Gaps

Press release - COVID-19: Parliament adopts roadmap to better prepare for future health crises

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

COVID-19: Parliament adopts roadmap to better prepare for future health crises

Key Points: 
  • COVID-19: Parliament adopts roadmap to better prepare for future health crises
    - Evaluation of the effectiveness of EU and national measures
    - Recommendations to improve EU crisis management and preparedness for future health emergencies
    - Increase parliamentary oversight of measures, coordination, solidarity
    MEPs want to reinforce the European Health Union and the resilience of national health systems in view of future challenges.
  • Parliament debated the report on Tuesday and adopted the text on Wednesday by 385 votes in favour, 193 against and 63 abstentions.
  • MEPs outlined a clear roadmap for future action in four main areas: health, democracy and fundamental rights, social and economic aspects, and global response to the pandemic.
  • The EU’s response to the pandemic was exemplary in securing vaccines, NextGenerationEU funds, and preparing for future health emergencies.

Hachette has withdrawn a policeman's memoir due to accuracy concerns. Should publishers do more fact checking?

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Australian publisher Hachette has withdrawn from publication the memoir of a retired police officer, after concerns were raised about its accuracy.

Key Points: 
  • Australian publisher Hachette has withdrawn from publication the memoir of a retired police officer, after concerns were raised about its accuracy.
  • Christophe Glasl spent 16 years in Victoria Police before writing his tell-all memoir, Special Operations Group, named after the elite force he was a member of for four years.
  • In one chapter, Glasl writes of his involvement in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
  • The case raises a number of questions: chiefly, what kind of fact-checking processes, if any, do publishers use when commissioning and editing non-fiction books, especially memoirs?

How do book publishers check facts?

    • Book publishing doesn’t have the same intensive fact-checking culture as journalism – partly due to the resources it would involve.
    • The first element is trust, Andrew Wilkins, who has been a book publisher for over 25 years and was editor of industry publication Books & Publishing, told The Conversation.
    • Read more:
      How can publishers support the authors of trauma memoirs, as they unpack their pain for the public?
    • “But in practical terms that would be very difficult to do, with so many different publishers involved and the sheer length of a book manuscript compared to a news story.”

Humans set budgets when facing an uncertain future. So do ants 

Retrieved on: 
Monday, July 10, 2023

Do you decide to take it, or invest more time into hunting a better spot which may or may not exist?

Key Points: 
  • Do you decide to take it, or invest more time into hunting a better spot which may or may not exist?
  • You might resolve this decision by “budgeting”: limiting the resources (time) you will spend looking for a better option before settling for the inferior one.
  • In new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we show weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) – much like humans – manage it by budgeting their investment into a task with an uncertain payoff.

Weaver ants bridge gaps with their own bodies

    • Weaver ants link their bodies together to form bridge-like structures called “hanging chains”, which they use for crossing gaps encountered along trails.
    • Chains span several times the size of an individual ant and, most strikingly, are self-organized.

Chains are a gamble

    • The cost of the chain is proportional to its length: longer chains are more costly, as they keep more ants occupied.
    • Chains provide a major benefit too: they allow ants to explore areas that would otherwise be inaccessible, which may offer food sources to the colony.
    • We expected ants would stop forming chains when the gap to be bridged became too tall, as the cost of the chain would become too great.

A simple mechanism for a complex decision

    • Ants could comfortably form chains within this range, which allowed us to precisely determine the rules they use to build chains.
    • A detailed analysis of the ants’ behaviour revealed that joining and leaving events happen primarily in the lowest part (1cm) of chains.
    • This indicates that ants are unable to leave their position if one or more individuals start hanging from them.

Tricking ants into investing more

    • We ran an additional experiment where we could lower the platform ants had to reach using a slider.
    • As the chain grew, we lowered the platform, keeping it just out of reach of the ants.
    • Using this apparatus, we tricked ants into forming chains as long as 125mm.

How an African collection of art in Canada is celebrated with care and community

Retrieved on: 
Monday, July 10, 2023

A significant collection of traditional African art has had a home in Canada for almost a hundred years.

Key Points: 
  • A significant collection of traditional African art has had a home in Canada for almost a hundred years.
  • At Agnes Etherington Art Centre, we are working on new, more hospitable practices of care for this collection.
  • The African art collection, named after donors Justin and Elisabeth Lang, consists of approximately 600 three-dimensional pieces that originate from 19 West African countries.

European market in African art

    • The European market in African art had boomed in the 1920s and 1930s.
    • European enthusiasm for African art was partly due to its influence on modernist artists, such as Picasso, Cézanne and Gauguin.
    • The establishment of an African art market therefore had direct ties to European colonial projects and imperial commercial networks that reinforced colonial violences.

At least four lives of the collection

    • At the time, it was the largest collection of African art at a Canadian university.
    • As a body, the collection has had at least four lives: one within Africa as an active part of everyday life, another in Europe as part of a thriving art market, in Canada as a private art collection and now as a museum holding on a university campus.

‘You are holding communities’

    • In this film, Samwel Nangiria, Maasai community leader, notes:
      “You are not holding artifacts, you are holding communities … museums need to be a place of people, not a place of artifacts.
    • When we see these objects we see our parents, we see our ancestors.”
      “You are not holding artifacts, you are holding communities … museums need to be a place of people, not a place of artifacts.
    • How do we adjust our practices to respond to a colonial past and to the gaps in our understanding?

New curatorial approaches

    • I was confronting isolation, impending economic migration to Canada and the start of curatorial work at Agnes and Queen’s University.
    • I felt compelled to find new ways to enliven a collection that inhabited an awkward silence in the museum.

‘With Opened Mouths’

    • For the Agnes exhibit With Opened Mouths, we discarded the glass display cases often used in museums and instead used labelling that echoed contemporary African signage.
    • With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is a digital safe space where I interview racialized creatives to discuss their practice.

Moving out of the vault

    • The collection will move to a temporary home on campus in preparation for renovations at Agnes.
    • The move of the African collection out of the vault is momentous.

Celebration of presence, welcome, care

    • The project emerged after Bitek’s first visit to the vaults.
    • will be a moment of hope, welcome and care.
    • In essence, these curatorial practices seek to acknowledge the African communities and artists who have, unknowingly, built up the collection at Agnes.

'On my worst day ...' How the NDIS fosters a deficit mindset and why that should change

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, July 9, 2023

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was designed to empower and support people with disability.

Key Points: 
  • The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was designed to empower and support people with disability.
  • But ten years into the scheme, many participants are finding their encounters with the NDIS dehumanising and burdensome.

Evaluating impairment

    • To become an NDIS participant, applicants must provide evidence of a permanent disability that significantly impacts their life or requires early intervention.
    • Evaluating impairment is important for accurate support planning.
    • Every year we go through the same mundane crap and have to fight the fight, not knowing what the outcome will be.

The need for strengths-based planning

    • Given the scheme’s design means NDIS participants have a verified permanent disability, they should not have to justify that they still need essential services.
    • They are regularly advised by providers and advocates to imagine their “worst day” when detailing the support they might need.
    • Strengths-based planning defines capability in relation to someone’s self-identified goals and in the context of support.
    • And research suggests NDIS paperwork has a notable impact on the information NDIS participants can share about themselves, and how their capabilities and needs are considered in planning.

An oasis in the desert

    • But those outside the scheme have been left behind, forced to self-fund essential services or go without.
    • Making the world more accessible will enable these goals and is the real solution to reducing the cost of the scheme.
    • Kate Anderson receives funding from the Department of Health, the Department of Social Services, the Transport Accident Commission, Western Health, and Solve-TAD.

Christine Lagarde: Interview with La Provence

Retrieved on: 
Saturday, July 8, 2023

    The most recent dataset covers ratings data until December 2022.

Key Points: 
  •     The most recent dataset covers ratings data until December 2022.
  • CEREP provides information on credit ratings issued by Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) which are either registered or certified in the European Union.
Sarah Edwards 

If someone posts your private photos online, there has been little you can do about it – how changes in the law will finally help victims

Retrieved on: 
Friday, July 7, 2023

She’d been in court seeing her ex-partner sentenced for harassment and sharing sexual images without her consent.

Key Points: 
  • She’d been in court seeing her ex-partner sentenced for harassment and sharing sexual images without her consent.
  • After being stalked by him, she said she was now being “stalked by the media”.
  • Finally, it criminalises the sharing of deepfake porn, a vital step as AI technology is making it easier to create deepfakes.
  • Read more:
    Scams, deepfake porn and romance bots: advanced AI is exciting, but incredibly dangerous in criminals' hands

Long overdue changes

    • In 2014, the actor Jennifer Lawrence described the hacking and sharing of her nudes a “sex crime”.
    • This standard was one factor leading to low prosecution rates and police refusing to progress cases.
    • Sharing such images – though not creating them – will also now be criminalised in the online safety bill.
    • Artist and campaigner Helen Mort has also shared her experiences of deepfake porn, calling for the changes in the law that have now been announced.

Only the start

    • We’ve come a long way since Erika Rackley and I started calling for change.
    • For example, a Muslim woman photographed not wearing a headscarf that her family or community expects her to wear.
    • The changes to the online safety bill are a great start, but not the end of the fight.

Friday essay: we knew we were Bundjalung – but I was shocked to discover a pardoned convict slave trader among my ancestors

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, July 6, 2023

That night in 2008, my trepidation rose quickly when I heard it was my Uncle Gerry from Sydney who was on the line.

Key Points: 
  • That night in 2008, my trepidation rose quickly when I heard it was my Uncle Gerry from Sydney who was on the line.
  • I’ve just been on the phone with a Bostock woman, a “white” Bostock woman from A.J.’s side of the family.
  • I’ve just been on the phone with a Bostock woman, a “white” Bostock woman from A.J.’s side of the family.
  • He told me Thelma was an avid genealogist who had been researching the Bostock family tree for over 30 years.

‘They were slave traders!’

    • In their long conversation, Thelma told him she had traced the Bostock family line back to the 1600s in England.
    • “Guess who our white ancestors were?” Chuckling to himself, Uncle deliberately paused for dramatic effect before he blurted out: “They were slave traders!
    • A couple of generations of slave traders!
    • And by the end of the call, she kindly invited me to come and visit her next time I was up that way.
    • The two “Roberts” were the slave traders.
    • Thelma explained that after slave trading was abolished, the British government arrested Robert Bostock Jnr and his business partner John McQueen, and sentenced them to “transportation” to the colony for 14 years.

Befriending a slave-trade historian

    • But before we lost touch, she introduced me to the slave-trade historian Emma Christopher.
    • Emma’s field of expertise is the transatlantic slave trade, Pacific Islander labour, West African and historical slavery, and modern slavery.
    • When a fellow historian told her that a mansion built by a convict transported for slave trading still existed in Tasmania, Emma was astonished.
    • Read more:
      From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia's 'blackbirding' past and its roots in the global slave trade

‘I feel numb about it’

    • Emma was surprised when Thelma told her about the Aboriginal branches of the Bostock family.
    • So, it turned out that my family are not the only Indigenous descendants of Robert Bostock.
    • In 2018, Emma’s book Freedom in Black and White: A lost story of the illegal slave trade and its global legacy was published.
    • Frowning, I lamely said, “I don’t know what to say … I feel numb about it – I just wish I had better words to say.” That was over 12 years ago.

Our ‘mob of blackfellas’

    • Her name, this record and other archival documents (which name her), as well as confirmation from Bundjalung Elders, indicate that she was a traditional Aboriginal woman from the Wollumbin/Mount Warning people.
    • We always knew we were Bundjalung, and my father had frequently told us, “Our mob are from the Tweed”, but he didn’t know much else.
    • This is an edited extract from Reaching Through Time by Shauna Bostock (Allen & Unwin, $34.99).

Manchester Baccalaureate: how the proposed vocational GCSE route would work – and the pitfalls it must avoid

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 5, 2023

From September 2024, GCSE pupils in Greater Manchester may be able to embark on a educational pathway created specifically for them.

Key Points: 
  • From September 2024, GCSE pupils in Greater Manchester may be able to embark on a educational pathway created specifically for them.
  • Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, announced his plans to introduce a Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc) in May 2023 and a public consultation on the plans has recently closed.

Another path

    • The subjects required for the EBacc are GCSE English literature and language, maths, science, a language and either geography or history.
    • The MBacc, by contrast, could require students to study maths, English language and technology alongside optional subjects such as engineering, creative arts, or sciences.
    • The government is aiming for 90% of pupils in England to be taking the EBacc combination of subjects at GCSE by 2025.
    • The dual offering of the EBacc and MBacc is intended “to give a clear path to all young people in Greater Manchester, whatever their interests, ambitions and passions”.

Academic hierarchy

    • However, these new qualifications have yet to successfully bridge the division between academic and vocational study routes.
    • Teachers will need to be supported to give advice that does not assign a hierarchy to the two routes.
    • If this hierarchy emerges, the division that becomes apparent at 16 could begin even earlier.

Scaling up community drug-checking services in B.C. could help respond to the overdose crisis

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 4, 2023

With a significant rise in deaths over the last seven years, innovative responses are urgently needed.

Key Points: 
  • With a significant rise in deaths over the last seven years, innovative responses are urgently needed.
  • Among these responses is community drug checking, which continues to gain traction in both public health practice and research.

Drug checking in global perspective

    • Internationally, groups like the Drug Information Monitoring System in the Netherlands have been pioneering drug checking and continuing to inform drug-checking research and practice internationally.
    • While services in some countries remain beholden by archaic prohibitory legislative environments that challenge the legality of drug checking, others are finding success in embedding drug checking within novel legal frameworks, like the legalization of drug checking in New Zealand.

Drug checking in Canada

    • In Canada, drug checking has its origins in the festival and rave scene as a grassroots bottom-up response to the harms of an unregulated market.
    • The success of drug checking in festival settings for lowering potential harms and highlighting broader trends is now increasingly being evaluated as a response to the overdose crisis in B.C.
    • Drug checking alone is not enough to curb the dramatic increase in drug toxicity deaths in the province and nationally.

Substance: The Vancouver Island drug-checking project

    • This research provides evidence to support services that respond to the unique needs of people accessing drug-checking services.
    • This research supports services that respond to the unique needs of people accessing drug-checking services.

Vancouver Island’s unique model of drug checking

    • In responding to the challenges of scaling up drug-checking services, we developed a unique distributed drug-checking model to increase the reach of these services.
    • This model aims to fill in gaps in service delivery for diverse communities that are vulnerable to the unregulated drug supply.
    • This model responds to the unique challenges of providing critical harm reduction across geographical locations and within different communities.
    • Through the distributed model, we continue to evaluate what works best for whom in the context of an ever-changing drug supply and policy landscape.