Burnaby brewery decontaminating masks for front-line workers

By Chris Campbell, Burnaby Now | May 6, 2020, 

N95 respiratory face masks | Submitted

A Burnaby brewery has repurposed new brewery equipment to decontaminate N95 masks.

Steamworks Brewery took delivery of its steam-driven chamber pasteurizer days before the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

It was for laboratory use in new product development and for preventing re-fermentation from occurring in beers with high sugar content such as radler and barrel-aged beers. The chamber pasteurizer looks like a big upright freezer.

Steamworks Brewery CEO Eli Gershkovitch, long a proponent of steam, was fascinated by work being done by the Battelle Organization and Stanford University on decontaminating existing masks as a way of dealing with the worldwide shortage of new N95 masks, especially for first-line health-care providers. 

Steamworks Brewery took delivery of its steam-driven chamber pasteurizer days before the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Photo submitted

Using protocols developed by Stanford University and approved by the CDC, the Steamworks pasteurizer is capable of decontaminating 1,200 N95 masks per cycle using either steam or hydrogen peroxide vapour (HPV).

“With steam, our pasteurizer can decontaminate 1,200 masks per cycle and approximately 10,000 N95 masks per day. Using steam, each mask can be decontaminated up to three times,” Gershkovitch said. “With hydrogen peroxide vapour, we can do about 5,000 masks per day, but the masks can be decontaminated a maximum of 10 times before needing to be discarded. Thus, choose steam for speed while HPV is preferred for greater reusability.”

Health Canada has confirmed that any registered hospital in Canada can use the Steamworks pasteurizer for decontaminating masks without further regulatory authorization.

Gershkovitch is offering the Steamworks pasteurizer to any accredited hospital or health authority in British Columbia and in neighbouring Washington State that is facing a shortage of N95 masks, at no cost.

Burnaby Now

BC Schools to have ‘full re-launch in September’

Smaller class sizes, spacing between desks, health checks, greater cleaning recommended

By Jeremy Hainsworth | May 6, 2020

B.C.’s public sector and post secondary could see a “full re-launch in September,” B.C.’s deputy minister of health said May 6.

Stephen Brown said schools could return to initially limited operations with guidelines incorporating core hygiene and gathering rules.

There could also be a partial return for K-12 and a mix of online and in-class for post-secondary facilities in September.

“We will continue to plan for the full resumption of class in September,” Premier John Horgan said, adding it is vital parents feel safe about their children’s return to school as part of “the new normal.”

“We want to make sure we can safely get kids back into the classroom,” he said. “It’s not just about reading, writing and ‘rithmatic.”

Further, the premier acknowledged, children want to see their friends.

“There’s an overwhelming desire to get kids interacting with each other,” Horgan said.

The Ministry of Education released a staged plan for return to full in-class instruction.

Those are:

• Stage 5 - Suspend all in-class instruction for all grades and students. Remote and online learning for all students;

• Stage 4  - Current stage - In-class learning for children of essential service workers and vulnerable students. Remote and online learning continues for most students;

• Stage 3 - In-class learning for students in kindergarten to Grade 5 on a part-time basis. Access to in-class learning as needed for grades 6 to 12 on a part-time basis. Remote and online learning continues to be available for students;

• Stage 2 - In-class learning for all students in elementary school (K to 7) on a full-time basis. In-class learning for secondary students (grades 8 to 12) on a part-time basis. Remote and online learning continues to be available for secondary students, and;

• Stage 1 - return to full in-class instruction.

Health Minister Adrian Dix, the Ministry of Education will address details of what openings might look like in coming days.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said school districts would have to determine how best to implement policies in their areas.

Brown, Dix and Henry presented the information on B.C.’s Restart Plan to a technical briefing and news conference.

B.C.’s COVID-19 Go-Forward ... by BIV on Scribd

Brown said Minister of Education Rob Fleming is working on the details “to ensure students and staff are safe and stay well.”

But, stressed Henry, not all classroom instruction ended in the lockdown period.

In-class instruction had remained for some students, including those of essential workers, Henry said.

She said that could expand in June with a greater expansion in September.

Among issues schools will be looking at, Brown said, include:

• routine daily screening protocol for all staff and students;

• routine and frequent cleaning;

• smaller class sizes, increased space between desks, alternating attendance arrangements, frequent hand washing, wearing non-medical masks for group activities and sports, and limiting group sizes;

• clear policies for children, youth and staff who have symptoms of a cold, flu, or COVID-19, with any coughing or sneezing not attending school or taking part in extracurricular activities and sports;

• planning over the summer for increased use of remote online learning, especially for high school children; and

• early arrival and self-isolation for 14 days of international students for both public system and post-secondary institutions.

Brown said similar cleaning rules and attendance restrictions would apply to post-secondary institutions.

Henry said she sees no utility in taking students’ temperatures as they arrive at school each day.

Rather, she said, students would be asked how they are feeling.

“It’s about a health-symptom screening that we all need to do,” Henry said.

Horgan said the province is working with the B.C. Recreation and Parks Association to determine what kids sports can take place this summer.

He said Fleming has been working with the BC Teachers Federation and school trustees.

B.C. School Trustees Association president Stephanie Higginson said school boards will be working with the Ministry of Health guidelines to ensure a safe return to school in a modified manner before the end of June.

She said the government has worked very collaboratively with stakeholders to ensure everything is done safely.

jhainsworth@glaciermedia.ca

@jhainswo

The meat of the matter: don’t expect shortages in Canada

By Sylvain Charlebois | April 28, 2020

Shutterstock


As COVID-19 ravages communities across North America, many analysts believe meat-packing plants, where employees work close to each other, are the next focal point of the spread of the virus.

We’re likely in the worst of it now. More than a dozen North American meat-packing plants have closed over the last two weeks, with at least five in Canada.

The big meat processing operators in Canada have been affected.

Maple Leaf Foods had four plants affected by COVID-19, and two are back in operation. Protocols are being carefully followed to put plants back in operation as quickly as possible. Closures can be disruptive and, especially for farming, disastrous.


Olymel, controlled by La Coop Fédérée, operates several pork processing plants. Two of its plants were closed for two weeks.

Given the intense production cycle in hog farming, animals needed to be harvested. While other sectors struggle to manage waste, pork processors made vertical co-ordination work so no animals were euthanized.

Throughout the crisis, we should expect to see more of these scenarios erupt.

But we shouldn’t expect meat shortages.

Meat consumption across the globe is down during the pandemic, relieving some of the pressure on meat packers.

The futures market is telling the story, especially for cattle and hogs, as farmers are being paid less for their livestock. Inventories are high enough to provide comfort to the supply chain. And meat sales in Canada have been unusually high since mid-March, when most Canadians were home.

We expect peak barbecue season to be flattened this year, again alleviating pressure on the entire meat supply chain.

But beef, and one packing plant in particular, offers a different story.

The cattle industry has always had a unique culture. Beef and cattle processing in Canada are dominated by a few large players. Cargill Foods operates in High River, Alberta, and Guelph, Ontario. Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta, is operated by JBS Canada, part of a Brazil-based multinational. Both are private companies and tend not to be too forthcoming.

The Cargill plant in High River has been the focus of much scrutiny in recent days.

Unlike other plants affected by COVID-19, Cargill chose to keep operating in High River after seeing employees contract the virus. But it opted to slow down production to allow for cleaning and physical spacing.

Reports now say more than 350 COVID-19 cases have been identified in households linked to the High River plant. That’s a problem.

Similar circumstances are being reported in the United States.

A few issues merit attention. First, many of our plants need to be retrofitted, particularly in the beef industry. Since the beginning of the crisis, all plants less than 10 years old in Canada have avoided COVID-19. That’s a sign. The virus could eventually get in, but modern infrastructure can play a significant preventive role.

Because of automation, robotics and modern maintenance, most European plants have so far been spared the virus. Those with issues have been in operation for decades, with patchwork and provisional operating solutions.

The high-volume, low-margin nature of the agri-food sector puts tremendous pressure on the entire supply chain, particularly in North America. Price volatility also makes things more complicated. There’s barely any room for capital investments.

The High River plant is 31 years old. The Brooks plant is more than 40 years old.

The region needs more processing, either with newer facilities or with more players. But the economics are very poor for any new entries.

The other issue is worker mobility. Many plants hire workers who commute by bus from urban centres to rural plants. Complying with physical distancing rules on a bus can be complicated, if not impossible.

Part of management’s decisions to deal with the pandemic should be making the safety of the community a priority. Maple Leaf, Olymel and other companies made the right decisions to temporarily close facilities to clean and establish safety measures.

Employees at the Cargill plant have continuously, if awkwardly, voiced concerns about work safety. Despite teleconferences and a few interviews, Cargill has failed to be reassuring about the safety of its employees.

COVID-19 will ultimately force management to think more broadly about employee safety, in and out of the plant. But Cargill’s efforts now to mitigate risks and keep employees and the community safe don’t appear to be working.

Meanwhile, employees are talking to the media about concerns while the number of cases in the community continues to grow.

Not wanting to close the plant even temporarily probably makes sense for ranchers who deal with Cargill. But public health and the safety of employees must be priorities.

In 2012, XL Foods in Brooks closed for several days amid the largest food recall in Canadian history. Canadians continued to get their beef while prices remained stable. So we know the market can handle a temporary closure.

In the end, the meat processing industry will be fine, if not perfect, and Canadians will get their meat supplies. •

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER 

14 mutations found in SARS-CoV-2: One strain may be more easily spread

by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress

A colorized scanning electron micrograph of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Credit: NIAID

A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and Department of Surgery has found 14 mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, one of which they suspect might be more easily spread. In the interest of speedy dissemination of findings, the group has uploaded their paper to the bioRxiv preprint server rather than waiting for peer review at another journal.

The work involved analyzing the genomes of the virus found in 6,000 infected people from around the globe. They focused most specifically on the virus genes that are responsible for producing the "spike protein," which is the mechanism the virus uses to attach to human cells. In so doing, they found 14 mutations, but one they named D614G (also known as G614) stood out because it was found in almost all samples outside of China. It was also particularly notable because it appeared to replace a prior mutation called D614. They also noted that in the original outbreak in China, there were only D614 mutations. It was only after the virus began appearing in Europe that the G614 mutation emerged. They suggest that the fact that the G614 virus took over from the prior mutation could mean it is more easily spread. Notably, after the mutation appeared in Europe, the G614 mutation began appearing in samples from other sites around the world, suggesting that this new strain is behind the global pandemic.

Others in the medical science field have expressed skepticism about the suggestions made by the team, insisting that it is far too soon to assume that any of the various strains of the virus are any more contagious than the original strain in China. Some have even suggested that the reason the strain with the G614 mutation has spread so far and wide is because it happened to infect regions that did not begin mitigation efforts in the earliest days of the pandemic. In either case, more work is required to ascertain whether any strains are more contagious than any other, and also to determine if the virus mutates at a rate that could outpace vaccine development.

---

More information: Bette Korber et al. Spike mutation pipeline reveals the emergence of a more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2, bioRxiv (2020). DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.29.069054

Climate change could reawaken Indian Ocean El Nino

by University of Texas at Austin

Evidence of an ice age Indian Ocean El Niño was found in the chemistry of these 21,000 year old foram shells by Thirumalai in 2017, when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. The researchers now think the processes driving Indian Ocean El Niño during global cooling were very similar to those under global warming. Credit: Kaustubh Thirumalai

Global warming is approaching a tipping point that during this century could reawaken an ancient climate pattern similar to El Niño in the Indian Ocean, new research led by scientists from The University of Texas at Austin has found.

If it comes to pass, floods, storms and drought are likely to worsen and become more regular, disproportionately affecting populations most vulnerable to climate change.

Computer simulations of climate change during the second half of the century show that global warming could disturb the Indian Ocean's surface temperatures, causing them to rise and fall year to year much more steeply than they do today. The seesaw pattern is strikingly similar to El Niño, a climate phenomenon that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and affects weather globally.

"Our research shows that raising or lowering the average global temperature just a few degrees triggers the Indian Ocean to operate exactly the same as the other tropical oceans, with less uniform surface temperatures across the equator, more variable climate, and with its own El Niño," said lead author Pedro DiNezio, a climate scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, a research unit of the UT Jackson School of Geosciences.

According to the research, if current warming trends continue, an Indian Ocean El Niño could emerge as early as 2050.

The results, which were published May 6 in the journal Science Advances, build on a 2019 paper by many of the same authors who found evidence of a past Indian Ocean El Niño hidden in the shells of microscopic sea life, called forams, that lived 21,000 years ago—the peak of the last ice age when the Earth was much cooler.

To show whether an Indian Ocean El Niño can occur in a warming world, the scientists analyzed climate simulations, grouping them according to how well they matched present-day observations. When global warming trends were included, the most accurate simulations were those showing an Indian Ocean El Niño emerging by 2100.

Rainfall simulations in the Indian Ocean under future global warming show more extreme periods of deluge and drought. According to the University of Texas-led study, the climate swings are the result of Indian Ocean El Niño and La Niña that could emerge within the 21st century if today's greenhouse warming trends continue. Credit: Pedro DiNezio

"Greenhouse warming is creating a planet that will be completely different from what we know today, or what we have known in the 20th century," DiNezio said.

The latest findings add to a growing body of evidence that the Indian Ocean has potential to drive much stronger climate swings than it does today.

Co-author Kaustubh Thirumalai, who led the study that discovered evidence of the ice age Indian Ocean El Niño, said that the way glacial conditions affected wind and ocean currents in the Indian Ocean in the past is similar to the way global warming affects them in the simulations.

"This means the present-day Indian Ocean might in fact be unusual," said Thirumalai, who is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona.

The Indian Ocean today experiences very slight year-to-year climate swings because the prevailing winds blow gently from west to east, keeping ocean conditions stable. According to the simulations, global warming could reverse the direction of these winds, destabilizing the ocean and tipping the climate into swings of warming and cooling akin to the El Niño and La Niña climate phenomena in the Pacific Ocean. The result is new climate extremes across the region, including disruption of the monsoons over East Africa and Asia.

Thirumalai said that a break in the monsoons would be a significant concern for populations dependent on the regular annual rains to grow their food.

For Michael McPhaden, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who pioneered research into tropical climate variability, the paper highlights the potential for how human-driven climate change can unevenly affect vulnerable populations.

"If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trends, by the end of the century, extreme climate events will hit countries surrounding the Indian Ocean, such as Indonesia, Australia and East Africa with increasing intensity," said McPhaden, who was not involved in the study. "Many developing countries in this region are at heightened risk to these kinds of extreme events even in the modern climate."Indian Ocean phenomenon spells climate trouble for Australia

More information: Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay7684 , advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaay7684

Kaustubh Thirumalai et al. An El Niño Mode in the Glacial Indian Ocean?, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology (2019). DOI: 10.1029/2019PA003669

Journal information: Science Advances 

Study shows wetter climate is likely to intensify global warming

by Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Greater rainfall is likely to intensify global warming by increasing microbes' release of CO2 into the atmosphere from soils in tropical drainage basins like that of the Kali Gandaki River, a tributary of the Ganges River in Nepal. Credit: © Dr. Valier Galy, WHOI.

A study in the May 6th issue of Nature indicates the increase in rainfall forecast by global climate models is likely to hasten the release of carbon dioxide from tropical soils, further intensifying global warming by adding to human emissions of this greenhouse gas into Earth's atmosphere.

Based on analysis of sediments cored from the submarine delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, the study was conducted by an international team led by Dr. Christopher Hein of William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Collaborators include Drs. Valier Galy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Muhammed Usman of the University of Toronto, and Timothy Eglinton and Negar Haghipour of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Major funding was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

"We found that shifts toward a warmer and wetter climate in the drainage basin of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers over the last 18,000 years enhanced rates of soil respiration and decreased stocks of soil carbon," says Hein. "This has direct implications for Earth's future, as climate change is likely to increase rainfall in tropical regions, further accelerating respiration of soil carbon, and adding even more CO2 to the atmosphere than that directly added by humans."

Soil respiration refers to release of carbon dioxide by microbes as they decompose and metabolize leaf litter and other organic materials on and just below the ground surface. It's equivalent to the process in which larger multicellular animals—from snails to humans—exhale CO2 as a byproduct of metabolizing their food. Roots also contribute to soil respiration at night, when photosynthesis shuts down and plants burn some of the carbohydrates they produced during daylight.

Sediment cores reveal link between precipitation, soil age

The team's study is based on detailed analysis of three sediment cores collected from the ocean floor seaward of the mouth of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers in Bangladesh. Here, the world's largest delta and submarine fan were built by the prodigious volume of sediments eroded from the Himalayas. The two rivers carry more than a billion tons of sediment to the Bay of Bengal each year, more than five times that of the Mississippi River.

The cores record the environmental history of the Ganges-Brahmaputra drainage basin during the 18,000 years since the last Ice Age began to wane. By comparing radiocarbon dates of bulk sediment samples from these cores with samples from organic molecules known to be derived directly from land plants, the researchers were able to gauge changes though time in the age of the sediments' parent soils.

Their results showed a strong correlation between runoff rates and soil age—wetter epochs were associated with younger, rapidly respiring soils; while drier, cooler epochs were linked to older soils capable of storing carbon for longer periods.

The wetter periods themselves correlate with the strength of the Indian summer monsoon, the primary source of precipitation across India, the Himalayas, and south-central Asia. The researchers confirmed changes in monsoon strength using several independent lines of paleoclimatic evidence, including analysis of oxygen-isotope ratios from Chinese cave deposits and the skeletons of open-ocean phytoplankton.

Small changes, big effects

The magnitude of the correlation discovered by Hein and colleagues corresponds to a near doubling in the rate of soil respiration and carbon turnover in the 2,600 years following the end of the last Ice Age, as India's summer monsoon strengthened. "We found that a small increase in precipitation values corresponds to a much larger decrease in soil age," says Hein.

An earlier paper by Hein, Galy, and colleagues reported a threefold increase in annual rainfall in the Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin since the last Ice Age. This new study shows that upturn in precipitation led to a halving of soil age due to more rapid soil turnover.

Hein says "small changes in the amount of carbon stored in soils can moreover play an outsized role in modulating atmospheric CO2 concentrations and, therefore, global climate, as soils are a primary global reservoir of this element."

The current concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere—416 parts per million—equates to about 750 billion tons of carbon. Earth's soils hold around 3,500 billion tons—more than four times as much.

Previous research has highlighted the threat that global warming poses to the permafrost soils of the Arctic, whose widespread thawing is thought to be releasing up to 0.6 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year.

"We've now found a similar climate feedback in the tropics," says Hein, "and are concerned that enhanced soil respiration due to greater precipitation—itself a response to climate change—will further increase concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere."Forest soils release more carbon dioxide than expected in rainy season

---

More information: Millennial-scale hydroclimate control of tropical soil carbon storage, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2233-9 , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2233-9

Journal information: Nature 

Cold air rises—what that means for Earth's climate

by UC Davis MAY 6, 2020


This graphic illustrates the vapor buoyancy effect, in which cold, humid air rises because it is lighter than dry air. Credit: Da Yang/UC Davis

Conventional knowledge has it that warm air rises while cold air sinks. But a study from the University of California, Davis, found that in the tropical atmosphere, cold air rises due to an overlooked effect—the lightness of water vapor. This effect helps to stabilize tropical climates and buffer some of the impacts of a warming climate.

The study, published today in the journal Science Advances, is among the first to show the profound implications water vapor buoyancy has on Earth's climate and energy balance.

"It's well-known that water vapor is an important greenhouse gas that warms the planet," said senior author Da Yang, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at UC Davis and a joint faculty scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "But on the other hand, water vapor has a buoyancy effect which helps release the heat of the atmosphere to space and reduce the degree of warming. Without this lightness of water vapor, the climate warming would be even worse."

Humid air is lighter than dry air under the same temperature and pressure conditions. This is called the vapor buoyancy effect. This study discovered this effect allows cold, humid air to rise, forming clouds and thunderstorms in Earth's tropics. Meanwhile, warm, dry air sinks in clear skies. Earth's atmosphere then emits more energy to space than it otherwise would without vapor buoyancy.

The study found that the lightness of water vapor increases Earth's thermal emission by about 1-3 watts per square meter over the tropics. That value compares with the amount of energy captured by doubling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The authors' calculations further suggest that the radiative effects of vapor buoyancy increase exponentially with climate warming.

A better understanding of the vapor buoyancy effect and its stabilizing role in the tropics can also improve cloud and thunderstorm simulations, as well as climate models, the study said.

"Now that we understand how the lightness of water regulates tropical climate, we plan to study whether global climate models accurately represent this effect," said the study's lead author, Seth Seidel, a graduate student researcher at UC Davis.
Measuring the effect of water vapor on climate warming
More information: "The lightness of water vapor helps to stabilize tropical climate" Science Advances (2020).
Journal information: Science Advances

Police stop fewer black drivers at night when a 'veil of darkness' obscures their race

The Stanford-led study also found that when drivers were pulled over, officers searched the cars of blacks and Hispanics more often than whites

STANFORD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when "a veil of darkness" masks their race.

That is one of several examples of systematic bias that emerged from a five-year study that analyzed 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018.

The Stanford-led study also found that when drivers were pulled over, officers searched the cars of blacks and Hispanics more often than whites. The researchers also examined a subset of data from Washington and Colorado, two states that legalized marijuana, and found that while this change resulted in fewer searches overall, and thus fewer searches of blacks and Hispanics, minorities were still more likely than whites to have their cars searched after a pull-over.

"Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias, and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities," the researchers write in the May 4th issue of Nature Human Behaviour.

The paper culminates a five-year collaboration between Stanford's Cheryl Phillips, a journalism lecturer whose graduate students obtained the raw data through public records requests, and Sharad Goel, a professor of management science and engineering whose computer science team organized and analyzed the data.

Goel and his collaborators, which included Ravi Shroff, a professor of applied statistics at New York University, spent years culling through the data, eliminating records that were incomplete or from the wrong time periods, to create the 95 million-record database that was the basis for their analysis. "There is no way to overstate the difficulty of that task," Goel said.

Creating that database enabled the team to find the statistical evidence that a "veil of darkness" partially immunized blacks against traffic stops. That term and idea has been around since 2006 when it was used in a study that compared the race of 8,000 drivers in Oakland, California, who were stopped at any time of day or night over a six month period. But the findings from that study were inconclusive because the sample was too small to prove a link between the darkness of the sky and the race of the stopped drivers.

The Stanford team decided to repeat the analysis using the much larger dataset that they had gathered. First, they narrowed the range of variables they had to analyze by choosing a specific time of day - around 7 p.m. - when the probable causes for a stop were more or less constant. Next, they took advantage of the fact that, in the months before and after daylight saving time each year, the sky gets a little darker or lighter, day by day. Because they had such a massive database, the researchers were able to find 113,000 traffic stops, from all of the locations in their database, that occurred on those days, before or after clocks sprang forward or fell back, when the sky was growing darker or lighter at around 7 p.m. local time.

This dataset provided a statistically valid sample with two important variables - the race of the driver being stopped, and the darkness of the sky at around 7 p.m. The analysis left no doubt that the darker it got, the less likely it became that a black driver would be stopped. The reverse was true when the sky was lighter.

More than any single finding, the collaboration's most lasting impact may be from the Stanford Open Policing Project, which the researchers started to make their data available to investigative and data-savvy reporters, and to hold workshops to help reporters learn how to use the data to do local stories.

For example, the researchers helped reporters at the Seattle-based non-profit news organization, Investigate West, understand the patterns in the data for stories showing bias in police searches of Native Americans. That reporting prompted the Washington State Patrol to review its practices and boost officer training. Similarly, the researchers helped reporters at the Los Angeles Times analyze data that showed how police searched minority drivers far more often than whites. It resulted in a story that was part of a larger investigative series that prompted changes in Los Angeles Police Department practices.

"All told we've trained about 200 journalists, which is one of the unique things about this project," Phillips said.

Goel and Phillips plan to continue collaborating through a project called Big Local News that will explore how data science can shed light on public issues, such as civil asset forfeitures - instances in which law enforcement is authorized to seize and sell property associated with a crime. Gathering and analyzing records of when and where such seizures occur, to whom, and how such property is disposed will help shed light on how this practice is being used. Big Local News is also working on collaborative efforts to standardize information from police disciplinary cases.

"These projects demonstrate the power of combining data science with journalism to tell important stories," Goel said.

###

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality

Job-replacing tech has directly driven the income gap since the late 1980s, economists report.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

This is part 3 of a three-part series examining the effects of robots and automation on employment, based on new research from economist and Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Modern technology affects different workers in different ways. In some white-collar jobs -- designer, engineer -- people become more productive with sophisticated software at their side. In other cases, forms of automation, from robots to phone-answering systems, have simply replaced factory workers, receptionists, and many other kinds of employees.

Now a new study co-authored by an MIT economist suggests automation has a bigger impact on the labor market and income inequality than previous research would indicate -- and identifies the year 1987 as a key inflection point in this process, the moment when jobs lost to automation stopped being replaced by an equal number of similar workplace opportunities.

"Automation is critical for understanding inequality dynamics," says MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, co-author of a newly published paper detailing the findings.

Within industries adopting automation, the study shows, the average "displacement" (or job loss) from 1947-1987 was 17 percent of jobs, while the average "reinstatement" (new opportunities) was 19 percent. But from 1987-2016, displacement was 16 percent, while reinstatement was just 10 percent. In short, those factory positions or phone-answering jobs are not coming back.

"A lot of the new job opportunities that technology brought from the 1960s to the 1980s benefitted low-skill workers," Acemoglu adds. "But from the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s and 2000s, there's a double whammy for low-skill workers: They're hurt by displacement, and the new tasks that are coming, are coming slower and benefitting high-skill workers."

The new paper, "Unpacking Skill Bias: Automation and New Tasks," will appear in the May issue of the American Economic Association: Papers and Proceedings. The authors are Acemoglu, who is an Institute Professor at MIT, and Pascual Restrepo PhD '16, an assistant professor of economics at Boston University.

Low-skill workers: Moving backward
The new paper is one of several studies Acemoglu and Restrepo have conducted recently examining the effects of robots and automation in the workplace. In a just-published paper, they concluded that across the U.S. from 1993 to 2007, each new robot replaced 3.3 jobs.

In still another new paper, Acemoglu and Restrepo examined French industry from 2010 to 2015. They found that firms that quickly adopted robots became more productive and hired more workers, while their competitors fell behind and shed workers -- with jobs again being reduced overall.

In the current study, Acemoglu and Restrepo construct a model of technology's effects on the labor market, while testing the model's strength by using empirical data from 44 relevant industries. (The study uses U.S. Census statistics on employment and wages, as well as economic data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Studies, among other sources.)

The result is an alternative to the standard economic modeling in the field, which has emphasized the idea of "skill-biased" technological change -- meaning that technology tends to benefit select high-skilled workers more than low-skill workers, helping the wages of high-skilled workers more, while the value of other workers stagnates. Think again of highly trained engineers who use new software to finish more projects more quickly: They become more productive and valuable, while workers lacking synergy with new technology are comparatively less valued.

However, Acemoglu and Restrepo think even this scenario, with the prosperity gap it implies, is still too benign. Where automation occurs, lower-skill workers are not just failing to make gains; they are actively pushed backward financially. Moreover, Acemoglu and Restrepo note, the standard model of skill-biased change does not fully account for this dynamic; it estimates that productivity gains and real (inflation-adjusted) wages of workers should be higher than they actually are.

More specifically, the standard model implies an estimate of about 2 percent annual growth in productivity since 1963, whereas annual productivity gains have been about 1.2 percent; it also estimates wage growth for low-skill workers of about 1 percent per year, whereas real wages for low-skill workers have actually dropped since the 1970s.
"Productivity growth has been lackluster, and real wages have fallen," Acemoglu says. "Automation accounts for both of those." Moreover, he adds, "Demand for skills has gone down almost exclusely in industries that have seen a lot of automation."

Why "so-so technologies" are so, so bad

Indeed, Acemoglu says, automation is a special case within the larger set of technological changes in the workplace. As he puts it, automation "is different than garden-variety skill-biased technological change," because it can replace jobs without adding much productivity to the economy.

Think of a self-checkout system in your supermarket or pharmacy: It reduces labor costs without making the task more efficient. The difference is the work is done by you, not paid employees. These kinds of systems are what Acemoglu and Restrepo have termed "so-so technologies," because of the minimal value they offer.

"So-so technologies are not really doing a fantastic job, nobody's enthusiastic about going one-by-one through their items at checkout, and nobody likes it when the airline they're calling puts them through automated menus," Acemoglu says. "So-so technologies are cost-saving devices for firms that just reduce their costs a little bit but don't increase productivity by much. They create the usual displacement effect but don't benefit other workers that much, and firms have no reason to hire more workers or pay other workers more."

To be sure, not all automation resembles self-checkout systems, which were not around in 1987. Automation at that time consisted more of printed office records being converted into databases, or machinery being added to sectors like textiles and furniture-making. Robots became more commonly added to heavy industrial manufacturing in the 1990s. Automation is a suite of technologies, continuing today with software and AI, which are inherently worker-displacing.
"Displacement is really the center of our theory," Acemoglu says. "And it has grimmer implications, because wage inequality is associated with disruptive changes for workers. It's a much more Luddite explanation."

After all, the Luddites -- British textile mill workers who destroyed machinery in the 1810s -- may be synonymous with technophobia, but their actions were motivated by economic concerns; they knew machines were replacing their jobs. That same displacement continues today, although, Acemoglu contends, the net negative consequences of technology on jobs is not inevitable. We could, perhaps, find more ways to produce job-enhancing technologies, rather than job-replacing innovations.

"It's not all doom and gloom," says Acemoglu. "There is nothing that says technology is all bad for workers. It is the choice we make about the direction to develop technology that is critical."

New research finds racial bias in rideshare platforms

Minority riders are twice as likely to have rides canceled than caucasians
INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

INFORMS Journal Management Science New Study Key Takeaways:


Under-represented minorities are more than twice as likely to have a ride canceled compared to Caucasians.

The racial bias is lessened during peak demand times.

Rides are more likely to be canceled for people who show support for the LGBT community with no changes during peak demand times.


CATONSVILLE, MD, May 6, 2020 - New research to be published in the INFORMS journal Management Science has found popular rideshare platforms exhibit racial and other biases that penalize under-represented minorities and others seeking to use their services.

The study, "When Transparency Fails: Bias and Financial Incentives in Ridesharing Platforms," was conducted by Jorge Mejia of Indiana University and Chris Parker of American University. In addition to finding racial biases persist, similar phenomena were also documented against people who show support for the LGBT community.

Data was analyzed from a major rideshare platform in Washington, D.C., between early October to mid-November 2018. The experiment manipulated rider names and profile pictures to observe drivers' behavior patterns in accepting and canceling rides. To illustrate support for LGBT rights a rainbow profile picture filter was used. In addition, times of ride requests varied to determine how peak and non-peak price periods impact bias.

"We found under-represented minorities are more than twice as likely to have a ride canceled than Caucasians, that's about 3% versus 8%," said Mejia, an assistant professor in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana. "Along with racial bias, LGBT biases are persistent, while there is no evidence of gender bias."

Peak timing was found to have a moderating effect, with lower cancelation rates for minority riders, but the timing doesn't appear to change the bias for riders that signal support for the LGBT community.

"Data-driven solutions may exist wherein rider characteristics are captured when a driver cancels, and the platform penalizes the driver for the biased behavior. One possible way to punish drivers is to move them down the priority list when they exhibit biased cancelation behavior, so they have fewer ride requests. Alternatively, less-punitive measures may provide 'badges' for drivers that exhibit especially low cancelation rates for minority riders," concluded Mejia.


About INFORMS and Management Science

Management Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of management in companies and organizations. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at http://www.informs.org or @informs.