Strike averted as WestJet reaches tentative agreement with Calgary and Vancouver employee union

Social Sharing

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

Agreement 'brings long overdue wage increases,' union says

The Canadian Press · Posted: Jul 24, 2022 7:51 PM MT | Last Updated: July 24

A WestJet flight to Vancouver lifts off in Calgary on Jan. 21, 2021. The airline has reached a tentative labour deal with the union representing hundreds of workers at the Calgary and Vancouver airports. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

There will be no strike at WestJet this week now that the airline has reached a tentative labour deal with the union representing hundreds of workers at the Calgary and Vancouver airports.

Both the airline and Unifor Local 531 announced the deal on Sunday evening, days before nearly 800 baggage and customer service staff could have walked off the job.

Unifor announced last week that workers had voted 98 per cent in favour of a strike as early as this Wednesday if a deal could not be reached.

• WestJet employees in Calgary and Vancouver back strike vote if deal can't be reached

Neither side disclosed specific terms of the tentative deal, which is still subject to ratification.

The union issued a release saying the agreement "brings long overdue wage increases and improvements to working conditions."

The deal, touted as the first between the two sides, will be presented to union members later this week.

CBC's Journal

Fossil of ‘earliest animal predator’ is named after David Attenborough

Sea creature, thought to have used tentacles to capture food, is named Auroralumina attenboroughii

Artwork emphasises the fossil Auroralumina attenboroughii. 

Photograph: British Geological Survey/UKRI/PA

Linda Geddes

Science correspondent

Mon 25 Jul 2022 

A hundred years from now, Sir David Attenborough’s body may have turned to dust, but a fossilised sea creature, thought to represent Earth’s earliest animal predator, will continue to bear his name.

Discovered in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, where Attenborough hunted for fossils as a child, the creature predates what was previously thought to be the oldest predator by 20m years.

Palaeontologists have named it Auroralumina attenboroughii, in honour of the TV presenter. The first part of its name is Latin for dawn lantern, in recognition of its great age and resemblance to a burning torch, and the creature is thought to have used a set of densely packed tentacles to capture food in Earth’s early oceans.


Rise of the dinosaurs traced back to their adaptation to cold

Charnwood Forest is known for its fossils. Although Attenborough dug there as a child, he avoided the rocks where Auroralumina has been discovered. “They were considered to be so ancient that they dated from long before life began on the planet. So I never looked for fossils there,” he said.

A few years later, in 1957, a fern-like impression was discovered by Roger Mason, a younger boy at Attenborough’s school. The discovery turned out to be one of the oldest fossilised animals, and was named Charnia masoni, in Mason’s honour.

“Now I have – almost – caught up with him and I am truly delighted,” said Attenborough, who has more than 40 species named after him, ranging from a Madagascan dragonfly to a dandelion-like hawkweed found only in the Brecon Beacons in south Wales.

Auroralumina is part of a trove of more than 1,000 fossils discovered in 2007, when a team of researchers from the British Geological Survey spent more than a week in Charnwood Forest, cleaning a 100-sq-metre rock surface with toothbrushes and pressure jets, before using a rubber mould to capture an impression of its lumps and bumps.

The fossil was dated at the British Geological Survey’s headquarters using tiny radioactive minerals in the surrounding rock, called zircons, that act as geological clocks.

Related to the group that includes modern corals, jellyfish and anemones, the 560m-year-old specimen is the first of its kind. Its discovery, reported in Nature Ecology and Evolution, throws into question when modern groups of animals appeared on Earth.

“It’s generally held that modern animal groups like jellyfish appeared 540m years ago in the Cambrian explosion. But this predator predates that by 20m years,” said Dr Phil Wilby, palaeontology leader at the British Geological Survey, who helped to discover it.

“It’s the earliest creature we know of to have a skeleton. So far we’ve only found one, but it’s massively exciting to know there must be others out there, holding the key to when complex life began on Earth.”
Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BST

Dr Frankie Dunn from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, who carried out the detailed study, said: “It’s nothing like anything else we’ve found in the fossil record at the time.”

Whereas the body plans of other fossils from this period bear no relation to those of living animals, “this one clearly has a skeleton, with densely packed tentacles that would have waved around in the water capturing passing food, much like corals and sea anemones do today,” she said.

Possibly, it originated from shallower water than the rest of the fossils found in Charnwood. “All of the fossils on the cleaned rock surface were anchored to the seafloor and were knocked over in the same direction by a deluge of volcanic ash sweeping down the submerged foot of the volcano, except one, A. attenboroughii,” Dunn said. “It lies at an odd angle and has lost its base, so appears to have been swept down the slope in the deluge.”

‘Canary in the coal mine’: What Tunisia’s controversial referendum means for the Arab World

As Tunisians voted Monday over whether to give the president more power, critics say the country is one step closer to a dictatorship and the end of the only surviving Arab Spring democracy.

By Maria Iqbal

Staff Reporter

TORONTO STAR
Mon., July 25, 2022

A controversial referendum Monday over a new constitution in Tunisia raised concerns that growing power for the president could drag the country back to its pre-Arab Spring dictatorship.

The constitution, which was anticipated to pass with low voter turnout, would cement power in the hands of Tunisian President Kais Saied. Since last year, the leader has given himself the power to rule by decree, fired multiple judges after freezing Parliament and dismissed his government in what some have decried as a coup.

Members of some of the main opposition parties boycotted the vote on the draft constitution, which has been criticized for lacking public consultation and would give the president the power to select and fire a prime minister and other ministers, and reduces the power of Tunisia’s judiciary and Parliament.

“The divisions in Tunisia are the canary in the coal mine for the Arab World,” said Farid Laroussi, a French professor at the University of British Columbia who focuses on historical and cultural issues in North Africa.

Tunisia was the first country to trigger the Arab Spring in late 2010, when residents took to the streets to demand the removal of former autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

“It was nearly 30 years of dictatorship falling in 20-some odd days,” said Salah-Dean Satouri, a William & Mary Global Research Institute fellow from the U.S. speaking to the Star from Tunis, the Tunisian capital. “There was a lot of hope … that Tunisia was going to progress.”

Though, unlike the other Arab Spring countries, democracy has survived in Tunisia, though there has been little progress since the revolution. The economic stagnation, unemployment and poverty plaguing the country and political paralysis resulting from a rise in opposition parties with little consensus has led to disillusionment with democracy.

For some, Monday’s vote was essentially “between the plague and cholera,” said Jabeur Fathally, an associate law professor at the University of Ottawa, referring to the opposition and current ruler.

In speaking with citizens, Satouri said Tunisians were divided on the referendum. Few turned up to the polls early Monday, and some of the ones who planned to vote in favour of the proposed constitution said they supported Saied and the new constitution out of resistance to the Ennahdha, the previous governing party, which has been blamed for the country’s economic problems.

Most of the main opposition parties advocated for a boycott of the election to signal that the referendum and the president’s attempts at centralizing power were unconstitutional. Others planned to vote in favour of the constitution despite believing that Saied hasn’t addressed Tunisia’s problems over the last year.

“Most Tunisians just want to live and if they’re going to vote ‘yes’ on this constitution, it’s because they want stability. They view Kais Saied as a stable option,” Satouri said.

Other Tunisians didn’t want to vote out of concerns that the election results would be falsified. Satouri expressed concern about the country’s future if the proposed constitution was passed.

“I’m quite worried, if I’m going to be honest, as a Tunisian American,” Satouri said. “I’m afraid that Tunisia will completely backslide out of democracy, and … contrary to what a lot of citizens believe, I don’t think it’s going to be easy to mobilize like they did in 2011.”

For Satouri’s colleague Ian DeHaven, another William & Mary Global Research Institute fellow based in Tunis, Monday’s vote was a “death knell” for democracy, but something that ha been coming for a long time.

The referendum is akin to adding “psychological legitimacy to something that has already been in place. It’s like making Kais Saied’s power de jure rather than de facto,” he said. In other words, the election will entitle Saied to greater powers by right.

Though it wasn’t known Monday when the results would be announced, if the new constitution passes, Laroussi said it could be used by Arab countries to declare that democracy doesn’t work. But the real picture is more complex.

“It is difficult to say that Tunisia is dictatorship. It’s not,” Laroussi said, pointing to the presence of elections, a free press and political opposition in the country. “But we are heading toward a strongman regime.”

With file from the Associated Press.

Maria Iqbal is a 905 Region-based staff reporter for the Star. 

Reach Maria via email: miqbal@torstar.ca

Chess robot breaks 7-year-old opponent's finger at Moscow tournament

The Associated Press · Posted: Jul 25, 2022 

A chess-playing robot grabs a boy's finger as he attempts to make a move at a Moscow tournament.

A chess-playing robot grabbed the finger of its seven-year-old opponent and broke it during last week's Moscow Chess Open tournament, Russian media reported Monday.

"The robot broke the child's finger," Sergei Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the Russian TASS agency. "Of course, this is bad."

A video shared on social media shows the robot taking one of the boy's pieces, and then grabbing his finger as he attempts to make a move. Four adults then rush in, struggling to free the boy before leading him away from the chessboard.

Lazarev said the chess federation had rented the robot and that it had appeared in many previous events without incident.

He said the boy was able to play again the next day and finished the tournament with his finger in a cast.

Professor, Indigenous rights activist question why Pope was gifted a headdress

After the long-anticipated apology from the Pope in Maskwacis Alta., Monday, Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations Wilton Littlechild presented the Holy Father with a headdress.


© Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

After delivering a long-awaited apology Monday, Pope Francis was presented with a traditional headdress by Chief Wilton Littlechild in Maskwacis, Alta.

But not everyone is applauding Littlechild's gesture.

After Pope Francis's apology, Littlechild — a former commissioner of the TRC — placed the headdress on the Pontiff's head, over his papal zucchetto.

The pope donned the regalia briefly before having it removed by his staff.

Samson Cree elder John Crier supports Littlechild's decision to gift the headdress to the Pope.

"The giving of the headdress is honouring a man as the honourary chief and leader in a community. So, in doing that it actually adopted him as one of our leaders in the community," said Crier.

"It's an honouring of the work that he has done and it also is recognizing from the community that here's a man that belongs to our tribe."

Related video: Pope 'deeply sorry' for 'colonizing mentality' of many Christians
View on Watch

The headdress donned by the Pope, the war bonnet, is held in high regard.

In 1987, when John Paul II visited Canada he met with Indigenous leaders and urged the church's solidarity with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Yet, Pope Francis is the first Pontiff to receive a war bonnet on a visit to Canada.

Riley Yesno is a Anishinaabe writer and Indigenous rights activist based in Toronto. She says allowing the Pope to be held in such high regard is frustrating.

"The church is here because it didn't act very honourably and the church continues not to act very honourably."

Yesno says she believes Indigenous people have been gracious to the Pope but, neither the Pope nor the Catholic church has returned the gesture.

"We're gifting things to the Pope and the Pope is not returning these [gestures] on the list of things that are actually meant to happen."

Niigaan Sinclair, professor of Indigenous Studies at University of Manitoba, says allowing prominent people to take part in significant Indigenous traditions can devalue their meaning.

"To give our most sacred items to those who, perhaps demonstrate goodwill, but don't deliver on the promises is just very upsetting, and it's also very degrading to our own ceremonial items."

Sinclair says although many viewed the papal visit and the gifted headdress as a turning point, there is still pain in the community.

"It is, at times, a very complicated day. It's not a day to celebrate. It's a day to realize that the traumas are still ongoing in our community and to sit to feel that pain."

Pope's apology doesn't acknowledge church's role as 'co-author' of dark chapter: Murray Sinclair

Apology fails to recognize 'full role of the church in the residential school system,' former senator says


Rachel Bergen · CBC News · Posted: Jul 26, 2022 

Former senator Murray Sinclair was the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015. He says the apology the Pope delivered Monday for the role Catholics played in Canada's residential school system was lacking. 

(Tyson Koschik/CBC)

The former Manitoba senator who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada says there's a "deep hole" in the apology issued by Pope Francis Monday for the role Catholics played in Canada's residential school system.

Murray Sinclair says the historic apology, although meaningful to many residential school survivors and their families, fell short of Call to Action 58 in the final report.

It specifically called on the Pope to issue an apology "for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools."

In a written statement Tuesday, Sinclair said the intent was that survivors would not only hear remorse, "but an acceptance of responsibility for what they were put through at the hands of the church and other institutions."

While he called it a "historic apology," he said the Pope's statement "has left a deep hole in the acknowledgement of the full role of the church in the residential school system, by placing blame on individual members of the church."

Pope Francis delivered the apology Monday in Alberta at the site of the former Ermineskin residential school, one of the largest in Canada, as he started what he called his "penitential pilgrimage."

Pope Francis bows his head during a service at the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples in Edmonton on Monday as part of his papal visit across Canada. He apologized for the role of many Christians in residential schools, which doesn't go far enough, says Sinclair. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

"I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools," he said.

Sinclair said it's important to highlight that the Catholic Church was not just an agent of the state, but "a lead co-author of the darkest chapters in the history of the land."
Pope's residential school apology prompts mixed emotions from Manitoba survivors'We won't forget': Manitoba residential school survivors respond to Pope Francis' apology

Sinclair says Catholic leaders who were driven by the Doctrine of Discovery — a 15th-century papal edict that justified colonial expansion by allowing Europeans to claim Indigenous lands as their own — as well as other church beliefs and policies enabled the government of Canada, and pushed it further in its work to commit what the TRC called the cultural genocide carried out on Indigenous people in Canada.

That was often "not just a collaboration, but an instigation," he said.

"There are clear examples in our history where the church called for the government of Canada to be more aggressive and bold in its work to destroy Indigenous culture, traditional practices and beliefs," Sinclair's statement said.

"It was more than the work of a few bad actors — this was a concerted institutional effort to remove children from their families and cultures, all in the name of Christian supremacy."
Time for action

Sinclair says reconciliation requires action, and the Catholic Church must work to assist in restoring culture, beliefs and traditions destroyed through assimilation.

"For the children and descendants of survivors, it is not enough that you have stopped abusing them," he said. Rather, the church must help them recover, and "as well as commit to never doing this again."

Students and staff at the Fort Alexander residential school are shown in an archival photo. Sinclair says there are clear examples in Canadian history where the Church called for the government of Canada to be more aggressive in its work to destroy Indigenous culture, traditional practices and beliefs. (National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation archives)

The Pope will continue his pilgrimage throughout the week to meet with First Nations, Métis and Inuit survivors in Quebec and Nunavut. Sinclair hopes the pontiff will take his words to heart.

"There is a better path that the church — and all Canadians — can indeed follow: taking responsibility for past actions and resolving to do better on this journey of reconciliation."
Pope Francis apologizes for forced assimilation of Indigenous children at residential schools'I am deeply sorry': Full text of residential school apology from Pope Francis

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Bergen is a journalist for CBC Manitoba and previously reported for CBC Saskatoon. Email story ideas to rachel.bergen@cbc.ca

CANADA: What Pope Francis left out of residential school apology

Pope Francis prays at a gravesite at the Ermineskin Cree Nation Cemetery in Maskwacis, Alta., during his papal visit across Canada on Monday, July 25, 2022. Pope Francis delivered a historic apology to survivors of the country's residential school system, the majority of which were operated by the Catholic Church. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Prior to his visit, Indigenous leaders made specific calls about what they wanted to see in the apology and where they hoped it would lead

Stphanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

OTAWA — Pope Francis delivered a historic apology on Monday to survivors of Canada's residential schools. The majority of those government-funded institutions, in which thousands of Indigenous children suffered abuse and neglect, were run by the Catholic Church.

In the lead-up to the Pope's visit, Indigenous leaders made specific calls about what they wanted to see in the apology and where they hoped it would lead to next. 

Here's what was missing:

A revocation of the Doctrine of Discovery

The Assembly of First Nations has been among the loudest bodies calling for the renouncement of the 14th-century policy. 

It was a decree from the Vatican that countries including Canada used to justify the colonization of Indigenous lands. 

The AFN says the doctrine ignores Indigenous sovereignty and continues to have legal impacts today. 

After Pope Francis's apology, delivered before an audience of survivors and others in Maskwacis, Alta., the pontiff faced a shout from the crowd to renounce the doctrine. 

An apology on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution

In his apology, the pontiff requested forgiveness "for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples." 

Murray Sinclair, who served as the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, said the pope's apology "left a deep hole" by failing to recognize the role the church itself played in the residential school system and instead "placing blame on individual members."

"It was more than the work of a few bad actors — this was a concerted institutional effort to remove children from their families and cultures, all in the name of Christian supremacy," Sinclair said in a statement Tuesday.

The TRC had listed a papal apology as one of its 94 calls to action.

Cody Groat, a professor at Western University and member of Six Nations of the Grand River in southern Ontario, says Pope Francis's earlier apology to an Indigenous delegation that travelled to see him in Rome was found lacking for a similar reason — placing blame on individuals rather than on the institution. 

Groat, whose grandparents attended a residential school operated by the Anglican Church, says people are going to see the language and terms the pontiff used in Monday's apology in different ways, adding he feels it's an improvement from the spring. 

"When you use remarks such as apologizing on behalf of the Christian faith, it perhaps acknowledges more of a broader incident that happened within a long history of colonialism." 

Any mention of sexual abuse — or genocide

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in its call for a papal apology, said it should address the Catholic Church's role in the "spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse" of Indigenous children at residential schools. 

Pope Francis said children suffered "physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse," but did not mention sexual abuse.

Groat says the pontiff's words would have been carefully vetted before he delivered them and believes leaving out sexual abuse was a conscious effort. 

"That is going to be something that is called out by a lot of people," he said. 

"Not seeing Pope Francis directly acknowledge or apologize for sexual abuse, this is something that again, will be have to be followed up on."

Also absent from the pontiff's apology was the word "genocide." The commission concluded in its 2015 final report that Canada's residential school system amounted to a "cultural genocide." 

A promise to release documents and artifacts

One of the outstanding calls the Vatican and Catholic entities in Canada are facing is to release more documents related to the operation of residential schools, and to return Indigenous artifacts. 

The news last year that ground-penetrating radar had located what are believed to be hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites across Western Canada underscored the need for governments and Church authorities to turn over records that could help identify those who died, advocates and Indigenous leaders say. 

Evelyn Korkmaz, a residential school survivor who attended St. Anne's residential school, noted the pope's apology didn't mention anything about handing over of church-held documents, which she said are desperately needed. 

"These documents have our history," she said. "These documents hold the identification of these children. It would give their families and loved ones closure. Everybody needs closure in order to heal and move on. And this is all we're asking, is for those documents to be released. They belong here in Canada. They belong to us."

The Métis National Council had also called for artifacts held in the Vatican, which were taken from Métis people and communities, to be returned. 

A commitment to reparations and compensation

The pontiff's apology and visit to Canada comes as the Catholic Church is facing criticism over not fulfilling the financial commitments it has made to survivors. 

One of the main points of contention is over a "best efforts" fundraising campaign that 48 Catholic entities signed on to as part of compensating survivors under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement struck in 2006. 

Of a stated $25-million goal for the fundraising effort, less than $4 million was raised before a judge ruled in 2015 that the entities were free from their obligations. 

Last September, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops announced it would pledge $30 million to reconciliation-related initiatives over five years. Before Pope Francis's arrival, the bishops announced that dioceses had contributed $4.6 million to the effort so far. 

Some survivors and Indigenous leaders have said the pontiff's apology should be followed by additional commitments to reparations or restitutions. 

Cindy Blackstock, an advocate for child welfare and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, shared what she called a "to-do" list on social media to follow the apology. 

It included: "Ensuring the church (not parishioners) provides reparations for residential school survivors, and the estates of children who died." 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 26, 2022

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

Victims rights advocate Kennedy calls for resignation of Hockey Canada leaders

Former NHL player and victims rights advocate Sheldon Kennedy has called for the resignation of Hockey Canada president and chief executive officer Scott Smith, his leadership team and the organization's board of directors as scrutiny of the organization's handling of sexual abuse allegations involving its players continues.


© Provided by The Canadian PressVictims rights advocate Kennedy calls for resignation of Hockey Canada leaders

Kennedy posted his demand on Twitter in a statement responding to Hockey Canada's "action plan" released Monday to combat toxic culture.

"The same people with a new plan expecting the same results is the definition if insanity," Kennedy said in the statement, ending it with "enough is enough already."

Kennedy's statement came after the end of Tuesday's round of parliamentary hearings investigating Hockey Canada's handling of sexual assault allegations involving past world junior team players.

Kennedy said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press that a July 11 open letter from Hockey Canada, promising reforms and the reopening of an investigation into a 2018 allegation of group sexual assault, was "a good first step."

"The followup? They should be able to speak with their actions," he added. "I'm hopeful that they will.''

He made it clear Tuesday that he believes Hockey Canada hasn't done enough.

"Giving my 26 yrs of advocating for victims, I cant sit idle any longer," he said in a tweet attached to his statement.

Kennedy has been a voice for victims following his own experience being abused by then-coach Graham James in junior hockey.

Hockey Canada's action plan building on the open letter includes the implementation by the end of September of a centralized tracking and reporting system for abuse complaints. It said the results will be published annually to "hold Hockey Canada accountable.''

The organization will publish an annual social responsibility report, which will include information on complaints received at both the national team and subnational levels and a scorecard based on "key performance indicators.'' Hockey Canada said it was in the process of identifying the measures to be included in the scorecard.

Hockey Canada did not say what data on the complaints will be made public in the report, but historical allegations of sexual assault will not be included.

The parliamentary hearings will continue Wednesday, with Smith being among those scheduled to testify.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 26, 2022.

The Canadian Press

A more balanced public health approach is needed for e-cigarette use

Researchers at Rutgers seek balanced policies to ensure the devices are available for those who want to kick the cigarette smoking habit but don’t serve as a gateway to smoking or nicotine addiction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Rutgers researchers are calling for a balanced approach to examining recent trends in adult e-cigarette use.

 

Julia Chen-Sankey, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health, and Michelle T. Bover-Manderski, an instructor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Rutgers, said that while there are clear health concerns with e-cigarette use, particularly the adoption by those who previously hadn’t used tobacco products, there also are potential benefits that can’t be ignored.

 

The Rutgers researchers published an invited commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open, reviewing new data on the trend of e-cigarette use among U.S. adults. Chen-Sankey and Bover-Manderski, who are also researchers at the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies, discussed the need for a public health approach that balances the risks with the potential of e-cigarettes to facilitate cessation of combustible cigarette smoking by adults. 

 

You reviewed a study that raised important questions about e-cigarette use among U.S. adults. What did that study find, and what questions has it raised about public health policy?

 

Chen-Sankey: The paper was on recent trends in adult e-cigarette use in the United States in 2017, 2018 and 2020. Among the findings was the observation that while current e-cigarette use – defined as vaping in the previous 30 days – by young adults ages 18 to 20 years declined between 2018 and 2020, it increased in other age groups. Daily e-cigarette use among current users also increased.

 

But perhaps most alarming, e-cigarette use increased significantly for people who never smoked combustible cigarettes. It also decreased among combustible cigarette smokers attempting to quit – despite the potential that e-cigarettes have in helping people to stop smoking.

 

Bover-Manderski: In terms of how these conflicting findings should be applied to health policy, there is a need to balance concerns about the dangers of e-cigarette use among young people new to tobacco products with the potential benefits that e-cigarettes may have for people who want to stop smoking combustible cigarettes.

 

How can we strike that balance?

 

Chen-Sankey: There are several policy advances and strategies that may be helpful in ensuring that the net public health benefit of e-cigarette use is not eclipsed by its harm. For instance, the recent authorization of e-cigarette products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through its Premarket Tobacco Product Applications pathway may help to establish public trust in authorized e-cigarette products.

 

The FDA is also likely to authorize certain e-cigarettes as modified-risk tobacco products, which may help encourage smokers to see e-cigarettes as a tool to stop smoking combustible cigarettes.

 

Bover-Manderski: Additionally, to boost combustible cigarette smokers’ acceptance of using e-cigarettes for smoking cessation, public health education and mass media communication strategies should focus on evidence-based results pertaining to the reduced harm associated with switching to e-cigarettes.

 

Why do you think some adults who smoke combustible cigarettes have turned away from vaping as a means of quitting?

 

Chen-Sankey: Over the past five years or so, e-cigarette products have become less appealing to combustible smokers interested in quitting but more appealing to people who have never smoked. A few factors can help explain this discouraging pattern.

 

For one, local and national policies intended to reduce the use of e-cigarettes among youths may simultaneously reduce adult smokers’ interest in and use of e-cigarettes when attempting to quit. Additionally, the media may have altered smokers’ understanding of vaping because of the substantially higher volume of media coverage of vaping risks for youths compared with the potential benefits of vaping for adult combustible cigarette smokers.

 

Bover-Manderski: It’s also likely that public health groups and health care professionals may have emphasized the risks of vaping for youths over the potential benefits for adults who use combustible tobacco.

 

A bright spot in the research is a substantial decline in e-cigarette use by young adults ages 18 to 20. What accounts for this dip?

 

Chen-Sankey: The discrepancy may be associated with the Tobacco to 21 Act that restricted the sale of tobacco and nicotine delivery products, including e-cigarettes, to this age group nationwide starting in January 2020. Another potential explanation for the disproportional reduction is national restrictions on certain flavored cartridge-based e-cigarettes implemented in February 2020, a policy that may have considerably reduced the appeal of e-cigarettes among young people.

 

Bover-Manderski: And of course, we can’t overlook COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns and social-distancing requirements, which may have limited this group’s opportunities to use e-cigarettes in social or group settings.

---

JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.23274 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Importance of a Balanced Public Health Approach When Assessing Recent Patterns in the Prevalence of Adult E-Cigarette Use in the US

Electronic cigarette use among adults in US

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: In this study involving 994,000 adults from U.S. states and territories, a slight decrease in the prevalence of current (past 30 days) e-cigarette use was found between 2018 and 2020. This decrease was mainly observed among young adults ages 18 to 20. In contrast, daily e-cigarette use consistently increased, particularly among young adults ages 21 to 24. This increase in daily use suggests greater nicotine dependence among those who use e-cigarettes, warranting continued surveillance.

Authors: Michael J. Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.23266)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.23266?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=072222

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is the new online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

 

---

JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

Ant colonies behave like neural networks when making decisions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A COLONY OF ANTS EVACUATE THEIR NEST FOLLOWING A TEMPERATURE PERTURBATION. view more 

CREDIT: DANIEL KRONAUER

Temperatures are rising, and one colony of ants will soon have to make a collective decision. Each ant feels the rising heat beneath its feet but carries along as usual until, suddenly, the ants reverse course. The whole group rushes out as one—a decision to evacuate has been made. It is almost as if the colony of ants has a greater, collective mind.  

A new study suggests that indeed, ants as a group behave similar to networks of neurons in a brain.   

Rockefeller’s Daniel Kronauer and postdoctoral associate Asaf Gal developed a new experimental setup to meticulously analyze decision-making in ant colonies. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that when a colony evacuates due to rising temperatures, its decision is a function of both the magnitude of the heat increase and the size of the ant group.  

The findings suggest that ants combine sensory information with the parameters of their group to arrive at a group response—a process similar to neural computations giving rise to decisions. 

“We pioneered an approach to understand the ant colony as a cognitive-like system that perceives inputs and then translates them into behavioral outputs,” says Kronauer, head of the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior. “This is one of the first steps toward really understanding how insect societies engage in collective computation.”  

A new paradigm  

At its most basic level, decision-making boils down to a series of computations meant to maximize benefits and minimize costs. For instance, in a common type of decision-making called sensory response thresholding, an animal has to detect sensory input like heat past a certain level to produce a certain costly behavior, like moving away. If the rise in temperature isn’t big enough, it won’t be worth it.  

Kronauer and Gal wanted to investigate how this type of information processing occurs at the collective level, where group dynamics come into play. They developed a system in which they could precisely perturb an ant colony with controlled temperature increases. To track the behavioral responses of individual ants and the entire colony, they marked each insect with different colored dots and followed their movements with a tracking camera.  

As the researchers expected, colonies of a set size of 36 workers and 18 larvae dependably evacuated their nest when the temperature hit around 34 degrees Celsius. This finding makes intuitive sense, Kronauer says, because “if you become too uncomfortable, you leave.”  

However, the researchers were surprised to find that the ants were not merely responding to temperature itself. When they increased the size of the colony from 10 to 200 individuals, the temperature necessary to trigger the decision to vacate increased. Colonies of 200 individuals, for example, held out until temperatures soared past 36 degrees. “It seems that the threshold isn’t fixed. Rather, it’s an emergent property that changes depending on the group size,” Kronauer says.  

Individual ants are unaware of the size of their colony, so how can their decision depend on it? He and Gal suspect that the explanation has to do with the way pheromones, the invisible messengers that pass information between ants, scale their effect when more ants are present. They use a mathematical model to show that such a mechanism is indeed plausible. But they do not know why larger colonies would require higher temperatures to pack up shop. Kronauer ventures that it could simply be that the larger the colony’s size, the more onerous it is to relocate, pushing up the critical temperature for which relocations happen.  

In future studies, Kronauer and Gal hope to refine their theoretical model of the decision-making process in the ant colony by interfering with more parameters and seeing how the insects respond. For example, they can tamper with the level of pheromones in the ants’ enclosure or create genetically altered ants with different abilities to detect temperature changes. “What we’ve been able to do so far is to perturb the system and measure the output precisely,” Kronauer says. “In the long term, the idea is to reverse engineer the system to deduce its inner workings in more and more detail.”  

---

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2123076119 

Scientists expand entomological research using genome editing

Research team develops functional annotation workflow for genome sequencing of insects

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: FANFLOW4INSECTS CONSISTS OF THREE PIPELINES. view more 

CREDIT: HIDEMASA BONO, HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY (CC-BY 4.0)

Genome sequencing, where scientists use laboratory methods to determine a specific organism’s genetic makeup, is becoming a common practice in insect research. A greater understanding of insect biology helps scientists better manage insects, both those that are beneficial to the ecosystem and those that damage the food supply and threaten human health by carrying diseases.

Researchers have developed a work-flow method, called Fanflow4Insects, that annotates gene functions in insects. In functional annotation, scientists collect information about a gene's biological identity. The team’s new method uses transcribed sequence information as well as genome and protein sequence databases. With Fanflow4Insects, the team has annotated the functional information of the Japanese stick insect and the silkworm, including gene expression as well as sequence analysis. The functional annotation information that their workflow provides will greatly expand the possibilities of entomological research using genome editing.

The team, with scientists from Hiroshima University, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, has published their Fanflow4Insects method on June 27 in the journal Insects.

Insects are so diverse and abundant that scientists need a way of studying them on a large scale. This is what led scientists to begin work on sequencing the genome of insects. As of May 2022, scientists had decoded and registered the genomes of around 3000 insect species. They are also using long-read sequencing technology to further accelerate the pace of insect genome sequencing.

Next-generation sequencing has made it easier for researchers to decode the genomes of numerous insects along with their transcript sequences. However, the biological interpretation of these sequences remains a primary bottleneck of transcriptome analysis. The transcriptome is the sum of an organism’s RNA molecules. Transcriptome analysis is an important first step in functional annotation, which serves as an important clue for selecting genome editing targets.

Because some insects have genomes larger than the human genome, the difficult process of whole-genome sequencing is even more complicated. So scientists are using transcriptome sequencing with next-generation sequencing technology, also called RNA sequencing, as a tool for evaluating large genome-size insects. With this powerful tool, scientists can efficiently identify tens of thousands of possible genes in a specific tissue by assembling tens of millions of reads. They then assemble the gene sequences into transcriptional units for identification. But this type of analyses is dependent upon the scientists having access to comprehensive datasets and their functional annotation. Databases do exist, but they are unable to keep pace with the increase in insect genome sequencing.

As transcriptome analysis becomes more popular, many research groups are running their own pipelines, with the information regarding the transcription units from various studies being reported on a study-by-study basis. These pipelines are sets of algorithms used to processes the genome sequencing data. But scientists need a way to integrate the functional annotation from all the different groups doing this type of research into public databases.

In this current study, the research team used their newly developed Fanflow4Insects to create a functional annotation pipeline for the silkworm. Then the researchers also tested Fanflow4Insects for the transcriptomes of the Japanese stick insect. “Functional annotation is one of the most important processes to accelerate the selection of target genes once genome or transcriptome of the target organism is decoded. The functional annotation information obtained by the workflow Fanflow4Insects will greatly expand the possibilities of entomological research using genome editing,” said Hidemasa Bono, a professor with the Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life at Hiroshima University, and the first and corresponding author on the paper.

The Fanflow4Insects workflow for insects has been openly developed on GitHub, and is freely accessible. In conjunction with the functional annotation derived from expression, the data from Fanflow4Insects can be applied to the comparative study of insects with distinct phenotypes. “Using Fanflow4Insects, we are going to annotate insects that produce useful substances. The ultimate goal of this study is to make it possible to design molecular networks in insects using computer simulation,” said Bono.

###

The research team includes Hidemasa Bono, Hiroshima University; Takuma Sakamoto and Hiroko Tabunoki, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology; and Takeya Kasukawa, RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences.

This research was funded by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Kakenhi grant, an open innovation platform for industry–academia co-creation (COI-NEXT), Japan Science and Technology Agency, and the ROIS-DS-JOINT.

About Hiroshima University

Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 4 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan.
English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en

---

JOURNAL

Insects

DOI

10.3390/insects13070586 

ARTICLE TITLE

Systematic Functional Annotation Workflow for Insects

Historical mistrust in government, health care industry contributes to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for African Americans

MU researcher studies social, structural determinants of health that feed vaccine hesitancy, worsen health disparities for African Americans.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

image: Vaccine 
Credit: University of Missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. – While African Americans have disproportionately higher COVID-19 infection and mortality rates compared to white individuals, they also have disproportionately lower COVID-19 vaccination rates, which is partially fueled by vaccine hesitancy.

In an effort to address health disparities that negatively impact African Americans, MU’s Wilson Majee led a study to better understand the factors that contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African Americans. He found compounding factors, including historical mistrust in government and personal experiences of racism within the health care system, contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for African Americans.

Majee interviewed church leaders, lifestyle coaches and participants of Live Well by Faith, a community faith-based wellness program run by the Boone County Health Department that promotes healthy living and addresses chronic health conditions in predominantly African American communities in Boone County, Missouri. Both historical mistrust in government and personal experiences of racism within the health care system were common themes among African American community members for not wanting to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

“The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was repeatedly mentioned as a popular example of unethical medical treatment toward African Americans by the federal government, and once that trust is lost, it can be hard to regain even as time goes on,” said Majee, an associate professor in the MU School of Health Professions. “One respondent mentioned the common reminder from the federal government of never forgetting the tragic events of September 11, 2001, yet African Americans are expected to forget the unethical research practices and the history of injustice and racism from their own federal government.”

Majee also told the story of another respondent who reflected on his own personal experience in the health care industry after he tested positive for COVID-19.

“This elderly man went to the hospital but was sent home, and after his health declined, he went back to the hospital but was sent back home again,” Majee said. “When he went back a third time, he was told they had made a mistake and he was given a hospital bed so he could be monitored, and he could not help but wonder if his experience would have been different if he was not Black?”

Other factors contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy included how fast the vaccine was developed, a lack of Black physicians providing the vaccines and misinformation spread on social media.

Majee added social determinants of health, including that African Americans tend to be poorer and have less access to education, health care and healthy foods, as well as structural determinants of health, including that African Americans tend to be affected by racism in the housing, education, employment and health care industries, all compound together to contribute to worse health outcomes for African Americans.

“African Americans are more likely to have lower-income, in-person jobs at crowded places that cannot accommodate work-from-home or social distancing, so they are more likely to be exposed to and infected by COVID-19,” Majee said. “Combine that with African Americans already being poorer and less likely to be able to afford quality health insurance, the historical mistrust in government and personal negative experiences with the health care industry, and you quickly see how all these factors start to work together to negatively impact health outcomes for African Americans.”

Community wellness programs like Live Well by Faith play a key role in helping to address these inequities, Majee said. Receiving accurate information about the COVID-19 vaccine from trusted community members, such as African American church leaders and lifestyle coaches, played a big role in promoting positive health outcomes.

“African American members of the congregation at Black churches believed in the information they were receiving because it was coming from people they trusted that looked like themselves,” Majee said. “The key about the Live Well by Faith program is that is it rooted in the community, and we saw it was helpful in getting more African Americans to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Majee’s main research goal is to find ways in which those with power, including local, state and federal governments, church leaders, researchers and adult role models, can distribute resources that engage vulnerable populations in their communities.

“My passion is to empower people in resource-limited communities by listening to their ideas and allocating resources to develop interventions that meet the needs of struggling people,” Majee said. “There is a great need to elevate the health of minorities, as the disparities are huge and will continue to grow if we fail to act now.”

“The past is so present: Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African American adults using qualitative data” was published in Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Co-authors on the study include MU’s Adaobi Anakwe, Kelechi Onyeaka and Idethia Harvey.