Oxford University Press's Blog, page 258

Social media use and disturbed sleep

Are you spending more and more time consuming social media through your computer, mobile phone, video games, and social media apps? If so, you’re not alone. Data from Pew Research Center has shown that use of social media among adults has grown from 5% in 2005 to 69% in 2018, with almost 90% of 18–29-years-olds indicating use. Using social media of various forms may have some benefits; in addition to entertainment value, social media can also expose us to new ideas and current events, promote community participation, facilitate connection with long-distance friends and family, and enhance access to social networks.

However, social media use can have negative health-related consequences as well. Using social media has been associated with important sleep-related outcomes such as a shorter number of hours slept at night and poorer sleep quality. This is noteworthy because the National Sleep Foundation reports that almost half of Americans don’t get the recommended 7–9 hours of sleep on week nights. Because social media commonly involves interactive screen time, it may be more detrimental to sleep than more passive types of screen media, such as watching television. Among other mechanisms, social media use may also impact sleep directly by displacing sleep and indirectly by promoting emotional, cognitive, and/or physiological arousal. Therefore, our research group has focused on the impact of social media use in particular, rather than screen time more generally, given its relevance to sleep health.

We previously showed that those who use social media more than two hours per day were about twice as likely to have disturbed sleep—including decreased sleep quality and difficulty falling asleep—compared to those who use social media 30 minutes per day or fewer. However, we had not yet examined the impact of the time of day of social media use. While social media use may impact sleep regardless of the time of day, it may be particularly important before bedtime for three reasons:

social media use may delay bedtime and displace time available for sleep;
mental activation can hinder ease of falling asleep;
the light from screen-based devices can delay the onset of sleep.

Therefore, we recently undertook a study to explore whether social media use in the 30 minutes just before bed was linked with poorer sleep, over and above social media use across the entire day.

Who was involved in the study?

We studied 1,763 young adults between the ages of 19–32 who completed a web-based survey. They were recruited by randomly dialing phone numbers (cell phones and land lines) and by sampling a selection of addresses. The sample assessed in the study represents the young adult population across the United States.

How did we measure social media use and sleep disturbance?

We measured social media use in two ways:

To assess social media use over the entire day, we asked participants to report the typical total number of minutes per day they used social media for personal use.
To assess social media use before bed, we asked participants to answer the question: “How frequently over the past year did you check social media in the 30 minutes before falling asleep at night?”

We assessed sleep disturbance using items on a web-based survey that assessed problems with sleep, difficulty falling asleep, whether sleep was refreshing, and sleep quality over the past seven days.

What did we find?

Compared to participants who rarely check social media before bed, those who most often check before bed were about 1.5 times more likely to have more disturbed sleep. This was still true even when we considered how much participants used social media across the entire day.

What doesn’t this study tell us?

Because we assessed social media use and sleep disturbance at the same time, this study can’t tell us whether social media use leads to disturbed sleep, or whether disturbed sleep contributes to social media use. Future studies will need to examine this over time to answer this question.

Why does this study matter?

If future work is able to determine that social media in the 30 minutes before bed use leads to disturbed sleep (rather than the other direction), this would suggest that young adults who want to improve their sleep should focus on reducing social media use at this particular time of day. Reducing social media use in the 30 minutes before bed may be more feasible and effective than reducing social media use across the entire day.

Featured image credit: Vietnam woman on smartphone by Tony Lam Hoang. CC0 Public Domain via Unsplash.

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Melody—why isn’t it taught?

Melody is one of the four foundational materials—melody, harmony, rhythm, and texture— used to make music. It is also the one most people would cite as the most attractive, the one that draws audiences to the works of Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and others, and to the popular songs of George Gershwin, Diane Warren, Bruno Mars, and more. Yet I know of no college course that is devoted to teaching this subject in depth.

Why?

The usual answer is that melody is God-given; in this scenario, you either have the ability to conceive and compose interesting and beautiful melodies or you don’t. God, in this context, is an elitist, giving all of us the chance to study multiple courses in harmony, replete with its rules and guidelines, but hiding away the craft of creating melody except for the precious few. What nonsense! I can only guess why a curriculum and pedagogy in melody were not created: probably because between 1700 and 1900 the harmonic vocabulary kept expanding and, therefore, became the focus of teaching music.

In all fairness, yes, if you studied at a music college, you were taught some things about melody, but the things you learned about melody were almost always in relationship and subservient to harmony. In harmony courses, you were made aware of how melody has either a dissonant or consonant relationship to the harmony and you learned the names of the various dissonant relationships that occur: passing tones, neighboring tones, appoggiaturas, etc. Even in counterpoint courses, the subject of melody is often subservient to the harmonic relationship taking place between the voices.

Did you know that composers of popular songs during the era of “The Great American Songbook” were called melody writers? That is just one of the reasons that as the first appointed chair of the Songwriting Department at Berklee College of Music (1987), I decided my mandate would be to form a curriculum that would teach this heretofore ignored subject.

Would it be possible to conceive of melody without its reliance on its relationship to harmony? And, if it was possible, how could it be taught?

The task I set for myself, to put melody front and center in the new Songwriting curriculum, was daunting. But I was troubled by the question of would it be possible to conceive of melody without its reliance on its relationship to harmony? And, if it was possible, how could it be taught? I thought of monophonic music that I knew: the songs of Hildegard von Bingen or the many Celtic songs that are sung without accompaniment. And then I remembered how entranced I had been when I first heard recordings of Ravi Shankar playing the ragas of India, music that emanated from the drone, and I started to piece together a concept for teaching melody, of creating melody not in relationship to harmonies, but instead, in relationship to a tonal center.

Stripping away harmony completely and allowing melody to only relate to the tonal center and its overtones led me to reexamine and deepen my understanding and importance of the overtone series and the tone tendencies of scales most commonly found in popular songs. I created a pedagogy that starts with melody being conceived first to a tonal center, a relationship I designated as melody’s primary relationship. Once an understanding of the importance of that relationship has been established for the student, examining the relationship of melody to its harmony, its secondary relationship, exposes in a deep, empowering way how harmony works with melody. This approach gives melody its rightful place, not one that forces it into a pre-determined position by given harmonies, but one that allows melody to initiate the music and asks harmony to play its role in enhancing it. Of course, I do not dismiss the other, more common approach to creating a melody: by beginning with a chord progression and then composing a melody to it. That is still a perfectly feasible way to proceed and should be taught as well. It is simply not the only way.

The relationship between melody and harmony is quite complex and symbiotic. It is a relationship that is not simply tonal; it is also rhythmic because harmony is a controlling factor in form, and melody often serves to offset harmony’s too ridged metric positioning. Differentiating the melodic phrase from the harmonic phrase is a vital factor in creating interesting, memorable melodies and is a very exciting and teachable subject. Once these two relationships—melody to tonal center and melody to harmony— are completely understood, the resulting pedagogy expands and lights the pathways in which melody can be conceived and taught.

There are many topics in the study of melody that go beyond the scope of this short essay. For example, since melody is made up of both pitch and rhythm, the rhythmic aspect of melody is of paramount importance. My work in this area has mainly been centered on the relationship of words to melodic rhythm, especially how melodic rhythms often summon a need to rhyme. Other questions involving the aesthetics of music are complex unless they are confined stylistically, e.g., “what constitutes an interesting or beautiful melody?”—a topic worthy of an entire book!

My hope is that my work inspires teachers to create materials and courses that expand on my ideas. I would not have had the chance to explore this important subject without the creation of a Songwriting department in 1987, the first of its kind, and an example of the innovative approach to music that Berklee College of Music has had since its inception.

Featured image credit: Photo by MD Duran. Public domain via Unsplash.  

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Science and spectacle: exposing climate change through the arts

Despite scientific consensus about the reality of climate change, one of the challenges facing the scientific community is effectively facilitating an understanding of the problem and encouraging action. Given the complexity of the issue, its many interdependencies, and lack of simple solutions, it’s easy to ignore. For many people, the threat of climate change feels distant and abstract—something they don’t easily perceive in their day-to-day lives.

One of the ways that might help people grasp the real complexities of climate change is through narratives and storytelling. Narratives help people understand and communicate information by organizing the information in a way that is conducive to human cognition. Additionally, narratives can be effective because they present lived experiences of others, which may make it more difficult for them to be discounted. In the arts field, there has been an encouraging increase in the number of stories being told about climate change. From cinema to theater, artists and celebrities have helped publicize the effects of climate change by making them feel real.

The Oxford Research Encyclopedia Climate Science will help us understand how this field has helped the scientific community reshape their communication strategy.

Arts & Climate Change

Individuals respond to and process information differently. For some people, knowing the scientific facts about climate change may not feel helpful or beneficial. In fact, knowing about it may make people feel paralyzed by the magnitude and complexity of the problem, and they may disengage because of a negative (and fully rational) appraisal of their individual capacity and efficacy to do something about it.

The arts and humanities engage people in many different ways through different mediums (art, film, writing, etc.). Telling climate stories in distinctive ways involves a variety of senses, allowing audience to experience the reality. The arts and humanities can help move beyond simply conveying information about climate change. They allow the so-called invisibility of climate change to be seen, felt, and imagined in the present and the future.

A relatively new genre of fiction—climate fiction, also known as cli-fi—is helping to break the silence surrounding climate change. Cli-fi stories often involve apocalyptic events or dystopian futures, such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Waterworld (1995). Informed by scientific knowledge regarding the likely environmental consequences of climate change, these stories offer audiences a vivid and unsettling depiction of the future that is being created.

Documentaries & Edutainment

Documentary films have presented powerful climate stories. Increasingly, filmmakers are using documentaries and documentary TV shows (“edutainment”) to both inform audiences of the facts of climate change as well as to persuade them that problem is a serious one urgently requiring human action. Several documentaries have been created to educate the public about anthropogenic climate change as well as to advocate for individual and collective action. Studies have shown audiences are more likely to acquire and retain science knowledge when it is presented in narrative formats like documentaries.

Studies have shown audiences are more likely to acquire and retain science knowledge when it is presented in narrative formats like documentaries.

Their reach, however, might be limited. This may be due to selective exposure: the tendency of individuals to prefer media that they assume will reinforce their values over media that they assume will challenge their preexisting beliefs. Because many environmental issues are highly partisan, this selective exposure is frequently politically-motivated and individuals tend to sort into partisan news sources. Although the processes by which science and environmental documentaries influence public salience and thus policy demands about an issue like climate change can be difficult to predict, it is impossible to deny that documentaries at least have the potential to play a major role in shaping public discourse about the environment due to their potential influence on the amount and quality of news coverage and thus public attention toward specific environmental issues.

Celebrities & the embodiment of audience

Moving beyond the screen, celebrities use their cultural status to raise awareness of climate change, bringing it within the popular cultural sphere, as well as utilizing their fan bases to mobilize engagement and action via social media. But, they have done so through what might be termed the “spectacle:” highly visible, eye-catching, and visually exuberant media appearances that have the potential to distract audiences from the “real” environmental issues under scrutiny. Here, then, celebrities provide an important human dimension to climate change beyond polar bears and melting glaciers to develop a kind of “human embodiment of the spectacle” in the ways they utilize their very bodies to garner media and audience attention around environmental activism. However, celebrities may render climate change as monetized and meaningless media performances. Thus, the endorsement becomes inauthentic and the audience turns away from climate change belief. While there remains many questions regarding the positive—or negative—effects of “celebritizing” climate change belief, it is still true that the topic is in the mainstream, which may be in and of itself a victory.

The public relationship with climate change belief or denial has been increasing with the help of the media landscape. If we are to move the audiences to become politically active, we must understand the way in which science and media can benefit each other.

Featured image credit: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Actor and Environmental Activist Leonardo DiCaprio at the 2016 Our Ocean Conference, by US Department of State. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Considerations for peacemaking and peacekeeping

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to peacekeeping. Consequently, peace has generated considerable interest in the areas of education, research, and politics. Peacekeeping developed in the 1950s as part of preventive diplomacy. It has since become an essential component of conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Peacebuilding has become embedded in the theory and practice of national governments, nongovernmental organizations, and regional and global intergovernmental organizations. Most regional intergovernmental organizations now have departments for peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding.

The proliferation of international peacebuilding was accompanied by a series of questions about peacebuilding ethics within International Relations.

Using the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, we’ll examine some of the challenges and questions facing peacebuilding.

Peace Operations

Peace operations are the most visible face of the United Nations (UN). In fact, the UN declares in the first bullet point of the purposes of the UN is to “maintain international peace and security.” However, the UN is not the only actor involved in peace operations; peace operations have been authorized and undertaken by other international organizations, coalitions of states, and individual governments.

But what is a peace operation exactly? There is no uncontested definition of what constitutes a peace operation. In general terms, all definitions have consequences that lead analysts in certain directions and produce different conclusions about the number, type, and success or failure of peace operations. The central dilemma with defining the term involves deciding what makes some military activities worthy of the label “peace operations” but not others. Another approach would be to examine the different ways in which actors have justified certain military activities as “peace operations” as opposed to some other sort of action, such as counterinsurgency, limited war, humanitarian intervention, or self-defense. Peace operations come in many different shapes and sizes, and deploy for many different purposes.

While it is difficult to define what makes a peace operation, it is also difficult to define a successful peace operation. There are three key issues that must be addressed in answering this question. First, success for whom? Any peacemaking operation involves multiple parties and each one could interpret success differently. Second, what timescale should be adopted? Perceptions of success may vary depending upon whether one adopts a short- or long-term perspective. Third, what baseline standard should be used against which to assess peacekeeping’s effects?

Durability of Peace

Since the end of World War II, most armed hostilities have been civil wars, many of which have been serial conflicts. The costs associated with these ever-present wars—the loss of lives, the destruction of infrastructure, and a host of other ills—have galvanized researchers into identifying the conditions that can help countries establish a durable peace once a war has ended. Scholars have studied various conflicts in order to better understand why peace proved durable after some conflicts but not others.

How can third party actors engage in peacebuilding in good ways? Are there certain obligations that peacebuilders must follow?

Several studies have devoted attention to a variety of factors that affect whether peacekeeping and peacebuilding help ensure a durable peace. After several discouraging outcomes of the UN’s conflict management in the early 1990s (e.g., Somalia and Rwanda) some scholars argued that the UN was achieving, at best, short-term goals like reducing hostility and preventing outside actors from encouraging continuation of the conflict. Other scholars claimed that intervention was actually making the situation worse by creating incentives that led conflicts to persist and that it would be better to see one party defeated and the fighting ended. Several scholars have recognized that the UN will assist in more intense conflicts, which may be more difficult to resolve.

Ethics

The proliferation of international peacebuilding efforts has been accompanied by critical analysis and calls for accountability, which have fed into a rich and growing literature on peacebuilding ethics. How can third party actors engage in peacebuilding in good ways? Are there certain obligations that peacebuilders must follow? Are peacebuilders doing the right things? Because there are different definitions to what peacebuilding and peace operations are, it proves difficult answering these questions.

Moral judgements ask if whether the lives of those who live in areas in which peacebuilding occurs are better or worse off because of the intervention. Many of the critiques aimed at the “liberal peace” highlight the problematic pursuit of unjust ends through peacebuilding. Many have warned that international efforts in peacebuilding and state building were not only ineffective but were potentially doing further harm by imposing state and market models that were premature, did not fit, and perhaps even undermined the generation of locally rooted peace initiatives in conflict-affected areas. While others argue that there are ethical imperatives for certain types of states to engage in post-conflict support.

While there are challenges facing peacemaking efforts, it is worth examining the causes and possible solutions. We are in an increasingly interdependent world and our efforts to cooperate will only serve to better life around the world.

Featured image credit: Bolivian Army 2nd Lt. Mauricio Vidangos stands guard at the entry control point of an Observation Point during training, Oct. 21, 2002, by Senior Airman JoAnn S. Makinano. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons .

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The agonies of the Multilateral Trading System

As of late, the Multilateral Trading System has been beset by several serious agonies. The symptoms have been obvious. The 11th Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which took place in December 2017 in Buenos Aires, has demonstrated that the WTO’s rule-making function is no longer performing as expected: with the exception of a shared willingness to collectively and constructively work further on the issue of disciplining fishery subsidies, it did not result in any new normative multilateral outcome. Likewise, the WTO’s dispute settlement function has been affected by a stalled selection process for its new judges. If this situation persists, the WTO might cease to be the Multilateral Trading System’s final legal arbiter.

In so far as symptoms hide deeper afflictions, the WTO’s functions in the normative context and in the field of dispute settlement will probably need deeper diagnosis and long-time reflection in order to get member states’ institutional remedies right. In the short term, it might therefore be easier to start by refocussing on the WTO’s third function: transparency.

There was a time when the WTO’s main forum for transparency—its Trade Policy Review Mechanism, which periodically analyses member states’ trade policies and practices—was considered to be one of the two “Crown jewels” of the WTO (its Dispute Settlement Body being the other). However, that was a time when multilateral trade was not yet eclipsed by plurilateral, regional, or bilateral trade deals or initiatives. It was also a time when the WTO member states still clearly appreciated the WTO’s added value in terms of trade transparency. As the sixth and last appraisal of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (2017) demonstrates, member states still do (as the continued relevancy of the mechanism shows), but they are seemingly not willing to pay any longer for the institutional consequences of an increased periodicity or deepened review of the Trade Policy Reviews. The political importance of the WTO’s main forum for transparency has therefore gradually withered over the years.

It is therefore time to start re-polishing the Trade Policy Review Mechanism.

International trade and its modalities are ever-evolving. Once upon a time, national borders were protected by tariff barriers in order to regulate the trade in goods. Since then, national borders have been gradually superseded by a proliferation of international value chains whereas tariff barriers have been increasingly replaced by the advent and complexification of non-tariff barriers. Moreover, international trade patterns are increasingly based on services and other intangibles such as data.

It is therefore time to start re-polishing the Trade Policy Review Mechanism; not only because it is probably easier from an institutional perspective to organize increased transparency (a permanent need on which all WTO members still seem to agree) than to provide further WTO rulemaking or adjudication to the respective interest and shared acceptance of all (economic interests of WTO members change), but also because the WTO’s transparency function seems to logically precede its two other functions. Although the findings of the Trade Policy Reviews have no institutional bearing on the WTO’s dispute settlement, members have often tried to skew the line between transparency and compliance and attempted to use the WTO transparency function’s findings in disputes. Likewise, new trade issues or topics that still have no normative standing in the WTO (such as competition) often first appear in the context of the members’ Trade Policy Reviews long before these issues lead to new multilateral or plurilateral deliberations or norm-setting.

If it is easy and logical to refocus the WTO members’ political attention on revamping and revitalising the Trade Policy Review, the question arises whether members can and will do so. Whether they can will often depend on their available budget. In this regard, the historical and actual settings of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism show that it is possible to do more with less, simply by reorganising the institutional settings and scope and depth of reviews. Whether WTO members will effectively revamp and revitalise the Trade Policy Review is of course up to them. History however suggests that crisis (a situation for which the current state of play in the context of Multilateral Trading System probably qualifies) often leads to the greatest breakthroughs. Moreover, actuality suggests that even amongst the sceptical members of the WTO, increased WTO transparency is now sought after as a matter of priority.

Contrary to its two other functions, the WTO’s Trade Policy Review Mechanism is not sick. It only seems to suffer under a symptom of member states’ complacency with a relatively well-working system, which resulted in a gradual withering away of the mechanism’s political and economic importance. It is therefore time to re-polish the WTO’s second Crown jewel in order to provide a transparent future for the WTO.

Featured image credit: ‘Map of states which have submitted an application to join the World Trade Organization.’ by Happenstance. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons .

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The social importance of dance in the 17th and 18th centuries

In the 21st century, dance is a part of life—it can be an occupation, a part of traditional weddings, a hobby, and a pastime, among other things. However, it is regarded quite differently than it was in the time of the Enlightenment, when it was a much more important part of regular social life, especially for the wealthier classes. In this time, young adults went to dance instructors to make sure they were properly trained for the social activities they would soon be a part of. Read on for excerpts of correspondence from Electronic Enlightenment highlighting just how important dancing was to everyday life in the 17th and 18th centuries.

René Descartes to père Marin Mersenne, 1630 , using dance as an example to explain whether one can discover the essence of beauty:

“[W]hat makes some people want to dance may make others want to cry. This is because it evokes ideas in our memory: for instance those who have in the past enjoyed dancing to a certain tune feel a fresh wish to dance the moment they hear a similar one; on the other hand, if someone had never heard a galliard without some affliction befalling him, he would certainly grow sad when he heard it again.”

John Locke to Mary Clarke [née Jepp], 1685 , giving advice on how to raise young girls:

“Girls should have a dancing master at home early: it gives them fashion and easy comely motion betimes which is very convenient, and they, usually staying at home with their mothers, do not lose it again, whereas the boys commonly going to school, they lose what they learn of a dancing master at home amongst their illfashioned schoolfellows, which makes it often less necessary because less useful for the boys to learn to dance at home when little: though if they were always to play at home in good company I should advise it for them too. If the girls are also by nature very bashful, it would be good that they should go also to dance publicly in the dancing schools when little till their sheepishness were cured…”

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu [née Pierrepont] to Alexander Pope, 1717 , writing about women dancing that she witnessed on her trip to Turkey:

“The great lady still leads the dance, and is followed by a troop of young girls, who imitate her steps, and, if she sings, make up the chorus. The tunes are extremely gay and lively, yet with something in them wonderfully soft. The steps are varied according to the pleasure of her that leads the dance, but always in exact time, and infinitely more agreeable than any of our dances, at least in my opinion. I sometimes make one in the train, but am not skilful enough to lead; these are the Grecian dances, the Turkish being very different.”

Image credit: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield by Allan Ramsay, 1765. Public domain via National Portrait Gallery.

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield to his son Philip Stanhope, 1739 , explaining how dancing relates to “decency,” which he considers one of the most important points of life:

“It is very proper and decent to dance well; but then you must dance only at balls, and places of entertainment; for you would be reckoned a fool, if you were to dance at church, or at a funeral. I hope, by these examples, you understand the meaning of the word Decency; which in French is Bienséance; in Latin Decorum; and in Greek Πρεπον.”

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield to his son Philip Stanhope, 1748 , again imploring the importance of learning to dance well while at school:

“Do you mind your dancing while your dancing-master is with you? As you will be often under the necessity of dancing a minuet, I would have you dance it very well. Remember, that the graceful motion of the arms, the giving your hand, and the putting-on and pulling-off your hat genteelly, are the material parts of a gentleman’s dancing. But the greatest advantage of dancing well is, that it necessarily teaches you to present yourself, to sit, stand, and walk genteelly; all of which are of real importance to a man of fashion.”

Featured image credit: “A Dance in the Country” by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. Public domain via Metropolitan Museum of Art .

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Trust in face-to-face diplomacy

President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, are due to meet for a historic summit in an as yet undisclosed location to try and resolve the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula. For academics that study the potential of face-to-face diplomacy to de-escalate and transform conflicts, the summit – assuming it actually takes place – is a fascinating case for testing the validity of their theories and prescriptions. The meeting of Trump and Kim raises the tantalizing possibility that these two leaders might be able to cut a deal which reduces the threat that each fear from the other, but for that to happen, each will have to trust in the other’s assurances that they do not have malign intent. The question is: can these two leaders develop this level of trust through a face-to-face meeting? Or, alternatively, could both leave the meeting feeling that they had been played, leading to a psychological backlash on the part of both leaders that could drive up the risks of war?

The strongest claim for advocates of face-to-face interaction between state leaders and top-level policymakers is that it makes possible a better understanding of each other’s intentions, and crucially, the promise of interpersonal trust. For Marcus Holmes, diplomats and state leaders meeting face-to-face are not only able to approximate one another’s intentions, but actually simulate them through the operation of the mirror neuron system in the brain. Holmes’s bold claim is that face-to-face interaction in promoting unparalleled access to the intentions of others escapes the security dilemma problem in international relations that is defined in terms of the existential condition of uncertainty that confronts decision-makers about the current and future behavior of others. The implication of Holmes’s argument for Trump and Kim’s meeting is that if both can be reassured that the other does not frame their state’s security needs in a way that requires the insecurity of the other, a deal that meets the security concerns of both sides might be possible. Indeed, writing with the author, Holmes argues that the success of the summit should be judged, not in terms of whether it promotes the denuclearization of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, but how far it promotes increased mutual reassurance.

The challenge posed by Holmes’ work is how far increased intention understanding can lead to a diplomatic breakthrough when both leaders meet in a context where they actively distrust the other’s intentions. In the case of Trump and Kim, Kim needs assurance that if he ceases further development of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Capability (ICBM) that can hold US cities nuclear hostage, the United States will not feel emboldened to press what Kim fears is its long-standing goal of regime change. Conversely, the lack of trust between the two sides means US decision-makers need concrete and verifiable assurances that Kim is committed to giving up North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in return for security guarantees from the United States and the lifting of sanctions. The problem is that if Trump and his key advisors believe that Kim is only offering a summit because of continuing US sanctions and the credible threat of military action, they will not want to slacken those pressures until they have achieved the goal of North Korea’s complete denuclearization. The North Korean leader’s unilateral announcement last weekend that North Korea will suspend nuclear testing and ICBM launches was greeted by Trump tweeting that the move was ‘big progress.’

 The meeting of Trump and Kim raises the tantalizing possibility that these two leaders might be able to cut a deal which reduces the threat that each fear from the other.

However, will such a concession be enough to satisfy the United States since there is no commitment here on Kim’s part to remove North Korea’s nuclear deterrent? US decision-makers, especially those like the newly appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton, apply to North Korean intentions what Ole Hoslti calls ‘an “inherent bad faith” model.’ This leads decision-makers to interpret any conciliatory move on the part of an adversary as a trick aimed at lulling their opponent into a false sense of security. The past history of negotiating efforts between the two sides, especially the collapse of the 1994 Agreed Framework, has left US decision-makers strongly of the belief that North Korea cannot be trusted to keep to its promises, a position mirrored in North Korean perceptions of the US record of honoring its promises. Consequently, even if Kim has committed to restraining his nuclear testing and missile programme, can he – and crucially his successors – be trusted to honour this promise?

The potential for face-to-face interaction to develop trust at the highest levels of diplomacy has been recognized by practitioners themselves, including state leaders. Consider this reflection from President Ronald Reagan in his memoir on the eve of his first summit meeting in Geneva in November 1985 with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan wrote: ‘if we were ever going to break down the barriers of mistrust that divided our countries, we had to begin by establishing a personal relationship between the leaders of the two most powerful nations on earth’. But if practitioners appreciate the potential of face-to-face interaction in developing trust, the discipline of International Relations has not properly theorized the conditions under which some of these encounters lead to interpersonal trust, and equally importantly, why others lead to disappointment and failure.

My research into how interpersonal trust can develop through face-to-face interaction highlights the importance of state leaders exercising empathy for their counterparts. This can be called ‘security dilemma sensibility’ which is a recognition on the part of two adversaries as to how their actions have made the other fearful and insecure. In the case of Reagan and Gorbachev, both had exercised security dilemma sensibility prior to their first encounter. By contrast, in the case of Trump and Kim, each enters the room holding a ‘bad faith model’ of the other, and the hope has to be that empathy of the kind displayed by Reagan and Gorbachev can develop out of the face-to-face encounter itself.

The reciprocal exercise of security dilemma sensibility is a prior condition for the development of interpersonal trust, but it is not a sufficient one. Trust of this kind develops out of a process of social bonding that is engendered by face-to-face interaction. To be sure, Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan and Kim is no Gorbachev, but it is too soon to say that they could not develop a personal bond through meeting face-to-face. Trump has said in the context of past US leaders that they lacked the ‘chemistry’ to achieve a breakthrough with Russian leaders, but one of the fascinating questions that will be answered if Trump and Kim meet is whether they can ‘hit it off’ together. The likely odds of the Korean nuclear conflict ending in war or a peaceful accommodation hangs on the answer the two leaders give to this question.

Featured image credit: Donald-Trump und Kim-Jong-un Graffiti von Lush Sux by Bwag. CC-BY-SA-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Soil protists: a fertile frontier in biology research

For many years, soil has been considered the ultimate frontier to ecological knowledge. Soils serve many ecosystem functions for humans; for example, they provide the basis for most of our nutrition. Yet, the organisms which act as the catalysts for those services—i.e. the soil microbiota—still remain a relatively unexplored field of research. Leonardo da Vinci stated in the early 16th century that, “we know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underneath our feet”. While soil bacterial and fungal microbiology has become a fertile ground for scientific discovery, soil protists still remain a big unknown.

Image credit: Soil protist hartmannella by Stefan Geissen. Used with permission.

Certain species’ have nevertheless written history. The potato pathogen Phytophthora infestans was the biological culprit of the Big Irish Famine in the 19th century, causing mass starvation and provoking a mass exodus. Others, like Giardia and Entamoeba histolytica, are widespread human parasites that cause severe pathologies. However, most soil protists provide positive services in belowground ecosystems.

Soil protists are mostly tiny (

Image Credit: acanthamoeba1.6 by Stefan Geissen and Enrique Lara. Used with permission.

But the actions of soil protists are not limited to eating bacteria. Several species’specialise in preying on fungi, including plant pathogens; parasites infect nematodes and arthropods, such as insects; and, finally, phototrophic species’—organisms which obtain energy from sunlight and synthesise organic compounds, also called micro-algae—are predated, constituting a non-negligible pathway for nutrients in the different below ground ecosystems. As a whole, protists are considered a central hub in soil ecosystems, which link microbial decomposers (like bacteria and fungi) to macroscopic plants and animals, and have a huge potential interest for agricultural researchers. Indeed, protists that can manipulate microbial communities may find applications in crop production and pest control, which are both environmentally friendly and sustainable.

Until recently, however, the immense diversity of soil microbial eukaryotes—which arguably overtake all other eukaryotes on Earth—was an obstacle for characterising environmental communities. Indeed, molecular approaches to diversity studies in the past two decades have only scratched the surface of the thousands of molecular species present in a single sample.

Image Credit: Darbyshirella by Stefan Geissen and Enrique Lara. Used with permission.

In addition, organisms living within aggregates are far less accessible than their ecological counterparts, such as plankton. Taxonomic databases for soil protists were, as a consequence, underpopulated, especially as far as small species’ are concerned. The revolution brought by novel sequencing technologies (collectively called next generation sequencing) now allows researchers to retrieve unprecedented amounts of genetic information from the environment. Massive efforts to describe soil eukaryotic microbes are currently undertaken in several laboratories around the world, with a special focus on the function of these organisms.

In addition, big data oriented statistical tools are developed to infer the intricate interaction networks that link these organisms to their natural environments, develop models for holistic foodweb modelling, and finally quantify their contribution to nutrient flows and ecosystem functions. Knowledge building is, as always, essential to the application of new techniques. But protist research is on course to being placed at the centre of soil biology, and certainly has the potential to live up to all its hopes and promises.

Featured Image Credit: “Soil in Hands” by Natural Resources Conservation Service Soil Health Campaign. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Treating people with Alzheimer’s: The non-pharmacological approach.

On 2 January 2018, National Public Radio’s Terry Gross interviewed British neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli, who discussed Alzheimer’s disease and how “much better treatment” for the disease is about ten years away. The improved treatment to which Dr. Jebelli was referring was pharmaceutical/biomedical treatment. Indeed, the vast majority of stories in the mass media about treatment for Alzheimer’s focuses on the long hoped for biomedical treatment, emerging from drug trials or genetic approaches or both, that can stop the progress of the disease or prevent its occurrence. There is, however, a vast difference between treating a disease and treating people diagnosed with the disease—and this difference is especially critical where people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and their families and friends are concerned. At present, there are more than 5 million people in the US alone who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and the quality of their lives and that of their care partners depends on how the former are treated.

Treating persons diagnosed entails far more than attending to their biology and neurophysiology. Indeed, it necessitates that we attend to the psychological and social aspects of their lives. It requires understanding them, empathizing with them, and helping them to deal with their psychological and emotional reactions to the losses they have sustained due to brain damage, and helping them to cope with those feelings of loss. As well, it requires not focusing solely on what they cannot do, but recognizing their intact abilities to think, make memories, and have social relationships with others. It requires that we see the person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s as a person who has a great deal in common with people who are not diagnosed.

All of this requires first that healthy others understand the point of view of the person diagnosed: what do the dysfunctions mean to him or her? How does the person’s history as an adult inform us about his or her state of mind now and what they need from others? For example, a patient of mine, Dr. M was a retired university professor in the moderate to severe stage of the disease. Speaking eruditely was of the utmost importance to her. One of the problems she faced as a result of Alzheimer’s disease was that she had great difficulty recalling and then pronouncing the words she wanted to use to convey her thoughts. She was desperately unhappy and angry with herself, felt great frustration, and would refrain from speaking at all in the support group she attended. Her sadness and frustration were not “symptoms” of Alzheimer’s, but logical reactions to her losses, given who she had been all her adult life. That she was frustrated and sad meant that she was able to evaluate her own abilities at present in comparison with what they were in the past (this, of course, required her to have an intact memory of those abilities), recognize the difference, and interpret the meaning of that difference. This is very complex thinking that is not factored into determining her “stage” of the disease.

Treating persons diagnosed entails far more than attending to their biology and neurophysiology.

I spent two hours a week with Dr. M, with whom I worked to help her cope with her losses, in her home for about two years and at the beginning of that time, tried to convey to her that she was still able to communicate even though she could not speak with the grace and quickness that she enjoyed in the past. I called her attention to the famous mime, Marcel Marceau, who communicated a great deal to people all over the world without saying a single word. One day, in the course of conversation, Dr. M was unable to recall a particular word on two occasions and used a gesture each time to convey her thought. When I said to her, “You just used gestures twice to convey your thoughts. I understood exactly what you were trying to say. You made your point.” She smiled, and said, “I made your point.” That she turned my comment around, as it were, was not only a correct observation, but one that required a great wit as well as an intact memory of what I had told her about Marcel Marceau and how one could communicate without words. Indeed, in that moment, she laughed aloud and joyfully proclaimed, “Who needs words!”

At the beginning of our association, Dr. M’s husband was always present at home when I met with her. After the first few months, he told me that his wife was always more alert and energized on the mornings when I was coming to speak with her than she was on other mornings. This is another important observation, for Dr. M knew that she and I were going to be engaged in conversation about things that mattered to her. This means that a person with Alzheimer’s can have a sense of purpose and meaning in life and can want very much to be engaged with another person in an enlivening way given their interests and long-held dispositions of personality. There is a tremendous difference between enlivening and meaningful social interaction with others and spending time alone in front of a television that presents something that holds no value to a person. Under the latter circumstances, is it any wonder that people with Alzheimer’s fall asleep—if for no other reason than boredom?

The social and personal treatment of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease can be helpful and enlivening or it can be stultifying. If a person diagnosed can experience enjoyment and even delight from his or her interactions with other human beings, it is incumbent upon all of us who are deemed healthy to provide the resources that allow that to happen. There is a lot more to “treating” people with Alzheimer’s disease than biological treatment. There is psychological and social treatment as well. Although “much better treatment” in the pharmaceutical realm for people with Alzheimer’s may be ten years away, it is entirely possible for people diagnosed and their loved ones to enjoy “much better treatment” right now.

Featured image credit: Grandma and Grandad by Ben Smith. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Supporting grieving students at school following crisis events

Tragic events such as recent natural disasters and shootings at school affect many children and families. Although these events typically receive immediate media coverage and short-term supports, the long-term implications are often overlooked. The grief among children and adolescents experiencing significant loss generally emerges during the weeks and months following such tragic events. Although there are variations in the expression of grief, bereaved children and adolescents often struggle to meet the cognitive demands of school. Professionals at school, including, school psychologists, school counselors, and other mental health professionals have a tremendous opportunity to help identify and support students in need. Such support at school is helpful in facilitating healthy adjustment and coping strategies among bereaved students.

Understanding grief and mourning

The term grief refers to an individual’s personal experience, thoughts, and feelings associated with a loss. The term mourning refers to the externalized manifestation of grief. Mourning rituals, such as funerals, memorial services, and commemorative activities can facilitate grief. Culture influences the grieving process, and it is important to consider the vast range of ways that individuals and families mourn the death of others. For example, being sensitive to family preferences surrounding funerals or memorials helps ensure that you’re honoring their beliefs and values. It is also critical to note that some individuals may not feel comfortable expressing their grief at school, and instead prefer to do it privately with family.

Grief is often emotional and can bring up different feelings simultaneously, such as sadness, anger, fear, or worry. Grief is also physical and can be felt in different parts of a person’s body. A child or adult who is grieving may have trouble sleeping, eating, and may experience somatic difficulties such as headaches or stomachaches. Finally, grief can also show up in someone’s behaviors, such as through crying, separating oneself from other people, and having trouble focusing or sitting still. At the same time, other individuals may appear to be less affected, despite the fact that they may still be experiencing many of these symptoms. This is because for some people, depending on their age and ability to deal with their grief, they want to continue to have control over their life and maintain normal routines. This can sometimes be helpful for them to manage their grief, especially while at school or in public. Because of the widespread effects grief can have on an individual’s functioning, it is critical that students, school-staff, and parents obtain effective support when grieving the death of one or more significant person.

Elementary school children (6-12) are typically able to relate to death more easily than younger children.

Considerations for schools and families

Children express grief differently due to a variety of factors, including their age, cognitive abilities, and cultural surroundings. Young children are typically better able to express their grief through play, make-believe, and drawings instead of verbally. They also tend to be more vulnerable to the withdrawal or excessive displays of grief of their caregivers and need consistent love and support. Elementary school children (6-12) are typically able to relate to death more easily than younger children and ask a lot of questions and obtain knowledge to better understand what happened. Within this age range, they understand that death is final and that all living things die. Adolescents (13-18) are sometimes more self-conscious and although they may be spending more time with friends, they may be less likely to share their feelings with their friends. Typically around ages 15-18, they feel more comfortable expressing their feelings and their grief is more similar to that of adults.

Regardless of age, grief can significantly affect children and teenagers in various ways. Because of the variety of symptoms someone may experience when grieving, he or she may be less focused or motivated in school, or appear more withdrawn or tired. Furthermore, because a grieving youth may be experiencing a range of emotions, with some being uncomfortable for that individual, the youth may experience sudden outbursts of either anger or sadness. Families and schools are encouraged to remember that this is to be expected, and that youth need to be supported when experiencing these difficult emotions. However, additional support and follow-up may be needed if the youth is exhibiting a significant loss of interest in daily activities, is chronically absent, and has a significant fear of being alone, among other symptoms. These changes should be significant and not minor.

Additional support and follow-up may occur in a variety of ways, such as having a school-based mental health professional, like a school psychologist or counselor, provide individual or group support to the youth. This will enable the youth to process difficult feelings, have the opportunity to share their story, and talk about positive and difficult memories. When appropriate, receiving support through a grief group can be particularly effective, as it can help normalize their feelings and make the youth feel less alone. Ensuring that teachers and families are knowledgeable about the grief process and how to effectively support grieving youth is also critical. It may be particularly difficult for teachers or families who are also grieving the same death as the youth, emphasizing the importance of self-care and support for adults. Given that most children will experience the death of at least one close or special person prior to high school graduation, and because the vast majority of children ages 7 to 18 attend school on a regular basis, it is essential that school-based professionals be prepared to effectively support bereaved students.

Featured image credit: Chalk by Nikhita S. Public domain via Unsplash.

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