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Thursday, May 21, 2020
Trump says mail voting means Republicans would lose every election. Is that true? No.
By REID J. EPSTEIN AND STEPHANIE SAUL
THE NEW YORK TIMES |
APR 10, 2020
| WASHINGTON
Mail-in ballots for the 2016 general election in Salt Lake City. As President Donald Trump rails against voting by mail, some members of his own political party, in Utah specifically, are embracing it to keep their voters safe during the coronavirus outbreak.(Rick Bowmer/AP)
President Donald Trump said that if the United States switched to all-mail voting, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
The GOP speaker of the House in Georgia said an all-mail election would be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said universal mail voting would be “the end of our republic as we know it.”
Trump openly admitting if we made voting easier in America, Republicans wouldn't win elections
Trump: "The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." pic.twitter.com/x5HmX6uogo— Lis Power (@LisPower1) March 30, 2020
Yet leading experts who have studied voting by mail say none of that is true.
As with false claims by Republicans about vote-by-mail fraud, there is no evidence to back up the argument from the right that all-mail elections favor Democrats. But Trump and some of his allies are warning that vote-by-mail poses an existential threat to their party, in hopes of galvanizing Republican opposition to a voting method that is widely seen as safer than in-person voting in the era of the coronavirus.
Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — now have all-mail elections, in which ballots are sent to every registered voter without their having to request one. Others, like Arizona and California, allow voters to add themselves to a permanent list of mail voters.
And there are also cases like Nebraska, which allows counties of less than 10,000 people to mail ballots to all voters (many of them Republicans) but forbids it in large urban areas (where many voters are Democrats). Texas allows no-excuse absentee voting for people 65 or older, another group that skews Republican.
By REID J. EPSTEIN AND STEPHANIE SAUL
THE NEW YORK TIMES |
APR 10, 2020
| WASHINGTON
Mail-in ballots for the 2016 general election in Salt Lake City. As President Donald Trump rails against voting by mail, some members of his own political party, in Utah specifically, are embracing it to keep their voters safe during the coronavirus outbreak.(Rick Bowmer/AP)
President Donald Trump said that if the United States switched to all-mail voting, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
The GOP speaker of the House in Georgia said an all-mail election would be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said universal mail voting would be “the end of our republic as we know it.”
Trump openly admitting if we made voting easier in America, Republicans wouldn't win elections
Trump: "The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." pic.twitter.com/x5HmX6uogo— Lis Power (@LisPower1) March 30, 2020
Yet leading experts who have studied voting by mail say none of that is true.
As with false claims by Republicans about vote-by-mail fraud, there is no evidence to back up the argument from the right that all-mail elections favor Democrats. But Trump and some of his allies are warning that vote-by-mail poses an existential threat to their party, in hopes of galvanizing Republican opposition to a voting method that is widely seen as safer than in-person voting in the era of the coronavirus.
Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — now have all-mail elections, in which ballots are sent to every registered voter without their having to request one. Others, like Arizona and California, allow voters to add themselves to a permanent list of mail voters.
And there are also cases like Nebraska, which allows counties of less than 10,000 people to mail ballots to all voters (many of them Republicans) but forbids it in large urban areas (where many voters are Democrats). Texas allows no-excuse absentee voting for people 65 or older, another group that skews Republican.
None of these states have seen an appreciable shift favoring Democrats that officials and experts attribute to mail voting. Here are a few reasons....
What happens to partisan turnout after a switch to mail voting?
Not much that had not happened before.
The main argument by Trump and other Republicans is threefold: Voting by mail is easier than going to the polls, more people will vote if the process is easier and when larger numbers of people vote more will vote for Democrats.
But in the states and counties that have transitioned to all-mail voting, there has been little evidence of partisan advantage for either side because of mail voting, said Robert Stein, a Rice University professor who has helped put in place vote-by-mail systems.
Amelia Showalter, who was the data analytics director for former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, found in deeply reported studies of all-mail elections in Colorado in 2014 and Utah in 2016 that there were very slight partisan advantages in each race.
The Colorado study found that Republicans outperformed their predicted turnout in 2014 by a slightly higher margin than did Democrats. The GOP’s candidate for Senate, Cory Gardner, ousted the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Mark Udall, and Republicans won 3 of the 4 other statewide races on the ballot.
Two years later, in Utah, Democrats gained an equally slight advantage in counties that had switched to all-mail voting.
Both states saw overall turnout increase — especially among those voters considered least likely to participate in the elections.
“That was a more noticeable effect among low-propensity voters,” Showalter said. “These are people who aren’t the die-hards who are going to vote in every election. They’re not going to vote in every partisan primary.”
Even before the coronavirus emerged as a global threat, Democrats had generally favored ways to expand access to voting by mail, while Republicans frequently argued in favor of tightening voter identification and registration requirements, claiming without evidence that easing restrictions invited voter fraud.
This wasn’t always the case. Republicans in Florida and Arizona, states with large populations of retirees, who tend to skew Republican, have pushed for years to expand vote-by-mail.
Thad Kousser, chairman of the political science department at the University of California, San Diego, said that voting by mail in California was historically seen as especially helpful to older people and rural voters, who are more likely to be Republican. He called Trump’s statements a “gross exaggeration of any partisan effect we’re likely to see.”
“There are still Republicans elected in many of the areas that have voting by mail,” Kousser said. “Democrats and Republicans alike appreciate this option.”
So, what difference does universal vote-by-mail make?
Showalter’s studies of Colorado and Utah found that mailing ballots to all voters did tend to increase turnout. And Oregon and Washington, the states that pioneered all-mail elections, have long been among the highest-turnout states in presidential elections.
A 2013 study of voters in Washington by professors at Yale University and the University of California, San Diego, found that voting by mail increased turnout by 2% to 4%, with low-participating voters more likely to be influenced than others.
But it was impossible to tell whether those voters were Republicans or Democrats, according to one of the study’s authors, Gregory Huber, a professor of political science at Yale.
What happens to partisan turnout after a switch to mail voting?
Not much that had not happened before.
The main argument by Trump and other Republicans is threefold: Voting by mail is easier than going to the polls, more people will vote if the process is easier and when larger numbers of people vote more will vote for Democrats.
But in the states and counties that have transitioned to all-mail voting, there has been little evidence of partisan advantage for either side because of mail voting, said Robert Stein, a Rice University professor who has helped put in place vote-by-mail systems.
Amelia Showalter, who was the data analytics director for former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, found in deeply reported studies of all-mail elections in Colorado in 2014 and Utah in 2016 that there were very slight partisan advantages in each race.
The Colorado study found that Republicans outperformed their predicted turnout in 2014 by a slightly higher margin than did Democrats. The GOP’s candidate for Senate, Cory Gardner, ousted the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Mark Udall, and Republicans won 3 of the 4 other statewide races on the ballot.
Two years later, in Utah, Democrats gained an equally slight advantage in counties that had switched to all-mail voting.
Both states saw overall turnout increase — especially among those voters considered least likely to participate in the elections.
“That was a more noticeable effect among low-propensity voters,” Showalter said. “These are people who aren’t the die-hards who are going to vote in every election. They’re not going to vote in every partisan primary.”
Even before the coronavirus emerged as a global threat, Democrats had generally favored ways to expand access to voting by mail, while Republicans frequently argued in favor of tightening voter identification and registration requirements, claiming without evidence that easing restrictions invited voter fraud.
This wasn’t always the case. Republicans in Florida and Arizona, states with large populations of retirees, who tend to skew Republican, have pushed for years to expand vote-by-mail.
Thad Kousser, chairman of the political science department at the University of California, San Diego, said that voting by mail in California was historically seen as especially helpful to older people and rural voters, who are more likely to be Republican. He called Trump’s statements a “gross exaggeration of any partisan effect we’re likely to see.”
“There are still Republicans elected in many of the areas that have voting by mail,” Kousser said. “Democrats and Republicans alike appreciate this option.”
So, what difference does universal vote-by-mail make?
Showalter’s studies of Colorado and Utah found that mailing ballots to all voters did tend to increase turnout. And Oregon and Washington, the states that pioneered all-mail elections, have long been among the highest-turnout states in presidential elections.
A 2013 study of voters in Washington by professors at Yale University and the University of California, San Diego, found that voting by mail increased turnout by 2% to 4%, with low-participating voters more likely to be influenced than others.
But it was impossible to tell whether those voters were Republicans or Democrats, according to one of the study’s authors, Gregory Huber, a professor of political science at Yale.
Whether the marginal nonvoter — the person induced to vote by the availability of vote-by-mail — is Democrat or Republican is less clear,” Huber said in an email, referring to voters who are ambivalent about the process and decide based on outside events.
Filling out a ballot at home also affords people more time to think about their vote. Research by Stein, the Rice University professor, found that voters spent about 3 1/2 minutes when they went to a voting booth, but took about two days to complete a ballot they had received at home.
“Vote-by-mail has a way of affecting voter turnout in a way that we don’t always think about,” he said. “It increases turnout and attention for races that you would expect people would not vote for, like county judges and people you’ve never heard of.”
Does vote-by-mail favor Democrats?
Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the evidence so far on which party benefits had been inconclusive, citing numbers from the 2016 North Carolina election showing that Republicans were more likely to vote by mail than Democrats.
Showalter found the biggest turnout difference in all-mail elections came among people who were the least likely to vote. These voters tend to pay the least attention to politics and are the most ideologically flexible.
In fact, all-mail voting makes some Democrats nervous. One reason is the finding in some studies that black and Latino voters — two key groups in the party’s base — are less likely to embrace mail voting than white voters.
Kousser pointed to a survey of California voters that revealed differences along racial and ethnic lines in voting by mail, with black and Latino voters about 5 percentage points less likely to favor it than white voters.
“Vote-by-mail is a little less popular as an option among Latino and African Americans than whites and Asian Americans,” Kousser said. “The NAACP has said they’re concerned about a shift to only vote-by-mail.”
As for the party’s younger voters, they tend to be more transient — less likely to have a current address on file with elections authorities.
“There is justified concern that Democratic-leaning voters may be disadvantaged through vote-by-mail systems,” said Brian Dunn, an Obama campaign alumnus who is a founder of Deliver My Vote, which encourages voters to sign up to receive mail ballots at home in states that allow it. “People like caregivers, gig-sector employees or those working multiple jobs may not update their address as they move, causing them to lose their ability to vote safely and easily.”
This concern emerged recently during deliberations by the Maryland Board of Elections over whether to conduct the state’s June 2 primary entirely by mail.
The board decided to keep a limited number of polling places open after Democratic legislative leaders, in a letter to Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, objected to an all-mail format, raising concerns about its potential impact on black voters.
“Most vote-by-mail states are overwhelmingly white,” the letter said, then cited a 2011 study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts that found mandatory voting by mail reduced the chances that a person would vote, particularly among urban voters, who were 50% less likely to vote in an all-mail election.
Why are some Republicans eager to adopt vote-by-mail?
Despite Trump’s opposition, there is some Republican support for transitioning to mail elections.
In Ohio, the state’s top Republican officials, Gov. Mike DeWine and Frank LaRose, the secretary of state, recorded a video this week promoting the state’s first all-mail elections later this month.
“I reject this notion that I think comes from days gone by, when people say it’s not good for Republicans when there’s high turnout,” LaRose said Thursday. “The highest turnout presidential election we ever had was 2016. The highest turnout gubernatorial election we ever had was 2018.”
Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington, pushed for mail elections as a local official. She said she did not believe that voting by mail helped either party in her state.
“There would be those who say, ‘You haven’t elected a Republican governor since 1980 in Washington,’ and our state certainly leans blue in terms of outcome,” Wyman said. “But I think if you do a deeper drive, we’re a purple state. I think a lot of those elections were won and lost with very small margins.”
“When you look at states that are vote by mail, you have a mix of blue and red and states,” she said. “Utah is pretty red.”
Michael Meyers, a Republican whose data firm, TargetPoint Consulting, has guided GOP presidential campaigns since 2004, said Republican data and voter contact programs were superior to what Democrats had, meaning all-mail elections could be advantageous for conservatives.
“Every time we do something that scares Republicans, that makes voting easier to do, we tend to freak out about it and then figure out a way to level the playing field,” Meyers said. “In some respect I think there is some advantage to it. While I am concerned about voter fraud and security, on straight mechanics, it doesn’t scare me that much.”
c.2020 The New York Times Company
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Filling out a ballot at home also affords people more time to think about their vote. Research by Stein, the Rice University professor, found that voters spent about 3 1/2 minutes when they went to a voting booth, but took about two days to complete a ballot they had received at home.
“Vote-by-mail has a way of affecting voter turnout in a way that we don’t always think about,” he said. “It increases turnout and attention for races that you would expect people would not vote for, like county judges and people you’ve never heard of.”
Does vote-by-mail favor Democrats?
Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the evidence so far on which party benefits had been inconclusive, citing numbers from the 2016 North Carolina election showing that Republicans were more likely to vote by mail than Democrats.
Showalter found the biggest turnout difference in all-mail elections came among people who were the least likely to vote. These voters tend to pay the least attention to politics and are the most ideologically flexible.
In fact, all-mail voting makes some Democrats nervous. One reason is the finding in some studies that black and Latino voters — two key groups in the party’s base — are less likely to embrace mail voting than white voters.
Kousser pointed to a survey of California voters that revealed differences along racial and ethnic lines in voting by mail, with black and Latino voters about 5 percentage points less likely to favor it than white voters.
“Vote-by-mail is a little less popular as an option among Latino and African Americans than whites and Asian Americans,” Kousser said. “The NAACP has said they’re concerned about a shift to only vote-by-mail.”
As for the party’s younger voters, they tend to be more transient — less likely to have a current address on file with elections authorities.
“There is justified concern that Democratic-leaning voters may be disadvantaged through vote-by-mail systems,” said Brian Dunn, an Obama campaign alumnus who is a founder of Deliver My Vote, which encourages voters to sign up to receive mail ballots at home in states that allow it. “People like caregivers, gig-sector employees or those working multiple jobs may not update their address as they move, causing them to lose their ability to vote safely and easily.”
This concern emerged recently during deliberations by the Maryland Board of Elections over whether to conduct the state’s June 2 primary entirely by mail.
The board decided to keep a limited number of polling places open after Democratic legislative leaders, in a letter to Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, objected to an all-mail format, raising concerns about its potential impact on black voters.
“Most vote-by-mail states are overwhelmingly white,” the letter said, then cited a 2011 study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts that found mandatory voting by mail reduced the chances that a person would vote, particularly among urban voters, who were 50% less likely to vote in an all-mail election.
Why are some Republicans eager to adopt vote-by-mail?
Despite Trump’s opposition, there is some Republican support for transitioning to mail elections.
In Ohio, the state’s top Republican officials, Gov. Mike DeWine and Frank LaRose, the secretary of state, recorded a video this week promoting the state’s first all-mail elections later this month.
“I reject this notion that I think comes from days gone by, when people say it’s not good for Republicans when there’s high turnout,” LaRose said Thursday. “The highest turnout presidential election we ever had was 2016. The highest turnout gubernatorial election we ever had was 2018.”
Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington, pushed for mail elections as a local official. She said she did not believe that voting by mail helped either party in her state.
“There would be those who say, ‘You haven’t elected a Republican governor since 1980 in Washington,’ and our state certainly leans blue in terms of outcome,” Wyman said. “But I think if you do a deeper drive, we’re a purple state. I think a lot of those elections were won and lost with very small margins.”
“When you look at states that are vote by mail, you have a mix of blue and red and states,” she said. “Utah is pretty red.”
Michael Meyers, a Republican whose data firm, TargetPoint Consulting, has guided GOP presidential campaigns since 2004, said Republican data and voter contact programs were superior to what Democrats had, meaning all-mail elections could be advantageous for conservatives.
“Every time we do something that scares Republicans, that makes voting easier to do, we tend to freak out about it and then figure out a way to level the playing field,” Meyers said. “In some respect I think there is some advantage to it. While I am concerned about voter fraud and security, on straight mechanics, it doesn’t scare me that much.”
c.2020 The New York Times Company
ADVERTISEMENT
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Scientists discover oldest link between Native Americans, ancient Siberians
Siberia's Lake Baikal region has been populated by modern humans since the Upper Paleolithic. Ancient populations left behind an extensive archaeological record. This photo shows the 1976 excavation of the Ust'-Kyakhta-3 site located on Russia's Selenga River. Photo by A. P. Okladnikov
May 20 (UPI) -- Using genomic analysis, scientists have traced the oldest link between the earliest Native American populations and the people of Siberia's Lake Baikal region.
Modern humans have populated the lands surrounding Lake Baikal since the Upper Paleolithic. Previous studies of the region's population dynamics suggest the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age was marked by genetic turnovers and admixture events, but the timing of the human migrations and cultural interactions that characterized this place and time in human history aren't well understood.
New genomic analysis of ancient remains in Siberia -- detailed this week in the journal Cell -- have offered scientists fresh insights into the movements of human populations across Eurasia and into the Americas at the end of the Stone Age.
"Previous studies observed the genetic differences between individuals from different time periods, but didn't investigate the differences by dating the admixture events," lead study author He Yu, postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, told UPI in an email. "Our study reports a 14,000-year-old individual, which actually fills in a large blank of ancient genomes in this region, between 23,000 and approximately 8,000 years ago."
RELATED Siberian permafrost yields 46,000-year-old horned lark
Yu and his colleagues were able to stitch together a genome from DNA recovered from the tooth of the 14,000-year-old individual, revealing ancient links between the people of the Lake Baikal region and early Native American populations.
"The deep connection observed in this study is sharing of the same admixed ancestry between Upper Paleolithic Siberian and First Americans," Yu said. "We are not suggesting interbreeding between Native American and Siberian, or any back flow of Native American ancestry into Siberia. But we are suggesting that, the First American ancestry was formed in Siberia and also existed there, in a large range of time and space, so we can detect it in ancient Siberian individuals."
Armed with DNA from several Lake Baikal fossils, scientists deployed a variety of sophisticated genomic analysis methods to establish relationships between different ancient populations in the Eurasia and the Americas.
RELATED Hot pots helped ancient Siberian hunters stay alive, warm
"For genetic background analysis, we first compared the new individuals with published data to see how they were related with known populations, then zoomed in to their differences with closely related populations," Yu said.
Two of the individuals from southern Siberia showed strong genetic similarities to populations from northeastern Asia, groups previously linked with the ancestry of the earliest Native Americans. The findings suggest the genetic heritage of the earliest Native Americans was already widespread across Siberia by the early Bronze Age.
Scientists also surveyed the ancient Siberian genomes for evidence of disease. Their efforts revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis, the plague-causing pathogen, in two individuals. DNA analysis showed the infected individuals hailed from northeast Asia, but the bacteria's genetic signatures suggest the pathogen came from western Eurasian steppe -- further evidence of widespread movement and complex contact among Eurasian populations.
RELATED Ancient litter on cave floor offers insight into lives of early humans
"Early Bronze Age is the era of population mobility and communication, and such phenomenon has been observed in many other regions, especially western Eurasia," Yu said. "Our study is the first to report such long-range mobility in southern Siberia."
RELATED Humans arrived in Americas earlier than thought, new Idaho artifacts suggest
Siberia's Lake Baikal region has been populated by modern humans since the Upper Paleolithic. Ancient populations left behind an extensive archaeological record. This photo shows the 1976 excavation of the Ust'-Kyakhta-3 site located on Russia's Selenga River. Photo by A. P. Okladnikov
May 20 (UPI) -- Using genomic analysis, scientists have traced the oldest link between the earliest Native American populations and the people of Siberia's Lake Baikal region.
Modern humans have populated the lands surrounding Lake Baikal since the Upper Paleolithic. Previous studies of the region's population dynamics suggest the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age was marked by genetic turnovers and admixture events, but the timing of the human migrations and cultural interactions that characterized this place and time in human history aren't well understood.
New genomic analysis of ancient remains in Siberia -- detailed this week in the journal Cell -- have offered scientists fresh insights into the movements of human populations across Eurasia and into the Americas at the end of the Stone Age.
"Previous studies observed the genetic differences between individuals from different time periods, but didn't investigate the differences by dating the admixture events," lead study author He Yu, postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, told UPI in an email. "Our study reports a 14,000-year-old individual, which actually fills in a large blank of ancient genomes in this region, between 23,000 and approximately 8,000 years ago."
RELATED Siberian permafrost yields 46,000-year-old horned lark
Yu and his colleagues were able to stitch together a genome from DNA recovered from the tooth of the 14,000-year-old individual, revealing ancient links between the people of the Lake Baikal region and early Native American populations.
"The deep connection observed in this study is sharing of the same admixed ancestry between Upper Paleolithic Siberian and First Americans," Yu said. "We are not suggesting interbreeding between Native American and Siberian, or any back flow of Native American ancestry into Siberia. But we are suggesting that, the First American ancestry was formed in Siberia and also existed there, in a large range of time and space, so we can detect it in ancient Siberian individuals."
Armed with DNA from several Lake Baikal fossils, scientists deployed a variety of sophisticated genomic analysis methods to establish relationships between different ancient populations in the Eurasia and the Americas.
RELATED Hot pots helped ancient Siberian hunters stay alive, warm
"For genetic background analysis, we first compared the new individuals with published data to see how they were related with known populations, then zoomed in to their differences with closely related populations," Yu said.
Two of the individuals from southern Siberia showed strong genetic similarities to populations from northeastern Asia, groups previously linked with the ancestry of the earliest Native Americans. The findings suggest the genetic heritage of the earliest Native Americans was already widespread across Siberia by the early Bronze Age.
Scientists also surveyed the ancient Siberian genomes for evidence of disease. Their efforts revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis, the plague-causing pathogen, in two individuals. DNA analysis showed the infected individuals hailed from northeast Asia, but the bacteria's genetic signatures suggest the pathogen came from western Eurasian steppe -- further evidence of widespread movement and complex contact among Eurasian populations.
RELATED Ancient litter on cave floor offers insight into lives of early humans
"Early Bronze Age is the era of population mobility and communication, and such phenomenon has been observed in many other regions, especially western Eurasia," Yu said. "Our study is the first to report such long-range mobility in southern Siberia."
RELATED Humans arrived in Americas earlier than thought, new Idaho artifacts suggest
Scientists use ultrasonic mind control on monkeys
Scientists estimate ultrasonic brain manipulation could eventually be used to study and treat decision-making disorders like addiction in humans. Photo by QuinceMedia/Pixabay
May 20 (UPI) -- Scientists have for the first time directed the decision making of monkeys using remote, ultrasonic brain stimulation.
For the study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers had a pair of macaque monkeys participate in a visual test designed to investigate basic decision making.
The monkeys were made to look at a target at the center of a screen before being presented with a second and third target to the left and right sides of the screen, one following the other.
Typically, macaques and other monkeys glance at the target that appears first, but researchers were able to alter the tendency by directing low-intensity ultrasound waves at the frontal eye fields of the two monkeys, the brain region that controls eye movement.
"Brief, low-intensity ultrasound pulses delivered non-invasively into specific brain regions of macaque monkeys influenced their decisions regarding which target to choose," researchers wrote . "The effects were substantial, leading to around a 2:1 bias in choices compared to the default balanced proportion."
Each of the ultrasonic pulses lasted 300 milliseconds and was applied just before the first secondary target appeared on the sides of the screen. The pulses cause brain tissue to vibrate and neurons to fire, altering the neuronal sequences in the targeted brain region.
When researchers directed ultrasonic waves on the monkey's motor cortex, which doesn't control the eye movements or decision making of monkeys, the visual choices of the two monkeys were unaffected.
Though a lot more testing of the technology and its potential is necessary, scientists estimate ultrasonic brain manipulation could eventually be used to study and treat decision-making disorders like addiction in humans.
"There are ... tantalizing opportunities to apply ultrasonic neuromodulation to non-invasively modulate choice behavior in humans, with first applications aimed at determining the set of circuits involved in a given disorder in a given individual," researchers wrote.
Scientists estimate ultrasonic brain manipulation could eventually be used to study and treat decision-making disorders like addiction in humans. Photo by QuinceMedia/Pixabay
May 20 (UPI) -- Scientists have for the first time directed the decision making of monkeys using remote, ultrasonic brain stimulation.
For the study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers had a pair of macaque monkeys participate in a visual test designed to investigate basic decision making.
The monkeys were made to look at a target at the center of a screen before being presented with a second and third target to the left and right sides of the screen, one following the other.
Typically, macaques and other monkeys glance at the target that appears first, but researchers were able to alter the tendency by directing low-intensity ultrasound waves at the frontal eye fields of the two monkeys, the brain region that controls eye movement.
"Brief, low-intensity ultrasound pulses delivered non-invasively into specific brain regions of macaque monkeys influenced their decisions regarding which target to choose," researchers wrote . "The effects were substantial, leading to around a 2:1 bias in choices compared to the default balanced proportion."
Each of the ultrasonic pulses lasted 300 milliseconds and was applied just before the first secondary target appeared on the sides of the screen. The pulses cause brain tissue to vibrate and neurons to fire, altering the neuronal sequences in the targeted brain region.
When researchers directed ultrasonic waves on the monkey's motor cortex, which doesn't control the eye movements or decision making of monkeys, the visual choices of the two monkeys were unaffected.
Though a lot more testing of the technology and its potential is necessary, scientists estimate ultrasonic brain manipulation could eventually be used to study and treat decision-making disorders like addiction in humans.
"There are ... tantalizing opportunities to apply ultrasonic neuromodulation to non-invasively modulate choice behavior in humans, with first applications aimed at determining the set of circuits involved in a given disorder in a given individual," researchers wrote.
STATE SANCTIONED DEATH SQUAD
Colombia civil war survivors outraged by appointment of warlord's son
The son of former warlord Rodrigo Tovar, shown here under arrest in Bogota, Colombia May 13, 2008, was named to lead a program to compensate victims of the country's long civil war Tovar was part of. Photo by Colombia National Police/EPA
May 21 (UPI) -- The Colombian government this week named the son of one of the country's most notorious warlords to run a program meant for victims of its long-running civil war.
Survivors and victims' rights groups expressed outrage with the selection of Jorge Rodrigo Tovar to operate the program run out of the interior ministry created to compensate victims. Tovar's father, Rodrigo Tovar, known as Jorge 40, has been accused of nearly 400 massacres.
Tovar, leader of the Northern Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was blamed for the torture and dismemberment of 60 peasant farmers in 2000 among other crimes. He was extradited to the United States in 2008 and is serving a 16-year sentence for drug trafficking.
"It's not just because he's Jorge 40's son," Colombia Sen. Antonio Sanguino said. "He's always thought of his father as a hero. Totally unacceptable. And now the Duque administration is rewarding him by appointing him director of victims at the interior ministry. How would the victims of the AUC's Northern Bloc feel?"
DEATH SQUAD
The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, is a government-supported paramilitary militia that helped fight leftist rebels like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, of FARC.
Survivors have blamed those paramilitary groups with contributing to the 260,000 who have died over the country's 52-year civil war while displacing more than 7 million.
The younger Tovar, 30, who is an attorney, said he will not leave his post.
Colombia civil war survivors outraged by appointment of warlord's son
The son of former warlord Rodrigo Tovar, shown here under arrest in Bogota, Colombia May 13, 2008, was named to lead a program to compensate victims of the country's long civil war Tovar was part of. Photo by Colombia National Police/EPA
May 21 (UPI) -- The Colombian government this week named the son of one of the country's most notorious warlords to run a program meant for victims of its long-running civil war.
Survivors and victims' rights groups expressed outrage with the selection of Jorge Rodrigo Tovar to operate the program run out of the interior ministry created to compensate victims. Tovar's father, Rodrigo Tovar, known as Jorge 40, has been accused of nearly 400 massacres.
Tovar, leader of the Northern Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was blamed for the torture and dismemberment of 60 peasant farmers in 2000 among other crimes. He was extradited to the United States in 2008 and is serving a 16-year sentence for drug trafficking.
"It's not just because he's Jorge 40's son," Colombia Sen. Antonio Sanguino said. "He's always thought of his father as a hero. Totally unacceptable. And now the Duque administration is rewarding him by appointing him director of victims at the interior ministry. How would the victims of the AUC's Northern Bloc feel?"
DEATH SQUAD
The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, is a government-supported paramilitary militia that helped fight leftist rebels like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, of FARC.
Survivors have blamed those paramilitary groups with contributing to the 260,000 who have died over the country's 52-year civil war while displacing more than 7 million.
The younger Tovar, 30, who is an attorney, said he will not leave his post.
"Everything that is going on fills me with the promise to show that I do good work and that the work can speak for me," Tovar told a local magazine.
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Global CO2 emissions to drop 4-7% in 2020, but will it matter?
AFP/File / INA FASSBENDERPopulation confinement has led to drastic changes in energy use and CO2 emissions.
Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are set to drop by up to seven percent in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but even this dramatic decline -- the sharpest since WWII -- would barely dent longterm global warming, researchers reported Tuesday.
In early April, coronavirus lockdowns led to a 17 percent reduction worldwide in carbon pollution compared to the same period last year, according to the first peer-reviewed assessment of the pandemic's impact on CO2 emissions, published in Nature Climate Change.
Four countries or blocs -- China, the United States, the European Union and India -- accounted for two-thirds of the downturn across the first four months of 2020, equivalent to more than one billion tonnes of CO2.
Total emissions from industry and energy last year came to a record 37 billion tonnes.
"Population confinement has led to drastic changes in energy use and CO2 emissions," said lead author Corinne Le Quere, a professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia.
"These extreme decreases are likely to be temporary, however, as they do not reflect structural changes in the economic, transport or energy systems."
If the global economy recovers to pre-pandemic conditions by mid-June -- an unlikely scenario -- CO2 emissions in 2020 are projected to drop only four percent, Le Quere and her team calculated.
But if lockdown restrictions persist throughout the year, the decline will be around seven percent.
With nearly five million confirmed infections and 320,000 deaths, the COVID-19 pandemic has deflected attention from the climate crisis that dominated global concerns in 2019.
But the climate threat remains, other experts warn.
"This will make barely a dent in the ongoing build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at Britain's Met Office Hadley Centre.
- Like filling a bathtub -
"We need to stop putting it there altogether, not just put it there more slowly," he said.
"It's like we're filling a bath and have turned down the tap slightly -- but not turned it off. The water is still rising, just not as fast."
Earth's average surface temperature has so far risen by one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- enough to amplify deadly droughts, heatwaves and superstorms engorged by rising seas.
AFP/File / Jonathan WALTERIf lockdown restrictions persist throughout the year, the decline will be around seven percent
Under the 2015 Paris climate treaty, nearly 200 nations pledged to cap global warming at "well below" 2C.
But the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) subsequently determined that 1.5C is a far safer temperature guardrail.
The pandemic has underscored just how difficult it will be to hit that more ambitious target.
Emissions must fall 7.6 percent -- in line with the worst-case lockdown scenario for 2020 -- every year this decade to ensure the 1.5C cap, unless other means are found to remove carbon from the atmosphere, scientists calculate.
"The pandemic has shown us that major structural changes in the transport and energy systems are required," noted Mark Maslin, a professor of climatology at University College London.
Some experts have suggested the pandemic could speed up that transition.
"Fossil fuels seem to be getting hit harder relative to renewables," Glen Peters, research director of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, told AFP.
- Sectors hit unevenly -
"If this (continues) we may come out of COVID with emissions going down, since renewables have been able to take more relative space, pushing out some of the most polluting fossil fuels, especially coal."
But the multi-trillion dollar rescue packages -- especially in the United States and China -- hastily assembled to stave off another Great Depression send mixed signals when it comes to building a green global economy.
"There is a high risk that short-sightedness will lead governments to lose track of the bigger picture and put money into highly polluting sectors that have no place in a zero-carbon society," said Joeri Rogelj, a researcher at Grantham Institute and Imperial College London.
AFP/File / FRED TANNEAUThe pandemic has underscored just how difficult it will be to hit that more ambitious target
Different sectors of the economy have been hit unevenly by measures taken to halt the pandemic, the study revealed.
On April 7 -- the day global CO2 pollution dropped the most -- emissions from land transport accounted for more than 40 percent of the decrease, while industry, electricity generation, and aviation accounted for 25, 19 and 10 percent, respectively.
Calculating global emissions of CO2 and methane -- another potent greenhouse gas -- usually takes months or longer, but methods used in the study could help guide decision-making, the authors said.
"If we can see the effect of a policy in the space of months as opposed to years then we can refine policies more quickly," said Peters.
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