It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, April 21, 2023
Reducing fatigue and errors among nurses working night shifts
Short exposure to bright light could help shift workers generally combat fatigue
Nurses exposed to 40 minutes of bright light before their night shifts feel less fatigued and make fewer errors at work, according to a study led by McGill University. The nurses also slept better after their shifts.
“Healthcare workers are experiencing high levels of fatigue due to staffing shortages, difficult schedules, and heavy workloads. Further, the cost of medical errors has been estimated at tens of billions of dollars per year in North America,” says Jay Olson, the senior author of the recent study in Sleep Health, who completed his PhD at McGill University and is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. “Our study shows that feasible changes, such as getting light exposure before the night shift, may help reduce fatigue and its effects on performance at work, something which could benefit both the nurses and their patients.”
Light exposure leads to a significant reduction in errors
Building on a previous study, the researchers recruited close to 60 nurses at the McGill University Health Centre. The nurses worked schedules that rotated between day and night shifts within the same week.
During an initial 10-day observation period, nurses in the experimental group made a total of 21 errors, ranging from giving the wrong medication dose to accidental needle pricks. However, when given 40 minutes of bright light exposure from a portable light box before their night shifts, the nurses made only 7 errors — a reduction of 67%. This confirmed the results of a previous feasibility study where the researchers saw a similar 62% reduction in the number of errors at work. In contrast, nurses in the control group who changed their diet to improve their alertness showed only a 5% reduction in errors.
The researchers also found that nurses who followed the evening light intervention reported larger improvements in fatigue compared to those in the control group. In addition, the nurses who reported higher levels of fatigue made more errors at work.
Small changes could make a big difference to many shift workers
“Interventions like the one we studied are relevant to a large population of workers, since between a quarter and a third of the world’s employees do some form of shift work,” adds Mariève Cyr, the first author on the paper, a fourth-year medical student at McGill University. “Although we focused on nurses working rotating schedules, our results may apply to other types of shift workers as well.”
The researchers are conducting workshops on practical fatigue management at hospitals and other workplaces and have launched a website that shift workers can use to adapt the interventions to their own schedules.
The study
“An evening light intervention reduces fatigue and errors during night shifts: A randomized controlled trial” by Mariève Cyr et al was published in Sleep Health.
IMAGE: ALIREZA ANSARIPOUR MONITORS DATA FROM THE EXPERIMENT IN HOUSTON ON HIS COMPUTER OUTSIDE THE TRACKING ZONE.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
University of Houston computer scientists have developed a new system to keep construction workers safe at job sites. Their findings and process are laid out in a study published in the research journal Applied Sciences.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 4,764 workers died on the job in 2020. Employees in construction and extraction occupations accounted for 20% of those deaths. Many were struck by a vehicle or mobile machinery on construction sites. Although the construction industry has enlisted the help of safety experts, a great number of fatalities and injuries still occur.
“The point of our research project was to enhance safety of workers and equipment on a construction site by tracking their location,” said Alireza Ansaripour, a computer science doctoral student at UH and first author of the study. “By tracking their location, we can monitor location-based policies related to the safety of workers and equipment in construction sites.”
These location-based safety policies are created during the planning stage of the construction site such as when Internal Traffic Control Plans are made. These policies define safe areas for workers and equipment or define a safe distance between them when equipment is operating in the construction site. ViPER+ automates the monitoring of these policies and detects any violations of the policies while workers and equipment are working.
ViPER+ utilizes ultra-wideband technology for location tracking. “These radios use large bandwidths to communicate, which enables them to perform location tracking more accurately compared to other wireless radios,” Ansaripour said. “This was the technology we used to track the locations of workers and equipment.”
The team’s ViPER+ system surmounts challenges of other ultra-wideband based real-time safety monitoring systems primarily because it overcomes non-line of sight situations. These are instances in which trucks, construction loaders and other equipment block the signal between the transmitter and receiver in ultra-wideband radio transmissions.
Ansaripour and his colleagues implemented a correction method in their localization, or location tracking algorithm to reduce the error caused by non-line of sight.
Construction truck with a ultra-wideband tag that allows students to monitor its location.
CREDIT
University of Houston
Testing ViPER+ in Construction Zones
ViPER+ is an updated and improved version of the group’s initial system ViPER. The greatest difference between the two is the enhanced location tracking on ViPER+, which is more accurate in non-line of sight situations.
The team tracked locations through tags and anchors. Tags are small ultra-wideband radio transmitters, mounted to workers and vehicles to monitor their locations. Anchors are ultra-wideband receivers that receive signals from tags. The researchers then collected data from anchors to their computer server and estimated the location of vehicles and people in a construction site.
They tested their system twice in actual construction zones in Houston that was cordoned off for their experiment. But instead of real construction workers, students had to play that part.
“In our evaluation, all four construction workers had tags mounted. We also had one vehicle, either a truck or bulldozer with multiple tags on it, and another static vehicle was used to create a non-line of sight situation.”
The first evaluation was in 2019 when researchers set up tags in an area about 8,600 square feet called the tracking zone. Four students operated as workers in the tracking zone while Ansaripour was managing the data flow of the system and made sure the experiment ran smoothly. In 2022, a similar scenario was set up but at a different construction site.
“Alireza is one of those students with brilliant ideas and the work ethic to see these ideas to fruition,” said Omprakash Gnawali, associate professor of computer science at the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and co-author of the study. “Having that combination is important to get these technical projects to be successful.”
Graphical rendering of the experiment in which the red box indicates where the truck is not allowed to enter.
CREDIT
University of Houston
Future Improvements
Future changes to the system include ironing out user design issues such as alerting construction workers when they are too close to moving machinery.
“We also have an issue creating a tracking zone that covers all of a construction site, not just a portion of it,” said Ansaripour. “There are still some improvements that need to be made for this to become a commercial product, but our work provides insight on how a real-time safety monitoring system can be used for safety tracking in construction sites.”
Other authors of the study include UH’s Milad Heydariaan, and from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, corresponding author Kyungki Kim and Hafiz Oyediran.
This research project was funded through the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Idea of the National Academy of Sciences under the award NCHRP-206.
The study was carried out in an animal model with oral administration of MNPs, in this case polystyrene, a widely-used plastic which is also found in food packaging. Led by Lukas Kenner (Department of Pathology at MedUni Vienna and Department of Laboratory Animal Pathology at Vetmeduni) and Oldamur Hollóczki (Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Debrecen, Hungary) the research team was able to determine that tiny polystyrene particles could be detected in the brain just two hours after ingestion. The mechanism that enabled them to breach the blood-brain barrier was previously unknown to medical science. "With the help of computer models, we discovered that a certain surface structure (biomolecular corona) was crucial in enabling plastic particles to pass into the brain," Oldamur Hollóczki explained.
Researching impact on health The blood-brain barrier is an important cellular barrier that prevents pathogens or toxins from reaching the brain. The intestine has a similar protective wall (intestinal barrier), which can also be breached by MNPs, as various scientific studies have demonstrated. Intensive research is being conducted on the health effects of plastic particles in the body. MNPs in the gastrointestinal tract have already been linked with local inflammatory and immune reactions, and the development of cancer. "In the brain, plastic particles could increase the risk of inflammation, neurological disorders or even neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's," said Lukas Kenner, pointing out that more research is needed in this area.
Restrict the use of MNPs Nanoplastics are defined as having a size of less than 0.001 millimetres, while at 0.001 to 5 millimetres, some microplastics are still visible to the naked eye. MNPs enter the food chain through various sources including packaging waste. But it is not just solid food that plays a role, but liquids too: according to one study, anyone who drinks the recommended 1.5-2 litres of water per day from plastic bottles will end up ingesting around 90,000 plastic particles a year in the process. However, drinking tap water instead can – depending on the geographical location – help reduce this figure to 40,000. "To minimise the potential harm of micro- and nanoplastic particles to humans and the environment, it is crucial to limit exposure and restrict their use while further research is carried out into the effects of MNPs," Lukas Kenner explained. The newly discovered mechanism by which MNPs breach protective barriers in the body has the potential to advance research in this area decisively.
ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH
IMAGE: ON A POLARSTERN EXPEDITION IN THE ARCTIC, RESEARCHERS LED BY BIOLOGIST MELANIE BERGMANN FROM THE ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE ARE INVESTIGATING HOW MUCH MICROPLASTIC IS IN AGGREGATES OF THE ICE ALGA MELOSIRA ARCTICA AND THE SEAWATER DIRECTLY NEXT TO ICE FLOES.view more
CREDIT: ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT / MARIO HOPPMANN
The alga Melosira arctica, which grows under Arctic sea ice, contains ten times as many microplastic particles as the surrounding seawater. This concentration at the base of the food web poses a threat to creatures that feed on the algae at the sea surface. Clumps of dead algae also transport the plastic with its pollutants particularly quickly into the deep sea - and can thus explain the high microplastic concentrations in the sediment there. Researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have now reported this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
It is a food lift for bottom-dwelling animals in the deep sea: the alga Melosira arctica grows at a rapid pace under the sea ice during spring and summer months and forms metre-long cell chains there. When the cells die and the ice to whose underside they adhere melts, they stick together to form clumps that can sink several thousand metres to the bottom of the deep sea within a single day. There they form an important food source for bottom-dwelling animals and bacteria. In addition to food, however, these aggregates also transport a dubious cargo into the Arctic deep sea: microplastics. A research team led by biologist Dr Melanie Bergmann from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has now published this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
“We have finally found a plausible explanation for why we always measure the largest amounts of microplastics in the area of the ice edge, even in deep-sea sediment,” Melanie Bergmann reports. Until now, the researchers only knew from earlier measurements that microplastics concentrate in the ice during sea ice formation and are released into the surrounding water when it melts. „The speed at which the Alga descends means that it falls almost in a straight line below the edge of the ice. Marine snow, on the other hand, is slower and gets pushed sideways by currents so sinks further away. With the Melosira taking microplastics directly to the bottom, it helps explain why we measure higher microplastic numbers under the ice edge”, explains the AWI biologist.
On an expedition with the research vessel Polarstern in summer 2021, she and a research team collected samples of Melosira algae and the surrounding water from ice floes. The partners from Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI), Dalhousie University and the University of Canterbury then analysed these in the laboratory for microplastic content. The surprising result: the clumps of algae contained an average of 31,000 ± 19,000 microplastic particles per cubic metre, about ten times the concentration of the surrounding water. “The filamentous algae have a slimy, sticky texture, so it potentially collects microplastic from the atmospheric deposition on the sea, the sea water itself, from the surrounding ice and any other source that it passes. Once entrapped in the algal slime they travel as if in an elevator to the seafloor, or are eaten by marine animals,” explains Deonie Allen of the University of Canterbury and Birmingham University who is part of the research team.
Since the ice algae are an important food source for many deep-sea dwellers, the microplastic could thus enter the food web there. But it is also an important food source at the sea surface and could explain why microplastics were particularly widespread among ice-associated zooplankton organisms, as an earlier study with AWI participation shows. In this way, it can also enter the food chain here when the zooplankton is eaten by fish such as polar cod and these are eaten by seabirds and seals and these in turn by polar bears.
The detailed analysis of plastic composition showed that a variety of different plastics are found in the Arctic, including polyethylene, polyester, polypropylene, nylon, acrylic and many more. In addition to various chemicals and dyes, this creates a mix of substances whose impact on the environment and living creatures is difficult to assess. “People in the Arctic are particularly dependent on the marine food web for their protein supply, for example through hunting or fishing. This means that they are also exposed to the microplastics and chemicals contained in it. Microplastics have already been detected in human intestines, blood, veins, lungs, placenta and breast milk and can cause inflammatory reactions, but the overall consequences have hardly been researched so far,” reports Melanie Bergmann. “Micro and nano plastics have basically been detected in every place scientists have looked in the human body and within a plethora of other species. It is known to change behaviours, growth, fecundity and mortality rates in organisms and many plastic chemicals are known toxins to humans,” says Steve Allen, OFI Dalhousie University, a research team member.
Moreover, the Arctic ecosystem is already threatened by the profound environmental upheavals caused by the climate crisis. If the organisms are now additionally exposed to microplastics and the chemicals they contain, it can weaken them further. “So, we have a combination of planetary crises that we urgently need to address effectively. Scientific calculations have shown that the most effective way to reduce plastic pollution is to reduce the production of new plastic,” says the AWI biologist and adds: “This should therefore definitely be prioritised in the global plastics agreement that is currently being negotiated.” That is why Melanie Bergmann is also accompanying the next round of negotiations, which will begin in Paris at the end of May.
Original Publication:
Bergmann, M., Allen, S., Krumpen, T., Allen, D., 2023. High levels of microplastics in the Arctic ice alga Melosira arctica, a vector to ice-associated and benthic food webs. Environmental Science and Technology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c08010
Information for editorial offices:
EMBARGOED until 12:00 CEST (06:00 am US Eastern Time, 11:00 London Time) on Friday, 21 April 2023.
Printable images can be found in this collection until the end of the embargo: https://multimedia.awi.de/medien/pincollection.jspx?collectionName=738688f0fec1806bc1d0814218a705c7#1681817422433_2 and then in the online version of this press release at https://www.awi.de/ueber-uns/service/presse.html
Video footage of the sampling for the study can be found here: https://we.tl/t-9p7yre7Ro1
Your contact at the Alfred Wegener Institute is Dr. Melanie Bergmann (Tel.: +49 (0) 471 4831-1739, e-mail: Melanie.Bergmann@awi.de. At the cooperating institutes your contacts are: Dr. Deonie Allen, Research fellow at University of Birmingham, UK/ Canterbury University, New Zealand; email: deonie.castle@canterbury.ac.nz ; Phone: +64 (0)22 095 5171 and Dr. Steve Allen, Research fellow at Ocean frontiers Institute (Dalhousie University), Canada; Phone: +64 (0)22 095 5171; email: steveascotland@gmail.com.
In the press office of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Dr. Folke Mehrtens (Tel.: 0471 4831-2007; E-Mail: medien@awi.de) will support you.
Follow the Alfred Wegener Institute on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AWI_Media), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/awiexpedition/) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/AlfredWegenerInstitute).
The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) conducts research in the Arctic, Antarctic and oceans of the high and mid-latitudes. It coordinates polar research in Germany and provides major infrastructure to the international scientific community, such as the research icebreaker Polarstern and stations in the Arctic and Antarctica. The Alfred Wegener Institute is one of the 18 research centres of the Helmholtz Association, the largest scientific organisation in Germany.
High levels of microplastics in the Arctic ice alga Melosira arctica, a vector to ice-associated and benthic food webs
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
21-Apr-2023
LES GRANDE Dame Edna actor Barry Humphries stable in Sydney hospital
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Tony Award-winning comedian Barry Humphries, renowned for his garish stage persona Dame Edna Everage, a condescending and imperfectly veiled snob whose evolving character has delighted audiences over seven decades, is in a Sydney hospital with complications following hip surgery.
St. Vincent’s Hospital described the 89-year-old’s condition on Friday as stable and rejected media reports that he had become unresponsive.
Humphries was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday following hip replacement surgery last month. The surgery was conducted after a fall in February.
His publicist, Wendy Day, said Humphries’ condition was unchanged since Thursday and he was resting.
Seven Network entertainment reporter Peter Ford said three of Humphries’ four children have traveled to their father’s hospital bedside, two from London.
“His children were told in the beginning of the week it would be advisable if they wanted to come see him to do so … and they are all there right now along with his wife, Lizzie,” Ford told Perth Radio 6PR.
Humphries has lived in London for decades and returned to Australia in December to spend Christmas in his homeland during the Southern Hemisphere summer.
He told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper last month that his physiotherapy had been “agony” following his fall and hip replacement.
“It was the most ridiculous thing, like all domestic incidents are. I was reaching for a book, my foot got caught on a rug or something, and down I went,” Humphries said of his fall.
Humphries has remained an active entertainer, touring Britain last year with his one-man show “The Man Behind the Mask.”
Dame Edna Everage
Dame Edna Everage, often known simply as Dame Edna, is a character created and performed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries, known for her lilac-coloured hair and cat eye glasses ; her favourite flower, the gladiolus ("gladdies"); and her boisterous greeting "Hello, Possums!" As Dame Edna, Humph... Wikipedia
The character of Dame Edna began as a dowdy Mrs. Norm Everage who first took to the stage in Humphries’ hometown of Melbourne in the mid-1950s. She reflected a postwar suburban inertia and cultural blandness that Humphries found stifling.
Edna is one of Humpries' several enduring characters. The next most famous is Sir Les Patterson, an ever-drunk, disheveled and lecherous Australian cultural attache.
Patterson reflected a perception of Australia as a Western cultural wasteland that drove Humphries along with many leading Australian intellectuals to London.
Humphries, a law school dropout, found major success as an actor, writer and entertainer in Britain in the 1970s, but the United States was an ambition that he found stubbornly elusive.
A high point in the United States was a Tony Award in 2000 for his Broadway show “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.”
Rod Mcguirk, The Associated Press
UAW President: "No excuse" for Detroit's non-union EV operations
Story by Reuters •
DETROIT (Reuters) - United Auto Workers union President Shawn Fain said Friday there is "no excuse" for Detroit's automakers to set uplectric vehicle operations and ventures that are not unionized.
Fain told the Detroit Automotive Press Association that Stellantis NV's decision to idle an assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, is "a flat out violation" of the union's current contract with the UAW and is "unacceptable." Stellantis has said the plant has been idled but is not permanently shut down.
Detroit automakers have set up several U.S. joint venture battery factories that are not covered by their current agreements with the UAW. Ford Motor Co is building a new electric vehicle manufacturing complex in Tennessee, called Blue Oval City. Workers there would have to vote to join the UAW.
(Reporting By Joe White)
Nelson: Saying no to sales tax is Alberta's last stand
HERE, HERE I AGREE
Opinion by Chris Nelson, For The Calgary Herald • Yesterday Thermopylae, The Alamo, Masada, Rorke’s Drift and Saragarhi. What could those famous battles of history have in common with us peace-loving (mostly) Albertans of today?
A provincial sales tax could in theory help Alberta get off the boom and bust fiscal cycles, but it would depend on governments using the revenue effectively, rather than simply to buy votes
More than you might imagine. Those varied locations all involved desperate last stands, which is what we’re currently engaged in, fighting off the relentless rumblings from elitist, high-foreheads who think it a wonderful and worthy idea to impose a provincial sales tax upon us.
We’re an exception among the provinces; not ponying up an extra seven to 10 per cent on most purchases atop the five per cent that Ottawa rakes in courtesy of the GST.
We can’t do much about that federal sales tax — though Premier Danielle Smith might have some plot to alter that — but we sure as heck can do something to retain what remains as the final, genuine Alberta Advantage.
Let’s simply demand, from both those UCP and NDP wannabes, a pledge before each election to not impose such a levy until the sun decides to rise in the west or we vote to do so in a provincewide referendum. “Would you like to give the government more of your money?” would seem a straightforward enough question on any future ballot form, don’t you think?
We know in our bones what would happen with such a tax, despite the silly claims about it solving all our fiscal problems by smoothing out those booms and busts synonymous with Alberta.
To satisfy our suspicious nature, we need simply look to the other provinces and judge if the various sales taxes resulted in a land of ever-bountiful balanced budgets and a no-debt existence
Related video: Alberta Business Council wants next government to study provincial taxation model (Global News) Duration 4:20 View on Watch
Oops. Ontario owes about $450 billion, Quebec $220 billion and B.C. $100 billion. (The federal government is in an elite, much-more-than-a trillion-owed stratosphere, so we’ll not even bother using them as an example of sales tax economics.)
The Business Council of Alberta is the latest bunch wanting a re-evaluation of the province’s revenue model to even out the ups and downs of our resource-based economy. A provincial sales tax would be the bees-knees apparently, helping solve this endless fiscal conundrum. (Oh, and yes, let’s jack up every price by five per cent as part of the battle against inflation.)
To be fair, in the economics classroom, or the thoughtful confines of a polite debating chamber, a consumption tax is a plausible alternative to relying upon the whims of the commodity markets for steady, governmental revenue. And that’s why this nonsense gets regurgitated every few years. In theory, it makes sense.
But we aren’t sensible creatures. We’re human beings. Theory means naught unless it’s catchable and edible. And the least sensible of all is a human being who wants to get elected. Oh, sorry, scratch that: it is a human being already elected who’d like to stay that way.
Give such people more tax revenue to spend and that’s what they’ll do. Health, education, social services and other departments will all need more money — forever and a day. Plus there’ll be handouts here, there and everywhere whenever an election rolls around. Imagining sales tax revenue would be treated any differently is akin to betting on the Flames to win the Stanley Cup. Now that’s false hope.
As for this levelling-up argument — have we forgotten the Heritage Savings and Trust Fund? Wasn’t it supposed to do exactly that? Siphon off in the good times — when energy revenues flowed — for times ahead when such largesse ran dry?
How did that work out? It’s more than 45 years since inception and the most we’ve accumulated is about $20 billion. That wouldn’t cover four months of provincial spending. Future sales tax revenue would suffer the same fate, accompanied by a giant sucking sound.
We might not die on this hill as did the brave men from those famous battles mentioned earlier, but it’s our last stand, nevertheless. No Alberta sales tax.
Chris Nelson is a regular Herald columnist.
ALBERTA
Rahim Mohamed: Falling UCP fortunes in northeast Calgary could spell trouble for Danielle Smith
Opinion by Rahim Mohamed • National Post
Yesterday With Alberta’s next provincial election less than 40 days away, one thing that’s all but guaranteed is that election night will be a nail-biter.
University of Calgary students stand in line to sign up to receive information about the upcoming provincial election, on March 27.
The latest batch of polls indicate that the race is too close to call , with a clear regional divide in each major party’s support. With Edmonton holding firm as an New Democratic fortress and the United Conservative Party ascendant in rural Alberta, the election’s outcome will inevitably be decided within Calgary’s 26 electoral districts.
The UCP won 23 of those seats in 2019, but many of those seats are now up for grabs . The governing UCP looks to be in good shape in south Calgary, but will have a tough slog in the city’s inner trenches. One area that will be critical to the UCP’s electoral math is Calgary’s highly diverse northeastern quadrant.
Home to the city’s highest concentration of recent immigrants , northeast Calgary has been a bellwether in recent provincial elections. In 2015, Rachel Notley’s NDP netted four of the northeast’s five seats en route to winning its first ever provincial government. (The area gained a sixth seat in a redistribution two years later).
In 2019, the upstart UCP, led by Jason Kenney, turned the tables, winning all but one of the quadrant’s seats and notching its own majority government victory. The UCP won the newly created northeastern riding of Calgary-Falconridge by just 96 votes , making it the closest race in the province that year.
And the pendulum appears to be swinging once again. A new poll conducted by respected Calgary pollster Janet Brown shows the UCP lagging the NDP by a 15 per cent margin in the northeast quadrant (trailing its citywide average by 10 points). The NDP now looks poised to sweep the quadrant outright.
And there’s good reason to believe the UCP is coming to terms with its grim electoral prospects in the quadrant. Incumbent Calgary-North East MLA and cabinet minister Rajan Sawhney (one of Premier Danielle Smith’s most important lieutenants in Calgary) announced in February that she wouldn’t be seeking re-election in the district, only to be reassigned earlier this month to the more winnable Calgary-North West.
Related video: Will Alberta’s tough-on-crime political promises pay off as provincial elections loom? (Global News) Duration 1:55 View on Watch
The UCP’s declining fortunes in northeast Calgary can be attributed to multiple factors. For one, the quadrant is still reeling from a destructive June 2020 hailstorm, which generated an estimated $1.5 billion in damages. The event coincided with increases in home and auto insurance premiums, adding to the woes of local residents. (The provincial government declined to provide funding to cover insurance deductibles).
The numbers may also reflect lingering scars from the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a controversial November 2020 interview on Calgary’s RED FM, then-premier Jason Kenney appeared to blame the northeast’s South Asian multi-generational households for an uptick in COVID transmission. Kenney’s comments spurred multiple calls for him to apologize to Calgary’s South Asian community.
But the numbers, more foundationally, underscore the loss of one of the biggest upsides that Kenney brought to the UCP fold: a singular talent for ethnic outreach. Going back to his Harper government days, Kenney has built a political brand on his unmatched ability to cultivate relationships within Canada’s manifold ethnic communities.
There are, in fact, few figures in the country’s history who’ve garnered a following with so many pockets of new Canadians. Kenney’s tireless outreach work earned him the affectionate monikers “Smiling Buddha” and “minister of curry in a hurry” during his time in Ottawa.
Kenney, accordingly, was a frequent visitor to Calgary’s northeast throughout his time in Alberta politics. And he wasn’t just on hand for the major festivals and religious holidays. He was also spotted regularly at small, intimate gatherings — sometimes comprising just a handful of attendees.
Longtime RED FM host Rishi Nagar opened up about Kenney’s popularity in the northeast in a spring 2022 interview with the Calgary Sun , saying, “Whenever there is a photo-op with the premier, (people) forget everything. A picture is important. If I have a picture with Jason Kenney I will hang it in my family room.”
Danielle Smith, who has never sought office at the federal level, barely even scratches the surface of her predecessor’s visibility in ethnic communities. She will also have a tough time explaining her dealings with far-right Street Church pastor Artur Pawlowski to northeast Calgary’s cosmopolitan electorate.
Alberta’s fast approaching provincial election is set to be a game of inches, with Calgary’s highly competitive northeast quadrant likely to take centre stage. When the votes are counted, the UCP may end up sorely missing the cross-cultural appeal that former-leader Jason Kenney brought to the party.
National Post
Rahim Mohamed is a freelance writer based in Calgary.
Influential French author said Hitler’s big mistake was failing to ‘wipe out England’, new document reveals
Story by Tom Murray •
A newly published transcript has revealed that the French literary giant Louis-Ferdinand Céline once expressed regret that Adolf Hitler had not wiped out the English.
The Journey to the End of the Night author is considered by many to be the most influential French author of the last century.
Céline, who died in 1961 aged 67, remains a controversial figure in history, however, due to his antisemitic views and advocation for a military alliance with Nazi Germany.
The French newspaper Le Figaro this week obtained and published a full transcript of the Paris Match’s 1960 interview with the author.
According to The Times, Céline said in the interview that Hitler’s great mistake was failing to “wipe out England” during World War II.
“Hitler lacked Napoleon’s genius. He was an empirical [man], Hitler. He messed up the day when he did not hit England straight away,” he said.
“He was a show-off. He looked good. He was a star but didn’t have any military genius at all,” he added.
These sentiments against the English were not included in the Match’s published piece, in which the author was described as “funny, bitter, nice deep down”.
After Allied forces landed in Normandy in 1944, Céline fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile.
Six years later, the author was convicted of collaboration by a French court but was then pardoned by a military tribunal based on his status as a disabled war veteran.
Of Céline, Maurice Nadeau once wrote: “What Joyce did for the English language… what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale.”
Scientists Finally Solved the Mystery of How the Mayan Calendar Works
Story by Tim Newcomb • Yesterday
Popular Mechanics The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span
Scholars show how multiple planet movements tie into the 819-day Mayan calendar. The 819 days of the calendar must be viewed across a 45-year time period to fully understand. The movements of all major planets visible to the ancient Mayans fit into this extended calendar.
The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span. That’s a much broader view of the tricky calendar than anyone previously tried to take.
In a study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, two Tulane University scholars highlighted how researchers never could quite explain the 819-day count calendar until they broadened their view.
“Although prior research has sought to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of visible planets,” the study authors write. “By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar.”
Related video: Experts Believe They Have Finally Decoded the Mayan Calendar (Amaze Lab)
That means the Mayans took a 45-year view of planetary alignment and coded it into a calendar that has left modern scholars scratching their heads in wonder.
While ancient Mayan culture offered various calendar types, the one that baffled scholars the most was this 819-day calendar discovered in glyphic texts. Researchers have long believed this calendar was associated with planetary movements, especially the synodic periods—when a planet appears visually to return to the same location in the sky, as seen from Earth—of key planets. However, each planet moves quite differently and matching up multiple planets into an 819-day span didn’t seem to make sense.
But it does when you look at it over 16,380 days (roughly 45 years), not just 819 days. That’s a total of 20 819-day timelines.
Mercury was always the starting point for the tricky timeline because its synodic period—117 days—matches nicely into 819. From there, though, we need to start extrapolating out the 819 number, and if you chart 20 cycles of 819, you can fit every key planet into the mix.
And Mars may be the kicker for the overall length. With a 780-day synodic period, 21 periods match exactly to 16,380, or 20 cycles of 819. Venus needs seven periods to match five 819-day counts, Saturn has 13 periods to fit with six 819-day counts, and Jupiter 39 periods to hit 19 819-counts.
“Rather than limit their focus to any one planet,” the authors write, “the Maya astronomers who created the 819-day count envisioned it as a larger calendar system that could be used for predictions of all the visible planet’s synod periods, as well as commensuration points with their cycles in the Tzolk’in and Calendar Round.”
New York state education officials vote to prohibit public schools from using Indigenous team names, logos or mascots
Story by Gili Remen • CNN - Yesterday
New York state education officials voted unanimously this week to prohibit public schools from using or displaying Indigenous team names, logos, or mascots to represent the school.
Throughout the state, boards of education must commit through a resolution to eliminating the use of all Indigenous imagery by the end of the current school year, and the prohibited names, logos, or mascots must be eliminated by the 2024-25 school year, according to regulations laid out by the New York State Board of Regents.
The amendment, which was approved Tuesday, does not require public schools, school buildings, or school districts named after an Indigenous tribe to change their names.
Educators are still allowed to use Indigenous imagery for the purposes of classroom instruction, the regulations say, and schools may keep Indigenous imagery if a written agreement exists between a federally recognized tribal nation and the school using a name, mascot or logo associated with that tribe.
The changes will become effective as a permanent rule on May 3, according to the Board of Regents. If school districts fail to comply, school officers could be removed or state aid could be withheld, according to the regulations.
The National Congress of American Indians voiced its support for the changes in a statement to CNN.
“Native ‘themed’ mascots dehumanize Native people and diminish the enduring vibrancy and diversity of our distinct cultures, values, and lifeways,” Executive Director Larry Wright Jr. wrote in a statement. “Crucially, research in recent years documents the well-known harms that the monikers, images, and fan behaviors associated with these mascots cause Native people, particularly Native youth.”
There are “issues that will need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis,” the state Department of Education said in a statement, and more guidance is forthcoming but mirrors the language laid out in the regulations, according to the department.
“The Department can provide assistance to any school or district that has questions,” the statement says. “The Department’s position is that any team names, logos, or mascots that contain vestiges of prohibited team names, logos, or mascots will not be considered acceptable.”
