Premier Study Finds New Evidence of Both Mother-to-Child (Trickle-Down) and Child-to-Mother (Trickle-Up) Relationships in Civic Education and Engagement
PHOENIX, September 12, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy today announced an initiative to support new research on civics and also published its premier policy brief, titled New Evidence on Trickle-Down and Trickle-Up Influences in Civic Education and Engagement.
Conducted by Kirsten Slungaard Mumma, Ph.D., assistant professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, the brief evaluated K-12, birth, and voting records for over 580,000 students from the state of Indiana. It found evidence of significant trickle-down (mother-to-child) and trickle-up (child-to-mother) relationships in civic education and engagement. Children whose mothers voted in the previous presidential election, for example, were 20.3 percentage points more likely to vote in their first election. That indicates a 64% increase in the probability of voting.
The brief found that trickle-up relationships—in which the political behavior of children influences that of their mothers—are also broadly significant but are largest for non-white children and children who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. This suggests a pathway for “spillover effects” for civic education and engagement interventions, meaning these interventions could improve civic outcomes not only for students but also for their families.
“These findings are novel, major, and exciting,” said Institute Director of Public Policy Liam Julian. “They will be of serious interest to national, state, and local elected representatives; to social scientists; to educators; and, of course, to parents and their children.”
New Evidence on Trickle-Down and Trickle-Up Influences in Civic Education and Engagement is the first of several policy briefs and research reports on civics that the O’Connor Institute will publish over the coming months and years.
“High-quality research in civics is especially crucial now,” said Matt Feeney, chair of the O’Connor Institute’s Board of Directors. “We are honored to carry forward the civics legacy of Justice O’Connor by investing resources in creating new civics knowledge to help inform our nation’s parents, educators, civic leaders, and public policy decision-makers.”
Kirsten Slungaard Mumma is assistant professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds an A.B., an Ed.M., and a Ph.D., all from Harvard. Her research is in the economics of education. She studies how education programs and policies affect the economic, social, and political outcomes of children and adults.
About the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy
Founded in 2009 by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the O’Connor Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(3), continues her distinguished legacy and lifetime work to advance American democracy through multigenerational civil discourse, civic engagement and civics education.
Source: Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy
The European Union has survived — and thrived — in the past five years and is ready for the next challenge: artificial intelligence.
That’s one of the prominent messages Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered in her annual State of the Union address — the last such speech ahead of the looming European election in 2024, and thus possibly in her career as leader of the EU executive.
Since her 2019 speech as president-elect, Ursula von der Leyen has stewarded the EU through a pandemic, economic crisis and a war on European soil.
With EU elections now only eight months away, this year’s speech focused on the Commission’s work over the course of its mandate, with von der Leyen claiming a 90 percent success rate in delivering on political guidelines she presented in 2019 (although this figure has been contested.)
Looking to the future, the speech paid more attention than previous years to the impact of artificial intelligence and technology on the European Union, and plans for significant enlargement of the bloc.
We crunched the numbers on von der Leyen’s latest, and possibly last, script.
With research from POLITICO’s Research and Analysis Division.
Roche said Friday that its Alecensa drug demonstrated the ability to reduce recurrence of lung cancer for patients in the early stage of the disease.
The Swiss pharmaceutical company said the results, from a Phase 3 study of 257 people which compared the treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy, met its primary goal of disease-free survival in people with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. About half of people with this type of lung cancer experience a recurrence of the disease after surgery, Roche said.
Roche said that it found no unexpected safety issues and will submit the data to global health authorities.
Past-year use of marijuana and hallucinogens by adults 35 to 50 years old continued a long-term upward trajectory to reach all-time highs in 2022, according to the Monitoring the Future (MTF) panel study, an annual survey of substance use behaviors and attitudes of adults 19 to 60 years old. Among younger adults aged 19 to 30, reports of past-year marijuana and hallucinogen use as well as marijuana and nicotine vaping significantly increased in the past five years, with marijuana use and vaping at their highest historic levels for this age group in 2022. The MTF study is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and is conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, Ann Arbor.
While binge drinking has generally declined for the past 10 years among younger adults, adults aged 35 to 50 in 2022 reported the highest prevalence of binge drinking ever recorded for this age group, which also represents a significant past-year, five-year, and 10-year increase.
“Substance use is not limited to teens and young adults, and these data help us understand how people use drugs across the lifespan,” said NIDA director, Nora Volkow, M.D. “Understanding these trends is a first step, and it is crucial that research continues to illuminate how substance use and related health impacts may change over time. We want to ensure that people from the earliest to the latest stages in…
Glazed eyes. One syllable responses. The steady tinkle of beeps and buzzes coming out of a smartphone’s speakers.
It’s a familiar scene for parents around the world as they battle with their kids’ internet use. Just ask Věra Jourová: When her 10-year old grandson is in front of a screen “nothing around him exists any longer, not even the granny,” the transparency commissioner told a European Parliament event in June.
Countries are now taking the first steps to rein in excessive — and potentially harmful — use of big social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
China wants to limit screen time to 40 minutes for children aged under eight, while the U.S. state of Utah has imposed a digital curfew for minors and parental consent to use social media. France has targeted manufacturers, requiring them to install a parental control system that can be activated when their device is turned on.
The EU has its own sweeping plans. It’staking bold steps with its Digital Services Act (DSA) that, from the end of this month, will force the biggest online platforms — TikTok, Facebook, Youtube — to open up their systems to scrutiny by the European Commission and prove that they’re doing their best to make sure their products aren’t harming kids.
The penalty for non-compliance? A hefty fine of up to six percent of companies’ global annual revenue.
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The exact link between social media use and teen mental health is debated.
These digital giants make their money from catching your attention and holding on to it as long as possible, raking in advertisers’ dollars in the process. And they’re pros at it: endless scrolling combined with the periodic, but unpredictable, feedback from likes or notifications, dole out hits of stimulation that mimic the effect of slot machines on our brains’ wiring.
It’s a craving that’s hard enough for adults to manage (just ask a journalist). The worry is that for vulnerable young people, that pull comes with very real, and negative, consequences: anxiety, depression, body image issues, and poor concentration.
Large mental health surveys in the U.S. — where the data is most abundant — have found a noticeable increase over the last 15 years in adolescent unhappiness, a tendency that continued through the pandemic.
These increases cut across a number of measures: suicidal thoughts, depression, but also more mundanely, difficulties sleeping. This trend is most pronounced among teenage girls.
Smartphone use has exploded, with more people getting one at a younger age | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
At the same time smartphone use has exploded, with more people getting one at a younger age. Social media use, measured as the number of times a given platform is accessed per day, is also way up.
There are some big caveats. The trend is most visible in the Anglophone world, although it’s also observable elsewhere in Europe. And there’s a whole range of confounding factors. Waning stigma around mental health might mean that young people are more comfortable describing what they’re going through in surveys. Changing political and socio-economic factors, as well as worries about climate change, almost certainly play a role.
Researchers on all sides of the debate agree that technology factors into it, but also that it doesn’t fully explain the trend. They diverge on where to put the emphasis.
Luca Braghieri, an assistant professor of economics at Bocconi university in Italy, said he originally thought concerns over Facebook were overblown, but he’s changed his mind after starting to research the topic (and has since deleted his Facebook account).
Braghieri and his colleagues combed through U.S. college mental health surveys from 2004-2006, the period when Facebook was first rolled-out in U.S. colleges, and before it was available to the general public. He found that in colleges where Facebook was introduced, students’ mental health dipped in a way not seen in universities where it hadn’t yet launched.
Braghieri said the comparison with colleges where Facebook hadn’t yet arrived allowed the researchersto rule out unidentified other variables that might have been simultaneous.
Faced with mounting pressure in the last years, platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have introduced various tools to assuage concerns, including parental control | Staff/AFP via Getty Images
Elia Abi-Jaoude, a psychiatrist and academic at the University of Toronto, said he observed the effect first-hand when working at a child and adolescent psychiatric in-patient unit starting in 2015.
“I was basically on the front lines, witnessing the dramatic rise in struggles among adolescents,” said Abi-Jaoude, who has also published research on the topic. He noticed “all sorts of affective complaints, depression, anxiety — but for them to make it to the inpatient setting — we’re talking suicidality. And it was very striking to see.”
His biggest concern? Sleep deprivation — and the mood swings and worse school performance that accompany it. “I think a lot of our population is chronically sleep deprived,” said Abi-Jaoude, pointing the finger at smartphones and social media use.
The flipside
New technologies have gotten caught up in panics before. Looking back, they now seem quaint, even funny.
“In the 1940s, there were concerns about radio addiction and children. In the 1960s it was television addiction. Now we have phone addiction. So I think the question is: Is now different? And if so, how?” asks Amy Orben, from the U.K. Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge.
She doesn’t dismiss the possible harms of social media, but she argues for a nuanced approach. That means honing in on the specific people who are most vulnerable, and the specific platforms and features that might be most risky.
Another major ask: more data.
There’s a “real disconnect” between the general belief and the actual evidence that social media use is harmful, said Orben, who went on to praise the new EU’s rules. Among its various provisions, the new EU rules will allow researchers for the first time to get their hands on data usually buried deep inside company servers.
Orben said that while much attention has gone into the negative effects of digital media use at the expense of positive examples, research she conducted into adolescent well-being during pandemic lockdowns, for example, showed that teens with access to laptops were happier than those without.
But when it comes to risk of harm to kids, Europe has taken a precautionary approach.
“Not all kids will experience harm due to these risks from smartphones and social media use,” Patti Valkenburg, head of the Center for Research on Children, Adolescents and the Media at the University of Amsterdam, told a Commission event in June. “But for minors, we need to adopt the precautionary principle. The fact that harm can be caused should be enough to justify measures to prevent or mitigate potential risk.”
Parental controls
Faced with mounting pressure in the past years, platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have introduced various tools to assuage concerns, including parental control. Since 2021, YouTube and Instagram send teenagers using their platform reminders to take breaks. TikTok in March announced minors have to enter a passcode after an hour on the app to continue watching videos.
Very large online platforms will also be banned from tracking kids’ online activity to show them personalized advertisements | Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images
But the social media companies will soon have to go further.
By the end of August, very large online platforms with over 45 million users in the European Union — including companies like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube — will have to comply with the longest list of rules.
They will have to hand in to the Digital Services Actwatchdog — the European Commission — their first yearly assessment of the major impact of their design, algorithms, advertising and terms of services on a range of societal issues such as the protection of minors and mental wellbeing. They will then have to propose and implement concrete measuresunder the scrutiny of an audit company, the Commission and vetted researchers.
Measures could include ensuring that algorithms don’t recommend videos about dieting to teenage girls or turning off autoplay by default so that minors don’t stay hooked watching content.
Platforms will also be banned from tracking kids’ online activity to show them personalized advertisements. Manipulative designs such as never-ending timelines to glue users to platforms have been connected to addictive behavior, and will be off limits for tech companies.
Brussels is also working with tech companies, industry associations and children’s groups on rules for how to design platforms in a way that protects minors. The Code of Conduct on Age Appropriate Design planned for 2024 would then provide an explicit list of measures that the European Commission wants to see large social media companies carry out to comply with the new law.
Yet, the EU’s new content law won’t be the magic wand parents might be looking for. The content rulebook doesn’t apply to popular entertainment like online games, messaging apps nor the digital devices themselves.
It remains unclear how the European Commission will potentially investigate and go after social media companiesif they consider that they have failed to limit their platforms’ negative consequences for mental well-being. External auditors and researchers could also face obstacles to wade through troves of data and lines of code to find smoking guns andchallenge tech companies’ claims.
How much companies are willing to run up against their business model in the service of their users’ mental health is also an open question, said John Albert, a policy expert at the tech-focused advocacy group AlgorithmWatch. Tech giants have made a serious effort at fighting the most egregious abuses, like cyber-bullying, or eating disorders, Albert said. And the level of transparency made possible by the new rules was unprecedented.
“But when it comes to much broader questions about mental health and how these algorithmic recommender systems interact with users and affect them over time… I don’t know what we should expect them to change,” he explained. The back-and-forth vetting process is likely going to be drawn out as the Commission comes to grips with the complex platforms.
“In the short term, at least, I would expect some kind of business as usual.”
Speedy implementation of a combination of measures such as face masks, lockdowns and international border controls, “unequivocally” reduced COVID-19 infections, a major review has shown.
The report published Thursday by the Royal Society looked at findings from six evidence reviews that analyzed thousands of studies to assess the effect of masks, social distancing and lockdowns, test trace and isolate systems, border controls, environmental controls and communications. It found evidence that each of these measures — which are called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” — were effective, albeit to varying degrees, when looked at individually. However, the evidence in favor of using these tools was stronger when countries combined several measures.
The report could have significant implications for decision-making in future outbreaks, with Mark Walport, chair of the report’s expert working group and foreign secretary of the Royal Society, saying that “having protocols in advance is really important.” He said what policymakers should take from the research is “there is evidence that non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective, but … they have to be applied as packages, and they have to be applied as early as possible.”
The most effective measure, according to the review, was one of the most controversial — restrictions on movement and social interactions through lockdowns, distancing and rules around the size of gatherings. These were repeatedly found to be associated with a “significant reduction” in transmission of the virus, with the more stringent the measure, the greater the effect.
For masks, 75 studies were assessed, with 63 of these finding positive effects. Unlike the January Cochrane review, which only looked at randomized controlled trials, this review also included observational studies. The Cochrane review was unable to find conclusive evidence that masks helped stop respiratory viruses.
Chris Dye, professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford, who led the review on masks for the Royal Society, said if they had only looked at randomized controlled trials they would have come to the same conclusion as the Cochrane review. But the researchers behind the paper released Thursday chose to analyze a larger body of studies and found strong evidence that masks work.
A key finding from the research was these type of measures were most effective when implemented early on. Dye said that while there is a 100-day mission to develop drugs, therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics for a future pandemic, “it would be marvelous” if there were a 100-day vision for non-pharmaceutical interventions. He said this would mean countries could “put in place the necessary mechanisms for preparedness, which would be to implement [non-pharmaceutical interventions] when some unknown new pathogen comes along.”
While a future pandemic could be transmitted sexually or gastrointestinally, Salim Abdool Karim, a member of the working group on the report and pro-vice-chancellor for research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the biggest concern was a respiratory virus. “The lessons of SARS-CoV-2 have to feature in our thinking as we prepare for a next pandemic that would be a respiratory virus of which we’ve got no prior exposure and so we don’t have a pre-existing immunity. The lessons of this report are going to feature strongly in anyone’s deliberations,” he said.
However, responding to the report, Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University cautioned that impact on virus transmission is not the only factor that should be taken into account when deciding to use such measures. “The report does point out explicitly that NPIs can impose a great number of costs and burdens, in terms social and economic impacts, and indeed of increasing ill health … but makes it very explicit that this piece of work isn’t going to consider any of that.” “I think that limits quite severely its effectiveness in helping decisions on what should be done in the next pandemic, whenever it arises.”
WREXHAM, Wales — Sitting in the Royal Oak, a narrow but implausibly long pub in Wrexham’s town center, Gary Tipping is reflecting on the rollercoaster fortunes of his favorite football team.
Wrexham Association Football Club (A.F.C.) — a lower-league team barely recognizable since it was bought up by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2021 — has just lost its opening game of the season. But little can dampen the enthusiasm of Tipping or his fellow fans.
“What they’ve done for this town, it’s beyond what I could have ever dreamed of,” he says.
“People want to see the town and breathe in the atmosphere here,” adds his 21-year-old son Sam, who’s been going to the football with Gary since he was 5 years old. “There’s a hype around the place.”
“Hype” was not a word formerly associated with Wrexham. The third-oldest professional football club in the world, it had fallen on hard times and was struggling to stay afloat in the 2010s. But everything changed when Reynolds and McElhenney arrived, in search of a project and with movie-star money to spend.
Wrexham’s fortunes were transformed by new players and a new manager, financed by American dollars. The fans flooded back. A Netflix documentary series charting their progress, “Welcome to Wrexham,” was a smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic. In May, the rejuvenated team was promoted back into the professional football league after a 15-year absence.
The town, too, feels like a different place.
Strolling through a lively Wrexham high street on a Saturday night, local call center worker Christopher Lamb points out a raft of new bars that have opened over the past two years.
“The town was going downhill for quite a while since 2010. But it’s changed a lot. Now you get a lot of American tourists here — though they don’t always go to the places that need the money,” Lamb says.
But not every ailing football club — nor every ailing town — finds a superhero.
Football in the English leagues — where Wrexham play, despite the town’s north Wales location — is a wildly unequal game. The hundreds of millions of pounds powering top-level Premier League clubs contrast sharply with the tiny budgets of lower-league teams, most of whom struggle just to stay afloat.
Wrexham faced the same endless financial battles before its unlikely takeover, with financial distress leaving the team at its lowest sporting ebb. Other clubs under constant threat of extinction look on in envy, and with a lingering sense of injustice.
Wrexham’s fortunes were transformed by new players and a new manager, financed by American dollars | Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images
Knights in shining armor?
“You’ve got wonderful things like Wrexham — that’s a dream isn’t it?” says Jenny Chapman, formerly the MP for the northeast town of Darlington, and now a Labour member of the House of Lords. “We were hoping for that knight in shining armor.”
First elected to parliament in 2010, Chapman was thrust straight into a local nightmare: the imminent collapse of her town’s beloved football club.
Darlington F.C. had been placed into emergency financial proceedings multiple times through the 2000s, having gambled unwisely on an outsized new stadium on the outskirts of the town. That purchase had been covered in part by a £4 million loan taken out by the club’s former owner, George Reynolds — who arrived with ambitions of taking the club to the Premier League, but ended up in prison for tax avoidance.
“It was a very difficult period and it was overwhelming,” Chapman recalls.
“I’m not a football fan at all, never pretended to be. But I felt very strongly that Darlington was a club with a real heritage to it and it was an important part of the community that needed to be supported and should survive,” she adds.
As the club desperately looked for a buyer to save it from liquidation, Chapman spent hours each day on the phone with the club’s administrator, and tried to vet and cajole prospective buyers.
It was to no avail. Darlington was eventually expelled from the Football Association in 2012. A phoenix club — owned by fans — was formed in its place, and is currently attempting to rise from the very bottom of the English football pyramid.
“There definitely wasn’t any support from Westminster,” Chapman recalls.
But a decade on, there are signs Westminster is starting to pay attention. A similar collapse in 2019 at Bury F.C. — another lower-league cub in the north of England — grabbed headlines far beyond the Greater Manchester area, and happened just as the politics around football were starting to shift.
The constituencies containing Wrexham, Bury and Darlington all flipped from Labour to the Conservatives in 2019. All could be characterized as the kind of “Red Wall” seats that the Tories had promised under Boris Johnson to “level up” and regenerate after years of post-industrial decline.
Football is of particular importance in these seats. Research by the center-right Onward think tank earlier this year showed that people in the north of England “are more likely to view their local football team as one of the main sources of pride in the local area.”
“You’ve got to think about the institutions that are fundamental and core to these places,” says Tory MP John Stevenson, chair of the Northern Research Group, a backbench Conservative caucus focused on supporting northern England.
Bury F.C. was expelled from the English Football League in 2019, after failing in its bid to find a buyer | WPA pool photo by Danny Lawson/Getty Images
“I always come up with two: one is universities and the second one is football clubs. As a social enterprise, an economic enterprise and a sporting one, football clubs are very much at the forefront of their communities.”
Dead and Bury’d
Bury was expelled from the English Football League in 2019, after the cash-strapped club failed in its bid to find a buyer. Onward’s research shows that northern clubs — like Bury and Darlington — have been particularly exposed to financial stress, often by unscrupulous owners who stretched them far beyond their means.
In response to Bury’s expulsion, Conservative MP and former Sports Minister Tracey Crouch was commissioned by Johnson’s government to carry out a fan-led review into the governance of English football clubs. The review, published in November 2021, recommended a new, independent regulator for English football and the introduction of tests to better police club ownership.
The government accepted Crouch’s call to establish a regulator in a white paper — a draft legislative document — responding to her review. But there’s no sign yet of any legislation to formally enact her recommendations, prompting angry claims of foot-dragging.
“The fan-led review went a long way … but it seems incredibly slow. It’s taken two years just for a white paper to come forward,” says Christian Wakeford, the MP for Bury North — who switched from the Conservatives to Labour last year.
“There are so many clubs that are on that threshold of not existing anymore — we don’t want anymore Burys. It’s not fair for the fans and it’s not fair for a town,” he adds.
Tory MP and NRG Chair Stevenson adds: “I’m of the belief that governments of all persuasions neglected [and] ignored northern communities. It’s not just about economies, it’s also about communities. And football clubs are very much part of that.”
A government official pointed POLITICO to a speech made by Sports Minister Stuart Andrew in June to the English Football League’s annual conference, in which he acknowledged that there are “a number of clubs across the EFL that are in real distress today.” Andrew said the government intends to publish its response to a consultation on the white paper “in the coming weeks.”
While some MPs eagerly await the government’s next move, not everyone is convinced it’s the state’s place to try to save clubs from the vagaries of the market — particularly given that the country’s top flight appears to be in rude health.
Tory peer and West Ham United Vice Chairman Karren Brady said last year that “much of [the fan-led review] should be welcomed like a giant hole in Wembley’s pitch.”
“It is messing with an industry which works better than most, and it’s hard to see what football has in common with banks or other financial institutions who also have regulators,” she wrote in the Sun newspaper. “We have to remember the Premier League is the envy of world sport, so why break it because Bury went bust?”
This is Wrexham
Back in Wrexham, the signs of what forward-thinking — and extremely wealthy — owners can do are on full display. It’s little surprise that MPs keen for their own local success story are eyeing the club with envy.
Wrexham may have lost its opening game of the season, but little can dampen the enthusiasm of its fans | Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images
“All of a sudden, everyone knows who Wrexham is — it’s had a massive effect,” says Geraint Andrews, a local engineer standing outside another thriving town center bar.
Indeed, the whole town center is awash with Wrexham A.F.C. replica shirts and memorabilia dedicated to the club and the “This Is Wrexham” documentary series. A Wrexham A.F.C. mural adorns the glass of the town’s branch of McDonald’s. U.S. flags held by tourists or fans who have taken the Hollywood stars to heart are only narrowly outnumbered by Welsh national flags.
Since the takeover in 2021, the town of Wrexham has even been officially upgraded to a city. Amid the takeover buzz, it was also shortlisted for the U.K. City of Culture title last year.
For fans of other small-town clubs, like Bury and Darlington — not to mention the currently struggling Derby County — just some stability would do.
“Not everybody can win the league,” Stevenson of the Northern Research Group notes.
“But through the good times and the difficult times, you want clubs to have financial stability and good management. That’s what we’re asking for.”
“I think it is safe to say that animals are beneficial to our mental and physical health,” says Nancy Gee, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University, told NPR.
According to the National Institute of Health, petting a pup has decreased levels of cortisol (a stress-related hormone) and lower blood pressure. Other studies have found that animals can reduce loneliness, increase feelings of social support, and boost your mood
Dog ownership has also been linked to a longer life and better heart health, especially for heart attack and stroke survivors, according to a new study and a separate meta-analysis published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a journal of the American Heart Association.
You don’t have to own a dog to reap the rewards. New research from Washington State University, with support from the Waltham Petcare Science Institute, found that therapy dogs can help boost college students’ attention and memory and help them tackle stress.
In another study, nine-year-olds were asked to pet dogs twice a week for 20 minutes for four weeks. Researchers measured the kids’ cortisol levels before and after the four weeks of cuddling. The result: The kids who interacted with the dogs had much lower cortisol levels than the kids who didn’t.
Why do dogs chill us out?
What is it about dogs that makes humans relax? The research on that is less clear. NPR asked Megan Mueller, an associate professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, to weigh in. She hypothesizes that dogs take us out of our heads and make us live in the moment.
“They’re experiencing their environment with wonder and awe all the time, and they’re not bringing up what happened to them earlier in the day or what they’re thinking about in the future. They’re there right now,”
And humans aren’t the only ones getting the benefits. Dogs dig it, too. “It’s a two-way street,” said Gee. “The dogs’ oxytocin also increases when they interact with a human.”
British authorities have launched an investigation after officials mistakenly sent emails meant for U.S. military intelligence to the government in Mali, a Russian ally.
Officials from the U.K. Ministry of Defense were supposed to be sending emails to the Pentagon, but accidentally sent them to Mali’s government instead, the Times reported Thursday. The mistake was the result of a typo, as the Pentagon’s domain name is “.mil,” while Mali’s is “.ml.”
The Ministry of Defense said Friday they were investigating the incident.
“We have opened an investigation after a small number of emails were mistakenly forwarded to an incorrect email domain,” a spokesperson for the ministry said, Reuters reported.
According to the Times, while most emails sent to Mali were innocuous — containing information such as dates when the employees from the foreign ministry were on holiday — others contained “detailed descriptions” of British research into hypersonic missiles.
However, the Ministry of Defense said the Times’ claims were misleading.
“This report misleadingly claims state secrets were sent to Mali’s email domain. We assess fewer than 20 routine emails were sent to an incorrect domain & are confident there was no breach of operational security or disclosure of technical data,” the ministry said Friday. “An investigation is ongoing. Emails of this kind are not classified at secret or above.”
According to Reuters, the spokesperson said all sensitive information is shared “on systems designed to minimize the risk of misdirection.”
“The MOD constantly reviews its processes and is currently undertaking a program of work to improve information management, data loss prevention, and the control of sensitive information,” they said.
Earlier this month, an investigation by the Financial Times found that millions of emails meant for the Pentagon have been sent to Mali as a result of the same typo. Some of these emails included sensitive information, such as diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and officers’ travel details, the investigation found
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It’s not every day that a pair of sunglasses causes your downfall. But that’s what happened to Bjørnar Moxnes, a Norwegian left-wing party leader who was caught on camera stealing a pair of luxury sunglasses from Oslo airport.
“A lot of people have asked me how I could do something so stupid. I’ve asked myself that many times in recent weeks. I don’t have an adequate explanation,” Moxnes wrote on Facebook.
In honor of Moxnes’ fall from grace, POLITICO brings you some of the most embarrassing resignations in European politics (and there were a lot to choose from). From sex scandals to misused government funds to petty theft, here are 11 of the most shameful examples with a facepalm ranking from 1 (yikes, that’s embarrassing) to 5 (dear lord, what have you done?).
Tractor Porn
Facepalm rating:
UK Conservative MP Neil Parish resigned after being caught watching porn in the House of Commons chamber in 2022. Parish claimed it was a “moment of madness” and said he chanced upon the offending adult content accidentally while Googling tractors, only to later admit that he did then look at actual porn (it’s unclear if the porn involved tractors).
Parish admitted in an interview that his wife always found him “oversexed.” He added that she would tell him “I’ll get the scissors to you if you don’t behave yourself. Snippety, snip” if he got “a little too amorous.” A classic case of TMI.
Cuban cigars and a private jet
Facepalm rating:
When Haiti was hit by an earthquake in 2010, French Development Minister Alain Joyandet was ready to help. To get to an international aid conference held in Martinique, Joyandet hired a private jet worth a cool €116,500 — not a great look. He resigned after the scandal hit the headlines.
Joyandet was not the only minister found to have wasted taxpayer money under former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Junior minister Christan Blanc came under fire for buying €12,000 worth of Cuban cigars using public cash. Alas, Blanc couldn’t remember who had smoked them all. “I smoke two a day … that’s the maximum,” he said. Who consumed the remaining thousands of euros worth of cigars? he was asked. “I don’t know.”
Tax hypocrisy
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Former French Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac used to be a strong advocate against overseas tax havens. You’ll never guess what he was later found guilty of. It was tax fraud! Of course it was. Cahuzac’s illegal fiscal activities were first made public in a 2012 investigation by news site Mediapart, which reported he had failed to declare money kept in a Swiss bank account for close to 20 years. Oops! The Panama Papers confirmed that Cahuzac also owned a company in the Seychelles. He was sentenced to two years in prison for money laundering and tax fraud.
There was some good news that came out of this case, the creation of an ethics body, the Haute Autorité de la Transparence pour la Vie Publique.
The City of Light — and graphic sex messages
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The 2020 race to be mayor of Paris was riddled with internal feuds and party rivalry. And then Benjamin Griveaux — the La République En Marche candidate and one of Emmanuel Macron’s biggest supporters — made everyone forget all about it as he was hit with allegations that he sent graphic videos to an unidentified woman. Screenshots of sexually explicit messages attributed to Griveaux — married with three children — went viral, prompting the candidate to step down. “I don’t want to expose myself and my family anymore when any sort of attack is allowed, it goes too far,” Griveaux said in a statement, perhaps ill-advisedly using the word “expose.” The sexually explicit content was published on a blog registered by Russian artist and activist Piotr Pavlenski. In an added twist, one of those who spread the graphic videos widely on social media was MP Joachim Son-Forget, who in 2021 had his Twitter account suspended for impersonating Donald Trump!
From a fake Russian with love
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Austrian Deputy Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache thought he was going on a nice vacation in Ibiza, where he met a woman claiming to be a wealthy Russian citizen who said she wanted to invest in Austria. The woman offered to buy a 50 percent stake in Austria’s Kronen-Zeitung newspaper and switch its news line to push the agenda of Strache’s far-right Freedom Party. In turn, Strache said he could award her public contracts. Alas for Strache, she was not a wealthy Russian at all. He later tried to justify his actions by saying it was “a drunken night” and he was in whatever “intimate vacation mood” is!
The ensuing scandal — dubbed “Ibiza-gate” — brought down Sebastian Kurz’s government. To be fair to Strache, let those of us who haven’t tried to trade public contracts for party donations from a woman we believed to be the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch cast the first stone.
25 naked men and a whole lot of drugs
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Hungarian MEP József Szájer had one of the wildest exits from office in recent memory. A senior member of the Fidesz party, known for its conservative views and its anti-LGBTQ stance, Szájer was caught attending a lockdown-busting party in Brussels in 2020. Police found 25 naked men at the gathering, according to Belgian media reports, and a passerby reported seeing a man fleeing along the gutter, leading the police to apprehend Szájer and find narcotics in his backpack, prosecutors said. Viktor Orbán called the deed “unacceptable and indefensible” and Szájer quit the party and his post in Brussels. For some reason, there is not a statue of Szájer in Brussels.
Skin in the game
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Five years before Moxnes and the Hugo Boss sunglasses, regional head of Madrid Cristina Cifuentes made headlines when old footage circulated showing her allegedly stealing anti-aging cream. The incident was an “involuntary error,” said Cifuentes, who was released after paying for the €40 cream. But as the shoplifting scandal broke on the tail of a news site accusing her of lying about her graduate degree, Cifuentes stepped down from her role.
Grabbing a bite to eat
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In yet another shoplifting scandal, a Slovenian MP lost his job after stealing a sandwich from a shop in Ljubljana. Darij Krajcic reportedly told his colleagues he became annoyed when supermarket employees ignored him and decided to conduct what he called a “social experiment” to test the shop’s security. While the theft went unnoticed, pressure from colleagues led to his resignation — and to him paying back the cost of the sandwich.
EU mass exodus
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Of all the embarrassing resignations on this list, this is the one with the most people involved. In 1999, the entire European Commission led by Jacques Santer resigned after a scathing committee report found it guilty of “corruption, misuse of power and fraud.” The 140-page report by independent experts looked at charges of widespread fraud, nepotism, and corruption in the Commission. One of the commissioners at the center of the storm, former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson, was heavily criticized for hiring friends and relatives, including her local dentist, to well-paid positions. The dentist, René Berthelot, did not get his teeth into the adviser role he was given, and produced only a 24-page document during his 18-month stint working for the EU.
Got any snus?
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John Dalli, the EU commissioner for health, resigned in 2012 after an anti-fraud inquiry linked him to an attempt to influence tobacco legislation. A Dalli aide called Silvio Zammit was accused of trying to obtain a whopping €60 million from a tobacco company called Swedish Match to reverse an EU ban on snus, a type of smokeless tobacco that can make the user look like they are gargling bin juice. Dalli claimed he was dismissed by the Commission chief at the time, José Manuel Barroso, and took him to court. In 2019, the EU’s General Court rejected Dalli’s claim for compensation for damages he claims he suffered as a result of losing his job.
The PM, the spy services, his wife and his lover
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In 2013, Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas resigned after his chief of staff, Jana Nagyova, was charged with corruption and abuse of power. Among the crimes, Nagyova was accused of bribing former MPs, but what made headlines was her illegal use of the secret service. It turns out that Nagyova, who was having an affair with Necas at the time, allegedly used military intelligence to spy on the prime minister’s wife. Needless to say, this particular resignation was followed by a divorce. But it wasn’t long before Necas and Nagyova had a happy ending, getting married soon after.
The PwC Tower (left) has a zero vacancy factor. Photo / Michael Craig
Don’t call them ghost towers any longer because the chief of a billionaire landlord and a research boss have cited rising numbers of workers back in Auckland’s heart.
On Monday, Precinct Properties chief executive Scott Pritchard talked of office popularity soaring, “work from work” being the latest trend and a study of lift movement in buildings showing many of the approximately 10,000 people on two waterfront blocks returning Monday to Friday.
Gavin Read, JLL research head, backed that up, saying research his business released in May showed Auckland office block vacancies had dropped, as more people returned to work, commercial space made a comeback and more leasing deals were struck.
The ANZ Centre: 22 per cent is empty. Photo / Dean Purcell
Last year, the Herald reported on three big blocks with many empty floors. The ex-Chorus House at 66 Wyndham St was then 59 per cent empty, the former Lumley Centre at 88 Shortland St was 30 per cent empty and the ANZ Centre on Albert St was 22 per cent empty.
But JLL’s most recent survey found 66 Wyndham only 47 per cent vacant in this year’s first quarter, the ex-Lumley Centre now called Shortland and Fort only 5 per cent vacant and the ANZ Centre on Albert St just 7 per cent vacant.
Precinct sold half the ANZ skyscraper on the Albert/Swanson corner to giant American business Invesco in a deal struck in 2018, then the other half…
During the month of July, Aperture brand Bulk Reef Supply (BRS) and The Florida Aquarium have joined forces to offer a collection of co-branded merchandise with 100% of the net proceeds being donated to The Florida Aquarium. These funds will be utilized to support the aquarium’s vital conservation efforts, specifically focused on the protection and conservation of Florida’s critically endangered coral reef. This collection includes plushies and t-shirts featuring Mr. Chili, the BRS mascot who is a coral polyp.
This collaboration between Aperture and The Florida Aquarium not only strengthens their long-standing relationship, but it also contributes to a significant cause.
“We are excited to support the critical coral conservation efforts of The Florida Aquarium. Their work is nothing short of extraordinary, fueled by a team with passion and relentless dedication to addressing the coral crisis,” said Natalie Strahan, Chief Executive Officer for Aperture Pet & Life. “They are making a significant impact for our ocean’s futures and generations to come. Therefore, we are proud to honor The Florida Aquarium researchers, scientists and team members by Mr. Chili becoming Super Chili for the month of July in recognition of their work and as a reflection of them being superheroes in our eyes.”
Super Chili will also assume the part-time role of a coral conservation mascot for The Florida Aquarium. He will act as a representative for reef education and conservation, particularly focused on educating children. As a coral polyp himself, the hope is he will help inspire the next generation to learn about our coral reefs and the important role they play for our oceans and our planet.
“The more we understand and have connection to something, the more we care about it. This unique partnership allows us to leverage the benefit of how toys like plushies can evoke imagination and compassion, which can ultimately be a catalyst for developing a sense of environmental responsibility and empathy toward the natural world,” said Roger Germann, president & Chief Executive Officer of The Florida Aquarium. “Super Chili has the strength to save coral reefs, one coral at a time, but when his superpower is fueled by millions of children and adults who care about coral enough to make positive environmental choices – now that’s hero’s work.”
Corals support 25% of all ocean life, are the ecosystem engineers that build physical homes for animals, protect up to 90% of our coastlines from damage, and provide food and economic benefit to hundreds of millions of people.
The scientists at The Florida Aquarium have been tirelessly dedicated to addressing the coral crisis. Their focus lies in protecting coral species that are on the brink of extinction in the wild, increasing coral reproduction rates, and advancing overall coral health. Through their relentless efforts, these coral scientists have made coral sexual reproduction history many times with their work, which has been vital to the restoration of the third largest barrier reef in the world, Florida’s Coral Reef.
In August 2019, The Florida Aquarium, in partnership with the Horniman Museum and Gardens, became the first to successfully spawn critically endangered pillar coral in a laboratory. In 2023, the first juvenile pillar corals born and raised in aquariums were returned to the ocean for the first time.
“We could not be prouder or more humbled to partner with the incredible team at The Florida Aquarium on their historic and revolutionary work,” said Strahan. “There has never been a more important time than now to support their research and help children and adults alike become a part of the mission to conserve our coral reefs.”
By supporting The Florida Aquarium’s conservation work, the collaboration between Aperture brand BRS and the Aquarium aims to make a tangible impact in safeguarding the fragile coral ecosystems. The funds generated from the co-branded merchandise will go directly toward supporting research, restoration projects, and education initiatives focused on coral reef preservation. This partnership not only fosters a deeper understanding of the importance of coral conservation but also provides crucial resources for sustaining these irreplaceable marine habitats for generations to come.
Aperture brands, including BRS, reach and represent one of the largest home aquarist communities in the world. In a recent survey of BRS customers, 90% indicated that contributing to coral conservation efforts is important to them. This partnership also provides this key community a new opportunity to give back to something they are deeply passionate about.
“We are grateful for our amazing partners at Aperture Pet & Life and Bulk Reef Supply and bolstered by their commitment to saving coral reefs, supporting our coral conservation efforts through philanthropy and outreach, and of course, sending Super Chili to join us in the global fight,” said Germann.
Aperture is a leading online retailer, manufacturer and distributor of products and solutions in over 50 countries through an integrated platform, which includes the industry’s leading online marketplace for saltwater aquarists, world-class products for the success of saltwater, freshwater and reptile and amphibian ecosystems and habitats, distribution operations, sales professionals and one of the pet industry’s largest YouTube platforms, with over 400,000 subscribers and 110 million views. Through its banner brands Bulk Reef Supply, Neptune Systems, EcoTech Marine, Aquaillumination, Leap Habitats and others, the company offers its customers the products and resources they need to create thriving ecosystems as well as to continue on the company’s rich history in supporting critical research, conservation and education that supports our world’s barrier reefs and marine life.
Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have found that cannabidiol (CBD), often used to treat anxiety and nausea, can potentially harm a developing fetus.
The paper was published in Molecular Psychiatrytoday.
People consume cannabis or a non-psychoactive component cannabidiol (CBD) to help with nausea and anxiety during pregnancy because they think it is safe and healthy. But CBD crosses the placenta and accumulates in the fetal brain.
Until now, no one knew how fetal exposure to CBD affected brain development, said Emily Bates, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and lead author of the study.
“We found oral consumption of a high dose of CBD during pregnancy impaired problem solving in female mice,” said Bates, who worked with Karli Swenson, a graduate student in her lab.
Along with fellow researchers, Won Chan Oh, PhD, Luis Gomez-Wulschner and Victoria Hoelscher, the team discovered that fetal exposure to CBD reduced the excitability of the pre-frontal cortex, a part of the brain important for learning.
They also found that increased pain sensitivity occurred only in male mice while cognitive impairments happened only in females. Bates said more research is needed to understand why the effects of CBD are sex-specific.
The perceived benefits of CBD are widely accepted in the U.S. where many view it as a safe alternative for treating the nausea, anxiety, and pain associated with…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
During challenging economic times like we face today, most smart entrepreneurs see both more opportunity and increased risk. So, when it comes to starting up a new business venture, it’s more important than ever before to guide your decisions with data.
But as a leader in the insights industry, I see traditional research methods failing today’s entrepreneurs. When you’re dreaming of disrupting an existing market or upending the way a problem is solved, the status quo doesn’t offer the blank-page flexibility that you need to evaluate the soundness of your instincts.
Leaders looking to pivot need to make intelligent, informed decisions at rapid speed. So if you’re thinking about starting a new venture or expanding your side gig, here are some research mistakes you absolutely must avoid if you’re looking to make a real impact in competitive marketplaces.
Quantitative surveys are tempting because they’re cheap, quick and inclusive in terms of demographics and geography. But they also have a serious depth problem. The questions are often too restrictive to net you truly authentic insights. You often get superficial answers that don’t offer the context you need to fully understand market potential.
If you’re trying to figure out a brand-new vertical, asking static questions about the world that currently exists isn’t going to get you where you need to be in order to understand if you’re making the right call.
What to do instead
There’s a reason why so many experts in the insights field refer to this as a discovery process: If you go into it believing you already know what you’re going to find, you’re simply going to have your preconceptions reaffirmed.
You need to throw out the script and talk to people. That’s not to say quantitative research isn’t useful — it absolutely is. But to capture the nuance that comes with rich emotional reactions and body language, you also need to speak to your potential audience in a way that enables them to share the “why” and “how” behind the “what.”
Instead of asking presumptuous questions like, “Would product X solve your problem?” you should have conversations with your target audience and allow them to tell you about their pain points. This tests your assumptions about the marketplace and prevents your biases from distorting the findings.
2. Relying too much on focus groups for the big picture
Considering the limitations I just detailed regarding quantitative research, you might be tempted to gather feedback through focus groups. Though more expensive, this option does solve many of the problems quantitative surveys pose. However, it creates a whole new set of issues to work through.
Assuming you want to convene your focus groups in a physical space, you’ll be limited to local participants and those with relatively flexible schedules. Does that fully capture the demographics and geographies you’re trying to reach? Very likely, it won’t. What about people who work during the day — will they take time out of their busy calendar to come to your focus group? How about those with disabilities or challenges with transportation? Are you ensuring they are fully represented?
Even if you decide to convene focus groups in a remote environment, these sessions traditionally require participants to share their opinions in front of others, leading to groupthink and biased results, not to mention the challenges of accurate recall. These are all deadly factors when it comes to launching new ideas or exploring new possibilities.
To discover a world that doesn’t exist yet, you must be wary of the status quo. But thanks to the technology we carry around in our pockets every day, there are some really simple ways to break away.
You can ask study participants to use their phones to record videos of themselves using products in the moment as they would in their daily lives, or even when they’re shopping in-store or online. Without a moderator to lead the discussion, participants will subconsciously feel more free to take you along on their journey, and this is where the real innovation comes in.
Honest, raw and uncut opinions from actual consumers will help bring your idea to life or show you where there might be an unmet need or improvements that can be made. This approach enables you to understand at a really deep level what your audience desires and how to structure your offerings to stand out. It will uncover real usage trends and hidden insight gems. And not only that, the asynchronous nature of this kind of research allows you to avoid schedule-based biases and embrace the geographic and demographic diversity that’s necessary to understand a global customer base.
This economic moment offers incredible opportunities to those looking to strike out in a new direction. Leveraging next-generation research technologies will arm you with the data you need to be part of the next wave of innovation and start delivering experiences your consumers rave about.
PARIS — French rioters have set the country on fire and Emmanuel Macron is pointing the finger at TikTok and Snapchat for pouring gasoline on the inferno.
In the past three days, violent protests erupted across France after a police officer in a Paris suburb shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel M., who was of North African descent. Rioters targeted public buildings, transport systems and shops with projectiles and Molotov cocktails, leaving 249 members of law enforcement injured and 875 people arrested.
Unlike the deadly outbreak of violence in 2005, the turmoil — which has led to public transportation shutdowns, concert cancelations and armored vehicles being deployed across the country — can be documented in real time, shared online and seen by tens of thousands on social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter.
That online phenomenon is worrying France’s political leaders, who have been scurrying to find solutions as the unrest shows no sign of fizzling out.
“We’ve seen violent gatherings organized on several [social media platforms] — but also a kind of mimicry of violence,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday after a government crisis meeting. He accused younger rioters of exiting reality and “living the video games that have intoxicated them.”
The French president wants tech companies to delete violent content and provide law enforcement with the identity of protesters who use social media to stoke — and exacerbate — the disorder. “I expect these platforms to be responsible,” he said.
According to research by France’s most-watched news channel BFM, TikTok and Snapchat were flooded Friday morning with videos from the rioting and looting across France. On TikTok, hashtags linked to the riots were pushed by the platform’s algorithm. Police officials also told BFM some protesters coordinate and communicate in real time through messaging services on WhatsApp and Telegram via online tools that did not exist in 2005, when riots left hundreds of public buildings damaged and thousands of cars burned.
The government is scheduled to meet with social media platforms Friday evening, where company executives will be pressed to cooperate.
Some, however, say social media platforms are unfairly blamed by grandstanding politicians who should focus their attention elsewhere.
On Friday, the U.N.’s human rights office weighed in, saying France needs to address “issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement,” referring to the killing of the teenager.
Tech has long been used to coordinate demonstrations and protests, political communications expert Philippe Moreau Chevrolet told POLITICO, adding that the government would be “terribly out of touch” to respond to the crisis by focusing on tech companies and video games.
“Text messages used to be accused [of facilitating riots], now it’s social networks. Yellow Vests protests were blamed on Facebook,” Moreau Chevrolet said.
Two sides of the coin
But the role of online platforms goes beyond showcasing fires and looting, and helping rioters get organized. This week’s violent unrest began with a video that was, of course, posted on social media.
“There’s clearly been a change, with more and more people adopting the reflex of filming the police. Above all, the activists’ community is now able to quickly and widely circulate the videos,” said Magda Boutros, a sociology scholar at the University of Washington who studied activism against police violence in France.
When a police officer shot and killed Nahel M. (the name by which he has been identified publicly) on Tuesday, media reports originally relied on law enforcement sources claiming a driver threatened the police officer’s life. But a video, filmed by a bystander and posted on Twitter, showed a different story: Two cops stood next to a car and one shot the driver at close range.
Another recent incident (crucially, not filmed) showed the power of social media to hold violent police officers accountable and the ability to set a country on fire — or not.
Two weeks ago, a teenager died in similar circumstances as Nahel M. in the Charente region of western France. The young man was reportedly shot dead by a police officer for refusing to comply.
That went relatively unnoticed, explained former French MP Thomas Mesnier, because Charente is in a more remote area compared to the dense banlieues of the French capital.
It also went unnoticed, Mesnier said, because “there was no video that went viral on social networks, participating in and reinforcing people’s emotions and sense of dread.”
Statins, one of the most extensively studied drugs on the planet, taken by tens of millions of Americans alone, have long had a perplexing side effect. Many patients—some 5 percent in clinical trials, and up to 30 percent in observational studies—experience sore and achy muscles, especially in the upper arms and legs. A much smaller proportion, less than 1 percent, develop muscle weakness or myopathy severe enough that they find it hard to “climb stairs, get up from a sofa, get up from the toilet,” says Robert Rosenson, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai. He’s had patients fall on the street because they couldn’t lift their leg over a curb.
But why should an anticholesterol drug weaken muscles in the arms and legs? Recently, two groups of scientists stumbled upon an answer. They didn’t set out to study statins. They weren’t studying cholesterol at all. They were hunting for genes behind a rare disease called limb girdle muscle dystrophy, in which muscles of the upper arms and legs—sound familiar?—become weak and waste away. After both teams tracked the disease through a handful of families in the U.S. and a Bedouin family in Israel, their suspicions separately landed on mutations in a gene encoding a particularly intriguing enzyme.
The enzyme is known as HMG-CoA reductase, and to doctors, it is not obscure. It is, in fact, the very enzyme that statins block in the process of halting cholesterol production. And so, the answers to two mysteries suddenly became clear at once: Dysfunction in this enzyme causes muscle weakness from both limb girdle muscular dystrophy and statins.
This connection between a rare disease and a common drug stunned the researchers. “It seemed too good to be true,” says Joel Morales-Rosado, a pathologist who worked on one of the studies as a postdoctoral researcher at the Mayo Clinic. “One of the first things you learn in medical school is association between statins and myopathy.” Now the answer as to why— along with a potential treatment for it—has emerged from the DNA of just a few patients living with a seemingly unrelated genetic disease.
The first patient the Mayo team studied had been showing signs of limb girdle muscular dystrophy since he was a child, and his symptoms worsened over time until he lost the ability to walk or breathe with ease. (The disease can also affect large muscles in the torso.) Now in his 30s, he wanted to know the genetic cause of his disease before having children and potentially passing it on to them. His two brothers had the disease as well. So the team looked for genes in which all three brothers had mutations in both copies, which is how they zeroed in on the gene for HMG-CoA reductase.
Six more patients from four other families confirmed the link. They too all had mutations in the same gene, and they too were all diagnosed with some degree of limb girdle muscular dystrophy. (Interestingly, for reasons we don’t entirely understand, they all have normal or low cholesterol.)
Unbeknownst to the Mayo team, a group of researchers halfway around the world was already studying a large Bedouin family with a history of limb girdle muscular dystrophy. This family also carried mutations in the gene encoding HMG-CoA reductase. Those afflicted began experiencing minor symptoms in their 30s, such as muscle cramps, that worsened over time. The oldest family members, in their late 40s or 50s, had lost all movement in their arms and legs. One bedridden woman had to be ventilated full-time through a hole in her windpipe. Another had died in their mid-50s, Ohad Birk, a geneticist and doctor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, told me. When his team saw that this family had the mutations in HMG-CoA reductase, they too immediately recognized the potential link to statins.
This pair of studies in the U.S. and Israel “really strongly suggests” that statins cause muscle damage via the same HMG-CoA reductase pathway, says Andrew Mammen, a neurologist at the National Institutes of Health who was not involved in either study. The enzyme’s role had been suspected, he told me, but “it had never been proven, especially in humans.” (Questions still remain, however. The enzyme, for example, is found in tissues throughout the body, so why do these common side effects show up in muscles specifically?) Rosenson, at Mount Sinai, wondered if variations in this gene could explain why statins don’t affect everyone the same. Perhaps patients who suffer particularly severe muscle side effects already have less functional versions of the enzyme, which becomes problematic only when they start taking statins, which reduce its function even further. This research might end up concretely improving the life of at least some of the patients most severely affected by statins.
That’s because Birk’s team in Israel did not stop at simply identifying the mutation. For two decades, he and his colleagues have been studying genetic disorders in this Bedouin community in the Negev and developing genetic tests so parents can avoid passing them on to their children. (Cousin marriages are traditional there, and when two parents are related, they are more likely to carry and pass on the same mutation to a child.) With limb girdle muscular dystrophy, his team went one step further than usual: They found a drug to treat it.
This drug, called mevalonolactone, allows muscle cells to function more normally even without the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme. Birk’s team first tested it in mice given doses of statins high enough to weaken their limbs; those also given mevalonolactone continued to crawl and even hang upside down on a wire just fine. They seemed to suffer no ill effects. When that experimental drug was given to the Bedouin woman bedridden with limb girdle muscular dystrophy, she also started regaining control of her arms and legs. She could eventually lift her arm, sit up by herself, raise her knees, and even feed her grandchild on her own. It was a dramatic improvement. Birk told me he has since heard about dozens of patients with limb girdle muscular dystrophy around the world who may benefit from this experimental drug.
Mammen and others think the drug could help a small subset of patients who take statins as well. However, the majority of patients—those with relatively minor pains or weaknesses that go away after they switch statins or have their dosage reduced—probably don’t need this new treatment. It probably even undermines the whole point of taking statins: Mevalonolactone eventually gets turned into cholesterol in the body, so “you’re basically supplying the building blocks for making more cholesterol,” Mammen said. But for some people, numbering in the thousands, severe muscle weakness does not go away even after they stop taking statins. These patients have developed antibodies to HMG-CoA reductase, which Mammen suspects continue to bind and disable the enzyme.
Mammen is eager for these patients to try mevalonolactone, and he’s been in touch with Birk, who unfortunately doesn’t have enough of the drug to share. In fact, he doesn’t even have enough to treat all of the other family members in Israel who are clamoring for it. “We’re not a factory. We’re a research lab,” Birk told me. Mevalonolactone is available as a research chemical, but that’s not pure and safe enough for human consumption. Birk’s graduate student Yuval Yogev had to manufacture the drug himself by genetically engineering bacteria to make mevalonolactone, which he then painstakingly purified. Making a drug to this standard is a huge amount of work, even for commercial labs. Birk is looking for a pharmaceutical company that could manufacture the drug at scale—for both patients with limb girdle muscular dystrophy and those with the most severe forms of statin-associated muscle damage.
Back in 1980, the very first person to receive an experimental dose of statins suffered muscle weakness so severe, she could not walk. (She had been given an extremely high dose.) Forty years later, muscle pain and weakness are still common reasons patients quit these very effective drugs. This recent breakthrough is finally pointing researchers toward a better understanding of statins’ toll on muscles, even if they still can’t fix it for everyone.
As gear reviews go, it was a glowing one: In a 60-second video clip posted on Telegram, a masked sniper sporting the death’s-head insignia of the Wagner mercenary army sings the praises of the Russian-made Orsis T-5000 rifle.
“The equipment comes very well recommended,” the soldier, pictured in the charred interior of a building, tells a war reporter from the Zvezda TV channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Pulling out the clip of the weapon at his side, he continues: “It uses Western .338 caliber ammunition. It works very well. It can penetrate light cover if the enemy is behind it. And, in the open, it can strike the enemy at a range of up to 1,500 meters.”
Filings obtained by POLITICO indicate that Promtekhnologiya and another Russian firm called Tetis have acquired hundreds of thousands of rounds made by Hornady, a U.S. company that trademarks its wares as “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.” Hornady, founded in 1949, sums up its philosophy with the phrase: “Ten bullets through one hole.”
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that supplies of lethal and nonlethal military equipment are still reaching Russia despite the West’s imposition of unprecedented sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The exigencies of war have exposed Russia’s lack of capacity to manufacture high-end sniper rounds, say defense experts, and that is fueling a flourishing black market for Western ammunition.
Information on the procurement of such gear is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals — importers, suppliers and product descriptions — can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes.
Anything but bulletproof
In a “declaration of conformity” filed with a Russian government registry and dated August 12, 2022, Promtekhnologiya stated that it planned to sourcea batch of 102,200 Hornady lead bullets for the assembly of “hunting cartridges” used in “civilian weapons with a rifled barrel.” The specifications — .338 Lapua Magnum bullets weighing 285 grains — match those of a product in the Hornady catalog.
A second declaration bearing the same date is for a batch of “uncapped cartridge cases for assembling civilian firearms cartridges” made by Hornady with the same .338 Lapua Magnum specification.
The description is misleading: The .338 Lapua Magnum isn’t a “hunting cartridge;” it’s a high-powered, long-range projectile that was developed by Western militaries in the 1980s and used by their snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reached by POLITICO, Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime.
“The instant Russia invaded Ukraine, we were done,” Hornady said in a brief telephone call.
Hornady declined at first to elaborate and, when asked to review the evidence, requested that it be sent by fax or courier as he did not use email. He eventually responded after POLITICO sent written requests for comment with supporting documentation by courier.
“We categorically are NOT exporting anything to Russia and have not had an export permit for Russia since 2014,” he replied. “We do not support any sale of our product to any Russian son-of-a-bitch and if we can find out how they acquire, if in fact they do, we will take all steps available to stop it.”
Hornady added that he had contacted the U.S. authorities following POLITICO’s inquiry. He pointed out that current U.S. law required that customers must obtain permission from the Department of Commerce to re-export articles made in the United States. “To the best of our knowledge, none of our customers violate that law,” he said.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked which ammunition his troops used, told POLITICO they had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.” In a sarcastic voice message sent to a POLITICO journalist, the Russian warlord also asked for help procuring F-35 combat jets and U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Promtekhnologiya denied filing any customs declarations to import ammunition; said it had no relationship with Hornady; and that it had the capacity to manufacture its own ammunition. The company also said in emailed comments to POLITICO that the Orsis rifle and the ammunition the company makes are intended for “hunting and sporting” purposes and are freely available on the civilian market.
Both Promtekhnologiya and Alexander Zinovyev, listed as the company’s general director in the filings, have been sanctioned by Ukraine, which cites evidence that its Orsis rifles “have been used in Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.”
Promtekhnologiya is also in Washington’s sights: “We take any allegation of sanctions violation or evasion seriously and are committed to ensuring that sanctions are fully enforced,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in response to a request for comment from POLITICO.
“We have taken steps to hold Russia accountable for its war in Ukraine and have imposed an unprecedented sanctions regime to disrupt Russia’s ability to access funds and weapons that fuel Putin’s war machine. That includes sanctioning companies like Promtekhnologiya.”
Criminal, or wilful, violations of U.S. sanctions can trigger penalties of up to $1 million per violation, as well as up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals. Civil penalties can run to the higher of either twice the value of the underlying transaction or around $350,000 per violation.
Describing military-grade ammunition as for hunting or sporting use, as the filings do, amounts to a thinly veiled ruse to evade targeted “smart” sanctions aimed at starving the Russian military of the means to fight the war, said defense analyst Maria Shagina.
“Strictly speaking, smart sanctions are not supposed to target anything civilian to avoid humanitarian collateral damage,” said Shagina, a research fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But the targets in authoritarian countries will really exploit this.”
Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Russia reloaded
Another Russian buyer of Hornady ammunition is a company called Tetis, which has disclosed two shipments since Russia’s full-scale invasionof Ukraine beganon February 24, 2022. The most recent was in April for more than 300,000 “units” comprising a wide range of products that checked out with the Hornady catalog.
The main owners of Tetis, Alexander Levandovsky and Sergey Senchenko — who each own stakes of 41.1 percent — have links to the Russian military.
Both were previously listed as shareholders in another company called Kampo, which according to company filings holds licenses to make weapons and military equipment and has done business with the Ministry of Defense and the Special Flight Detachment that operates Putin’s presidential plane.
Although Tetis doesn’t offer Hornady ammo on its website, it does advertise itself as an international distributor for RCBS, a U.S. maker of reloading equipment. This is used to assemble cases, primer, propellants and projectiles into cartridges that can then be fired — as seen in this video posted by a Russian gun enthusiast.
A database check revealed that the most recent declaration of conformity filed by Tetis for RCBS, for electronic weighing scales, predated Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year by just over a month.
Russia’s trade bureaucracy allows local firms to vouch for the goods they are importing by filing declarations of conformity, such as those that mention the Hornady products. This means that the supplier listed on the form may not be aware of specific shipments that could have been handled by an intermediary.
Tetis did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Matt Rice, a spokesman for RCBS owner Vista Outdoor, said Tetis was no longer an international distributor for RCBS. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our business made the decision to end all sales of goods with the country,” Rice said in an email, adding that RCBS would remove the listing for Tetis from its website.
Doing the rounds
Hornady ammunition or its components are freely available in Russia, along with other high-end foreign military gear.
Take the “Sniper Shop” on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that is popular in Russia: It features a current offer for a full range of Hornady products, with the seller inviting buyers to visit a showroom in Sokolniki, a Moscow district, and offering delivery throughout Russia by courier or post. Contacted by POLITICO, the poster confirmed the Hornady ammo was in stock but declined to comment further on how it was sourced.
Then there is “Anton,” who advertises products from Hornady and RCBS on his profile. He also touts gear from Nightforce, maker of thermal optical sights; Lapua, which helped design the eponymous .338 ammo; MDT, a maker of chassis systems, magazines and accessories for rifles; and precision gunsmith AREA 419. All are American with the exception of Lapua, which is based in Finland and owned by a Norwegian company called Nammo.
Western high-end foreign military gear seems to be freely available in Russia | Leon Neal/Getty Images
“Anton” posted an offer for Hornady cartridges last October 24. Contacted via Telegram to ask whether he was still stocking Hornady, he replied: “We don’t do ammunition.”
POLITICO has, in the course of its research, also found declarations from several other Russian companies for ammunition made in Germany, Finland and Turkey.
The thriving black market reflects a structural deficit in Russia’s war economy. Its military-industrial complex can produce good small arms, like the Orsis rifle, but lacks the capacity to churn out the amount of ammunition needed by an army fighting a war across a front stretching hundreds of miles.
“Despite the quality of the rifles produced, a successful hit directly depends on the components used in the cartridges, and they, unfortunately, are imported,” a correspondent lamented in a post on a Russian military news site a few months into the war. Gunpowder produced in Russia lacks stability, the correspondent added, saying this is “unacceptable in the framework of high-precision shooting.”
The continuing access to specialized rifle cartridges made in the West, such as the .338 Lapua Magnum, by a sanctioned Russian small arms manufacturer like Orsis maker Promtekhnologiya is “egregious,” said Gary Somerville, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense think tank.
“At present, there is only one manufacturer of this cartridge in Russia,” he added. “Preventing the shipment of these types of ammunition from Western countries to Russia is an easy win for those seeking to constrain Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.”
Balkan route
It’s not just ammunition from the U.S. that is reaching the battlefront around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries after a bloody, months-long battle.
There also appear to be cartridges from the European Union, which has imposed no fewer than 10 rounds of sanctions against Russia in a so-far inconclusive attempt to starve Putin’s war machine of the means to fight on.
Promtekhnologiya has filed four declarations since October covering shipments of 460,000 units described as “Orsis hunting cartridges” — most are of the .338 Lapua Magnum type. These identify a Slovenian company called Valerian as the supplier.
The first of the filings, dated October 13, 2022, includes an air waybill number whose first three digits — 262 — indicate that the shipper was Ural Airlines, a Russian carrier. It was not immediately possible to trace the route of the flight, however.
Valerian was founded on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with paid-in capital of €7,500 by Gašper Heybal, who previously worked for U.S. military outfitter Voodoo Tactical. On its home page, Valerian says: “Our goal is to equip you for your mission, whatever it might be, and wherever you are going.”
In online posts over the past decade — including on a Facebook Group called EU Guns with a declared mission of “easier transfer of weapons between European gun owners” — Heybal has done little to dispel the impression that he is an active small arms dealer.
Bakhmut was recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, the Wagner mercenary group| Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
The telephone number Heybal shared publicly in those posts is the same as the one for Valerian, which is registered at an address in a village around 40 minutes’ drive southeast of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Reached at that number, Heybal denied that Valerian had shipped ammunition to Russia: “We don’t sell any … firearms or ammunition, and also there is an embargo on Russia,” said Heybal.
In a follow-up email on the declarations of conformity, Heybal said: “Firstly, we must stress that we do not know, nor do we understand how the name of our company, Valerian d.o.o., appears on the document.”
“Secondly, Valerian is not listed there as a supplier but as the producer, and this is not possible, as we do not produce ammunition. That being said, it still makes absolutely no sense to us as to how our name could appear on it. We are glad you brought this to our attention so we can figure out what is going on.”
A Slovenian diplomat said that, while Valerian had never applied for authorization to export weapons or ammunition to Russia, it had shipped “individual parts” to Kyrgyzstan.
The Central Asian state is one of the countries that the EU has in mind as it discusses an 11th round of measures targeting third countries that are suspected of helping Russia evade sanctions.
“The competent services in the Republic of Slovenia have already initiated the appropriate procedures to investigate the facts concerning the company,” the diplomat told POLITICO, adding that they would verify the possible diversion of goods to the Russian Federation. “Slovenia is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, we have been supportive of all sanctions packages and especially this anti-circumvention one.”
An official at the European Commission deflected a request for comment, saying the bloc’s member countries were responsible for implementing sanctions. “As this seems like a very specific case, these allegations need to be investigated further by the competent authorities,” the official said.
Sergey Panov reported from Spain, Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels and Douglas Busvine from Berlin. Additional reporting by Steven Overly in Washington.
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Sergey Panov, Sarah Anne Aarup and Douglas Busvine
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
How many offers have you launched that didn’t get a single buyer? I’d wager that this scenario has played out in most (if not all) businesses. While there are many reasons this can happen, the most common reason I see as a launch strategist and copywriter is a lack of research.
The thing is, you can’t afford to skip market research. Research is crucial to understand your audience (and create marketing that attracts them), validate your ideas and create other offers.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
2020 was a turbulent year for most industries, including the qualitative research industry. Many brands and agencies that had previously relied on in-person focus groups and interviews for qualitative research moved their work online, accelerating industry innovation.
Areas like participant recruitment, insight communities, emotional intelligence (AI and ML), UX testing and more are undergoing tremendous innovation. The rise of digital technologies has opened up new possibilities, an explosion of techniques and opportunities that help us better understand the human experience.
Besides gathering deeper human insights, technology has paved the way for increased speed and efficiency in data collection and analysis. Today, it’s safe to assume that digital technologies have become crucial for markets and society, making digital transformation a vital area of business innovation.
Despite the bounty it presents, digital transformation is complex, and organizations will struggle to adequately grasp and capitalize on its opportunities unless they fully understand its impact on qualitative research. Let’s navigate significant changes in the qualitative research landscape while discussing how brands (yes, that’s you) can benefit from the digital transformation of qualitative research.
Gather better quality insights: Reducing the say/do gap
Seeking answers to questions has always been complex art. Respondents might forget something, feel obliged to respond appropriately or be hesitant or unwilling to open up.
There’s usually a gap between what respondents say and what they do. Winning in the qualitative research game today requires narrowing the say/do gap and capturing natural behavior.
Has expanding online qualitative research methods improved the ability to understand natural behaviors? Yes — with the inclusion of emotional intelligence.
It isn’t enough to get feedback; the key is to pair it with behavioral insights. Emotional intelligence includes AI technologies like voice analysis, eye tracking and facial coding to help you get a window into your customers’ minds.
Did your customers say they’re happy with the product? You can confirm that information by analyzing their voices or facial expressions. Want to test the consumer journey on your webpage? Utilize eye tracking to understand how your customers navigate your website.
You can use behavioral techniques for ad testing, concept testing, content testing, prototype testing and more to churn out accurate, proof-based insights to make actionable changes. Another cutting-edge technology is Natural Language Processing (NLP), which provides the tools to enhance and analyze linguistic and statistical data.
Get the best of both worlds: Conducting mixed methods research
Mixed methods research includes using multiple data collection methods (i.e., combining quantitative and qualitative research) to obtain a unified viewpoint. It is essential to the understanding you hope to gain — the What (quantitative insights) and the Why (qualitative insights) — and can help you deliver actual results.
For example, suppose a company wishes to identify issues with its new prototype. In that case, it can conduct a quantitative study followed by a qualitative study to validate the quantitative results, gaining a more comprehensive understanding of respondent opinions and feedback. Or if the company wants to understand the purchase patterns of both in-house vs. online shoppers, they can conduct a quantitative study for online shoppers and a qualitative one for in-house shoppers.
Brands can gain from both the specific, measurable insights of qualitative data and the nuanced, unique insights of quantitative data by combining both forms of research.
Logistically simplify qualitative research: Embracing in-house, DIY research
Digital technologies have made research accessible to all by lowering barriers to entry. This means more research and insight teams are conducting in-house studies, including people in other roles — like marketers, designers, product managers, and UX teams — who carry out DIY research when needed.
An ESOMAR study (that surveyed 802 users and buyers of insights and research from 61 countries) suggests that almost 50% of research is being handled internally with DIY tools. DIY research platforms allow brands to define the project’s scope, find the right respondents, build surveys and conduct interviews faster, easier and cost-effectively.
While pure DIY platforms are available in the market today, depending on the research objectives, brands can choose a hybrid model as well (for instance, a vendor offering assistance in data reporting and analysis).
Stand out in a competitive market: Introducing research agility
Digital technologies today make it easier than ever to make research processes agile. Studies that used to last months are now completed in days. Moreover, using market research tools can help brands conduct research at a much lower cost without compromising the quality of insights (in fact, they help gather higher-quality insights than traditional qualitative data collection methods).
Even a leading brand like Cisco switched their Subscription Billing Method (SBP), based on the Waterfall method, to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), reducing their defects by 40% and improving their defect removal efficiency by 14%. Agile research is the name of the game for brands to build foresight, respond rapidly to changes in the market and beat competitors.
While digital transformation is not a substitute for human intelligence, it paves the way for more intelligent, more effective research. The qualitative research industry has seen and will continue to witness game-changing innovations, enabling brands to capture superior customer insights seamlessly. Leveraging market research technology to understand your customers better and make practical innovations is crucial, especially in an uncertain economic environment.
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