Mediaboss Marketing

Could a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil cause a hurricane in Texas? American meteorologist Edward Lorenz once asked this question to show that small intrusions into complex systems can have unexpected effects.

This phenomenon, known as the butterfly effect, also applies to the networks of nature, the interrelationships of which are rarely known. However, in many places people intervene without even losing thought of what they might call it.

Finnish biologists describe an interesting example of this in the current issue of the scientific journal to know. In their study, they showed how overfishing of capelin, a small school fish in the Barents Sea, causes the miniaturization of salmon that other fishermen pull from waters several kilometers away in the Finnish Tino River.

For their study, the team led by biologist Yann Czorlich of Finlands University of Turku evaluated data from 40 years of hunting and combined it with results from genetic analyzes of salmon. Biologists have found that there is a relationship between the size of the Capelin clan in the Barents Sea and the frequency of a particular genetic variant in the tino salmon genome, which makes the fish sexually mature earlier and become smaller. Whenever capelin populations collapsed due to overfishing which occurred several times during the study period this genetic variant accumulated in salmon.

According to the authors, this connection, surprising at first glance, has to do with the complex life cycle of salmon. Fish are born in the fresh waters of rivers and then migrate to the sea. They spend their childhood and adolescence there, so to speak. Once they are sexually mature, they migrate back to the river where they were born to lay eggs.

In the Barents Sea, capelin schools huge in good times are one of the main food sources for the young salmon that live there. If fishing fleets pull a lot of capelin from the sea, then predatory fish find little to eat. The deficiency appears to result in a change in their genome that causes the salmon to mature earlier and remain smaller. The study authors wrote in to know. Biologists also talk about evolution in rapid motion.

Charles Darwin, who established the theory of evolution more than 160 years ago in his book On the Origin of Species, still posits that evolution is a slow process. It must take thousands or even millions of years for new species to form through mutation and selection (macroevolution) or for existing species to change (microevolution).

In the Anthropocene that is, in the era formed by humans the species Homo sapiens changed their environment and thus the conditions of other animals and plants at a much faster rate than in the history of the Earth. In this large-scale involuntary experiment, animals and plants must change quickly in order to have a chance of survival.

It has long been known that humans, as a selection factor, can directly influence and accelerate the development of animals and plants. An example is the elephants in Mozambique that have lost their tusks because they make them unattractive to poachers and allow them to survive. For a similar reason, many large-horned sheep in the United States no longer have thick horns, but rather slim horns. Cod has become noticeably thinner and shorter in recent decades due to the infiltration of small specimens through the nets of fishing fleets.

The current study is one of the few understandable examples of how humans influence evolution not only directly, but also indirectly: salmon are shrinking because humans catch an entirely different fish in an entirely different place. Ironically, capelin in the Barents Sea is also widely fished to feed salmon in aquaculture.

Read more:
Evolution in time-lapse: overfishing in the seas, and smaller salmon - Wikipedia - Socialpost

Before each summer and winter Paralympics, Tony Naar and his small team of enthusiastic volunteers set themselves a challenge: to create a Wikipedia page for every Australian para-athlete competing at the Games. In the past decade, this group known as the Australian Paralympic history project have created over 1,000 articles for para-athletes past and present. For each one, however, they have faced an obstacle: Wikipedias notability policy, which requires articles to be notable, or worthy of notice.

The project began prior to the London 2012 Paralympics. At the time, they partnered with Wikimedia Australia, the local chapter of the global Wikimedia Foundation, to offer an incentive: the two volunteers who created and edited the most articles ahead of the Games would win a free trip to London. But one of the things we confronted was the notability requirement, says Naar, a semi-retired sports administrator who previously worked for Paralympics Australia. If youre an Olympic athlete, you automatically met those notability requirements just by being an Olympic athlete. Being a Paralympic athlete wasnt good enough you had to be a medallist or otherwise meet the notability requirements.

In other words, para-athletes who had qualified for the Paralympics did not automatically qualify for Wikipedia. That meant the people involved in the project had to be pretty creative, says Naar. They had to hunt down other sources to justify having the article about the athlete. For example, newspaper articles or radio or television interviews. It was a question of frantically hunting those down ahead of London.

Ultimately, they succeeded just prior to the 2012 Paralympics, every Australian Paralympian competing in London had their own Wikipedia page. Their hard work provided a valuable service; over the two weeks of the Games, they had almost two million page views. It opened a lot of eyes [within the Paralympics community] because it way exceeded any other numbers, says Naar. The ABC televised the Paralympics and it way exceeded their views; it way exceeded views on Paralympics Australias official website. It indicated that there was a lot of interest in finding out information and Wikipedia was a great source for that.

One might think that Wikipedias notability distinction between Olympic and Paralympic athletes was blatantly discriminatory and would have been swiftly changed after London 2012. Naar chuckles with resignation. God no, he says. It has been a battle that we have fought a few times and have lost every time. At the moment that notability requirement stands just being a Paralympian still doesnt qualify you.

Nonetheless, thanks to the teams creativity, they have managed to create or update Wikipedia articles for every Australian para-athlete competing at Sochi 2014, Rio 2016, PyeongChang 2018 and Tokyo 2020, plus historical entries for past Paralympians. By the end of 2021, the team had written 617,797 words across almost 1,100 articles. In total, these articles have received just shy of 20 million page views.

These Wikipedia entries are the most visible part of the Paralympic history projects tireless work. But it represents just the tip of the iceberg. The project began in 2010, when Naar, who had been with Paralympics Australia (then the Australian Paralympic Committee) for a decade in various leadership roles, became aware that Kevin Coombs OAM was unwell. Coombs, a wheelchair basketballer, is a hugely significant figure; he was the first Indigenous athlete to represent Australia at a Paralympic or Olympic Games, competing at five Paralympics and carrying the torch into the Sydney 2000 Paralympic opening ceremony.

Id been aware that Paralympics Australia and the Paralympic team were very innovative and forward looking, really in the moment, says Naar. But there wasnt a massive amount of understanding or recognition of where the movement had gone before; it was very much based on the present, without acknowledgement of the past.

A colleague expressed concern that Coombs was unwell (he is now 80) and suggested that they might interview the Paralympic legend. That was really the impetus to get the project off the ground, Naar says. He contacted the National Library of Australia and suggested they might expand their oral history project to include past Paralympians. Within weeks they had recorded an interview with Coombs. We just took it from there, he adds. Today, the National Library has over 50 oral history interviews with significant Paralympic figures.

The interview precipitated a moment of reflection at Paralympics Australia. We thought, well, how can we capture the history of the movement in Australia? says Naar. Whats the best way of going about that? Some wanted a book, but Naar was keen think bigger. Lots of organisations produce books, but you tend to produce a few hundred copies, you give away 50 and the other 250 copies sit in boxes for years until someone throws them out,.

Instead, Naar and Professor Keith Lyons at the University of Canberra approached Wikimedia Australia, who were immediately interested in the project. Blending digital and orthodox history, through academic, sporting and institutional partners, the Australian Paralympic history project was born. It is a unique digital history project which combines traditional history elements and manages, presents and preserves them digitally in a way that is relevant to how people seek and use information in the 21st century, says Naar. They are also working on a book, which will be published shortly.

In 2013, with the University of Queensland, the project received a grant of $250,000 from the Australian Research Council, in addition to funding from Paralympics Australia. The group have used the funding to engage researchers, conduct Wikipedia workshops, develop a 3,000-image strong photo library and create an interactive website. We wanted to make it as accessible as possible, Naar adds. If you wanted to find out about the history of the Paralympic movement in Australia, anyone, anywhere could find it.

The Tasmanian has been at the forefront of this work, initially as a Paralympic Australia employee and then contractor, together with an ad hoc group of about 60 volunteers (including Greg Blood, who creates the helpful Australia at the Paralympics summary pages each Games). While Paralympics Australias funding for the project ceased in May 2020 due to Covid-related cuts, Naar has continued on in an unpaid capacity coordinating volunteers and managing the wider project.

Despite the current lack of financial support, Naar hopes that the project will endure. He says it has helped fill major gaps in Paralympic history: when the project started, Paralympics Australia only had archive imagery dating back to 1996; the project has subsequently collected photos from Australias participation in the first Games, in 1960, and at every Paralympics since. They have also hosted reunions for early teams, including a 50th anniversary of the 1960 Paralympics. The fact that five decades later we could talk to the people who had been at the first Paralympic Games was very powerful, Naar says.

Asked why he continues to work 20 hours a week, unpaid, on this project, Naar underscores the importance of history. For me, its an ongoing acknowledgement of the people who made the movement what it is today. Its important for sporting organisations to have a history and recognise that history.

Current and former Paralympic athletes have expressed gratitude for the teams work preserving their historic achievements. Naar cites a recent example to underscore the importance of accurately preserving history. Last year in Tokyo, when Madison de Rozario won gold, the commentary team was saying that this was the first female Australian to win the Paralympic marathon, he says. They were not the only ones most news coverage led with this claim. Only, it was wrong.

In actual fact, Jan Randles won a gold medal in the first wheelchair marathon held in 1984, Naar says. (Embarrassingly, this author made the same error). The project has since collaborated with Randles to provide more information online. Jan got fairly upset by the whole thing and weve since worked with her to make sure that the [Wikipedia] article has been updated and is more comprehensive and her story is out there. It means a huge amount to her.

When Australias Winter Paralympians take to the slopes in Beijing this week, they can take heart knowing their achievements will be accurately recorded for future generations. And, despite Wikipedias discriminatory notability requirement, Naar and his colleagues will have found a way to ensure that every para-athlete has their own page even before the opening ceremony begins.

Read more here:
Half a million words and 20m views: the project preserving Australias Paralympic history - The Guardian

Few people spend more time thinking about the Democratic Partys fading appeal with rural voters than Theron G. Noble. A local lawyer, Terry knows everyone around DuBois and established the state partys rural caucus in 2015. We met at the American Legion, a log cabin building off a main drive. In the quiet bar that smelled of heavy cigarette smoke, two retirees in Veteran caps nursed bottles of Miller Lite.

Two years ago, Biden did slightly better in Clearfield County than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. Both, however, still trailed Obamas vote count here in 2012, underscoring Democrats deepening troubles. In 2008, Obama came within 4,107 votes of McCain in Clearfield County. The last Democrat to win the county was Bill Clinton in 1992.

But Noble is especially exuberant for someone whose duties amount to ensuring Democrats keep Republicans from running up huge margins in rural counties. Biden had just stopped off in Pittsburghabout a two hours drive southwestand pledged to get out more to sell not only his top-line initiatives but the hundreds of millions of dollars approved for rural family housing costs, protecting manufacturing jobs and upgrading school facilities so they could open.

At a recent meeting hosted by the rural caucus, Noble says the organization hit its all-time high in participants on a call, 107. Candidates like Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for Pennsylvania governor, addressed the party activists. Nobles caucus also heard from Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Rep. Conor Lamb, Democratic U.S. Senate candidates who both have made crossover appeal central to their campaigns and political identities.

Noble grudgingly acknowledges that his conversations with Democrats often revolve around preventing blowouts. Pulling on an Amstel Light, he lists off the names and districts of six Democratic state lawmakers who held area seats just over the past 10 to 15 years. Now, there are two. We had a lot of good union jobs, coal-mining jobs, down in the southern end of the county, he says. They all went away, and the jobs went away. We were demonized over that.

Noble says its painful for him to watch candidates for local office who grew up in strong Democratic families switch their party affiliation just to be competitive. Winning federal elections is harder still, and the areas House members are doing what they need to demonstrate their relevance to constituents. The next morning, a newspaper in the state ran a commentary about Republican congressmen, Glenn GT Thompson and Mike Kelly, touting benefits from Bidens legislative agenda back home after opposing the rescue act. Noble wants Democrats to apply pressure and make Republicans work harder for the margins they enjoy.

As in any war, we need to move our resources to make them defend their own territory, Noble says. Im tired of playing defense. We got to get on the offense a little bit.

One thing Noble is adamant about is that Democrats cant make the midterm elections about Trump, whose grip hes convinced is slipping. Noble plays on a traveling senior baseball team and spends a lot of time with people who drove out of the hills to back Trump in both elections. He doesnt have hard data, but from his conversations hes picked up on weakening fervor for the former president, a sense that Trumps election conspiracies are wearing thin. Rural communities like his, Noble says, have suffered from the GOPs deliberate campaign to sow distrust between voters and their government and between each other.

For the better part of two decades now, the Republican Party has been formulating fear and really fear of others, he says. We, on the other hand, keep responding with policies and we get into the weeds on arguments. We do not hit back at the visceral level that theyve been targeting for a long time. It has just really made people into tribes.

Lately, Noble has settled on an approach he thinks would help drive a wedge through the Trump coalition of Republicans, independents and even the small contingent who remain Democrats. It calls for targeting a sizable chunk of votersby his estimate there are 15 percent to 17 percent nationally and as many as 22 percent in Pennsylvania who voted for Trump in 2020and convincing enough of them to lock arms with Democrats to protect American democracy. Hes started to refer to those voters he wants Democrats to focus onpeople who feel like the Republican Party has abandoned their values around upholding the Constitutionas the Bush-Cheney coalition. Its a reference to the former vice president who served under both Bushes, as well as Dick Cheneys daughter, Liz, the Wyoming Republican congresswoman who is calling out the former presidents lies about a stolen election and is serving on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Weve got to pose the question to them: Are you for democracy or are you not? he says.

He took me into a darkened room inside the American Legion where military medals hang on a wall. Noble didnt serve in the armed forces, but he says he was raised to appreciate the sacrifices of past generations. They buried his uncle John in September. He was 100 years old, with German shrapnel still in his body. Noble turns on his phones flashlight and points to Big Johns Purple Heart from Normandy. Next to it is his late dads medal, also from World War II, this one for good conduct. I ask him what drives him politically after so much losing.

Its my generations obligation to protect and preserve democracy, he says. But in this situation, the enemy is not foreign, you know. It is domestic.

He dimmed the flashlight shining on the medals. So, thats what drives me.

Continue reading here:
'It's Almost Like a Secret Society': The Perils of Being Democrat in a Trump Town - POLITICO

Mr. Romerio Mafnas and Lourin Hubbard, Congressional Candidate District 22. Courtesy photo

Tulare County Democrats announced that they have registered the 10,000th Democrat voter in the City of Tulare. On Sunday, February 27th, Tulare County Democrats participated in a voter registration program in the City of Tulare and walked door to door on the westside of the city to talk to neighbors about the importance of registering to vote.

In preparation for the upcoming June 7th primary and to help elect Democrats in key races, we have been walking door to door in certain communities to encourage people to register to vote and to participate in the upcoming election, stated Susanne Gundy, voter registration coordinator.

On Sunday volunteers knocked on the door of Mr. Romerio Mafnas, a new resident on the westside in the City of Tulare. Mr. Manfas is a retired veteran and strong Democrat who recently moved to Tulare from Ventura California. After a few minutes of conversation, he registered to vote and symbolically became the 10,000th Democrat to register to vote in Tulare.

When asked why he registered to vote, he responded, I was in the Army and I believe voting is the foundation of our country and I believe Democrats do a better job of running our country than Republicans, stated Mr. Manfas.

The recent once in a decade Census has provided data to us that shows us in what neighborhoods across the county are thousands of potential Latino voters who are 18 years of age and older and who are citizens that can potentially register to vote. Over the next few months, we will continue to engage with them to work to register Democrats to vote across Tulare county, concluded Gundy.

Read more:
Tulare County Democrats register 10,000th Democrat in the City of Tulare - Valley Voice

While most of the experts on Asian American politics I contacted voiced confidence in the continued commitment of Asian Americans to the Democratic Party and its candidates, there were some danger signals for example, in the 2021 New York City mayoral election. Eric Adams, the Democrat, decisively beat Curtis Sliwa, the Republican, 65.5 percent to 27.1 percent, but support for Sliwa an anti-crime stalwart who pledged to take on the spineless politicians who vote to defund police shot up to 44 percent in precincts where more than half of residents are Asian, according to The City.

The story was headlined Chinese voters came out in force for the GOP in NYC, shaking up politics, and the subhead read From Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, frustrations over Democratic stances on schools and crime helped mobilize votes for Republican Curtis Sliwa for mayor and conservative Council candidates.

A crucial catalyst in the surge of support for Sliwa, according to The City, was his proposed reforms to specialized high school admissions and gifted and talented programs ignoring the fact that Adams had also pledged to do this. More generally, the City reported,

A wave of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic has heightened a sense of urgency about public safety and law enforcement. Asian anger and frustration have, for the first time, left a visible dent in a city election.

Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from Queens, tweeted on Nov. 4, 2021:

Pending paper ballot counts, the assembly districts of @nily, @edbraunstein, @Barnwell30, @Rontkim and @Stacey23AD all went Republican. Our party better start giving more of a sh*t about #aapi (Asian American-Pacific Island) voters and communities. No other community turned out at a faster pace than AAPIs in 2020.

Similarly, Asian Americans led the drive to oust three San Francisco School Board members all progressive Democrats last month. As my Times colleague Amelia Nierenberg wrote on Feb. 16:

The recall also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power. In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board changed the admission system for the districts most prestigious institution, Lowell High School. It abolished requirements based primarily on grades and test scores, instead implementing a lottery system.

In their March 2021 paper, Why the trope of Black-Asian conflict in the face of anti-Asian violence dismisses solidarity, Jennifer Lee and Tiffany Huang, sociologists at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out that since March 2020 there had been over 3,000 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian violence from 47 states and the District of Columbia, ranging from stabbings and beatings, to verbal harassment and bullying, to being spit on and shunned.

While these senseless acts of anti-Asian violence have finally garnered the national attention they deserve, Lee and Huang continued, they have also invoked anti-Black sentiment and reignited the trope of Black-Asian conflict. Because some of the videotaped perpetrators appear to have been Black, some observers immediately reduced anti-Asian violence to Black-Asian conflict.

Working against such Black-Asian conflict, the two authors argue, is a besieged but real-world solidarity demonstrated in

studies showing that Black Americans are more likely than white or Hispanic Americans to recognize racism toward Asian Americans, and that Asian Americans who experience discrimination are more likely to recognize political commonality with Black Americans. Covid-related anti-Asian bias is not inevitable. While China virus rhetoric has been linked to violence and hostility, new research shows that priming Americans about the coronavirus did not increase anger among the majority of Americans toward Asian Americans.

Lee and Huang warn, however, that anger among a minority has invoked fear among the majority of Asian Americans.

In Asian Americans, Affirmative Action & the Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, published in the Spring 2021 issue of Daedalus, a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Lee makes the case that Asian Americans are at a political tipping point:

The changing selectivity of contemporary U.S. Asian immigration has recast Asian Americans from unassimilable to exceptional, resulting in their rapid racial mobility. This mobility combined with their minoritized status places them in a unique group position in the U.S. racial hierarchy, conveniently wedged between underrepresented minorities who stand to gain most from the policy (affirmative action) and the advantaged majority who stands to lose most because of it. It also marks Asians as compelling victims of affirmative action who are penalized because of their race.

In recent years, a new brand of Asian immigrants has entered the political sphere whose attitudes depart from the Asian American college student activists of the 1960s, Lee writes. This faction of politically conservative Asian immigrants has no intention of following their liberal-leaning predecessors, nor do they intend to stay silent.

The issue of whether more Asian Americans will choose to side with conservatives, Lee writes, or whether they will choose to forge a collective Asian American alliance will depend on whether U.S. Asians recognize and embrace their ethnic and class diversity. Will they forge a sense of linked fate akin to that which has guided the political attitudes and voting behavior of Black Americans?

More here:
Opinion | Will Asian Americans Bolt From the Democratic Party? - The New York Times