THIRD WORLD USA

Study finds family physicians deliver babies in majority of rural hospitals

Mark Deutchman, MD, is using data to guide training of medical students pursuing family medicine in rural areas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

In the heart of a city, the distances in rural communities may be difficult to envision. The space between neighbors can sometimes be measured in miles rather than blocks; a drive to the nearest hospital may take dozens of minutes rather than a handful.

The trickle-down effect of such distances can impact many aspects of health care, but especially maternal care and delivery, says Mark Deutchman, MD, a professor of family medicine and associate dean for rural health at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

As principal investigator of a study recently published in the journal Birth analyzing the impact of family physicians in rural maternity care, Deutchman and his co-investigators found that of the 185 rural hospitals surveyed in 10 states, family physicians delivered babies in 67% of the hospitals and were the only physicians who delivered babies in 27% of them.

Further, the study found that if family physicians stopped delivering babies in these rural hospitals, patients would have to drive an average of 86 miles round-trip to access maternal care.

“The purpose of this study was, number one, to understand the extent of family physicians providing maternity care in rural areas,” Deutchman explains. “Number two, and even more important, was to understand what would happen to women if family practitioners did not practice maternity care, and that’s the real take-home message: Family physicians are really, really important.”

Study highlights importance of family physicians providing maternity care

On this topic, Deutchman speaks from experience. For more than 12 years he practiced family medicine in White Salmon, Washington, a town of 2,000 residents on the Columbia River. The local hospital is federally designated critical access, which means it has fewer than 20 beds, among other standards.

“One of the major things I was involved in was maternity care,” he says. “I had a lot of OB patients and did a lot of deliveries. I was also one of the major providers of surgical OB, of C-sections when they were needed.

“I’m an advocate for and student of the quality of outcomes in areas where family physicians are a woman’s provider of obstetric and gynecologic care. I think that women deserve to have excellent care no matter where they are and no matter who provides it.”

After leaving rural practice, Deutchman became a faculty member at the University of Tennessee-Memphis, where he helped train family medicine residents for rural practice. He continued that focus after joining the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1995. In 2005, he founded the school’s rural track, which this year became a full-fledged program.

His recently published research evolved from previous, similar studies he conducted in Colorado and Montana with medical students

“It wasn’t a study of quality — we weren’t looking at individual cases and weren’t looking at outcomes — but we wanted to better understand how much and the sort of maternal care family physicians are providing at rural hospitals,” he explains.

After refining the survey tool used in the previous studies, Deutchman reached out to colleagues across the country. Those who responded represented 10 states and collected data about rural and frontier hospitals in their states. They gathered data about the hospitals’ obstetrics capacity, who delivers babies at the hospitals and what their specialty is, and other data.

“Ultimately, we were looking at how important is it for family physicians to provide maternity care and what would access be if they didn’t?” Deutchman says.

Rural program provides specialized training needed for medical students and residents

The study’s results, Deutchman says, highlight the importance of comprehensive, specialized training for medical students and residents who are interested in practicing in rural communities.

“Basically, the rural program is a way to attract, admit and support medical students and physician assistant students who want to live and work in rural areas when they finish their training,” he explains. “We need to have a program so that people who are interested in rural practice will have their aspirations supported and also have a way to test their assumptions about rural practice and see if it’s really right for them.

“The last thing we want is for students to have romanticized ideas, and then they show up in a small town and it wasn’t what they had in mind. We also don’t want to have that revolving door where physicians go to a small community for only two or three years, which fosters distrust and a lack of attachment between doctors and the community.”

Through the rural program, students not only receive on-campus experience in the classroom and clinical training, but they get significant rural clinic experience with partners throughout Colorado. That aspect of the training is vital, Deutchman says, because students learn in-person about rural health care systems and economics, community engagement, health care ethics, and how to practice in a community where physicians might regularly see patients at the grocery store.

Since 2005, Deutchman says, 191 students in the CU School of Medicine have graduated in the rural track, 40% of whom concentrated on family medicine.

“A common question is, ‘How do you get people interested in rural practice and providing care like delivering babies?’” Deutchman says. “Partly, we start out with people who are initially interested, then we help nurture that interest with real facts and real practical experience.

“Basically, the whole state of Colorado is short of primary care, especially in rural areas, which cannot support one of every kind of sub-specialist. Rural communities need versatile, broadly-trained and skilled physicians who can share clinical responsibilities with each other to avoid burnout. Family physicians can provide acute care, chronic care, end of life care, deliver babies, put on casts, repair lacerations — in the most accessible, cost-effective fashion. It’s vital we train and support these physicians who go out and support these rural communities.”

---

JOURNAL

Birth

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Sep-2021

What’s missing from forest mortality projections? A look underground

To understand how these ecosystems will respond to the pressures of climate change, a new study considers what goes on below the forest floor

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

 

IMAGE: A COTTONWOOD FOREST ADJACENT TO THE OLDMAN RIVER IN LETHBRIDGE IN ALBERTA, CANADA. IN A 2021 STUDY, RESEARCHERS PRESENT NEW TECHNIQUES FOR MODELING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON RIPARIAN FORESTS OF THIS KIND, FOCUSING ON A NEARBY REGION OF THIS FOREST. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: LAWRENCE B. FLANAGAN

BUFFALO, N.Y. — You can’t see it happening. But what goes on below ground in a forest is very important in determining its fate.

In a new study, scientists conclude that the sideways flow of water through soil can have an important impact on how riparian forests respond to climate change. Models used to predict the future plight of forests typically don’t account for this factor — but they should, researchers say.

“There hasn’t been a lot of attention on groundwater and how the movement of water from one location to another below ground can impact plants’ survival prospects, making some locations drier, and others wetter,” says lead author Xiaonan Tai, PhD, assistant professor of biological sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology. “Groundwater is a hidden water source for ecosystems that people have neglected over the years: It is very hard to observe and quantify, just because we can’t see it. The contribution of our new research is to begin characterizing lateral groundwater processes and quantifying how much of a role they can have in terms of influencing the future of forests.”

The study was published in July in Environmental Research Letters, building on research themes that Tai explored as a PhD student in geography at the University at Buffalo, where she completed her doctoral degree in 2018.

The new paper focuses on incorporating information about subsurface hydrology into computational models that predict the future fates of forests.

“Our research will fundamentally change the way the Earth systems modeling community will think about the impacts of future climate change droughts on forests,” says Scott Mackay, PhD, UB professor and chair of geography and professor of environment and sustainability. “In essence, the various vegetation models out there today assume the world is flat. Our model changes the story by allowing for water to be moved laterally below the surface, while simultaneously modeling the physiological responses of trees on the landscape.”

CAPTION

A cottonwood forest adjacent to the Red Deer River in Alberta, Canada. In a 2021 study, researchers present new techniques for modeling the impact of climate change on riparian forests of this kind. Visible in the photo is an eddy covariance flux tower — a type of scientific installation that was used in the new study.

CREDIT

Credit: Laurens J. Philipsen

PHOTOS: https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2021/10/018.html

In addition to Tai and Mackay, authors of the new study include Martin D. Venturas, PhD, at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; Paul D. Brooks at the University of Utah; and Lawrence B. Flanagan, PhD, at the University of Lethbridge. The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The paper models potential futures for a riparian cottonwood forest in Alberta, Canada, focusing on a 20-year period at the end of the 21st century. Riparian forests are common ecosystems that are located next to a body of water like a stream or pond.

Conventional wisdom suggests that as carbon dioxide levels in forests increase, tiny pores on leaves — called stomata — will not need to open as wide to absorb the carbon dioxide that plants need for photosynthesis. This, in turn, will lead to a reduction in water loss, which occurs through stomata.

But the new study suggests that the amount of water saved for future use may not be as great as anticipated: “Once you introduce subsurface lateral water flow, there is still extra saved water, but that saved water won’t all stay local,” Tai says. “Some of it will move away, and once it’s gone, plants won’t be able to use it in future droughts.”

In addition, models that fail to consider horizontal water flow may overestimate other mortality risks, Mackay says.

“Within the soil, water can move in all directions from areas of high water content to areas of low water content,” he says. “This is pronounced in mountainous landscapes because water moves from high to low elevation, and in close proximity to water bodies, such as one finds in river floodplains.

“By moving the water around horizontally, locations that would otherwise be very dry when the rain stops are made wetter, while areas that are typically wet can afford to give up some water without harming the plants.”

The big-picture message of the research? If scientists and policymakers want to understand how riparian forests will fare in a warming world, they’ll need to think more about hydrology and the hard-to-see processes that occur beneath the forest floor.

---

JOURNAL

Environmental Research Letters

DOI

10.1088/1748-9326/ac1135 

ARTICLE TITLE

Lateral subsurface flow modulates forest mortality risk to future climate and elevated CO2

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Jul-2021

Virtual job interviews infected by COVID-19 worries, new study finds

Organizations should work to reduce anxiety for best candidate performance

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

 

IMAGE: JULIE MCCARTHY IS A PROFESSOR OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND HR MANAGEMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SCARBOROUGH, WITH A CROSS-APPOINTMENT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO'S ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT. HER RESEARCH EXAMINES STRATEGIES THAT EMPLOYEES CAN USE TO BUILD RESILIENCE, REDUCE STRESS, AND ACHIEVE SUCCESS IN THEIR WORK AND HOME LIVES. SHE ALSO STUDIES HOW ORGANIZATIONS CAN ENSURE THAT THEIR POLICIES AND PRACTICES ARE VIEWED FAVORABLY BY JOB APPLICANTS AND EMPLOYEES. PROF. MCCARTHY'S RESEARCH IS PUBLISHED IN LEADING ACADEMIC JOURNALS AND HAS BEEN FEATURED IN SEVERAL PROMINENT MEDIA OUTLETS. CURRENTLY, SHE IS THE ASSOCIATE CHAIR OF EXTERNAL RELATIONS AND STRATEGIC INITIATIVES IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT AT UTSC AND SERVES ON THE EDITORIAL BOARDS OF THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY. IN THE CORPORATE SECTOR, SHE HAS COLLABORATED ON RESEARCH INITIATIVES, TRAINING PROGRAMS, PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND SELECTION TOOLS ON BEHALF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CORPORATIONS view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Toronto — Pandemic-induced boredom, isolation, health fears, and financial hits have been bad enough, not to mention an early shortage of consumer goods.

But for job-seekers living in areas hardest hit by COVID-19 deaths, the pandemic also heightened their anxiety during virtual job interviews held in the first wave, with a subsequent reduction in performance, a study from the University of Toronto has found.

“Even before the pandemic, interview anxiety was a concern for many applicants,” says lead researcher Julie McCarthy, a professor of organizational behaviour and human resources management at the University of Toronto Scarborough and Rotman School of Management. “With COVID, it’s a multiple whammy because the competition for jobs has increased and exacerbated the issues around anxiety in interviews.”

Prof. McCarthy had already been studying interview anxiety in collaboration with a U.S.-based recruiting technology company when the pandemic hit in early 2020. She and her seven co-researchers received permission to include research questions specific to COVID-19 in post-interview surveys of more than 8,000 job candidates applying to nearly 400 organizations in across 73 countries using the company’s virtual interview platform.

It is the first study to comprehensively examine the impact of anxiety in actual virtual job interviews. Surveys were collected from applicants between late April and early August 2020. Survey responses were compared to the applicants’ performances, assessed by the interview platform’s scoring algorithms.

Job candidates who experienced higher levels of preoccupation with the pandemic during their interviews also reported higher levels of interview anxiety and did not perform as well as other candidates. The effect was stronger among candidates who reported higher levels of pandemic-related emotional fatigue. Those people, in turn, tended to be from areas that had experienced higher death tolls from COVID-19 and who interviewed later in the study period, meaning they had gone through the pandemic for longer than those who did their interviews earlier in the study period.

To exacerbate issues, candidates with higher levels of anxiety were also less likely to feel the interview was fair and less likely to recommend the organization to other people, highlighting an opportunity for companies to improve messaging and engagement with candidates early in an application process. In an era when top candidates can work remotely anywhere in the world, says Prof. McCarthy, great care is needed as more companies move to doing virtual interviews – more than 80% are doing them already – sometimes without the candidate even interacting with a live human being.

“To be strategic and maximize benefits for the organization, organizations really want to be thinking about how the platform looks from the applicant’s perspective,” she suggests. “If it’s elevating their anxiety unnecessarily, then it may be artificially reducing their performance when that candidate could be an amazing individual on the job.”

And just like for the in-person interviews of old, candidates should do a practice run of the virtual interview experience before doing the real deal.

Get yourself used to the video camera,” says Prof. McCarthy. “Conduct a mock interview with someone in your network whom you trust. It’s also important to build your pre-interview confidence levels by thinking about what skills you have to offer and what it is that excites you about working for that company.”

The study appears in the Journal of Applied Psychology.  

Bringing together high-impact faculty research and thought leadership on one searchable platform, the new Rotman Insights Hub offers articles, podcasts, opinions, books and videos representing the latest in management thinking and providing insights into the key issues facing business and society. Visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub.

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca

-30-

For more information:

Ken McGuffin

Manager, Media Relations

Rotman School of Management

University of Toronto

E-mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Applied Psychology

DOI

10.1037/apl0000943 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Distressed and Distracted by COVID-19 During High-Stakes Virtual Interviews: The Role of Job Interview Anxiety on Performance and Reactions

Christian nationalism, vaccine hesitancy and science skeptics: WVU researchers delve into the sociology of COVID-19

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH PROFESSIONAL PREPARES TO ADMINISTER A COVID-19 VACCINE SHOT. RECENT RESEARCH FROM WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY'S DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY EXPLORED THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VACCINE HESITANCY AND SKEPTICISM AND RELIGION AND POLITICS. view more 

CREDIT: WVU PHOTO/DAVE RYAN

Christian nationalists are less likely to get the COVID-19 vaccine while political conservatives express high skepticism toward the coronavirus in general, two new studies published by West Virginia University sociologists conclude.

In their first report, published in Vaccine, researchers found that Christian nationalism—the belief that Christianity should permeate American civic life ‑ is one of the strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and is negatively associated with having received or planning to get the vaccine. 

“It’s the belief that Americans are chosen by God and that God protects them,” said Katie Corcoran, associate professor of sociology and lead author of the report. “They tend not to trust science and are against government intervention so they’re more focused on individual freedoms than public health protections. It's hypothesized that those are the reasons that Christian nationalists are less likely to receive the vaccine and are more likely to not trust it.”

Corcoran and her co-authors, Christopher Scheitle, also an associate professor of sociology, and graduate research assistant Bernard DiGregorio, used a national sample of 2,000 U.S. adults who completed a survey last spring on religious identities and behaviors as well as attitudes toward COVID-19. To measure Christian nationalism, respondents were asked, “To what extent do you agree or disagree that the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation?”

Scheitle noted that it’s important to not assume that all Christians or evangelicals fit the bill as Christian nationalists, which account for roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population.

“Traditionally, when the media talks about religion, they focus on evangelical Protestants,” Scheitle said. “That’s the main storyline. What Christian nationalism research has shown is that it’s not just about people who identify as evangelicals. It’s not an evangelical issue, it’s whether or not they adopt this particular nationalist ideology.”

The politics of COVID

In another study, Scheitle and Corcoran looked at COVID-19 skepticism in relation to other forms of science skepticism. They discovered that some of the predictors of COVID-19 skepticism mirror those of skepticism toward other scientific issues such as evolution, climate change, vaccines in general and genetically modified organisms, especially among political conservatives.

Those findings were published in Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World.

“There’s a narrative around COVID-19 that you have anti-science people and pro-science people,” Scheitle said. “This research was to try to see to what extent does COVID-19 map onto other forms of science skepticism. What we found is that political conservatism is a fairly consistent predictor of science skepticism, regardless of what issue you’re talking about.

“But there’s something specific about COVID that is making political conservatives especially more skeptical about that issue above and beyond climate change, evolution and everything else. I think it can be tied to the explicit politicization of COVID-19 policies.”

Age also played a factor in COVID-19 attitudes. Researchers found that younger individuals viewed COVID-19—from the vaccine to the virus’ very existence—with more skepticism than older people.

Meanwhile, the topic of evolution showed strong connections to religion and was the only science topic with a regional pattern, Scheitle said, as individuals residing in the South were more likely to view evolution with skepticism. 

The study also found that people with higher levels of education were less skeptical of every science issue. 

Researchers utilized the same dataset of 2,000 people from the previously mentioned study. 

---

JOURNAL

Vaccine

ARTICLE TITLE

Christian nationalism and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake

Ingenuity, design, and human spirit

A new book from the MIT Future Heritage Lab goes inside a Syrian refugee camp to uncover the creative lives of its inhabitants.

Book Announcement

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

The Azraq refugee camp in Jordan hosts about 35,000 people displaced by the Syrian civil war, who live in rows of small white steel sheds. Several years ago, a camp resident named Majid Al-Kanaan undertook a project to combat the visual and existential monotony of camp life.

Using clay and stones from camp terrain, he built a colonnade of decorative arches in front of his shed, referencing the Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria — and added elements alluding to Syria’s Citadel of Aleppo and the Umayyad desert palaces in Jordan.

“I was exploring what could be done with the sand and stone of this area,” Al-Kanaan says in a new book about life in the Azraq camp. The book was edited by an MIT-based team that worked with camp refugees on design projects for years.

As the team found, the Azraq camp is full of designers and builders who create objects despite having little to work with. Camp residents have used yogurt containers to build hanging gardens for plants, carved chess sets out of broom handles, made childrens’ toys from trash, and rigged up fountains from spare parts.

These projects “speak to the ingenuity of the human spirit,” says Azra Akšamija, an associate professor in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and a co-editor of the new book. “These inventions point to what is missing. People invent things because they are lacking.”

At the same time, she notes, the cultural and artistic aspects of these inventions are also critical: “Those are essential human needs, it’s not just food and a roof above your head.”

The book, “Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp,” has just been published by the MIT Press. The book’s co-editors are Akšamija, an artist, architectural historian, director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab, and director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology; Raafat Majzoub, an architect, artist, and writer who is a lecturer at the American University of Beirut and director of a Lebanon-based NGO, The Khan: The Arab Association for Prototyping Cultural Practices; and Melina Philippou, an architect and urbanist who is program director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab.

“The book is a case study about the refugee camp, but it goes beyond that,” Akšamija says. “It’s also about the conditions of scarcity, and this kind of agency of design and art in conditions of displacement, which inevitably face our global society in the future.”

Majzoub adds: “Through the dissemination of this work, we aim to contribute to the valorization and prioritization of social and cultural activities in crisis zones, moving beyond the established paradigm of ‘basic needs.’”

 

Syrian voices

Roughly 6.6 million Syrians have fled the country since war broke out in 2011, according to the United Nations. The Azraq camp opened in 2014, and the MIT Future Heritage Lab, founded by Akšamija, began helping refugees study and practice art and design in 2017 (facilitated by the humanitarian organization CARE and in collaboration with professors and students from the German-Jordanian University in Amman).

“Design to Live” details inventions Azraq residents developed before working with the MIT team. The book has text in both English and Arabic, abundant illustrations, and sections where Syrian refugees offer their own views. The volume has a tête-bêche structure — facing pages are upside down relative to each other — offering the viewpoints of people living both inside and outside the camp.

“We are not speaking for refugees, but we are highlighting their voices, while incorporating these multiple perspectives,” Akšamija says. “We want to bring out the significance of the cultural and artistic processes in the healing of society.”

She adds: “It was eye-opening to see toy trucks made out of trash and a chessboard made out of broomsticks. That is really about cultural expression and making life worth living, feeling like a human being, addressing issues of memory and hopelessness and idleness.”

Many refugees improvised forms of water storage; the book has blueprints for a fountain made from buckets and a hose. Some Azraq residents, barred from growing things in the soil, have created vertical gardens outside their sheds — with planters made from yogurt containers, where they grow traditional recipe ingredients.

“It’s impressive,” says Akšamija. “It’s about literally bringing spice to life. Plants are a beautiful metaphor for migration of culture and food, and maybe people, too. And [they’re] a way of continuing your tradition through cooking. Good food is a very important dimension of Syrian culture. People have minimal means, but they cook. You get this most incredible food in the middle of nothing. Continuing your traditions is a way of sustaining and surviving.”

As Philippou notes, “The designs of our Syrian collaborators like the vertical garden, the fountain, and the decorative arches carve space for personal and collective expression,” while merging from conditions of “confinement, with limited resources and [often] against the regulative framework of the camp.”

As a section of the book titled “Intimacy” details, camp residents also built alternate, decorated entrance halls for their sheds; these transitional spaces limit direct views into houses from the street, to grant privacy to residents.

“Over time, we observed the impact of these designs on both other residents and NGOs,” Philippou says. “Fellow residents replicated and built upon the work of their neighbors, and NGOs adapted camp regulations to accommodate and support these popular designs. Syrian designers at the camp offer alternatives that feed back into evolving camp services on a systemic level.” 

As Majzoub notes, “These designs are not singular or isolated but are rather parts of a complex process of sharing, co-creation, and world-making, where camp residents defy their realities, challenge the status quo, and create frameworks for cultural continuity in the harsh and sterile conditions of a standardized refugee camp in the middle of the desert.”

 

Acts of resilience

As Akšamija observes, creating objects is an act of resilience for refugees. Many camp residents are depressed, as they see no way out of their situation, but others find strength and inspiration in art and design. One elderly man making toys out of trash, Aksamija recollects, was “full of spirit, but I don’t know how.” His son is a camp resident who has been unable to find work elsewhere, despite being a professional engineer. Many people feel they “have nothing to do, no work, no future.”

Akšamija experienced war and forced displacement herself while growing up; her family fled Bosnia in the 1990s when war broke out, ultimately landing in Austria.

“In my own country, we had such an amazing life, and suddenly we had to start from scratch in a new place,” Akšamija says. “I think this can happen to anyone, and it’s important to think about it this way.”

Indeed, Akšamija says the ideas in the book are not only relevant to refugee camps; in a world of resource scarcity, where climate crisis and political strife are creating further dislocation, many people endure deep deprivation.

Moreover, most refugees remain in desperate circumstances. “It’s important not to exoticize these inventions,” Akšamija says. “It’s a brutal reality. We tried to show it. And we tried to show the power of art and design in creating a life worth living amid war, destruction, and displacement.”

In that vein, consider the colonnade of earthen arches at Azraq. Well-crafted as it was, the structure got destroyed by the elements within a few years. Only briefly, then, the arches “transformed the desert from a symbol of isolation to a place for the community and a medium for cultural expression,” as Akšamija, Majzoub, and Philippou write in the book.

Like everything, the structure was a transitory creation, vulnerable to collapse. In design, as in all areas of living, the Azraq refugees face a need for rebuilding and reconstruction, despite little support and enormous uncertainty.

“It’s life,” Akšamija says. “But it’s not like we say, ‘Oh, that’s how life is,’ and we accept it. Syrian refugees in Al Azraq camp showed us that we can and must do better to address the cultural and emotional needs of displaced people.”

 

###

 

Written by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

 

Book: “Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp”

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-live

Climate change and human pressure mean migration may be 'no longer worth it,' say researchers

by Vicky Just, University of Bath

Male of critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Calidris pygmaea) at a breeding

 ground, a species suffering higher nest predation rates recently, Chukotka, Arctic Russia.

 Credit: Vojtěch Kubelka

Animals that migrate north to breed are being put at risk by ongoing climate change and increasing human pressure, losing earlier advantages for migration, declining in numbers and faring much worse than their resident counterparts, according to scientists writing in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Many animals, including mammals, birds, and insects migrate long distances north to breed, taking advantage of the seasonally plentiful food, fewer parasites and diseases, and the relative safety from predators.

However, the international research team, including scientists from the University of Bath, found changes in climate and increasing human pressure have eroded these benefits and in many cases led to lower reproductive success and higher mortality in migrating species.

The researchers warn that reduced advantages for long-distance migration have potentially serious consequences for the structure and function of ecosystems.

They highlighted 25 recent studies, describing how migration is becoming less profitable for various terrestrial animals, including caribou, shorebirds and Monarch butterflies, which migrate over 1000km during the summer to north temperate and arctic regions to breed, returning south in the winter.

Traveling such long distances is very costly in terms of energy but the benefits of food supply, fewer diseases and predators have meant the benefits outweighed the cost. However, the researchers say this is no longer the case for many populations.

Whilst some animals might shift their breeding ranges slightly further north to compensate for the change in environmental conditions, migratory animals are hardwired to continue the dangerous trip each year to breed, despite the lack of benefit.

Dr. Vojtěch Kubelka, the leading author and former Visiting Researcher at the University of Bath's Milner Centre for Evolution, said, "These findings are alarming. We have lived with the notion that northern breeding grounds represent safe harbors for migratory animals.

"On the contrary, numerous Arctic and North temperate sites may now represent ecological traps or even worse degraded environments for diverse migratory animals, including shorebirds, caribou or butterflies."

Food supplies and availability in the North may be climatically mismatched with reproduction of migratory animals, incurring higher offspring mortality, as described for many migratory birds.

Polar bears stranded on the land are recently increasing predation pressure on migratory

 birds such as these Brant geese. Credit: Vojtěch Kubelka

Also new parasites and pathogens are emerging in the Arctic, creating new pressures, and top predators are increasingly preying on nests and eating eggs and chicks before they get a chance to fledge.

Dr. Kubelka said, "Lemmings and voles used to be the main food source for predators such as foxes in the Arctic; however, the milder winters can cause rain to fall on snow and then refreeze, preventing the lemmings from reaching their food.

"With fewer lemmings and voles to feed on, foxes eat the eggs and chicks of migratory birds instead.

"We've seen that rates of nest predation of Arctic migratory shorebirds has tripled over the last 70 years, in large part due to climate change."

The authors suggest that Arctic and northern temperate breeding grounds need substantial conservation attention, in addition to well-recognized problems at stopover sites and wintering areas of migratory species.

Next to the concrete conservation measures, the authors propose a simple framework on how to map the stressors for migratory animals across the space and time, helping to distinguish among suitable, naturally improved or protected habitats on one hand, and the ecological traps or degraded environments with reduced or eroded benefits for migratory behavior on the other hand.

Dr. Kubelka said, "The recognition of emerging threats and the proposed framework of migration profitability classification will help to identify the most endangered populations and regions, enabling the implementation of suitable conservation measures."

Professor Tamás Székely, Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder at the University of Bath's Milner Centre for Evolution, said, "Animal migration from equatorial regions to the North temperate and the Arctic is one of the largest movements of biomass in the world. But with reduced profitability of migration behavior and smaller number of offspring joining the population, the negative trend will continue and fewer and fewer individuals will be returning back to the North.

"The Earth is a complex ecosystem—changes in migration profitability affect populations of migrating animals which precipitate in alterations of species composition, trophic food webs as well as the whole ecosystem functioning.

"These patterns are particularly threatening for migratory animals as large numbers of those species are already negatively affected outside the breeding period, at their stopover sites and wintering grounds—and many have formerly relied on the northern latitudes to provide relative safe breeding grounds."

Professor Rob Freckleton, from the School of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Sheffield, said, "Our review highlights that there are possible threats to migratory species. There is a need for more research, and our article highlights solutions are really difficult because of the large areas involved."Decline in shorebirds linked to climate change, experts warn

More information: Vojtěch Kubelka et al, Animal migration to northern latitudes: environmental changes and increasing threats, Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2021.08.010

Journal information: Trends in Ecology & Evolution 

Provided by University of Bath 

FROM THE RIGHT

Carson Jerema: Jason Kenney puts Alberta on path he can't control with equalization win

A victory for the 'yes' side could do little more than raise expectations, creating a larger opening for separatist elements in the province

Author of the article:

Carson Jerema
Publishing date

:Oct 19, 2021 • 

 

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is very likely pleased with the referendum result, with voters approving a proposal to remove equalization from the Constitution.

 PHOTO BY IAN KUCERAK /Postmedia

Judging purely from the results of the equalization referendum, Jason Kenny made the right bet, but he has also put himself and Alberta onto a path he may regret. The referendum, which early results show Albertans voting to remove equalization from the constitution, was always a gesture meant to shore up support for his government as the province’s true defender against a hostile Ottawa.

But in the years since the premier took power his popularity has plummeted, largely due to his handling of the pandemic, which energized the more conservative factions in the province, and his party. Those factions will want to drastically change or dismantle equalization and won’t be satisfied with a symbolic victory.

Complaints against equalization are indeed well founded. Because Alberta, which hasn’t qualified for the program since the 1960s, is richer than other provinces and incomes are higher, its people pay a disproportionate amount of federal taxes, portions of which are distributed to “have-not” provinces so they can offer similar services at similar levels of taxation. Most of the payments go to Quebec, which will receive $13.1 billion of the nearly $21 billion in equalization payments for 2021-22, which is particularly galling given Quebec’s staunch opposition to pipelines carrying Alberta oil.

While the purpose of equalization is to smooth out inequalities between provinces, fiscal capacity has been converging, especially since the oil price collapse of 2014. 

RIGHT WING Political scientist Bill Bewick of Fairness Alberta estimates that the per capital fiscal gap between have and have-not provinces fell from about $5,000 in 2015, to $1,600 this year. Because the program has a predetermined pool of funding, equalization is currently paying out more than the formula would call for.

University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe said in an interview on Monday that while he opposed the referendum, he agrees that the program needs to be reformed. “In 2018, following the drop in oil prices and provinces getting more equal, the formula actually wanted to pay out fewer dollars than that preset amount,” he said.

Another objection is that equalization favours provinces with publicly owned power companies, because it calculates revenue based on the price the government sets for electricity. This is a particular boon for Quebec. “There is a strong incentive to keep power prices low,” Tombe says. If Quebec “were to have just two cents per kilowatt hour higher electricity prices, they would still have low electricity prices, relative to North America, but their equalization payment would have been $10.7 billion, instead (of $13.1 billion).”

So, yes, grievances against equalization are justified, and with respect to the referendum, equalization really has no business being in the Constitution. No federal spending program, especially one so easily manipulated for political aims, should be enshrined alongside rules that dictate the powers and limits of government. The wording of the equalization clause itself suggests it doesn’t belong, as it commits Ottawa to merely the “principle” of making equalization payments to poorer provinces.

Much has been said about the Supreme Court’s 1998 secession ruling and a duty “to come to the negotiating table” which was a specific reference to the threat of separation, not a general point on more trivial constitutional changes. However, elsewhere in the ruling, the court did affirm “the duty on the participants in Confederation to engage in constitutional discussions in order to acknowledge and address democratic expressions of a desire for change in other provinces.”

We could quibble over the legal distinctions between “negotiating” versus holding “discussions,” but if you wanted to remove the equalization clause from the Constitution, holding a referendum, followed up by a resolution in the legislature (as is planned), is indeed how Alberta would initiate the amendment process.

It just isn’t obvious what Kenney and his United Conservative Party government hopes to accomplish. “Our expectation is not that there will be a constitutional amendment or the end of equalization, but we’re using this to get leverage,” Kenney said in a Facebook Live event last week, where he fully acknowledged that he doesn’t expect to get the necessary support from other provinces to amend the Constitution. The whole purpose, then, appears to be to kick up dust.

Certainly, if the vote were to go the other way, it would be worse for Kenney, but a victory for the “yes” side could do little more than raise expectations, creating a larger opening for separatist elements in the province.

The so-called Free Alberta Strategy , which was announced with a splash earlier this month, goes well beyond the usual plans to assert autonomy, such as a provincial police force and pension plan. Supported by some current and former MLAs, it advocates for the provincial government to claim authority to “refuse enforcement” of federal laws and court rulings, and pushes for independence if Ottawa doesn’t end its “economic tyranny.”

Kenney won power with a coalition that included the nascent independence movement, despite the fact that he is a federalist. If Albertans strongly approve of making changes to equalization and Kenney is unable to deliver for them, will that further embolden the separatists within his base?

National Post
cjerema@postmedia.com

‘Historic moment’: 8 women elected to Edmonton city council

For the first time ever, there are more female Edmonton city councillors than male ones.

© Dean Twardzik, Global News

Edmonton City Hall pictured on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020.

Emily Mertz 12 hrs ago

Read more: Edmonton election results coverage

With all polls reporting Tuesday morning, eight female candidates had been elected:

Keren Tang in Ward Karhiio

Ashley Salvador in Ward Métis

Sarah Hamilton in Ward sipiwiyinkiwak

Karen Principe in Ward tastawiyiniwak

Jo-Anne Wright in Ward Sspomitapi

Anne Stevenson in Ward O-day'min

Jennifer Rice in Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi

Erin Rutherford in Ward Anirniq

"I'm feeling great," said councillor-elect Stevenson. "It's a bit surreal but really wonderful.

"It's definitely a historic moment and so exciting.

"I think it really speaks to what Edmontonians have been wanting to see for a while and some really strong candidates stepped up and we've made history."

GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE LAZIEST CITY COUNCILLOR EVER
Video: Veteran Edmonton city councillor Tony Caterina not reelected, ousted by Anne Stevenson

"I think it will change how things are done in council," said councillor-elect Wright, "bring a different perspective."

Video: Which Edmonton city councillors kept and lost their seats in the municipal election

Outgoing councillor Michael Walters congratulated everyone who has worked hard behind the scenes to get more diverse voices on council. He also praised Esslinger for her work on council, at times, being the "sole voice in the wilderness" as the only woman on city council two terms ago.

ANOTHER GOOD RIDDANCE 
Read more: Edmonton election 2021: Incumbent Bev Esslinger loses seat in Anirniq

"That's a big deal to have that kind of diversity on council," Walters said.

"We hoped, we dreamed, for something like this," said Katherine O'Neill with ParityYEG, a group that supports women and non-binary individuals in obtaining leadership positions in the community.

Read more: Unique project honours 100 years since first woman elected to Edmonton city council

"2021 is actually the 100th anniversary of the very first woman to be elected to Edmonton city council. Her name is Izena Ross.

"To achieve something this historic tonight... is beyond expectations," O'Neill said.

"It helps with the diversity of thought, diversity of perspective. I think it's set our council up for success."

Read more: Will Edmonton see more women on council come October?

Before the Oct. 18 election, there were two women on council.

Video: Edmonton mayoral candidate Kim Krushell concedes race

A total of 24 women put their name forward for councillor in the 12 wards, and three stepped up to campaign for the mayor’s seat.

Voters in every ward, with the exception of Nakota Isga in the west end, had the option of choosing a female candidate.

Video: Unique project honours 100 years since first woman elected to Edmonton City Council

Esslinger said Sept. 6 there’s a number of reasons why more women haven't historically put their names forward.

“One is fundraising. Often they’re really good about raising money for everyone else, but not asking for themselves. And I think the other one is just the social context we live in."

“Some women, they also have to balance on top of that family life. What if you have kids?” said ParityYEG's vice-chair of governance Cindy Caturao.

Read more: Navigating Edmonton city council as a parent

Councillor-elect Stevenson is a mother and city planner.

She said when she was contemplating a run for council, she was surprised by some of the things she heard.

“I did have the question come up a number of times, you know, ‘Why would you run when there’s already another woman running?’ And it really struck me that we’re still trapped in this idea that women are not part of public life,” she said.

“The biggest impact when you’re a woman running for any leadership spot is online harassment,” Caturao explained.

“The utter garbage that women and non-binary individuals experience being a political candidate online.”

Video: New battle of Alberta aims to elect more women to city hall

Edmonton Elections said more than 229,000 Edmontonians voted in the 2021 election, including ballots cast on Oct. 18 and during the advance vote period.

Official results will be confirmed by noon on Oct. 22.

-- With files from Sarah Ryan, Global News

Amarjeet Sohi elected Edmonton's 36th mayor, 4 incumbent councillors defeated


CTV EDMONTON -

Amarjeet Sohi will be Edmonton's 36th mayor as four incumbent councillors went down to defeat in the city's municipal election Monday night.

The CTV News decision desk projected Sohi to be the winner just after 9 p.m.

Sohi won with 45 per cent of votes and was followed by former councillors Mike Nickel (25 per cent), Kim Krushell (17 per cent) and Michael Oshry (six per cent).

RELATED STORIES
Election roundup: New mayors in Red Deer, Parkland County, Morinville

"I know that these last few years have been tough," said Sohi. "I'm honoured with the privilege to lead us towards a new chapter with better days ahead."

"Let's get to work. Let's build a city that's a place of opportunity for all."

His platform focussed on addressing homelessness, addictions and mental health as well as dealing with the realities of climate change.

He told CTV News he planned to reach out to other members of city council in the coming days.

"We will get to work right away," he said. "We have very serious challenges."

Sohi is the city's first person of colour to be elected as mayor.

He was elected as councillor in 2007 and re-elected in 2010 and 2013. He left local politics to run as a federal Liberal, winning in 2015 and serving as a federal cabinet minister before being defeated in 2019.

"This city is going to change," Nickel told supporters in conceding defeat.

"But there will always be a tomorrow and even if I am not there, tomorrow will always be yours."
MIXED NIGHT FOR INCUMBENTS

Incumbent councillors had a mixed election night with four councillors being returned to office but also an equal number coming up short.

Incumbents Aaron Paquette in Dene, Andrew Knack in Nakota Isga, Tim Cartmell in pihêsiwin and Sarah Hamilton in sipiwiyiniwak were all re-elected Monday night.

But, incumbent Tony Caterina lost his council seat to Anne Stevenson in O-day'min, and finished in fifth place.

Jon Dziadyk was upset by Karen Principe in tastawiyiniwak, who won with 38.9 per cent of the vote.


In Sspomitapi, Moe Banga finished in third place behind new councillor-elect Jo-Anne Wright.

And, two-term councillor Bev Esslinger lost to Erin Rutherford by 266 votes in Anirniq.

Before Monday night, 62 out of 65 incumbents, or about 95 per cent, had been re-elected as mayor or councillor in Edmonton over the last seven elections going back to 1998.

The closest race of the night was in the open ward of Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi where Jennifer Rice held a 39-vote lead over Rhiannon Hoyle at the end of Monday night.

Edmonton Elections said Monday that there a number of outstanding special ballots still to be counted.

Ashley Salvador in Métis, Michael Janz in papastew and Keren Tang in Karhiio round out the newcomers to council.

Women will represent two-thirds of city councillors, the most in Edmonton's history.

Voter turnout was 37.5 per cent with 235,826 ballots cast from 629,066 eligible voters. The 2017 municipal election drew a 31.5 per cent turnout.

Voters also cast ballots on the federal equalization program and daylight savings time as well as for senate nominees.

Final results for those ballots will come on the morning of Oct. 26 though some cities, including Calgary but not Edmonton, released results Monday night.

New mayors elected in historic victories in Calgary and Edmonton

Oct 19, 2021
CBC News

Jyoti Gondek is to become Calgary's first female mayor and Edmonton voters have elected Amarjeet Sohi, the city's first mayor of South Asian origin.