Awareness

Piero Cipollone: One step ahead: protecting the cyber resilience of financial infrastructures

Retrieved on: 
星期五, 一月 19, 2024

Bank market power, both in the loan and deposit market, has important implications for credit provision and for financial stability.

Key Points: 
  • Bank market power, both in the loan and deposit market, has important implications for credit provision and for financial stability.
  • This article discusses these issues through the lens of a simple theoretical framework.

Press release - Parliament ready for talks on an EU-wide Disability Card

Retrieved on: 
星期三, 一月 17, 2024

- Equal rights and conditions for EU Disability Card or Parking Card holders when travelling or visiting other EU countries

Key Points: 
  • - Equal rights and conditions for EU Disability Card or Parking Card holders when travelling or visiting other EU countries
    - EU Disability Card to be issued within 60 days, EU Parking Card within 30 days, both free of charge
    - MEPs want those moving to another member state for work or study to also be covered by the directive
    Parliament today adopted its mandate for negotiations with the Council on the EU disability card and the parking card for persons with disabilities.
  • Parliament’s mandate, prepared by the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, introduces deadlines for issuing and renewing the cards - within 60 days for the EU disability card and within 30 days for the parking card.
  • Parliament also introduces the option to request a digital version of the parking card, to be ready in 15 days.
  • MEPs propose that both cards should be available in physical and digital format and free of charge.

COVID barely gets a mention these days – here's why that's a dangerous situation

Retrieved on: 
星期三, 一月 17, 2024

For the year to December 2023, in England COVID rates peaked at around one in 24 people.

Key Points: 
  • For the year to December 2023, in England COVID rates peaked at around one in 24 people.
  • During the same month, Singapore also experienced record COVID cases and a spike in hospitalisations.
  • COVID, then, is still a major public health problem, accounting for 10,000 deaths in 50 countries and a 42% increase in hospitalisations during December 2023 alone.
  • COVID may not be a global health emergency at the moment, but it is still killing and harming far too many people worldwide.

How to fight COVID complacency

  • In future campaigns, boosters should be offered more broadly.
  • Cleaner air is essential for public health and will have benefits that extend beyond COVID.
  • Good ventilation can not only reduce the spread of COVID and other respiratory viruses, but can generally help reduce indoor air pollution, and can even improve things such as school attendance and concentration in the classroom.
  • Existing evidence suggests that masks do work to help reduce the transmission of COVID.
  • We can still live with COVID and at the same time respect, and try to reduce, the harm it can cause.


Simon Nicholas Williams has received funding from Senedd Cymru, Public Health Wales and the Wales Covid Evidence Centre for research on COVID-19, and has consulted for the World Health Organization. However, this article reflects the views of the author only, in his academic capacity at Swansea University, and no funding or organizational bodies were involved in the writing or content of this article.

Transhumanism: billionaires want to use tech to enhance our abilities – the outcomes could change what it means to be human

Retrieved on: 
星期三, 一月 17, 2024

For example, Elon Musk

Key Points: 
  • For example, Elon Musk
    has reportedly said he wants humans to merge with AI “to
    achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence”.
  • His company Neuralink aims to facilitate this convergence so that humans won’t be “left behind” as technology advances in the future.
  • While people with disabilities would be near-term recipients of these innovations, some believe technologies like this could be used to enhance abilities in everyone.

God-like role

  • It is not hard to understand why: they could be the central protagonists in the most important moment in history.
  • AGI is seen as vital to enabling us to take on the God-like role of designing our own evolutionary futures.
  • In the short term, the promises and the perils are probably overstated.
  • Meanwhile, AI has played a role in fuelling our polarised political landscape, with disinformation and more complex forms of manipulation made more effective by generative AI.
  • Indeed, AI systems are already causing many other forms of social and environmental harm.

A familiar story

  • Our misuse of the planet’s resources has set in train a sixth mass extinction of species and a climate crisis.
  • In addition, ongoing wars with increasingly potent weapons remain a part of our technological evolution.
  • If the human is conceived of as an environmental threat, then enhancement is surely that which redirects its exploitative lifeways.
  • That would be preferable to colonising and extending ourselves,
    with great hubris, at the expense of everything, and everyone, else.


Alexander Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Press release - An EU Disability Card to support persons with disabilities’ right to free movement

Retrieved on: 
星期日, 一月 14, 2024

Persons with disabilities regularly encounter barriers when travelling or visiting another member state as their disability status is not always recognised across the EU.

Key Points: 
  • Persons with disabilities regularly encounter barriers when travelling or visiting another member state as their disability status is not always recognised across the EU.
  • To ensure third country nationals who reside in the EU are covered, the Commission put forward a complementary proposal.
  • Free of charge, format, and deadlines
    MEPs propose that the disability card should be issued or renewed within 60 days of someone applying for it and the parking card within 30 days.
  • They also introduce the option of requesting a digital version of the parking card, to be ready in 15 days.

'Cli-fi' might not save the world, but writing it could help with your eco-anxiety

Retrieved on: 
星期一, 一月 8, 2024

But even outside of being directly effected, there is evidence that mere awareness of climate change can be detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing.

Key Points: 
  • But even outside of being directly effected, there is evidence that mere awareness of climate change can be detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing.
  • If just knowing about climate change is emotionally difficult, what is it like spending years focusing on and writing about the topic?

What can a genre do?


Cli-fi has been touted as one of the ways to help save the world, with an emphasis on how imagining our future might make us reconsider our relationship to the natural world.

  • Fictions in this genre have primarily imagined dystopian worlds where the very worst has happened and humanity is (often barely) surviving in flooded or desolate wastelands.
  • These apocalyptic visions are meant to serve as warnings, to galvanise us to action, making sure this bleak future doesn’t happen.
  • This seems a good idea in theory, but do dystopian fictions help us engage with the climate crisis?

Waking in the night

  • Their responses made it clear that writing about a climate-changed future does more than bring up the anticipated negative emotions.
  • Writers of climate fiction are often drawn to the genre because they are already thinking about the climate and feeling anxious.
  • I had waking patches in the night over that time, where I’d be very intensely imagining something and grieving it […] But to be fair, I do that anyway.
  • But many of the writers spoke of the writing process as helping, not exacerbating, their anxiety.
  • We have to imagine ten years in the future and we have to imagine 50 years in the future.


Read more:
Writing can improve mental health – here's how

Theraputic benefits

  • The mental health and wellbeing benefits of creative writing have been established.
  • Studies have explored how writing can reduce anxiety in those affected by natural disasters.
  • Yet, as the writers quoted here have shown, the imaginative process of crafting fictional narratives about difficult topics comes with its own benefits.
  • In discussing their findings from one of the few studies to focus on the wellbeing effect of writing fictional narratives, Catherine Deveney and Patrick Lawson state: “it is in the craft of writing, the combination of technique and emotional catharsis, that some of the therapeutic benefits of writing can be found”.
  • We need to shift from worrying about the effects of cli-fi texts to thinking about the benefits of writing creatively as we imagine our possible futures.


This research receives funding from Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Alex Cothren and Amy T Matthews do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

How Ireland's Nollaig na mBan evolved from a day off housework to a celebration of women's achievements

Retrieved on: 
星期五, 一月 5, 2024

My grandmother loved Nollaig na mBan, when my Dad would collect her around lunchtime and bring her to visit with her sister in Dún Chaoin, a village in west County Kerry.

Key Points: 
  • My grandmother loved Nollaig na mBan, when my Dad would collect her around lunchtime and bring her to visit with her sister in Dún Chaoin, a village in west County Kerry.
  • They would both dress in their Sunday best, my grandmother wearing the colourful beaded necklace she saved for special occasions.
  • My dad was their chauffeur because Nollaig na mBan was traditionally a “day off” for women after organising and executing a busy Christmas holiday for their families.

Celebrating Nollaig na mBan around Ireland

  • The tradition of Nollaig na mBan has been celebrated for generations in West Kerry.
  • Elsewhere in counties Kerry and Cork, as well as other Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas it was also common, but in many other communities around Ireland it was not a tradition at all.
  • In 1970, Danaher wrote of Nollaig na mBan: “Christmas Day was marked by beef and whiskey, men’s fare, while on Little Christmas Day the dainties preferred by women – cake, tea and wine, were more in evidence”.

Modern-day Nollaig na mBan traditions

  • For the second year, a Nollaig na mBan festival is celebrating women in north County Dublin.
  • Online discussion around Nollaig na mBan often centres on celebrating historical figures or creatives, alongside pictures women post of themselves with their female family members and friends.
  • Nollaig na mBan is a day to remember how far women in Ireland have come since the latew 1970s before which bans against contraception and married women working limited our freedom.


[email protected] previously received funding but not currently from Culture Ireland, Arts Council of Ireland, Ealaín na Gaeltachta, Kerry County Council. She is affiliated with the Board of the Arts Council of Ireland and works at the Folklore Department, University College Cork.

Can you really be allergic to alcohol?

Retrieved on: 
星期五, 一月 5, 2024

Some people get allergy-like symptoms when drinking alcohol, but can you really be allergic to alcohol?

Key Points: 
  • Some people get allergy-like symptoms when drinking alcohol, but can you really be allergic to alcohol?
  • The reason is that alcohol dilates blood vessels, which then sets the stage for a symphony of bodily responses.
  • Unlike allergies, which involve the immune system, intolerances arise when the body lacks the necessary enzymes to digest and eliminate alcohol.
  • True allergic reactions stemming from yeasts are a rare occurrence, dampening the suspicion that this microscopic organism is the chief cause.

Literature inspired my medical career: Why the humanities are needed in health care

Retrieved on: 
星期五, 一月 5, 2024

As a published poet and scholar of the health humanities and ethics, I have a foot squarely planted in each field – or perhaps more accurately, I stand in what I perceive as the overlapping field of healing and poetic practices.

Key Points: 
  • As a published poet and scholar of the health humanities and ethics, I have a foot squarely planted in each field – or perhaps more accurately, I stand in what I perceive as the overlapping field of healing and poetic practices.
  • I think literature can do this for other health care providers, too.

Narrative competence in medicine

  • Narrative medicine is the practice of close reading and reflective writing to build narrative competence.
  • Physician and narrative medicine scholar Rita Charon describes narrative competence as “the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret and act on the stories and plights of others.” Narrative competence, then, could inspire a person to pursue a career in health care and possibly make them a better clinician.
  • In fact, studies of narrative medicine programs have demonstrated that they tend to not only increase students’ empathy and communication skills but also their tolerance for ambiguity and self-confidence.

Using the humanities to address health inequity

  • Might narrative competence also expand clinicians’ understanding of health disparities and urge them to act in ways that lectures full of statistics couldn’t?
  • The burgeoning field of critical health humanities theorizes that stories and art can help clinicians understand the unequal realities of different people’s lives and make clinician-patient relationships more therapeutic.
  • This could lead her to make her practice more accessible to her patients – an action that would improve equity in health care for people with disabilities.
  • Before ever meeting my first patient, I gained an expanded knowledge of the diversity of human experience from the books I read.
  • This negates the fact that disease and health happen in varied and disparate social, cultural and political contexts.

Fitting in health humanities education

  • There are ways to fit in more health humanities in all the busyness and bustle of notoriously grueling medical education.
  • I’ve also led other health care providers in creative writing exercises during workshops, lectures and classes.
  • Many institutions host book clubs, story slams, film screenings and other opportunities for medical learners to engage with the humanities.
  • Monica Sok’s “ABC for Refugees” powerfully paints a portrait of a young child caught between languages and cultures – a reality that many pediatric patients face.
  • “Ode to Small Towns” by Tyree Daye upends common assumptions about rural life and demonstrates the meaning of place in hymnlike vernacular.
  • This article is part of Art & Science Collide, a series examining the intersections between art and science.

Melding literature and medicine

  • The possibilities for collaboration between literature and medicine are wide open.
  • The history, sociopolitical context, imaginative perspective and reflective practices the humanities offer may improve the practice of medicine.


Irène Mathieu, MD, MPH is an iTHRIV Scholar. The iTHRIV Scholars Program is supported in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers UL1TR003015 and KL2TR003016.

Canada’s Nature Agreement underscores the need for true reconciliation with Indigenous nations

Retrieved on: 
星期四, 一月 4, 2024

The agreement stressed the full collaboration of Indigenous Peoples in alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Key Points: 
  • The agreement stressed the full collaboration of Indigenous Peoples in alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
  • The Nature Agreement follows a series of historic federal investments in nature conservation over the past several years.
  • Like the previous announcements, the 2023 Nature Agreement includes funding for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, or IPCAs.

Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas

  • Unlike regular parks and protected areas in Canada, IPCAs are established and maintained by First Nations, Métis and Inuit governments.
  • Indigenous governments establish IPCAs under their own Indigenous laws, while some also choose to pursue protection under Canadian law.
  • IPCAs are varied, but typically support ecological restoration or protection and local economic development while centring Indigenous cultures, languages, knowledge and laws.

Roadblocks to reconciliation

  • Canadian governments continue to grant tenures and licences to companies for logging, mining, fish farms and other impactful activities inside IPCAs against the wishes of Indigenous nations.
  • These actions go against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its foundational principle of free, prior and informed consent.
  • Indigenous governments are sometimes forced to compensate companies by buying out tenures to ensure protection of their IPCAs.
  • This assertion is in spite of the Canadian government’s own guidance for reconciliation and legal pluralism — including the recognition of Indigenous rights and building equal relationships with Indigenous Peoples.

Systemic change will advance reconciliation

  • The challenges IPCAs surface can be embraced as catalysts for reconciliation.
  • It is the kind of transformative work that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for in all sectors of society.
  • As such, how Canadian governments and the conservation sector respond to the roadblocks encountered by Indigenous governments advancing IPCAs is crucial.
  • Only by assisting these initiatives can we build meaningful and lasting IPCAs which not only restore and protect ecosystems but also advance reconciliation through Indigenous governance, laws, and knowledge systems.
  • Justine Townsend received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for her doctoral research.
  • Robin J. Roth receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#895-2019-1019) and is the principal investigator and co-lead of the Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership.