Study finds socially tolerant monkeys have better impulse control

Socially tolerant species are better at controlling their emotions and behaviours, according to a new study of one of humanity's closest relatives

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH

 NEWS RELEASE 8-JUN-2023

Researchers have tested one of the ideas put forward to explain how humanity evolved to become smarter, on non-human primates.

The study, led by a team at the University of Portsmouth, found a significant connection between social organisation and cognitive skills in monkeys. 

They assessed three species of macaques with different social tolerance levels, from authoritarian to more relaxed societies, in a series of cognitive touchscreen touchscreen tasks to work out how impulsive and reactive they were.

Tonkean macaques, which are known to get along with each other the most with more diverse and complex relationships, demonstrated better overall control of distraction, emotions and actions compared to the less-tolerant long-tailed and rhesus species. 

Lead author and PhD researcher, Dr Louise Loyant from the University of Portsmouth’s Centre of Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology (CCEP), said: “This relationship between social tolerance and cognitive abilities could explain why Tonkean macaques are better at managing complex relationships with others.

“This is important, as it improves our understanding of our own social evolution. Macaques live in complex communities, not too dissimilar from our own, and we can learn a lot from them.

“Existing research on human inhibitory control, or self-control, suggests the better a person is at managing their emotions and reactions, the more successful they’re likely to be in life; whether that be in relationships, work, or just generally. Our results support this hypothesis.”

The study, published in Animal Cognition, also highlighted the influence of ecological factors on self-control skills. Different risks and environmental pressures faced by each species might have shaped their behaviours, emotions, and impulsivity levels.

Long-tailed and rhesus macaques living in areas with a greater number of predators, displayed more reactive and cautious behaviours, while Tonkean macaques who face lower predatory risk, exhibited quieter and less reactive behaviours.

The researchers say that both social and ecological factors may jointly influence self-control skills in primates.

Senior co-author, Dr Marine Joly from the CCEP, explained: “A macaque living in a more competitive environment would benefit from learning how to contain inappropriate behaviours, like feeding or mating, if they’re around others higher up in the social pyramid. 

“But there’s also the hypothesis that our closest primate species have evolved over time to have increased brain size and higher cognitive performances, including better self-control. 

“Our findings support both of these potential explanations, as well as suggest that species living in more complex societies might have better socio-cognitive skills too, including perception, attention, memory and action planning.”

The team evaluated the performance of 66 macaques from two institutions, the Medical Research Council Centre for Macaques in the UK and the Centre of Primatology of the University of Strasbourg in France.

While the study provides valuable insights, the researchers acknowledge some limitations, including the sample size and some prior cognitive testing experiences among the species. They recommend further research involving a larger number of macaques, as well as a closer evaluation of an individual’s reactions and results.

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JOURNAL

Animal Cognition

DOI

10.1007/s10071-023-01789-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Tolerant macaque species are less impulsive and reactive

CTHULHU STUDIES

When water temperatures change, the molecular motors of cephalopods do too

RNA recoding is widespread in some animals, though not humans; UC San Diego researchers report squid employ it to dynamically alter key proteins to work better in colder water

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

NEWS RELEASE 8-JUN-2023

 

IMAGE: DORYTEUTHIS OPALESCENS, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS MARKET SQUID, HELPED UC SAN DIEGO RESEARCHERS DISCOVER THE ANIMALS’ ABILITY TO RECODE RNA IN CELLS TO IMPROVE THEIR FUNCTIONING IN DIFFERENT WATER TEMPERATURES. view more 

CREDIT: UC SAN DIEGO, SEA GRANT CALIFORNIA

Cephalopods are a large family of marine animals that includes octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. They live in every ocean, from warm, shallow tropical waters to near-freezing, abyssal depths. More remarkably, report two scientists at University of California San Diego in a new study, at least some cephalopods possess the ability to recode protein motors within cells to adapt “on the fly” to different water temperatures.    

Writing in the June 8, 2023 edition of Cell, first author Kavita J. Rangan, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of senior author Samara L. Reck-Peterson, PhD, a professor in the departments of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at UC San Diego and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, describe how opalescent inshore squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) employ RNA recoding to change amino acids at the protein level, improving the function of molecular motors that carry out diverse functions within cells in colder waters. 

RNA recoding allows organisms to edit genetic information from the genomic blueprint to create new proteins. The process is rare in humans but is common in soft-bodied cephalopods, such as D. opalescens, which makes seasonal spawning migrations along the coast of San Diego. 

“Cephalopods like D. opalescens are remarkable for their large nervous systems, body innovations and complex behaviors” said Rangan, “and their extensive use of RNA recoding has raised many questions about how this process might be involved in responding to environmental cues like temperature.”

In the new study, Rangan and Reck-Peterson looked at changes to a pair of proteins in squid cells that serve as molecular motors transporting a variety of intracellular cargoes along cellular highways called microtubules. Specifically, the researchers focused on molecular motor proteins called kinesin and dynein, both of which are fundamental to transportation within all cells, including neurons. In humans, mutations in both motors are linked to neurodegenerative diseases. 

Working with live squid hatchlings at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Rangan found that recoding of kinesin increased in animals as they experienced colder ocean water temperatures. Rangan then recreated recoded kinesin proteins using recombinant DNA technology and biochemistry. She then measured the movement of single motor molecules using advanced light microscopy and found that the recoded kinesin motors functioned better at cold temperatures.

“The work suggests that squid can tune their proteome (an organism’s entire complement of proteins) on the fly in response to changes in ocean temperature,” said Reck-Peterson. “One can speculate that this allows these marine ectotherms — animals that depend on external sources of body heat — to survive and thrive in a broad range of ocean temperatures.”

The scientists also found that RNA recoding varied across tissues, generating new kinesin variants with distinct movement properties.

“This work supports the idea that recoding in cephalopods is important for dynamically tuning protein function to support physiological needs and acclimate to changing environmental conditions” said Reck-Peterson. “These animals are taking a completely unique approach to adapting to their surroundings.”

Rangan said the findings also suggest the squid “editome” may be a valuable resource for highlighting regions of molecules that are amenable to plasticity or change. She is currently developing a database that includes the entire squid editome across different ocean temperatures. 

“In highly conserved proteins, like kinesin and dynein, cephalopod recoding sites can point to overlooked residues of functional significance, said Rangan, “and this has broader implications for understanding basic protein function as well as for engineering proteins with specific functions. Cephalopods may be able to show us where to look and what changes to make.”

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JOURNAL

Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2023.04.032 

Masters of acclimation: Octopuses adjust to cold by editing their RNA

Octopuses use RNA editing to rapidly respond to environmental temperature changes by altering protein function

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: OCTOPUS BIMACULOIDES. view more 

CREDIT: ROGER T. HANLON

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Each cell comes with a finite set of instructions encoded in its DNA. Life, however, is unpredictable, and when circumstances change, animals need flexibility to acclimate. New research led by Joshua Rosenthal of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and Eli Eisenberg at Tel Aviv University indicates that octopuses and their close relatives elegantly adjust to environmental challenges by tinkering with their RNA — an intermediary molecule that conveys DNA’s directions.
 
In a new study appearing in Cell on June 8, Rosenthal and colleagues document an enormous uptick in RNA editing when octopus, squid and cuttlefish, known as coleoid cephalopods, acclimate to cold water. After cooling the octopuses’ tanks, the team saw increases in protein-altering activity at more than 13,000 RNA sites in the animals’ nervous systems. In two of these cases, they investigated how swapping out a single letter of the RNA molecule’s code alters the function of proteins the neurons produce. 
 
Through RNA editing, the cephalopods appear to have found a unique way of tweaking their own physiology, according to Rosenthal, a senior scientist at MBL. 
 
“We’re used to thinking all living things are preprogrammed from birth with a certain set of instructions,” he says. “The idea the environment can influence that genetic information, as we’ve shown in cephalopods, is a new concept.” 

The mystery of massive RNA editing in cephalopods
 
A cell’s molecular machinery transcribes the instructions encoded in DNA into RNA, some of which goes on to make protein. Researchers have learned that cells have the capacity to swap one member of the four-letter genetic code, Adenosine, for a substitute molecule, Inosine, which behaves like Guanosine, one of the original four. While the same process occurs in humans and most other animals, it only rarely affects RNA that’s bound to produce protein.
 
In 2015, Rosenthal and his colleagues showed that squid employ this kind of protein-altering RNA editing (called A-to-I)  on a massive scale, and later showed the same in octopus. 
 
“A big question for us was, ‘What are they using it for?’” Rosenthal says. 
 
Because editing changes RNA only temporarily, the researchers suspected these animals use it to acclimate to their environment. For the current study, they focused on the effects of one such factor, temperature, within the nervous system. Temperature matters because it governs the activity of enzymes, which in turn drive chemical reactions crucial to all physiological processes.
 
Like other cephalopods, the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) they studied cannot generate its own body heat to counteract the temperature drops that accompany tides, changes in water depth, and seasons. 
 
After acclimating octopuses to temperatures at the warm end of their natural range (22 degrees C/ 72 degrees F) and the cool end (about 13 degrees C / 55 degrees F), the researchers examined their RNA. Within its molecular code, they tracked activity at locations where they already knew editing occurs. In the octopuses in the cold tanks, they found significant increases at 13,285 sites where the one-letter change alters protein. For those in the warm tanks, they found upticks at 550 such places.
 
Follow-up experiments suggested RNA editing may help the animals adapt to gradual changes, but not to rapid ones associated with, for example, traveling from warmer surface water down to cooler depths. 
 
To corroborate the lab work, Matthew Birk, now an assistant professor at Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania, recorded temperature near octopus dens in winter and late summer, then collected the animals. 
 
With help from collaborators at the University of Michigan and Texas Tech University, the team investigated how RNA editing tweaked the function of two proteins that are vital for neural function in the octopuses. The first protein, kinesin-1, ferries cargo along the long branches of neurons. RNA editing, they found, changes the rate at which this molecule travels. Likewise, it alters the responsiveness of a protein called synaptotagmin that enables communication between neurons. 
 
One secret to cephalopods’ sophistication?
 
Cephalopods likely use this form of genetic tinkering to adjust to change in many ways, well beyond acclimating to cold water, Rosenthal suspects. “I think it’s the tip of the iceberg,” he says of this study’s findings.
 
It may explain, in part, how these organisms have achieved sophisticated behavior. Octopuses, for example, can solve mechanical puzzles, and mimic colors and textures to camouflage themselves. Capabilities like these require nervous systems composed of a complex set of proteins.  
 
“What mechanisms do they use to create this complexity? I believe that RNA editing is one of them,” Rosenthal says. 

CAPTION

Octopus bimaculoides.

CREDIT

Tom Kleindinst/Marine Biological Laboratory

 

Written by Wynne Parry

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

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JOURNAL

Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.004 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Temperature-dependent RNA editing in octopus extensively recodes the neural proteome

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jun-2023

Octopuses rewire their brains to adapt to seasonal temperature shifts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: THIS IS A PHOTO OF A CALIFORNIA TWO SPOT OCTOPUS (OCTOPUS BIMACULOIDES). view more 

CREDIT: TOM KLEINDINST

Octopuses don’t thermoregulate, so their powerful brains are exposed to—and potentially threatened by—changes in temperature. Researchers report June 8 in the journal Cell that two-spot octopuses adapt to seasonal temperature shifts by producing different neural proteins under warm versus cool conditions. The octopuses achieve this by editing their RNA, the messenger molecule between DNA and proteins. This rewiring likely protects their brains, and the researchers suspect that this unusual strategy is used widely amongst octopuses and squid.

“We generally think that our genetic information is fixed, but the environment can influence how you encode proteins, and in cephalopods this happens on a massive scale,” says senior author Joshua Rosenthal (@joshrosenthal16) of the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Compared to DNA mutations, which allow organisms to adapt over the course of generations, RNA editing offers a temporary and flexible way for individuals to adapt to environmental changes. RNA editing occurs across the tree of life, but RNA recoding—when the editing changes the subsequent protein structure—is much rarer, except in soft-bodied cephalopods like octopuses and squid. Humans have millions of editing sites but editing affects the protein products in only ~3% of their genes, whereas coleoid or “smart” cephalopods recode the majority of their neural proteins.

“RNA recoding gives organisms the option to express a diverse quiver of proteins when and where they choose,” says Rosenthal. “In cephalopods, most of the recoding is for proteins that are really important for nervous system function, so the natural question is, are they using this to acclimate to changes in their physical environment?”

To address this question, the research team explored whether octopuses undergo RNA editing in response to shifts in temperature and whether this editing impacts the function of their brain proteins. In the wild, octopuses are exposed to changes in temperature that can occur both rapidly, for example, when they dive to colder depths or there is upwelling, and slowly, when the seasons change.

The team focused on California two-spot octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides)—small, yellowish-brown octopuses who sport two iridescent blue false eyes under their real eyes. These octopuses live off the coast of California and Mexico, and their genome has already been sequenced.

To investigate whether RNA editing is associated with temperature variation, the researchers acclimated wild-caught adult octopuses to warm (22ºC) or cold (13ºC) waters in tanks at the Marine Biological Laboratory. After several weeks, they compared the RNA transcripts for the cold- and warm-acclimated octopuses to the genome to look for signs of RNA editing at over 60,000 previously identified editing sites.

“Temperature-sensitive editing occurred at about one third of our sites—over 20,000 individual places—so this is not something that happens here or there; this is a global phenomenon” says co-senior author Eli Eisenberg of Tel-Aviv University, who handled the computational aspects of the study. “But that being said, it does not happen equally: proteins that are edited tend to be neural proteins, and almost all sites that are temperature sensitive are more highly edited in the cold.”

They also noticed that certain types of neural proteins were more likely to be sensitive to temperature, for example, proteins that are associated with cell membranes (which are themselves very temperature-sensitive) and calcium-binding proteins.

Next, the team explored how quickly these changes occurred. Working with thumbnail-sized juvenile octopuses this time, the researchers gradually heated or cooled tanks—from 14°C to 24°C or vice versa at 0.5°C hourly increments—over the course of about 20 hours and measured the extent of RNA editing at several time points: before the temperature change, immediately after the temperature change was complete, and up to 4 days later. They were surprised by how rapidly RNA editing occurred.

“We had no real idea how quickly this can occur: whether it takes weeks or hours” says first author Matthew Birk, who led the project as a postdoctoral fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory and is now an assistant professor at Saint Francis University. “We could see significant changes in less than a day, and within 4 days, they were at the new steady-state levels that you find them in after a month.”

Next, in collaboration with Kristen Verhey at University of Michigan and Roger Sutton at Texas Tech, the team explored whether this recoding impacted protein structure function. They focused on kinesin and synaptotagmin, two proteins that are critical for nervous system function, and compared the edited and unedited versions of each protein. In both cases, they found evidence that the recoding produced structural changes in the proteins that would impact their function.

They also showed that temperature-sensitive RNA editing occurs in wild octopuses in response to seasonal temperature fluctuations. Wild octopuses captured in winter versus summer displayed similar patterns of temperature-sensitive RNA editing to those observed in the lab. This was true not only for California two spot octopuses but also for the closely related Verrill’s two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculatus), and the researchers suspect that temperature-sensitive RNA editing occurs widely among other octopuses and squid.

Open questions remain about how the octopuses are regulating this RNA editing, and it’s unclear why editing occurs more frequently in response to cold temperatures.

Next, the researchers want to explore whether octopuses and other cephalopods use RNA recoding to adapt to other environmental variables, such as low oxygen availability or varied social environments.

###

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

Cell, Birk et al. “Temperature-dependent RNA editing in octopus extensively recodes the neural proteome” https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00523-8 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.004

Cell (@CellCellPress), the flagship journal of Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that publishes findings of unusual significance in any area of experimental biology, including but not limited to cell biology, molecular biology, neuroscience, immunology, virology and microbiology, cancer, human genetics, systems biology, signaling, and disease mechanisms and therapeutics. Visit: http://www.cell.com/cell. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.004 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Temperature-dependent RNA editing in octopus extensively recodes the neural proteome

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jun-2023

Edmonton public students surveyed on race, ethnicity, gender identity in new report

EPSB IS ALL ABOUT SURVEY'S

ASKING STUDENTS WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
Story by Thandiwe Konguavi • Yesterday 



Kent Pharis, assistant superintendent of Edmonton Public Schools and co-chair of its Anti-racism and Equity Steering Committee, presented a preliminary report on an extended demographic data survey at a school board meeting on Tuesday.

© Janet French/CBC

The data from a first-time survey asking Edmonton Public Schools students how they identify has been released.

"This report is an opportunity to celebrate the diverse identities of the students we serve based on their own voices and what they were willing to share with us," Kent Pharis, assistant superintendent and co-chair of the Anti-racism and Equity Steering Committee, said at a board meeting Tuesday.

More than 76,000 students from across the board's 213 schools were asked to complete the extended student demographic survey last fall, asking about their race, religion, ethnicity, gender and Indigenous identity.

About 55,800 students – 73 per cent – in Grades 4 to 12 completed the questionnaire. Students in Grades 7 to 12 were also asked about their sexual orientation.

Students were allowed not to answer some questions and could choose more than one option for each question, so some survey tallies added up to more than 100 per cent.

Ethnic or cultural origin

About 10 per cent of the respondents self-identified as First Nations, Métis or Inuit.

About 11 per cent said the identity that best described them was Black. Sixteen per cent said East Asian, eight per cent Middle Eastern, 16 per cent said South Asian, about seven per cent said Southeast Asian, and about 33 per cent said white. Other answers included Hispanic and/or Latinx while some said they were not sure or their group was not listed.

Trustee Julie Kusiek said one section of the findings that stuck out was that fewer than 50 per cent of students identified Canadian as their ethnic or cultural origin.

"I think it just really underlines how diverse our students are and our need as a division to really make sure that we're stepping up to make sure that we create that sense of belonging," Kusiek said.

The collection of extended student demographic data is a key action in the board's plan, developed in the summer of 2021, to support anti-racism and equity efforts, Pharis said.

"In the months and years ahead, we will take a closer look at this data, along with information about academic achievement, school belonging and safety, to better understand actions we can take that will remove barriers," Pharis said.

Parent Tiera Williams is founder of the anti-racism group A Fight For Equity, and was one of the main organizers of a massive 2020 protest against systemic racism.

"I am happy to see that there is race-based data starting to happen and I would like to see the results when we do figure out how many students have been expelled and how many have dropped out for certain reasons of racism," Williams said.

Religion, gender

Out of a dozen choices under religion and/or spiritual affiliation, 22 per cent in Grades 7 to 12 responded Christian, 18 per cent responded Muslim, and 22 per cent selected that they have no religious or spiritual affiliation.

There were a dozen options for gender identity on the survey. Most in Grades 4 to 12 chose male or female, while non-binary and a gender identity not listed on the survey each received about three per cent of the responses.

On the question about sexual orientation, about 67 per cent of the student responses from Grades 7 to 12 chose only heterosexual. About seven per cent said prefer not to answer, almost two per cent said lesbian, 1.4 per cent gay, and 8 per cent bisexual.

Williams, whose Grade 6 son took the survey, said she heard there was confusion with some of the questions, especially for the younger students, regarding gender identity.

If the survey is taken again in the future, Williams hopes more collaboration will take place between the students, parents and teachers to prevent some parents from opting their children out of the survey because of the gender identity questions.

"I think maybe more education towards students and parents on what that is would be more beneficial because as we know, obviously, there's a lot of racialized people in the LGBTQ community as well as white people, and they all deserve a place," Williams said.

Superintendent Darrel Robertson said now that the data is collected, analysts can use it in conjunction with other student data, such as attendance records, to identify correlations.

"This is all about helping kids," Robertson said.

LGBTQ representation in U$ government hits fresh high

 

Story by Brooke Migdon • June 8,2023

Provided by The Hill

LGBTQ representation in government has made leaps and bounds over the past year, but there’s still a long way to go before equitable representation is achieved, according to numbers released Thursday by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute.

The number of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people elected to public office between June 2022 and May 2023 increased 13.6 percent, according to the organization’s annual overview of elected officials in the U.S. At least 1,185 are currently serving, the most on record and more than double what representation was in 2017, when the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute first measured it.

Compared with elected officials overall, LGBTQ officials are significantly more racially and ethnically diverse, according to Thursday’s report, but remain less diverse than the total U.S. population.

The number of openly LGBTQ elected officials of color rose roughly 23 percent this year, with Latinx and Hispanic officeholders leading the way. The number of Black LGBTQ officials increased by 18 to 125 in 2023, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, and the number of Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ elected officials rose to 37 this year, up 19 percent over 2022.

The majority of openly LGBTQ officials, at 783, are white, and more than 91 percent are cisgender, according to Thursday’s report, although transgender and nonbinary representation saw a notable bump this year.

Openly transgender and nonbinary officials now account for 8.1 percent of all LGBTQ elected officials, up from 6.9 percent last year. There are currently zero known intersex elected officials.

When elected officials are grouped by their sexual orientation, pansexuals and bisexuals saw the greatest gains over the past year, increasing 65 percent and 34 percent, respectively. As in prior years, growth in lesbian officials nearly stalled, up less than 1 percent over 2022.

Related video: LGBTQ+ rights organization declares state of emergency after new Florida laws signed (WESH Orlando)   Duration 2:29  View on Watch

All told, 0.23 percent of U.S. elected officials are LGBTQ, according to Thursday’s report, meaning more than 36,000 openly LGBTQ state, local and federal officials need to be elected to achieve equitable representation. More than 7 percent of the nation’s voting-age population identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to a February Gallup poll.

To achieve equitable representation in Congress, for instance, voters must elect 25 more openly LGBTQ members – 20 in the House and five in the Senate – for a total of 37, according to Thursday’s report. Twelve openly LGBTQ people are serving in the current Congress, with 10 in the House and two in the Senate.

Voters in all 50 states, territories and the District of Columbia likewise need to elect an additional 319 openly LGBTQ state lawmakers for equitable representation, according to Thursday’s report. Representation in state legislatures hit an all-time high of 226 this year, an increase of 18 percent over 2022.

Still, several states are lacking in adequate representation, and four states – Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia – don’t have a single out LGBTQ person serving in the legislature at all.

Annise Parker, the president and chief executive of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, on Thursday said electing more LGBTQ people to public office is the community’s best defense against rampant anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and a recent tidal wave of legislation that threatens to substantially roll back the rights of LGBTQ people in the U.S.

“LGBTQ+ leaders are our best firewall against the homophobia and transphobia sweeping our communities,” Parker, a former mayor of Houston and the first openly LGBTQ person elected to lead a major city, said.

“As LGBTQ+ elected officials stand up and speak out on behalf of all of us, they are also inspiring countless LGBTQ+ leaders to consider running for office themselves,” Parker said. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for the LGBTQ+ community and our allies: we must double down on our efforts to inspire, train and support future LGBTQ+ candidates – our rights will depend on it.”

At least 491 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced this year in state legislatures nationwide, and a record-shattering 63 have become law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. A recent analysis of proposed state-level legislation by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, found that roughly half of anti-LGBTQ bills filed this year explicitly targeted the transgender community.

Earlier this week, for the first time in its 40-year history, HRC declared a national state of emergency for LGBTQ people, citing the passage of recent laws.

 The Hill.

WHEN RAINBOWS ARE NOT ENOUGH 

FBI says artificial intelligence being used for 'sextortion' and harassment

Story by By REUTERS • Yesterday 

Artificial intelligence (Illustrative).© (photo credit: PIXABAY)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned Americans that criminals are increasingly using artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit images to intimidate and extort victims.

In an alert circulated this week, the bureau said it had recently observed an uptick in extortion victims saying they had been targeted using doctored versions of innocent images taken from online posts, private messages or video chats.

"The photos are then sent directly to the victims by malicious actors for sextortion or harassment," the alert said. "Once circulated, victims can face significant challenges in preventing the continual sharing of the manipulated content or removal from the internet."

Children being targeted

Related video: Criminals using artificial intelligence to target senior citizens (KMGH Denver, CO)  Duration 2:16   View on Watch

The bureau said the images appeared "true-to-life" and that, in some cases, children had been targeted.

The FBI did not go into detail about the program or programs being used to generate the sexual imagery but did note that technological advancements were "continuously improving the quality, customizability, and accessibility of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled content creation."

The bureau not respond to a follow-up message seeking details on the phenomenon Wednesday.

The manipulation of innocent pictures to make sexually explicit images is almost as old as photography itself, but the release of open-source AI tools has made the process easier than ever. The results are often indistinguishable from real life photographs, and several websites and social media channels that specialize in the creation and exchange of AI-enabled sexual imagery have sprung up in recent years.

Belief among workers that in-person employees will enjoy better career opportunities keeps rising

Story by Natalie Rose Goldberg • 

IN THIS ARTICLE

56% of workers believe in-person employees will be afforded better career opportunities than their remote or hybrid peers, the highest percentage in nearly two years of surveying by CNBC and SurveyMonkey.

Male workers are more likely to hold this view than women and non-binary people, and white workers believe this at higher rates than other racial and ethnic groups.

Google's top HR officer told employees Wednesday that it will be cracking down on employees who aren't adhering to the hybrid work schedule, and will include office attendance in performance reviews and track badge data.



Nearly three years out from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the concept of transitioning from remote or hybrid employment back to mostly in-person work remains a major point of contention between employees and their bosses. While recent office occupancy data has shown that employers may have hit at least a short-term plateau in efforts to bring workers back with greater frequency, the percentage of workers who believe that in-person employees will enjoy better career opportunities keeps rising.

That's according to the latest Workforce Survey from CNBC and SurveyMonkey, which finds a record number of employees (56%) expressing the belief that in-person workers will have the opportunity to advance further than workers who are hybrid or fully remote. In October 2021, only 47% percent of workers believed that in-person employees would have better career outcomes.

The spike in this survey finding comes as major employers push for more in-office days from workers, and some firms that had seemed fully on-board with remote work do about-faces on Covid policies, such as Meta Platforms.

"During the early days of the Covid pandemic, when it felt like everyone was working from home, the tradeoff might have been minimal – but now a clear majority of workers in our survey say they think in-person workers will have better career opportunities at their company," said Laura Wronski, senior research science manager at Momentive.

There are key demographic distinctions in the data, according to survey, which was fielded by Momentive's SurveyMonkey platform between May 23-31 among nearly 9,000 workers in the U.S.

For example, women and gender-nonconforming or unlisted individuals were less likely than their male counterparts to believe remote work has an impact on career advancement. Level of belief varied by race as well, with a higher percentage of white people believing in-person workers would have better outcomes than their remote peers.

The recent push from major employers to mandate more in-person days might seem to indicate that the balance of power is shifting, and workers are more inclined to return to primarily in-person work.

Meta Platforms, which had been among the most vocal supporters of work-from-anywhere during Covid, has significantly altered its stance. Google's top HR officer told employees Wednesday that it will be cracking down on employees who aren't adhering to the hybrid work schedule, and will include office attendance in performance reviews and track badge data. Last month, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, said it expected employees to be back four days a week starting in September.

"Companies have been trying to bring back their workers back to the office for years, with minimal success, but that might finally be changing," Wronski said. "Many workers may have been in denial about what they are giving up by working from home, missing out on those in-person connections in the office that lead to raises and promotions," she added.

There are reasons for workers to be more worried about challenging management over work policies. Some of the names in the headlines have been among the most aggressive job cutters over the past year, led by Meta and the tech sector. And while jobs are still plentiful, based on the latest JOLTS data showing 10 million-plus openings — and job growth and wage growth continue to defy expectations of a more severe downturn — year-over-year there are indications that Federal Reserve policy is beginning to cool the labor market.

But Layla O'Kane, senior economist at labor market research firm Lightcast, says that other labor market data continues to tell a different story when it comes to the in-person push. She said return-to-office has been dominating the headlines, but not the job postings.

"Definitely there are workers that are experiencing those mandates, but by and large, we're not seeing remote work numbers plummet in terms of postings, and I think that there are quite a few companies that are still fully hiring remotely, and also considering expanding their remote opportunities to try to get through some of the labor shortages that they're facing."

According to the CNBC survey, 37% of workers say they've seriously considered quitting their job in the last three months (steady from 36% in the prior survey last November). But recent national labor market data does indicate that the peak in worker confidence about finding a new job has been passed, and the "Great Resignation" has ended. The share of monthly quits (i.e., voluntary departures by workers) relative to total employment is now roughly on par with the monthly pre-pandemic average in 2019.

To join the CNBC Workforce Executive Council, apply at cnbccouncils.com/wec.

Who really owns key Canadian assets?

Regulators aren't sure but they want to find out: internal files

Story by Chris Arsenault • CBC

The financial fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine hit home a long-standing problem in Canada, according to internal government documents: regulators don't have basic information about who really owns key companies and assets.

As Canada ramped up economic sanctions against Russian elites last year, officials across the Western world realized it's impossible to crack down on wealthy beneficiaries of the invasion if the actual — or beneficial — owners of businesses are obscured by layers of front companies or other accounting tricks.

Transparency advocates say Canada had long ignored probing shady investors using anonymous holding companies to buy valuable assets; their money was welcome, often with no questions asked. That is starting to change, according to internal government files obtained via the Access to Information Act.

"The Government of Canada has been working with its provincial and territorial partners to improve corporate beneficial ownership transparency," said the Department of Finance document marked "protected" from 2022.

"Federal, provincial and territorial Ministers of Finance have committed to requiring corporations to hold accurate and up-to-date beneficial ownership information."

A new federal registry mandating the disclosure of this information should be up and running by the end of the year, a Department of Finance spokesperson told CBC News.

However, there are questions about how well it can achieve its goals if provinces and territories aren't on side and sharing information across the country. It also remains unclear how many staff will be working on the project to investigate whether companies are providing accurate information into the registry.



In this handout photo made available by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, firefighters hose down a Policlinic following a Russian attack in Dnipro, Ukraine, on May 26. Western countries have launched sanctions against members of the Russian elite who they say are supporting the war.

© State Emergency Service of Ukraine/The Associated Press

'Everyone turned a blind eye'

From mansions owned by anonymous trusts in Vancouver, to numbered companies holding valuable corporate shares registered to Toronto-area post office boxes, money laundering is estimated to be worth between $45 billion and $113 billion annually, according to data from the government's Criminal Intelligence Service.

These sorts of tactics, using front companies to obscure the true owners of investments, launder the proceeds of crime and avoid taxes, were publicized in the Panama Papers and similar leaks.

But the war in Ukraine added new urgency to uncovering the beneficial owners of Canadian assets, said James Cohen, executive director of the watchdog group Transparency International Canada.

"Everyone turned a blind eye, because it's money — not realizing this was being weaponized against us," Cohen told CBC News. "Pre-2023 Canada was a laggard [on ownership transparency]. We were far behind many of our OECD and G7 peers.

"When Canada has our registry online, we will have jumped from the back of the class to the front," he said. "Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a big final push to get this over the finish line."

The plan to create a "public and searchable beneficial ownership registry" was launched as part of the federal budget in March, Department of Finance spokesperson Marie-France Faucher told CBC News.

"This registry will cover corporations governed under the Canada Business Corporations Act, and will be scalable to allow access to the beneficial ownership data held by provinces and territories that agree to participate in a pan-Canadian registry."

It's unclear exactly what the database will look like when it's rolled out. It could resemble other public disclosure databases online, such as the federal lobbying registry, where a user can plug in the name of a company and find out who really owns it, controls voting rights and will profit from its activities.

'Patchwork regime' on ownership transparency

Publicly traded companies, generally larger businesses listed on stock exchanges, must already provide disclosure on their real or beneficial owners, said Cohen.

The new rules extend those provisions to determine who is the person ultimately controlling a company — 25 per cent ownership or voting rights— to federally regulated, privately held firms, he added.


Police block a protest against the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2021.

© Anton Basanayev/The Associated Press

Previously, tracking whether beneficial owners of a company in Canada had ties to crime, corruption or human rights abuses fell to individual banks who handled their finances, Cohen said.

Most businesses are registered provincially, and the new federal rules won't apply there. But some provinces are stepping up their own beneficial ownership requirements for companies; Quebec launched a system of beneficial ownership transparency in March and similar legislation has been tabled in B.C., Faucher said.

"The federal government will continue calling upon provincial and territorial governments to advance a pan-Canadian approach to beneficial ownership transparency," she added.

Cohen hopes new provincial registries will be expanded, and will be able to communicate with the federal system, so information on who really owns private companies can be gleaned in a simple fashion.

The lack of a single database and rules on transparency which cross provincial boundaries could undermine the new initiative, said Malcolm Aboud, a corporate lawyer with the firm Osler in Toronto who tracks white collar crime.

"As of now, you have a patchwork regime with different provincial regulations," he told CBC News. "In order to properly fulfil the goals of the legislation, some buy-in would be required with the provinces."

Aboud said the new rules will lead to "some increased regulatory burden on businesses." But he added that companies are already supposed to track their beneficial owners in their internal records, so providing this information to federal regulators shouldn't be too onerous.

Real-time impacts

Concerns about investors with criminal links, ties to violent regimes or implicated in corruption investing in Canadian assets as beneficial owners aren't merely academic, another set of government documents showed. They are playing out in real-time.

A separate internal briefing note marked "secret" from Nov. 18, 2022 to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Infrastructure and Communities spells out a situation involving sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

He is "a non-controlling, minority shareholder in the Austrian parent firm (Strabag SE)." That company is "working on major transit projects" in Ontario which to receive funding from the federal and Ontario governments, the note states.

Disclosures about Deripaska's financial stake in vital Canadian infrastructure raised ire from politicians in Ontario and beyond who didn't want to see a billionaire tycoon with interests in energy and metals who faces sanctions across the Western world benefit from government-funded transport projects.

A spokesperson Strabag SE, Marianne Jakl, told CBC News her company's work is ongoing on subway projects in Toronto, and the firm is "ensuring the sanctions in place by various countries, including Canada, are fully implemented."

Strabag "is also taking all possible legal steps to distance itself" from the investment firm Rasperia, which is partially owned by Deripaska and owns shares in the Austrian construction company, she said.

"For example, no dividend payments are made, the board member nominated by Rasperia has been removed and a proposal for capital measures has been tabled to reduce Rasperia's shares."

Real-estate blind spot

While the new beneficial ownership rules have been welcomed by transparency campaigners as a step in the right direction, they don't extend to real estate investments, a government official said on background.

Analysts say Canadian real estate including condos or high-end homes have long been popular investments for shady characters.


Boat captain Emosi Dawai looks at the superyacht Amadea where it is docked at the Queens Wharf in Lautoka, Fiji, on April 13, 2022. The superyacht that U.S. authorities say is owned by a Russian oligarch previously sanctioned for alleged money laundering has been seized by law enforcement in Fiji.© Leon Lord/Fiji Sun via The Associated Press

"The government intends to work with provincial and territorial partners to advance a national approach to a beneficial ownership registry of real property," the government official said.

Along with acting as a convenient money laundering vehicle for oligarchs, corrupt politicians or gangsters, "dirty money is that cyanide-filled cherry on top" of Canada's housing price crisis, Cohen said, urging swifter action on ownership transparency for real estate.