily paused funding for UNRWA in January after allegations that staff members were involved in the attacks against Israel last October.

A statement posted to UNRWA’s website that month says Israeli authorities provided information to the agency about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the attacks.

“To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay,” the statement quotes UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini as saying.

“Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.”

Hussen said in a statement at the time that Canada will conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations.

“Should the allegations prove to be accurate, Canada expects UNRWA to immediately act against those determined to have been involved in Hamas’ terrorist acts,” he said.

More than the 60 per cent of UNRWA’s budget in 2022 was filled by the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland and other countries that have suspended their aid to the agency.

The agency was established to provide aid to the estimated 700,000 Palestinians “who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 War” about Israel’s creation.

UNRWA operates schools, health clinics, infrastructure projects and aid programs in refugee camps that now resemble dense urban neighborhoods in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It has 13,000 employees in Gaza alone, the vast majority of them Palestinians.

In Gaza, where some 85 per cent of the territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, over one million are sheltering in UNRWA schools and other facilities.

The federal government said last June that between 2019 through 2023, Canada has committed a total of $90 million in support for UNRWA, provided as humanitarian aid.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Canada has sent an additional $20 million to the UNRWA, part of a total of $60 million committed to aid groups to address “urgent needs stemming from the crisis in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Israel and neighbouring areas.”

Hussen said in his statement Friday that "Canada continues to call on all parties to respect their international humanitarian law obligations."

"Canada is committed to a two-state solution, with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace and security, with dignity and without fear."

-- With files from Global News' Sean Boynton and Nathaniel Dove

 U of C (BERKELEY) Museums' vertebrate collections go online — in 3D

CT scans of animal skeletons are now available to anyone, including those with 3D printers


A 3D CT scan of a juvenile platypus (MVZ:Mamm:32885) from the collections of the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. In MorphoSource, the image can be rotated and zoomed or the data downloaded and sent to a 3D printer.

Courtesy of MorphoSource and MVZ

By Robert Sanders
March 7, 2024

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California, Berkeley, contains more than 300,000 vertebrate specimens — the majority of them reptiles and amphibians — preserved in alcohol and tucked away for current and future generations of scientists who want to study their anatomical and genetic diversity.

Now, those specimens are gradually gaining a new life online as part of an effort by 25 museums across the U.S. to obtain 3D scans of as many vertebrate groups as possible and make them available free to the general public in a searchable database.

A summary of the six-year project, called openVertebrate (oVert), was published this week in the journal BioScience, offering a glimpse of how the data might be used to ask new scientific questions and spur the development of innovative technology.

But scientists aren't the only ones who find the scans useful. Artists have used the 3D models to create realistic animal replicas, photographs of oVert specimens have been displayed as museum exhibits, and specimens have been incorporated into virtual reality headsets that give users the chance to interact with and manipulate them.

Carol Spencer, staff curator of herpetology in the MVZ, has a 3D-printed version of one specimen — the skull of a horned lizard — sitting on her desk. Anyone can access the 3D scans online at MorphoSource, download the data and send them to a 3D printer to produce their own skeletal models.

The 3D models in MorphoSource and an app called Sketchfab can be used for teaching purposes. This colored model of the right forearm of a platypus (MVZ:Mamm:32885) identifies the various bones: humerus (1), radius (2), ulna (3), carpals (4) and metacarpals and phalanges (5).
Courtesy of Sketchfab and MVZ

"You can actually print them and then use them in a classroom. We have lots of people using them for teaching in colleges or high schools," Spencer said.

Of the approximately 1,000 MVZ specimens scanned over the past six years through oVert, one — a juvenile Australian platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus — is the second most downloaded in the database.

"We've had this platypus in ethanol in a big tank, but it's never been loaned out. The only people who have ever gone to look at this are people that come here to our collection; it's maybe been looked at twice in its entire history here at MVZ. But in six years, it's been downloaded 320 times," Spencer said. "That's a huge expansion of use."

Spencer recently fielded a request from a professor at Towson University in Maryland to download CT scans for a course in which students compare the cranial anatomy of vertebrates and print 3D models for study.

"All of these specimens are gaining sort of a new digital life," said Michelle Koo, the MVZ's staff curator of biodiversity informatics. "Specimens are collected all the time, and museums have to justify taking an animal out of the wild and make sure that it has the highest value possible to current and future research. It's part of our responsibility as curators to seek out and help keep developing these new uses and ways of accessing specimens to make sure that they stay relevant and useful for these new cutting-edge tools."

A new digital life


Between 2017 and 2023, oVert project members led by David Blackburn at the Florida Museum of Natural History captured CT scans of more than 13,000 specimens with representative species across the vertebrate tree of life. These scans included more than half the genera of all amphibians, reptiles, fishes and mammals. CT scanners use high-energy X-rays to peer past an organism’s exterior and view the dense bone structure beneath. While skeletons make up the majority of oVert reconstructions, a small number of specimens were also stained with a temporary contrast-enhancing solution that allowed researchers to visualize soft tissues, such as skin, muscle and other organs.

New Zealand Lesser Short-tailed Bat Calcars from the MVZ collection by Blackburn Lab on Sketchfab

The models give an intimate look at internal portions of a specimen that could previously only be observed through destructive dissection and tissue sampling, Blackburn noted.

“Museums are constantly engaged in a balancing act,” he said. “You want to protect specimens, but you also want to have people use them. oVert is a way of reducing the wear and tear on samples while also increasing access, and it’s the next logical step in the mission of museum collections.”

Because CT scans yield a series of slices through the specimen, most of the images on MorphoSource are cross-sections that must be assembled into a 3D rendering that can be spun and manipulated in a 3D viewer. But software that does this is readily available, Koo said. The CT scans resemble what she laboriously assembled as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, when she was studying the unique skulls of a small group of salamanders. Then, she sliced the bodies into thin sections to study the internal anatomy, but hadn't the ability to assemble them into a 3D picture that people could readily appreciate.

"Today, I might still have to do histology, but now that we have a digital rendering of it, I can send them a picture," Koo said. "It's the same thing that I saw when I was looking under the microscope and trying to explain to people."

A YouTube video by the Florida Museum of Natural History highlights their oVert scans.

Though funding for oVert from the National Science Foundation has ended, many museums are continuing to scan their collections, often focusing on specific groups. Spencer noted that MVZ has over 800,000 specimens, pickled in alcohol or dry, that could potentially be scanned and made available online.

Initially, UC Berkeley didn't have one of the micro-CT scanners used by the oVert group, so the MVZ sent specimens to other institutions for scanning. Integrative biology professor Jack Tseng has since acquired one for projects, such as a study of fish and mammal skulls, within his department.

Spencer regularly sends MVZ specimens to other institutions where ongoing studies require a scan. She and Koo are continuing the scanning work started by oVert in a collaboration with the University of Colorado in Boulder, for example, which is leading a project to CT scan and high-resolution 2D image 1,100 species of Central American reptiles and amphibians. About 80 turtles from the MVZ are being scanned by the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, while some of the museum's legless lizards and cave salamanders are being scanned at other institutions for a study of their evolution. MVZ director Michael Nachman is CT scanning mice to study the connection between tail length and adaptation to heat, and the role maternal genes play in this adaptation.

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology houses an unusual collection of freeze-dried, dissected animals prepared for teaching purposes by the late Milton Hildebrand of UC Davis. This dissected harbor seal forearm is in the Milton Hildebrand Anatomical Collection. (MVZ:Hild:1053).
Courtesy of Sketchfab and MVZ

"oVert's goal was to try to get one of every genus of vertebrate. But then you don't have all this variability within species," Spencer said. "And so really what we need is huge data sets of multiple animals per species. And the only way we're going to get that is if we convince everyone to make their data public through sites like MorphoSource. So when I mail specimens out to someone, and then they do CT scans, I require them to put those CT scans, when they're done with their research, on MorphoSource so that other people can use them."

oVert was funded with an initial sum of $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation, along with eight additional partnering grants totaling $1.1 million that were used to expand the project’s scope.


RELATED INFORMATION

Florida Museum of Natural History story

Increasing the impact of vertebrate scientific collections through 3D imaging: The openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network (BioScience)

MorphoSource

Sketchfab

MUGWUMPS

These legless, egg-laying amphibians secrete ‘milk’ from their butts

Caecilians, the wormlike creatures you’ve never heard of, produce a viscous clear liquid to feed their young.

BY LAUREN LEFFER | PUBLISHED MAR 7, 2024

Siphonops annulatus. Mother with babies starting skin pigmentation. 

Carlos Jared

Alternatives to cow’s milk keep popping up. There’s oat milk, there’s goat’s milk, and now there’s amphibian milk (though you won’t find it on grocery store shelves). A team of Brazilian biologists have documented legless, subterranean amphibian mothers producing a milk-like liquid– packed with fats and carbohydrates–for their offspring. The research published March 7 in the journal Science is the first known instance of an egg-laying amphibian provisioning its babies with “milk.” The findings unveil new bodily functions and possible complex communication in an understudied animal weirdo.

Non-dairy discovery

Generally, milk is associated with mammals. After all, the word ‘mammal’ comes from the Latin mamma for “breast,” a reference to our taxonomic classes’ milk-producing mammary glands. But mammals are not the only group of animals to feed their babies with specialized secretions. Pigeons, penguins, and flamingos have “crop milk”–a goopy substance made by bird parents of both sexes within the lining of their digestive tracts. Some spiders and cockroaches, too, produce milk for their many-legged young. Enter caecilians, wormlike relatives of frogs, toads, and salamanders that live primarily in tropical areas.

Siphonops annulatus. Female with eggs. Credit: Carlos Jared

Ringed caecilians (Siphonops annulatus) are one of about 220 known caecilian species worldwide, and are the newest addition to the list of milk-able animals. The odd, nearly-blind organisms live secretive lives under the soil and leaf litter of South American forests and grasslands. “They are one of the least-well understood vertebrates, because access to these animals is very difficult,” says Carlos Jared, senior study author and an integrative biologist at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. But the effort is worth it, he adds because caecilians are a “surprise box,” constantly offering up unexpected biological treats.

Through years of careful study, collection, and observation in the wild and the lab, Jared and his colleagues have overcome the unknown to make some remarkable discoveries about S. annulatus. Most recently, they’ve learned that the amphibians provision their young with a viscous clear liquid “the consistency of honey,” says Jared. Ringed caecilians secrete this nutritious milk from their “vents”–the all-purpose opening at the rear-end of the body where waste and eggs are also released. In other words: these vertebrate worms feed their offspring with milk from their butts.

“It’s an exciting discovery of incredibly interesting reproductive modifications,” says Marvalee Wake, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Wake was not involved in the new study but has studied caecilians extensively and penned a perspective article accompanying the research in Science. The finding “challenges existing understanding of the evolution of parental care,” she writes in that note.

Dedicated parents

Some caecilians give live birth, but ringed caecilians lay eggs. Mothers guard their broods closely. Even after the young hatch and emerge as tiny, slimy wrigglers, mom continues to invest about two months in parental care, forsaking food to ensure the babies are well-fed. Previous research by Jared and others has documented some of the ringed caecilians’ unorthodox parenting methods. While raising offspring, the amphibian mothers’ skin changes color, developing a fatty outer-layer. The offspring use special teeth to scrape it off as a meal.

(“It doesn’t cause any harm to the mother,” clarifies Marta Antoniazzi, a co-author on both the new study and prior skin-feeding work, and a researcher at the Butantan Institute.) But with the new research, it’s clear that caecilians have more than just skin in the game–they’re producing an additional, energetically costly food source. Females lose an average of 30% of their body weight in providing for their young, according to the study.

Following up on past observations that caecilian broods spend a lot of time around the maternal vent, Jared, Antoniazzi, and their co-researchers collected 16 female caecilians and their young from beneath the forest floor of cacao plantations. Digging up the study subjects was “difficult” and required “great patience,” says Jared. In the lab, they housed the animals in tanks designed to mimic their natural environment, and set up cameras to record S. annulatus’ parental care. They confirmed that hatchlings ingest a secretion from their mother’s vent, and that such feedings occur multiple times a day–much more frequently than the weekly skin feedings. After each milk session, the young become less active and laze around “with bellies facing up, demonstrating apparent satiety,” according to the study.

Play

Milk provisioning in the caecilian Siphonops annulatus. Speed was raised 600X. Credit: Mailho-Fontana et al.

Through analyzing thin layers of tissue from different organs, the biologists found that the milk is produced by special glands that appear only during the parental care period. These temporary glands form in the skin of the caecilians’ oviducts–the equivalent of a mammalian fallopian tube.

It’s been known for decades that some live-bearing caecilian species produce a secretion in their oviducts to nourish their young internally, thanks to earlier research from Wake. But for an egg-laying species to do a similar thing is startling. “The dogma, based on all known similar species, is that even when an egg-laying mom provides some care or stays with the young for a time, there isn’t any such provisioning,” says Wake. “Switching to something that live-bearers do is really novel,” she adds.
More surprises

To assess S. annulatus’ milk composition, the scientists extracted the liquid from five of the caecilian mothers with careful massages and the help of gravity, according to Pedro Mailho-Fontana, lead study author and another researcher at Butantan Institute. Multiple analyses revealed the presence of carbohydrates and fat. (Though ringed caecilian milk lacks protein, the maternal skin fills that nutritional gap, says Antoniazzi.) Two types of fatty acids, palmitic and stearic acid, make up more than 90% of the caecilian milk-fat total, per the study. Three of the major fatty acids detected in the amphibian milk are also a significant part of the make-up of cow’s milk.

Then, the cameras captured yet another surprise. Hatchlings make clicking noises and wriggling movements near the vent in the lead-up to milk feedings, says Mailho-Fontana. He and his colleagues found that these sounds and movements peak in frequency just before milk is released, suggesting the offspring are begging and the mother is responding. “Most amphibian biologists are pretty conservative about claiming communication, but it’s entirely plausible based on the recordings that this team has,” says Wake. This type of vocal food solicitation would be unique among amphibians, she notes–just another way these bizarre animals set themselves apart.

Siphonops annulatus. Female with pigmented babies at the end of the period of parental care.

 Credit: Carlos Jared

What lies ahead

The study scientists are hoping to conduct follow-up research further examining the offspring vocalizations. Wake would like to see additional work assessing the hormonal cues that prepare a caecilian mother for parental care. “We have many other things to discover in these animals,” says Jared. Even with this new set of findings, so much remains unknown. Perhaps, as Jared suggests, the burrowing amphibians could play a critical role as soil engineers–helping plants grow. Maybe we have caecilians to thank for our chocolate bars, as they dig their way through cacao plantations.

That scientists are still discovering such basic things about vertebrate biology proves, “we need to know more about the biology of all the species on the planet,” says Wake. “Facing climate change and habitat modification, we need to know what we’re doing to our ecosystems–our support base.” Ringed caecilians put tons of effort into supporting their young, and in the process, they’re an inevitable part of the delicate web that supports us all.

Got milk? Meet the weird amphibian that nurses its young

Some caecilians feed their young on a combination of their own skin and a 

nutrient-rich milk-like liquid.

By 
• Freda Kreier

• Twitter

The worm-like caecilian Siphonops annulatus is the first amphibian described to produce ‘milk’ for offspring hatched outside its body.Credit: Carlos Jared

An egg-laying amphibian found in Brazil nourishes its newly hatched young with a fatty, milk-like substance, according to a study published today in Science1.

Lactation is considered a key characteristic of mammals. But a handful of other animals — including birds, fish, insects and even spiders — can produce nutrient-rich liquid for their offspring.

That list also includes caecilians, a group of around 200 limbless, worm-like amphibian species found in tropical regions, most of which live underground and are functionally blind. Around 20 species are known to feed unborn offspring — hatched inside the reproductive system — a type of milk. But the Science study is the first-time scientists have described an egg-laying amphibian doing this for offspring hatched outside its body.

The liquid is “functionally similar” to mammalian milk, says study co-author Carlos Jared, a naturalist at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil.

An unusual diet

In the 2000s, researchers showed that in some caecilians, the young hatched with teeth and that they fed on a nutrient-rich layer of their mother’s skin2 around every seven days. “It sounded a little strange — babies eating just once a week,” says Marta Antoniazzi, a naturalist also at the Butantan Institute. “That wouldn’t be sufficient for the babies to develop as they do.”

Antoniazzi, Jared and their colleagues wanted to investigate these young amphibians’ bizarre feeding habits in more detail, so they collected 16 nesting caecilians of the species Siphonops annulatus and their young at cacao plantations in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. The researchers then filmed the animals and analysed more than 200 hours of their behaviour.

The footage revealed that as well as munching on their mother’s skin, S. annulatus young could get their mother to eject a fat- and carbohydrate-rich liquid from her cloaca — the combined rear opening for the reproductive and digestive systems — by making high-pitched clicking noises. The young would also stick their heads into the cloaca to feed.

The finding that S. annulatus is “both a skin feeder and now a milk producer is pretty amazing”, says Marvalee Wake, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. It is probably just one of the caecilians’ many biological quirks. “Most species have not been studied at this level of detail,” says Wake. “So, who knows what else they’re doing.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00686-5

 

AUSTRALIA

Facebook ate and then ignored the news industry. It's hard, but we should leave it be

ABC Science /
By technology reporter James Purtill
Posted Thu 7 Mar 2024


Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned Facebook from a "digital town square" to a "digital lounge" with less news.(Getty Images: Alex Wong)

Facebook owner Meta's decision to stop paying Australian publishers for news marks a bitter end to a long and often toxic relationship with digital news publishers.

It was a hot-and-cold affair that defined over a decade of online publishing and the work experience of a generation of reporters, and has ultimately left the industry a shadow of its former self.

Although it may be tempting for lots of reasons, the Australian government should avoid putting the boot into Meta by enforcing the News Media Bargaining Code as it's threatened to do.

Doing so will only make a bad situation worse and won't solve the underlying problem of who will pay for the news.

Meta isn't stealing news content. It's ignoring it

Last week, the US social media giant announced it would not renew the commercial deals it (reluctantly) signed with some Australian digital news publishers in 2021.

The response since has generally been one of outrage and anger, plus calls to force Meta back to the bargaining table.

The government said Meta was "appropriating" the work done by Australian companies. By this argument, the tech giant is effectively stealing the content of struggling Australian publishers.

But that doesn't properly describe the problem facing the news industry.

The reality of the situation is far worse.

Having spent years getting news outlets to publish their content on its platforms, and then years making this content less visible, Meta has gone one step further.

It says it shouldn't pay for news content because it doesn't actually want news on Facebook.

And the worst part? It's telling the truth.

Facebook's hot-and-cold relationship with news publishers

How times have changed.

Ten years ago, in 2014, the Facebook news feed was prime real estate for digital news publishing

Reporters were drilled to "post on social". Shared articles went "viral". Armies of moderators blocked trolls in the comments.

Facebook itself (the company changed its name to Meta in 2021) encouraged this by making news content more visible, and producing tools to make it easier for publishers to share their content with its users.

Digital-only media outfits such as BuzzFeed and Vice rode a wave of growth, generating huge numbers of clicks that translated into ad revenue.

In 2023, BuzzFeed folded.

Its founding editor, Ben Smith, described this as "the end of the marriage between social media and news".

In 2024, just last month, Vice laid off reporters and closed its flagship website.

A few years earlier, it had been valued at $US5.7 billion.

What went wrong?


It can be argued that, from the 2016 US election onwards, Facebook tired of the responsibilities that came with hosting news content and weeding out misinformation.

Readers also grew weary of what news had become in the 2010s era of social media. Endless hot-takes. Clickbait headlines. A fast-spin news cycle. Content designed to polarise and inflame.

Whatever the reason, Facebook tweaked its algorithm so readers saw less news.

By 2021, when the Australian Parliament passed the News Media Bargaining Code legislation to make Facebook pay for news, Facebook had been incrementally quitting news for years.

It said at the time news made up less than 4 per cent of people's feeds.

Meta now says that figure is down to 3 per cent.

"Facebook encouraged news providers onto the platform in the ways it promoted content," Dan Angus, a professor of digital communications at QUT, said.


"Now it has the eyes of the world and doesn't need news any more."

Axel Bruns, also a professor of digital communications at QUT, agreed that Facebook seems done with news content.

"They're saying, 'Why should we be the ones paying for it?'

"I hate to admit it, but there is a certain amount of logic to Facebook's argument."
Why the code doesn't solve the underlying problem facing news

And so we come to the News Media Bargaining Code, which is designed to address (to varying degrees) three related problems:1.Google and Facebook hold a monopoly over online advertising in Australia
2.Big tech in general pays very little tax in Australia, including tax on all the revenue generated by that ad spending
3.Australian news outlets don't make enough money to pay for quality journalism, partly as a result of a long-term loss of advertising revenue.

Instead of breaking up that monopoly, or closing tax loopholes, the Code effectively takes money from a profitable industry (big tech) and distributes it to an unprofitable one (news).

It's estimated the confidential two-to-three-year deals negotiated by Meta and Google with news media businesses in 2021 amounted to around $200 million.

That's great for the news outlets, but is it fair?

Arguably not.

First, why should a general purpose communications service like Facebook have to prop up the news industry?


"It's a bit like taking mining royalties to fund kindergartens," Professor Bruns said.

"There is a good argument for using one to fund the other, but it doesn't usually involve making BHP pay money directly to childcare companies."

Second, it's impossible to accurately calculate the advertising revenue Facebook and others generate from news content.

Without going into too much detail, what advertisers pay to appear beside the content is determined by an automated bidding war as a user scrolls their feed or visits a site.

This price is determined as much by the user's profile as the content itself.

Calculating advertising revenue is much more complicated than in the heyday of magazines.

But even if you could accurately calculate revenue, and even if you gave digital news publishers every cent, it still wouldn't solve the problem of how to pay for quality journalism.

The reason for this was news organisations were never in the news business, Amanda Lotz, a professor of media studies at QUT, said.

"They were in the attention-attraction business.

"In another era, if you were an advertiser, a newspaper was a great place to be.

"But now there are just much better places to be."
The business model that sustained news for over a century is dead

The moment news moved online, and was "unbundled" from classifieds, sports results, movie listings, weather reports, celebrity gossip, and all the other reasons people bought newspapers or watched evening TV bulletins, the news business model was dead.

News by itself was never profitable, Professor Bruns said.

"Then advertising moved somewhere else.

"This was always going to happen via Facebook or other platforms."

This technological change has been generally costly for news outlets and very profitable for Facebook, but that's not Facebook's problem.

The News Media Bargaining Code is trying to restore a model for financing journalism that has gone the way of the fax machine, the fountain pen, and the pocket address book.

The real question is how to pay for a public good that's no longer being adequately privately funded, Professor Angus said.

"How do we pay for this thing that we know is pretty important in a functioning democracy?

"The thing that's annoyed me through the News Media Bargaining Code discussion is that it fundamentally misrepresents that challenge.


"This is not the regulatory solution that many think it is."

One widely proposed solution was more public funding of quality journalism, Professor Lotz said.

"We need to look at journalism the way we look at streets and hospitals.

"It's a thing that's good for all of us to have."

The value of journalism shouldn't be solely defined by readership figures and advertising revenue, she said.

"The idea that you have entities keeping an eye on things, that you have governments that are aware that if they're not following the rules, there's somebody paying attention to them ... that's the thing we've been losing.

"And so there is enormous public value in simply having journalism doing its role, whether or not it's being consumed by hundreds of thousands of people every day."
What happens next probably won't be good

With Meta's announcement last week, Australia is heading towards another Facebook news ban similar to 2021. This will be bad for everyone.

Here's a likely scenario for what will happen next.

The government will designate Meta under the Code, which means it will force it to negotiate with media companies to pay for content.

Assistant treasurer Stephen Jones recently told reporters, "we'll be taking all of the actions that are available to us under the code".

Meta will then ban news on its platforms in Australia.

It did this in Canada in July last year, in response to similar government regulation. Canada's news ban is still going.

As a result of this ban in Australia, fewer Australians will read the news.

A third of Australians use Facebook for "finding, reading, watching, sharing or discussing news" — more than any other social media platform.

Much of this news consumption on Facebook was "incidental and unwilling", Professor Bruns said.

That is, Facebook users didn't seek out news, but it popped up in their feeds. That won't happen any more

.
Facebook is still the main way Australians get their news on social media.

Misinformation will flourish, as has happened in Canada.

Digital publishers will see even less ad revenue, due to Facebook referring fewer readers to their sites.

"If I'm going to take a punt, I think the government will designate Meta," Professor Angus said.

"They will want to be seen to be tough on platforms and Facebook."

In trying to force a platform that doesn't want news to pay for news content, Australia may end up doing itself more harm.

The Madonna-whore complex may have an evolutionary explanation

by Mane Kara-Yakoubian
March 7, 2024
in Evolutionary Psychology


(Photo credit: OpenAI's DALL·E)


In studying human sexuality and relationships, few concepts have sparked as much debate as Sigmund Freud’s Madonna-Whore complex. This psychological theory, first articulated in the early 20th century, suggests that men divide women into two polar categories: the Madonna, representing purity and maternity, and the Whore, embodying sexual availability and vice. A recent paper published in Evolutionary Psychological Science offers an evolutionary explanation for the Madonna-Whore complex.

The dichotomy of female sexuality is not a novel invention of Freud’s. Literature, long before Freud, grappled with this divide. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment presented characters that embodied these extremes, highlighting the tension between virtue and vice. Classic works like William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair explore these themes too, demonstrating the dance between societal expectations and individual identity.

The Madonna-Whore complex has been studied from multiple perspectives, including Enlightenment philosophy and feminist theory. Critics argue that it serves as an instrument of female oppression, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and reinforcing gender inequality. Recent research has provided empirical support to the existence of this dichotomy in men’s attitudes towards women, linking it to sexism, objectification, and relationship dissatisfaction

In this paper, researchers Steven Hertler and colleagues offer an evolutionary rationale for the Madonna-Whore complex. Human mating is profoundly shaped by internal fertilization and cryptic ovulation. Unlike other species where fertilization occurs externally or ovulation is conspicuously advertised, humans evolved a system where fertilization is hidden within the body, and the timing of ovulation is obscure. This adaptation creates uncertainty around paternity, a significant evolutionary pressure for males who risk investing resources in offspring not genetically theirs.

Unlike many other mammals, human offspring require prolonged care and resources to reach maturity. This investment, while crucial for the survival and propagation of our species, introduces a vulnerability for men: the risk of cuckoldry, or investing in offspring that are not their own. Herein lies the evolutionary rationale for the Madonna aspect of the complex, favoring women who are perceived as more likely to be faithful and thus ensure the paternity of offspring.

The multi-male/multi-female social structures that early humans likely inhabited further complicated mating. The plentiful opportunities for both short- and long-term mating strategies likely intensified male competition and concerns over paternity. The evolution of mate guarding behaviors and jealousy can be viewed as outcomes of these socioecological pressures, with the Madonna-Whore complex serving as a psychological extension of these strategies, guiding men towards women who would be more likely to ensure their genetic legacy.

As human societies evolved from hunter-gatherer bands to industrial societies, the accumulation and transference of wealth became a significant factor in mating decisions. This magnified the stakes of paternal investment, as men now had not only their genetic legacy to consider but also their material legacy. In such contexts, the desire for a “Madonna” — a woman perceived as virtuous and faithful — became even more pronounced, ensuring that a man’s resources would benefit his biological offspring.

Hertler and colleagues argue that the Madonna-Whore complex’s variability across cultures and environments can also be explained through biogeographical and life history strategies. In harsher climates and environments where resources are scarce or difficult to procure, the emphasis on paternal certainty and investment increases, possibly intensifying the dichotomous view of female sexuality. But in environments where resources are abundant and survival less precarious, these pressures may subside, leading to more relaxed attitudes towards sexuality.

Importantly, this perspective does not excuse or justify harmful stereotypes or behaviors but seeks to understand their origins. Evolutionary psychology offers a lens through which to view the Madonna-Whore complex, not as a moral failing or social construct, but as an adaptation to the reproductive challenges our ancestors faced.

The paper, “An Evolutionary Explanation of the Madonna‑Whore Complex”, was authored by Steven Hertler, Mateo Perñaherrera‑Aguirre, and Aurelio José Figueredo.

 

Housing affordability for new mothers may help stave off postpartum depression

 Reviewed

Mar 7 2024Rutgers University

Becoming a parent comes with lots of bills. For new mothers, being able to afford the rent may help stave off postpartum depression.

"Housing unaffordability has serious implications for mental health," said Katherine Marcal, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work and author of a study published in the journal Psychiatry Research. "For mothers who rent their homes, the ability to make monthly payments appears to have a correlation to well-being."

Housing hardship – missing rent or mortgage payments, moving in with others, being evicted or experiencing homelessness – has been associated with increased risk for depression. Yet little is understood about unique manifestations of housing hardship among postpartum mothers in renter households, said Marcal.

To address this gap, Marcal used data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a multiyear study of nearly 5,000 children born in the United States between 1998 and 2000. As part of the research, mothers were interviewed in hospitals shortly after giving birth, and five times over the next 15 years.

Marcal drew on data for 2,329 mothers who reported being renters at year one of the survey. Participants were asked a series of questions related to housing hardship. For instance, had they ever missed a rent or utility payment, moved in with friends or family or spent at least one night homeless during the postpartum year?

Using latent class analysis, a modeling approach that allows clustering of data and statistical inference, Marcal used Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study responses to investigate manifestations of housing hardship.

Four groups emerged from the data: a "stable" group with very little housing hardship; "rent-assisted" mothers with government housing assistance; "cost-burdened" mothers who skip periodic rent and utility payments but manage to avoid most severe housing outcomes; and a "housing insecure" group or mothers who experience elevated rates of displacement.

Finally, these clustered data were analyzed with responses from year three of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, when participants were asked if they had experienced major depressive and anxiety disorders.

What emerged was a clear connection between housing hardship and depression. Mothers in the housing insecure group were far more likely to be depressed than those in the stable group. For anxiety risk, the best determinant was whether rent was paid each month. In total, the prevalence of maternal depression was 21 percent, while the prevalence of anxiety was 5 percent.

Marcal also identified a racial component to the findings: Black renters were less likely than whites to be cost-burdened.

The reason is counterintuitive, Marcal said.

Black families are more likely to receive rental assistance, but Blacks are also more likely to be evicted faster than whites."

Katherine Marcal, Assistant Professor, Rutgers School of Social Work 

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In other words, Black tenants don't remain cost-burdened for long. "They're either making their rent payments or they're getting evicted or moving out," Marcal said.

Taken together, the findings highlight the importance of government housing support for low-income families.

"Rental assistance is very effective in keeping people housed and in reducing risk for depression and anxiety," Marcal said. "But what this research shows is that we need to do a much better job at promoting equity in assistance programs."

Source:

Rutgers University

Journal reference:

Marçal, K. (2024). Housing hardship and maternal mental health among renter households with young children. Psychiatry Research. doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115677.

 

Study links higher mortality among rural elderly to understaffed Norwegian municipalities

 Reviewed

Mar 7 2024Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Elderly people living in rural areas in Norway have higher mortality rates if they are discharged to a municipality that has too many patients and not enough caregivers to provide services.

Aging baby boomers are swelling the ranks of elderly across the Western world, with Norway no exception.

We know Norway's elderly population will increase, and it's likely there will be far fewer healthcare professionals to take care of them. The last 20 years has seen the population of Norwegians over the age of 80 increase by 40,000; the percentage of people aged 67-79 has grown by 37.9 per cent over the last 10 years.

Over the next 20 years, there will be 250,000 more Norwegians over the age of 80.

The aging crisis has been predicted for a long time, but the country still doesn't appear to be prepared.

Research now shows that elderly people living in rural areas have higher mortality rates if they are discharged to a municipality under pressure.

Elderly people over the age of 70 who live in a municipality with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are particularly vulnerable.

Over 350,000 elderly people involved in the study

Gudrun Maria Waaler Bjørnelv is an associate professor of Health Economics at NTNU. Her work has her concerned that municipal authorities in Norway may not be prepared for an aging population.

Working with a research team from NTNU, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim Municipal Authority and SINTEF, she has studied all Norwegians over the age of 70 who were admitted to emergency departments from 2012 to 2016.

That amounted to just over 350,000 people.

This group of elderly people had almost 900,000 emergency hospital admissions during this period. The researchers followed them for 30 days after the day they were admitted.

Nursing and care services that were under pressure led to increased mortality in elderly who were under their care, and that elderly people in small municipalities had the highest mortality rate.

A small municipality was defined as having fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. According to Statistics Norway, 70 per cent of Norwegian municipalities in 2016 had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. In total, 17 per cent of the population lives in a small municipality.

Increased mortality rates in pressured municipalities

Previously, it was thought that small municipalities do better than large municipalities, because they have fewer patients in hospitals waiting to be discharged to the municipal services. Our findings, however, indicate that small municipalities are more vulnerable during periods when the demand for nursing and care services is higher than the municipality can supply,"

Gudrun Maria Waaler Bjørnelv, Associate Professor of Health Economics at NTNU

She points out that small municipalities may experience more pressure regarding demand for available nursing home places and health professionals.

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"This may make them more vulnerable to fluctuations and pressure on health services," Bjørnelv said.

To investigate how mortality rates among patients changed, the researchers relied on information regarding the amount of pressure individual municipalities were under.

The process is as follows:

As soon as a person is ready to be discharged from a hospital, the home municipality of the patient must either receive the patient in that municipality or pay a daily fee to the hospital until the patient is moved home to the municipality.

Need to know more about municipalities under pressure

"If there is a build-up of patients who are ready to be discharged from hospital to one municipality, this suggests that the municipal services such as home care and nursing homes are under pressure. It shows that they do not have the capacity to receive these patients," says Bjørnelv.

The study investigated how mortality rates changed if people were admitted to emergency departments during periods of increased pressure in the municipality. That would be during periods where many people from the same municipality as the acutely admitted patient were waiting to be discharged from hospital.

"We need to take a closer look at the municipal services, and it needs to happen now," says Bjørnelv. She believes that we must find out more about what happens when a municipality is under pressure.

"Is there a greater tendency to move some people home after hospitalization rather than to a municipal short-term care facility if the municipality is under pressure? Is it better for elderly people from a pressured municipality to longer in the hospital – without the municipality having to pay a 'fine' to the hospital? What is best for the patient?" Bjørnelv said.

Source:

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Journal reference:

Bjørnelv, G., et al. (2023). Mortality and subsequent healthcare use among older patients discharged to a municipality with excess demand for elderly care. Nordic Journal of Health Economics. doi.org/10.5617/njhe.10145.