World

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Labor president Wayne Swan on the party's coming national conference

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 10, 2023

Next week the Labor Party will hold its national conference in Brisbane.

Key Points: 
  • Next week the Labor Party will hold its national conference in Brisbane.
  • In this podcast we talk with Wayne Swan, the Labor Party National President.
  • But for most of our history, Labor parliamentary caucuses, Labor prime ministers, Labor leaders of the opposition have worked within the confines of the platform and that’s where we are today.
  • On the conference issues, Swan says:
    I certainly think there’ll be a debate over AUKUS and I hope there is.

The U.S. tendency to mythologize presidents may explain Donald Trump's appeal

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 10, 2023

Donald Trump faces three separate indictments — over 70 criminal and felony counts — with additional charges likely to come in the days ahead.

Key Points: 
  • Donald Trump faces three separate indictments — over 70 criminal and felony counts — with additional charges likely to come in the days ahead.
  • But more stunning than the unprecedented legal cases against the former president is that Trump stands a solid chance of being re-elected president of the United States in 2024.

American exceptionalism

    • American presidents have always been seen to be exceptional individuals.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vision and determination defeating both the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Axis powers during the Second World War.
    • Instead, Americans like to believe their presidential candidates have fought their way to the party’s nomination and to election day.
    • Each president has his own myth, such as rising from poverty, remaining calm under even the most dire circumstances, staring down American enemies abroad or using their status after the end of their years in the White House for the benefit of humanity.

Trump never backs down

    • Trump lost after only one term, sought to remain in office, is accused of inciting a riot to stay in power and then held onto classified documents, among other alleged and actual misdeeds.
    • After all, that dream is one of equal opportunity for all so that everyone can attain their highest goals.
    • From this viewpoint, Trump’s legal woes are simply obstacles that need to be overcome to reach the final goal.

Trump’s stature is enhanced

    • Trump portrays himself as a man who, through grit and good old American “never-say-die” determination, is following his dream.
    • Being the only former president to be indicted just adds to the magnitude of the hurdles he must clear — and enhances his stature among supporters.
    • Nothing in the American constitution or federal laws prevents Trump from seeking the presidency or serving if elected.
    • Many voters appear willing to give Trump a second chance, regardless of his legal travails.

From outdoor classrooms to gardens, how Nova Scotia youth are creating healthier school communities

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Think about the advocacy of Greta Thunberg and Mikaela Loach around climate change and climate justice or Malala Yousafzai’s advocacy for all children’s rights to receive an education.

Key Points: 
  • Think about the advocacy of Greta Thunberg and Mikaela Loach around climate change and climate justice or Malala Yousafzai’s advocacy for all children’s rights to receive an education.
  • We also share it to support youth engagement in social change and healthier school communities year round.

Health Promoting Schools

    • The UpLift Partnership is rooted in a global movement and model of Health Promoting Schools, first championed by the World Health Organization and driven by the insight that “health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life.” Involving youth in promoting health in schools can catalyze students’ ability to initiate and bring about positive change in the world — what researchers call their “action competence.” This includes building knowledge, motivation and competencies that align with this year’s International Youth Day theme, Green Skills for Youth.

Building ‘green skills’

    • The partnership between these diverse parties is grounded in over a decade of research designed to enhance youth engagement within the Health Promoting Schools model.
    • Building green skills helps them to understand the strong connection between health, well-being and nature.

Tranquility Garden

    • Prior to this, the school did not have a physical outdoor seating area or place for the students and staff to connect with nature, despite its rural location.
    • The Tranquility Garden now provides students, staff and animals with a calming and enjoyable place to visit and play.
    • Students and staff planted fruit trees, flowers and shrubs, and built benches for seating to create the garden.

Outdoor shelter, cooking by fire

    • Prior to installing the hot tent shelter and stove, few students at the school had the desire to learn outside due to the exposed nature of the outdoor space.
    • The outdoor shelter now serves as a space for multiple learning opportunities that connect the students to their environment, like stargazing, cooking by fire and building outdoor education skills.

Farm-to-school movement

    • This Go Fresh Salad Bar station is the final piece of a growing farm-to-school movement in their school.
    • This funding provided the salad bar infrastructure necessary to support more diverse and nutritious food options at the school cafeteria.

Healthier futures

    • As researchers have documented, youth participation in school health promotion enhances youth knowledge, competence, motivation and commitments to health and well-being.
    • This, in turn, will help young people become active citizens for a healthier future.
    • It is time for youth to have a lead role on the world’s stage, and for more adults to uplift them.

From Oppenheimer to Milton Friedman: how the Cold War battle of economic ideas shaped our world

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Is Oppenheimer a movie for our time, reminding us of the tensions, dangers and conflicts of the old Cold War while a new one threatens to break out?

Key Points: 
  • Is Oppenheimer a movie for our time, reminding us of the tensions, dangers and conflicts of the old Cold War while a new one threatens to break out?
  • But the Cold War did not just rest on the threat of the bomb.
  • Von Neumann also developed the computer architecture on the EDVAC machine that allowed simulations of these nuclear and economic “games”.

Spies and ideologies

    • He survived the siege of Leningrad and invented linear programming to help Soviet factories build wartime planes more efficiently.
    • But he found himself assigned to the ENORMOZ project, the desperate Soviet race to build their own atomic bomb.
    • But it failed when faced with the more sophisticated civilian demands later in the Cold War.

Academic warfare

    • But some of the most brutal arguments took place in the hallowed halls of academia.
    • Fascinated by the possibility of computers helping direct an economy, Oscar Lange wrote just before his death:
      So what’s the trouble?
    • Let us put the simultaneous equations on an electronic computer and we shall obtain the solution in less than a second.

Computers and coups

    • In Santiago he built a futuristic control centre: a ring of armchairs with controls, monitors and a software system named Cybersyn.
    • Allende had nationalised 500 businesses and he linked them up to the control centre by fax machine (ironically, using the wired network of the CIA-influenced ITT company).
    • Each day, the controllers would fax orders to the factories and receive information on shortages and gluts.
    • Despite all the geopolitical tensions, economists today can at least argue in a far less hostile environment.

Babies almost all try crawling to get from Point A to Point B, but CDC says it's not a useful developmental milestone

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 9, 2023

For a pediatrician, these milestones are useful indicators of typical or atypical development.

Key Points: 
  • For a pediatrician, these milestones are useful indicators of typical or atypical development.
  • Since 2004, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published a set of milestone checklists as part of its “Learn the Signs.
  • Important skills are listed for a series of ages, enabling anxious parents to know whether baby is developing typically.

Crawling to get from here to there

    • Studies have indicated that over 80% of infants progress through hands-and-knees crawling during development of locomotion.
    • Others use alternative crawling strategies like scooting along on their bottoms, or rolling.
    • The World Health Organization studied hundreds of children around the world and found that, on average, children develop hands-and-knees crawling by 8.5 months of age.
    • And 4.3% of the babies in the study skipped hands-and-knees crawling altogether.

Off the evidence-based list of milestones

    • Much of the CDC’s reasoning for removing crawling from the milestone list is centered on data.
    • Pediatricians have charts that say how fast children typically walk based on their age, but no such normative data exists for crawling.
    • Nonetheless, the CDC is correct: There are no age-based normative data charts for crawling as there are for walking.

Locomotion in the lab

    • As a biomedical engineer who specializes in pediatric locomotion biomechanics, I have firsthand knowledge of this lack of crawling data.
    • My colleagues and I attach small markers to skeletal landmarks like hips and knees, and special cameras track the markers and reconstruct skeletal movement.
    • But among all my lab’s studies on walking, I’ve completed only one 3D motion analysis study on crawling.

Collecting crawling data

    • We’re studying babies from their first crawling attempts all the way through their transition to walking.
    • We’re also hopeful that these hundreds of visits to the lab will result in the first normative data set on crawling development, addressing some of the issues that prompted the CDC to remove crawling from the milestone list.

What is POTS? And how is it related to long COVID?

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, August 8, 2023

But during the pandemic, we’ve been learning about the strong similarities with long COVID.

Key Points: 
  • But during the pandemic, we’ve been learning about the strong similarities with long COVID.
  • In fact, our recent research shows more than three-quarters of people with long COVID we studied had POTS.
  • À lire aussi :
    When does COVID become long COVID?

What triggers it?

    • Then came the pandemic, with almost 800 million people infected so far with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.
    • The World Health Organization says 10-20% of people infected with COVID are likely to develop long COVID – when unexplained symptoms persist three months or more after the infection.

What we and others have found

    • The people in our study either attended a specialist cardiology clinic for people with POTS or long COVID, or came via a long COVID support group on social media.
    • So we cannot generalise our results to people managing their long COVID at home or with their GP.
    • Earlier this year, a review said about 30% of people with people with “highly symptomatic” long COVID also had POTS.

What happens if you have POTS?

    • This, or another trigger, affects the autonomic nervous system.
    • Even if the autonomic nervous system is marginally disturbed, it leads to the physiological equivalent of anarchy.

A long path to diagnosis

    • Diagnosis can take years.
    • In our submission to the parliamentary inquiry into long COVID, we shared the experiences of people with POTS symptoms and their frustration at the lack of recognition by the medical profession.
    • À lire aussi :
      We got some key things wrong about long COVID.

We can do better

    • Although many people with POTS report they were referred to multiple specialists before they were diagnosed, this is not always necessary.
    • GPs can ask you to do a ten-minute standing test to help diagnose it.
    • They can also exclude other common causes of POTS symptoms, such as lung and heart conditions.
    • À lire aussi :
      What should my heart rate be and what affects it?

How about referral?

    • There are no specialised clinics for POTS in public hospitals.
    • For more information about the condition, see the Australian POTS Foundation website, which also lists doctors and allied health professionals who are “POTS aware”.
    • Marie-Claire Seeley receives funding from The Australian Government Research Training Scholarship and Standing up to POTS .

Housing is a direct federal responsibility, contrary to what Trudeau said. Here’s how his government can do better.

Retrieved on: 
Monday, August 7, 2023

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility” at a funding announcement in Hamilton, Ont.

Key Points: 
  • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility” at a funding announcement in Hamilton, Ont.
  • The right to housing — which Canada has promised to enforce in numerous international covenants — was enshrined in Canadian law by the current government in 2019.

History of federal housing engagement

    • Trudeau seems to have forgotten about the federal government’s previous involvement in housing.
    • The production of non-market housing fell off a cliff in 1992 when the federal government downloaded responsibility for affordable housing to provinces.
    • The housing crisis has its roots in the federal government’s neglect of affordable housing over decades.

Five priorities for the federal government

    • Rather than dodging responsibility, the federal government should pursue five priorities.
    • First, the federal government must return to using a single income-based definition of affordable housing in its programs, as it did from the 1940s to the 1990s.
    • Taxation reform and offering long-term, low-cost financing for purpose-built rental homes are both federal government responsibilities.

Provinces and municipalities must step up

    • Provinces must improve residential tenancy protections to stop the rising tide of evictions and double-digit rent increases.
    • Municipalities need to revise zoning codes to allow four- to six-storey buildings in all residential areas and 10- to 30-storey buildings close to rapid transit stations.
    • By amending the federal building code, municipalities could scale up smaller, affordable, accessible and energy-efficient apartment buildings with family-sized units.

Ghana's housing policy and regulation is failing - COVID proved as much

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, August 6, 2023

In Ghana, for example, the government estimates a staggering deficit of 1.8 million homes.

Key Points: 
  • In Ghana, for example, the government estimates a staggering deficit of 1.8 million homes.
  • Many households don’t get basic services either: 28.6% rely on wells for water, over a third use public latrines and one in ten dispose of waste indiscriminately.
  • Ghana’s housing market suffers from inadequate regulation.
  • We are urban and housing studies scholars who research issues of housing in Ghana.

Findings

    • The Ashanti region, with Kumasi as its capital, has the highest proportion of compound houses in Ghana (62.8% against a national average of 57.3%).
    • The courtyard serves as a significant space for social interactions and inter-household activities.
    • Households within the compound share common facilities such as toilets, kitchens, drying lines, water, and electricity meters.
    • Inadequate sanitation: The absence of toilet facilities in some compound houses forced households, including children, to rely on public toilets.
    • They faced challenges such as a distracting environment, lack of suitable work spaces, and unreliable internet connectivity.

The way forward

    • A recent seminar involving policymakers and stakeholders in Ghana’s housing sector yielded a consensus that housing policy and supply should put the needs of the poor first.
    • The existing pro-market housing policy does not help the poor to get decent accommodation.
    • Regulation should focus not only on the advance rent period but also on the provision of basic facilities.
    • Thus it is crucial to initiate a conversation about sustainable and context-specific housing design, and use of local construction materials.

Football world cup: African women make their mark, against all odds

Retrieved on: 
Friday, August 4, 2023

That’s three of the top 10 teams from the Fifa world rankings out in the group stage, and the US only runners-up in their group.

Key Points: 
  • That’s three of the top 10 teams from the Fifa world rankings out in the group stage, and the US only runners-up in their group.
  • This is the first time that three African teams have made it to the second round and a great indicator that the quality of the game is improving.
  • African teams, among other non-traditional power houses like Colombia and Jamaica, have indeed showed up to unsettle any pre-tournament expectations.

Debutantes cause a stir

    • This sets up a mouth-watering clash with France, who are in devastating form.
    • Out of the eight debutantes in Australia and New Zealand, the Atlas Lionesses are the last women standing.
    • The Moroccan government also deserves credit for investment in a football academy that seeks to produce international quality footballers from both boys and girls.

South Africa overcome pre-tournament chaos

    • One player who has stood out is Thembi Kgatlana, who has scored twice and assisted on two goals.
    • The reward for South Africa’s progress is a clash with the Netherlands.

The Super Falcons are flying

    • The team has surpassed expectations in an extremely difficult Group B to qualify for the last 16 for a second consecutive World Cup.
    • The underdog Super Falcons drew with Canada 0-0, beat Australia 3-2 and drew with Republic of Ireland 0-0 to emerge runners-up in Group B.
    • In the process, they edged out the current Olympic champions, Canada, at the group stage of the tournament.

Ready to compete

    • Zambia have departed the stage with heads held high as they finished third in their group after beating Costa Rica 3-1.
    • The self-belief and confidence, as well as the technical and tactical astuteness displayed by the African teams, shows that their opponents cannot take them lightly.

Women's World Cup: what still needs to be done to improve the lot of elite female footballers

Retrieved on: 
Friday, August 4, 2023

After the success of the 2019 WWC in France, the women’s competition has progressed to new heights for 2023 in Australia and New Zealand.

Key Points: 
  • After the success of the 2019 WWC in France, the women’s competition has progressed to new heights for 2023 in Australia and New Zealand.
  • Alongside other researchers, I have written about the gender gap in professional and elite-level women’s football in the last few years.
  • Fifa has also ensured that standards across staffing, base camps, accommodation and travel are delivered to the same level as the men’s competition.

Facilities and healthcare

    • A total of 362 women across teams attempting to qualify for this World Cup were surveyed, with 70% reporting poor gym facilities, 66% reporting poor or non-existent recovery facilities, and 54% saying they were not provided with a pre-tournament medical.
    • In addition 66% players had to take unpaid leave or vacation from work and almost 33% did not receive any compensation.

Injuries


    Given the findings from Fifpro on facilities, pitches and payment, it comes as no surprise that injury has become a hot topic of interest within women’s football. According to sports medicine specialists, women are six times more likely to rupture their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), and for this World Cup, nine of the top players are absent with the injury.

Gendered environment

    • A powerful piece published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine highlights a gendered environment approach to understanding ACL injuries.
    • This work describes how the social construction of gender affects the ACL injury cycle across the whole life of the athlete.
    • This includes how boys and girls learn to move (often differently) alongside inadequate training and competition environments for girls, and gendered cultural body norms.

Proper football kit

    • Menstruation, menopause and female hormone profiles across puberty, have been thought to have some impact on sports performance and injury.
    • This is part of a broader shift in sportswear manufacturers finally creating women-specific kit instead of the “hand-me-down men’s kit” culture many ex-players experienced.

Women’s bodies and experiences

    • Despite the increasing number of professional women footballers, their employment rights as mothers have often been overlooked.
    • Fifa regulations launched at the end of 2020 provided players with paid maternity leave for the first time.
    • Would their bodies recover to their pre-pregnancy form?