CO2 sensors in two urban areas registered big drop in emissions during COVID-19 pandemic

Scientists show they can reliably track changes in urban emissions by directly measuring CO2 in the air above cities

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST)

VIDEO: THE NIST GREENHOUSE GAS (GHG) MEASUREMENTS PROGRAM DEVELOPS ADVANCED TOOLS AND STANDARDS FOR ACCURATELY MEASURING GHG EMISSIONS SO INDUSTRIES AND GOVERNMENTS WILL HAVE THE INFORMATION THEY NEED TO MANAGE EMISSIONS... view more 

CREDIT: NIST

Carbon dioxide emissions in Los Angeles fell 33% in April of 2020 compared with previous years, as roads emptied and economic activity slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. In the Washington, D.C./Baltimore region, emissions of carbon dioxide, or CO2, dropped by 34% during the same period.

The study was led by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Notre Dame.

While the emissions reductions are significant, the method that scientists used to measure them may have the greater long-term impact.

In both locations, scientists had previously installed networks of sensors on rooftops and towers to monitor the concentration of CO2 in the air. They used the data from those sensor networks to estimate the drop in emissions.

This might seem an obvious way to estimate emissions, but this is not how it's usually done. Most cities estimate their emissions by tallying up the effects of activities that cause emissions, such as the number of vehicle miles traveled or the square footage of buildings heated and cooled. These are called "bottom up" methods because they are mostly based on activities on the ground.

This new study demonstrates that "top-down" methods, based on measuring the concentration of CO2 in the air, can produce reliable emissions estimates. Scientists were able to test those methods when emissions suddenly dropped due to COVID-19.

"This was a completely unanticipated experiment, and one we don't ever want to do again," said lead author and JPL data scientist Vineet Yadav. "But our results show that we were able to detect the onset of emissions reductions to within a few days."

Scientists have been developing top-down methods for measuring CO2 emissions for several years. "This study shows that the technology has matured enough to produce reliable results and can be put into operation," said NIST scientist and co-author Kimberly Mueller. That would give cities an important new tool in their efforts to reduce emissions.

Top-down estimates are difficult to achieve because most of the CO2 in the air above cities is not from local emissions. Most of it is there naturally, and some is emitted outside the city's borders and comes in on the wind. The trick is to figure out how much of the CO2 in the air above the city was generated locally.

"My Ph.D. adviser used to describe the atmosphere as a big cup of coffee," said Mueller. "You've added cream, and you're trying to unstir the coffee to see where and when you put the cream in."

To unstir the atmospheric coffee, scientists used data on wind speed, direction and other factors. This allowed them to estimate where within a city the emissions originated and how large they were.

Though difficult to achieve, top-down measurements have several advantages. First, they can provide relatively quick feedback on whether efforts to reduce emissions are working. If a city changes traffic patterns or increases public transit, for instance, top-down estimates can provide data on whether those efforts actually lead to reduced emissions.

CAPTION

The NIST Greenhouse Gas Measurements Program develops advanced tools and standards for accurately measuring GHG emissions.

CREDIT

N. Hanacek, J. Wang/NIST

In addition, a recent study, also co-authored by Mueller, indicated that U.S. cities often underestimate their emissions when using bottom-up methods alone. Another recent study showed that combining bottom-up with top-down methods increases accuracy. (Both studies were partly funded by NIST.)

"Accurate measurements are key to any strategy for managing greenhouse gas emissions," said James Whetstone, leader of NIST's greenhouse gas measurements group and a co-author of the study. "That's the only way to know if you are making progress toward your goals."

NIST, NASA and other research partners are using the sensor networks in Los Angeles and the Washington, D.C./Baltimore region to develop and test top-down methods as a way of achieving more accurate emissions estimates. This research project focuses on cities in part because cities account for a large and growing share of the world's CO2 emissions.

The 33% and 34% emissions drops in Los Angeles and the D.C./Baltimore region represent reductions relative to the average April emissions of the previous two years. The researchers used three different methods for detecting the change in emissions based on atmospheric measurements, all of which detected the drop occurring at the same time.

"These independent statistical tests on different pieces of the puzzle gave consistent results," said Notre Dame computational scientist and coauthor Subhomoy Ghosh. "This gives us confidence in the findings."

In addition, the methods appeared to work well in both locations, despite very different environmental conditions. In Los Angeles, relatively clean air comes in off the Pacific. D.C. and Baltimore, on the other hand, regularly receive emissions from cities and power plants to the west. Also in D.C. and Baltimore, emissions models have to account for the effects of spring, when plants turn green again and start pulling CO2 from the air. Los Angeles experiences less seasonal variation in uptake by plants.

"These methods were robust enough to work in very different settings," Mueller said. "The fact that these methods worked in both locations mean the results were not a fluke."

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Paper: V. Yadav, S. Ghosh, K. Mueller, A. Karion, G. Roest, S.M. Gourdji, I. Lopez-Coto, K. R. Gurney, N. Parazoo, K.R. Verhulst, J. Kim, S. Prinzivalli, C. Fain, T. Nehrkorn, M. Mountain, R.F. Keeling, R.F. Weiss, R. Duren, C.E. Miller and J. Whetstone. The impact of COVID-19 on CO2 emissions in the Los Angeles and Washington DC/Baltimore metropolitan areas. Geophysical Research Letters. Published online June 7, 2021. DOI: 10.1029/2021GL092744

 

Gender bias is real for women in family-owned businesses

Study examining gender bias and family-owned businesses found daughters received much less support than sons

UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

Research News

IMAGE: PROFESSOR PETER JASKIEWICZ, FULL PROFESSOR UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CHAIR IN ENDURING ENTREPRENEURSHIP: "FAMILIES NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT GENDER BIAS FAVOURS MEN WHILE DISCOURAGING WOMEN FROM BUILDING THEIR LEGACIES IN THE FAMILY... view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

A study examining gender bias and family-owned businesses found daughters were rarely encouraged nor received support to pursue entrepreneurship education while sons mostly did.

Professors James Combs, Peter Jaskiewicz, and Sabine Raul from the Telfer School of Management uncovered new insights about how gender bias - the preference of a gender over the other - affects the succession strategy in multi-generational family firms. Their findings are published in the Journal of Small Business Management.

When nurturing the next generation, entrepreneurial families often prepare their daughters and sons differently for their careers. The researchers noticed a common pattern in the stories shared by the next generation: Sons are often nurtured to become entrepreneurial, whether they are expected to take over the firm one day or to start a venture elsewhere. Daughters, however, receive little to no incentive to develop the leadership skills and entrepreneurial passion required to contribute to the family firm or start their own business.

In conversations with 26 children who were raised in 13 multi-generational family firms - some being centuries old - but not expected to work in the firm, the researchers found that:

• Seven of the nine sons (78%), pursued entrepreneurial careers;
• Only one among the 15 daughters (7%) gained an entrepreneurial education and engaged in entrepreneurship (7%);
• Women were not encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship education, gain business experience, start a new venture;
• Men rather than women received financial resources from the family to start their own business

"Even when these female non-successors have opportunities to acquire relevant knowledge and work to start a business, becoming entrepreneurial was still a challenging uphill battle," says Jaskiewicz, who believes the data reveals women do not pursue entrepreneurship outside of the family because they lacked sufficient emotional and financial support from the family.

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Visualizing cement hydration on a molecular level

Imaging technique could enable new pathways for reducing concrete's hefty carbon footprint, as well as for 3-D printing of concrete.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE HIGH TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL RESOLUTION RAMAN IMAGING TECHNIQUE OPENS OPPORTUNITIES TO ANSWER MILLENNIA-OLD QUESTIONS REGARDING CEMENT CHEMISTRY. THIS HIGH-RESOLUTION RAMAN IMAGE SHOWS THE HYDRATION OF ALITE (WHITE) FORMING C-S-H... view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF FRANZ-JOSEF ULM, ADMIR MASIC, HYUN-CHAE CHAD LOH, ET AL

The concrete world that surrounds us owes its shape and durability to chemical reactions that start when ordinary Portland cement is mixed with water. Now, MIT scientists have demonstrated a way to watch these reactions under real-world conditions, an advance that may help researchers find ways to make concrete more sustainable.

The study is a "Brothers Lumière moment for concrete science," says co-author Franz-Josef Ulm, professor of civil and environmental engineering and faculty director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, referring to the two brothers who ushered in the era of projected films. Likewise, Ulm says, the MIT team has provided a glimpse of early-stage cement hydration that is like cinema in Technicolor compared to the black and white photos of earlier research.

Cement in concrete contributes about 8 percent of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions, rivaling the emissions produced by most individual countries. With a better understanding of cement chemistry, scientists could potentially "alter production or change ingredients so that concrete has less of an impact on emissions, or add ingredients that are capable of actively absorbing carbon dioxide," says Admir Masic, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Next-generation technologies like 3D printing of concrete could also benefit from the study's new imaging technique, which shows how cement hydrates and hardens in place, says Masic Lab graduate student Hyun-Chae Chad Loh, who also works as a materials scientist with the company Black Buffalo 3D Corporation. Loh is the first author of the study published in ACS Langmuir, joining Ulm, Masic, and postdoc Hee-Jeong Rachel Kim.

Cement from the start

Loh and colleagues used a technique called Raman microspectroscopy to get a closer look at the specific and dynamic chemical reactions taking place when water and cement mix. Raman spectroscopy creates images by shining a high-intensity laser light on material and measuring the intensities and wavelengths of the light as it is scattered by the molecules that make up the material.

Different molecules and molecular bonds have their own unique scattering "fingerprints," so the technique can be used to create chemical images of molecular structures and dynamic chemical reactions inside a material. Raman spectroscopy is often used to characterize biological and archaeological materials, as Masic has done in previous studies of nacre and other biomineralized materials and ancient Roman concretes.

Using Raman microspectroscopy, the MIT scientists observed a sample of ordinary Portland cement placed underwater without disturbing it or artificially stopping the hydration process, mimicking the real-world conditions of concrete use. In general, one of the hydration products, called portlandite, starts as a disordered phase, percolates throughout the material, and then crystallizes, the research team concluded.

Before this, "scientists could only study cement hydration with average bulk properties or with a snapshot of one point in time," says Loh, "but this allowed us to observe all the changes almost continuously and improved the resolution of our image in space and time."

For instance, calcium-silicate-hydrate, or C-S-H, is the main binding ingredient in cement that holds concrete together, "but it's very difficult to detect because of its amorphous nature," Loh explains. "Seeing its structure, distribution, and how it developed during the curing process was something that was amazing to watch."

Building better

Ulm says the work will guide researchers as they experiment with new additives and other methods to reduce concrete's greenhouse gas emissions: "Rather than 'fishing in the dark,'" we are now able to rationalize through this new approach how reactions occur or do not occur, and intervene chemically."

The team will use Raman spectroscopy as they spend the summer testing how well different cementitious materials capture carbon dioxide, Masic says. "Tracking this up to now has been almost impossible, but now we have the opportunity to follow carbonation in cementitious materials that helps us understand where the carbon dioxide goes, which phases are formed, and how to change them in order to potentially use concrete as a carbon sink."

The imaging is also critical for Loh's work with 3D concrete printing, which depends on extruding concrete layers in a precisely measured and coordinated process, during which the liquid slurry turns into solid concrete.

"Knowing when the concrete is going to set is the most critical question that everyone is trying to understand" in the industry, he says. "We do a lot of trial and error to optimize a design. But monitoring the underlying chemistry in space and time is critical, and this science-enabled innovation will impact the concrete printing capabilities of the construction industry."

This work was partially supported by the scholarship program of the Kwanjeong Educational Foundation.

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Written by Becky Ham, MIT News correspondent
Paper: "Time-space-resolved chemical deconvolution of cementitious colloidal systems using Raman spectroscopy"
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c00609

 

Infrared imaging leaves invasive pythons nowhere to hide

New method makes it easier to spot pythons without relying on thermal contrast

THE OPTICAL SOCIETY

VIDEO: THE RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT NEAR INFRARED IMAGING CAN BE USED DURING THE DAY AND AT NIGHT WITH ILLUMINATION TO IMPROVE DETECTION OF BURMESE PYTHONS. THE MOVIE SHOWS AN NIR VIDEO... view more 

CREDIT: JENNIFER HEWITT, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA COLLEGE OF OPTICS AND PHOTONICS

WASHINGTON -- For more than 25 years, Burmese pythons have been living and breeding in the Florida Everglades where they prey on native wildlife and disrupt the region's delicate ecosystems. A new study shows that infrared cameras could make it easier to spot these invasive snakes in the Florida foliage, providing a new tool in the effort to remove them.

In the Optical Society (OSA) journal Applied Optics, researchers led by Dr. Kyle Renshaw from the University of Central Florida College of Optics and Photonics report that a near infrared camera helped people detect Burmese pythons at distances up to 1.3 times farther away than was possible using a traditional visible-wavelength camera. Because infrared sensors are small and low cost, they could easily be incorporated into handheld or vehicle-mounted systems designed for seeking out pythons.

"The removal of Burmese Pythons is vital to preventing further damage to the Floridian ecosystem and preventing their spread to other regions," said Hewitt, a PhD student and lead author on the study. "Our study -- one of the first to examine the efficacy of near infrared sensing in locating these pythons -- can help inform methods used to remove them from the environment."

Making snakes stand out

Burmese pythons can be up to 20 feet long and weigh as much as 200 pounds. They arrived in the U.S. as exotic pets in the 1980s and the snakes proliferated in the Everglades after a breeding facility was destroyed during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Their natural camouflage makes them blend in with grass and foliage, making them hard to see with the human eye or a traditional visible-light camera. In a previous study, the authors measured the reflectivity spectra of Burmese pythons in the visible and infrared wavelengths, finding that pythons are more visible against the background at infrared wavelengths longer than 750 nm.

"Based on these earlier findings, we hypothesized that using near infrared wavelengths for imaging could make the pythons easier to see because they would appear dark against bright foliage," said Hewitt. "Although we haven't acquired reflectivity measurements from other species of snakes, the pythons should be easy to distinguish since they are larger than any other native species of snake."

To test their hypothesis, the researchers took images of Burmese pythons in grass using visible and infrared cameras with similar fields of view and resolution. They then asked volunteers to examine these images and indicate whether they saw a python. Based on the responses of the volunteers, the researchers calculated the advantage of using near infrared images compared to visible.

"The method we used to evaluate each of the sensors was originally established for military sensing applications," Hewitt explained. "It accounts for the attributes of human vision and perception in addition to the characteristics of the system components to determine how effective a system is at allowing the observer to accomplish a task."

Spotting pythons day or night

Although other studies have explored using thermal infrared sensors to find Burmese pythons, the snakes had to have been basking in the sun during the day for them to be detected at night. The thermal contrast against their environment also diminished over time.

"In this work, we don't rely on thermal contrast," said Hewitt. "We found that near infrared imaging can be used both during the day as well as at night with illumination to improve detection, even if the pythons have not been basking."

The researchers have contracted with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to work on a project that expands on these results. "We are evaluating whether or not this technology will be effective in the field, and, if so, how to make it field-ready in the challenging Florida everglades ecosystem," said McKayla Spencer, the FWC interagency python management coordinator. "We are just in the beginning stages of our project with the researchers."

CAPTION

A new study shows that infrared cameras could make it easier to spot invasive Burmese pythons in Florida. Compared to an RGB visible image (left), the near-infrared image (right) helps the snakes stand out in the grass.

CREDIT

Jennifer Hewitt, University of Central Florida College of Optics and Photonics

USAGE RESTRICTIONS

Paper: J. Hewitt, O. Furxhi, K. Renshaw, R. Driggers, "Detection of Burmese pythons in the near infrared vs. visible band," Applied Optics, 60, 17, 5066-5073 (2021).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.419320

About Applied Optics

Applied Optics publishes in-depth peer-reviewed content about applications-centered research in optics. These articles cover research in optical technology, photonics, lasers, information processing, sensing and environmental optics. Applied Optics is published three times per month by The Optical Society and overseen by Editor-in-Chief Gisele Bennett, MEPSS LLC and Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. For more information, visit OSA Publishing.

About The Optical Society

Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts. For more information, visit osa.org.

 

School lesson gone wrong leads to new, bigger megalodon size estimate

FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Research News

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IMAGE: SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO ESTIMATE THE SIZE OF OTODUS MEGALODON FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, USING THE MANY FOSSIL TEETH THE GIANT SHARK LEFT BEHIND. A NEW, MORE RELIABLE... view more 

CREDIT: KRISTEN GRACE/FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A more reliable way of estimating the size of megalodon shows the extinct shark may have been bigger than previously thought, measuring up to 65 feet, nearly the length of two school buses. Earlier studies had ball-parked the massive predator at about 50 to 60 feet long.

The revised estimate is the result of new equations based on the width of megalodon's teeth - and began with a high school lesson that went awry.

Victor Perez, then a doctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural History, was guiding students through a math exercise that used 3D-printed replicas of fossil teeth from a real megalodon and a set of commonly used equations based on tooth height to estimate the shark's size. But something was off: Students' calculations ranged from about 40 to 148 feet for the same shark. Perez snapped into trouble-shooting mode.

"I was going around, checking, like, did you use the wrong equation? Did you forget to convert your units?" said Perez, the study's lead author and now the assistant curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland. "But it very quickly became clear that it was not the students that had made the error. It was simply that the equations were not as accurate as we had predicted."

Although the equations have been widely used by scientists since their publication in 2002, the classroom exercise revealed they generate varying size estimates for a single shark, depending on which tooth is measured.

"I was really surprised," Perez said. "I think a lot of people had seen that study and blindly accepted the equations."

For more than a century, scientists have attempted to calculate the size of megalodon, whose name means "big tooth." But the only known remains of the fearsome shark that dominated oceans from about 23 to 3.6 million years ago are fossilized teeth and a few, rare vertebrae. Like other sharks, the rest of megalodon's skeleton, including its jaw, was composed of lightweight cartilage that decomposed quickly after death. Tooth enamel, however, "preserves really well," Perez said. "It's probably the most structurally stable thing in living organisms." Megalodon sharks shed thousands of teeth over a lifetime, leaving abundant traces of the species in the fossil record.

The most accepted methods for estimating the length of megalodon have used great white sharks as a modern proxy, relying on the relationship between tooth size to total body length. While great white sharks and megalodon belong to different families, they share similar predatory lifestyles and broad, triangular teeth serrated like steak knives - ideal adaptations for hunting large, fleshy marine mammals such as whales and dolphins, Perez said.

But these methods also present a challenge: To generate body length estimates, they require the researcher to correctly identify a fossil tooth's former position in a megalodon jaw. As in humans, the size and shape of shark teeth vary depending on where they're located in the mouth, and megalodon teeth are most often found as standalone fossils.

So, Perez was ecstatic when fossil collector Gordon Hubbell donated a nearly complete set of teeth from the same megalodon shark to the Florida Museum in 2015, reducing the guesswork. After museum researchers CT scanned the teeth and made them available online, Perez collaborated with teacher Megan Higbee Hendrickson on a plan to incorporate them into her middle school curriculum at the Academy of the Holy Names school in Tampa.

"We decided to have the kids 3D-print the teeth, determine the size of the shark and build a replica of its jaw for our art show," Hendrickson said.

Perez and Hendrickson co-designed a lesson for students based on the then-most popular method for estimating shark size: Match the tooth to its position in the shark jaw, look up the corresponding equation, measure the tooth from the tip of the crown to the line where root and crown meet and plug the number into the equation.

After a successful pilot test of a few teeth with Hendrickson's students, he expanded the lesson plan to include the whole set of megalodon teeth for high school students at Delta Charter High School in Aptos, California. Perez expected a slight variability of a couple millimeters in their results, but this time, variations in students' estimates shot to more than 100 feet. The farther a tooth position was from the front of the jaw, the larger the size estimate.

After Perez detailed the lesson's results in a fossil community newsletter, he received an email from Teddy Badaut, an avocational paleontologist in France. Badaut suggested a different approach. Why not measure tooth width instead of height? Previous research had suggested tooth width was limited by the size of a shark's jaw, which would be proportional to its body length.

Ronny Maik Leder, then a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum, worked with Perez to develop a new set of equations based on tooth width.

By measuring the set of teeth from Hubbell, "we could actually sum up the width of the teeth and get an even better approximation of the jaw width," Perez said.

The researchers analyzed sets of fossil teeth from 11 individual sharks, representing five species, including megalodon, its close relatives and modern great white sharks.

By measuring the combined width of each tooth in a row, they developed a model for how wide an individual tooth was in relation to the jaw for a given species. Now when a paleontologist unearths a lone megalodon tooth the size of their hand, they can compare its width to the average obtained in the study and get an accurate estimate of how big the shark was.

"I was quite surprised that indeed no one had thought of this before," said Leder, now director of the Natural History Museum in Leipzig, Germany. "The simple beauty of this method must have been too obvious to be seen. Our model was much more stable than previous approaches. This collaboration was a wonderful example of why working with amateur and hobby paleontologists is so important."

Perez cautioned that because individual sharks vary in size, the team's methods still have a range of error of about 10 feet when applied to the largest individuals. It's also unclear exactly how wide megalodon's jaw was and difficult to guess based on teeth alone - some shark species have gaps between each tooth while the teeth in other species overlap.

"Even though this potentially advances our understanding, we haven't really settled the question of how big megalodon was. There's still more that could be done, but that would probably require finding a complete skeleton at this point," he said.

Perez continues to teach the megalodon tooth lesson, but its focus has changed.

"Since then, we've used the lesson to talk about the nature of science - the fact that we don't know everything. There are still unanswered questions," he said.

For Hendrickson, the lesson sparked her students' enthusiasm for science in ways that textbooks could not.

"Victor was an amazing role model for the kids. He is the personification of a young scientist that followed his childhood interest and made a career out of it. So many of these kids had never worked with or spoken to a scientist who respected their point of view and was willing to answer their questions."

Leder and Badaut co-authored the study.

CAPTION

Like other sharks, megalodon's skeleton was made of cartilage, which quickly decomposes after death. Researchers rely on its fossil teeth to estimate its size, using the great white shark as a proxy. While the two species belong to different families, they share similar lifestyles and tooth structure.

CREDIT

Kristen Grace/Florida Museum of Natural History

 

Ancient chickens lived significantly longer than modern fowl because they were seen as sacred, not food -- study shows

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Research News

 

IMAGE: IRON AGE COCKEREL FROM HOUGHTON DOWN, HAMPSHIRE, RADIOCARBON DATED TO THE 4TH-3RD CENTURY BC. ANALYSIS OF THE SPURS SUGGESTS THE BIRD LIVED TO AT LEAST TWO YEARS OLD. view more 

CREDIT: JULIA BEST

Ancient chickens lived significantly longer than their modern equivalents because they were seen as sacred - not food - archaeologists have found.

Experts have developed the first reliable method of finding the age of fowl who lived thousands of years ago. Their research shows they lived to advanced ages, and were kept for ritual sacrifice or cockfighting rather than meat or egg production.

Chickens today live for a few weeks (in the UK poultry birds live for between 33 and 81 days), but during the Iron Age, Roman and Saxon period they lived up to the age of two, three or even four years old.

Calculating the age of bird remains is hard because techniques used for mammals, such as bone fusion and tooth wear, are not available. Researchers have devised a new method based on size of the tarsometatarsal spur which develops on the leg of adult cockerels.

The new method was tested on modern birds of known-age and then applied to ancient specimens. This has allowed the experts to reconstruct the demographics of domestic fowl from Iron Age to Early Modern sites in Britain to reveal changes in relationships between humans and fowl.

Of the 123 Iron Age, Roman and Saxon bones analysed, over 50 per cent were of chickens aged over two years, and around 25 per cent over three years.

Dr Sean Doherty, from the University of Exeter, who led the study, said: "Domestic fowl were introduced in the Iron Age and likely held a special status, where they were viewed as sacred rather than as food. Most chicken bones show no evidence for butchery, and were buried as complete skeletons rather than with other food waste"

"The study confirms the special status of these rare and highly prized birds, showing that from the Iron Age to Saxon period they were surviving well past sexual maturity. Most lived beyond a year, with many reaching the age of two, three and four years old. The age of which cockerels then started to die at becomes younger after this period."

Experts carried out analysis on modern leg bones from domestic fowl and red jungle fowl of known age and sex from multiple collections. This revealed that the bony spur only develops in older birds.

Of the 69 cockerels aged below 1 year, only 14 (20 per cent) had developed a spur. The only age in which all cockerels had a spur was those aged over 6 years. Consequently, there is the potential for archaeologists to misidentify young cockerels without a spur as hens.

Once fully developed, the spur increases in size and its length in relation to the length of the leg can be used to estimate age.

The researchers also took measurements from 1,368 domestic fowl leg bones from British sites dating from the Iron Age to modern period to reconstruct the age when they had died and their sex. This suggested during the Iron Age and Roman period there were significantly more cockerels than hens, likely due to the popularity of cockfighting in this period.

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The research was carried out by Sean Doherty, Caroline Skelton, Rebecca Smallman, and Naomi Sykes from the University of Exeter; Alison Foster; Peta Sadler; Julia Best from the University of Cardiff and Bournemouth University, Sheila Hamilton Dyer from Bournemouth University; James Morris from the University of Central Lancashire; Helina Woldekiros from Washington University in St. Louis and Richard Thomas from the University of Leicester.

This study, Estimating the age of domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus L. 1758) cockerels through spur development, is published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.2988.

 

Paleontologists for the first time discover the pierced skull of a Pleistocene cave bear

Probably the find is the only evidence in the world that ancient people hunted Pleistocene small cave bears

URAL FEDERAL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: SUCH ARROWHEAD (LEFT) WAS PROBABLY USED TO KILL THE BEAR. view more 

CREDIT: URFU / ELIZAVETA VERETENNIKOVA.

Russian paleontologists discovered the skull of a Pleistocene small cave bear with artificial damage in the Imanay Cave (Bashkiria, Russia). A bear aged 9-10 years was killed with a spear during hibernation about 35 thousand years ago. If the assumptions of scientists are confirmed, the find will become the world's first direct evidence of a Paleolithic man hunting for a small cave bear. The description of the skull was published in the Vestnik Archeologii, Anthropologii I Ethnographii.

"The hole in the skull could be either natural or artificial," said senior researcher of the laboratories at the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ural Federal University Dmitry Gimranov. "In the first case, for example, a stone could fall on the bear's head, or water dripped onto the skull during thousands of years. But this is highly unlikely. Most likely the animal was killed by ancient people."

To establish whether the bear was killed or not, scientists have to find out when the hole was made - during life or after the death of the animal. In the second case, the hole can be evidence of a ritual.

"In the Paleolithic, ritual, sacred practices were widespread," said Dmitry Gimranov. "These are handicrafts made of bones, and drawings on the walls of caves not only mammoths' and much more. Therefore, a hole in the skull could have been made after the death of the bear as a ritual practice. The facts of hunting for bears in general at that time are extremely rare. For example, in Europe, many cave bears' bones of were found. But for millions of finds, only 20-30 bones have traces of felling, which means that the meat was removed from the animal for eating. And there is only one fact of the hunt. European researchers have found a stone tip in the vertebra of a bear. There have been no such finds in Russia before. Moreover, all found with traces of human hands belong to large cave bears."

As Gimranov said, hunting for large mammals was essential for life support of ancient humans. However, hunting for small cave bears was not a specialty of the ancient hunters who left traces of their stay in the Imanay cave. At the same time, Paleo human has such strength that he could pierce the bear skull with a spear at close range with relative ease.

Note

The excavations in the Imanay cave, which is located in the Bashkiria National Park, have been carried out by researchers for three years. During this time, paleontologists have collected more than 10 thousand remains of the Late Pleistocene period. Researchers from Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Ufa take part in this study.

Cave bears inhabited the territory of northern Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene (250-10 thousand years ago). These animals were often found in the faunas of Western Europe, the Russian Caucasus, and the Urals. Finds of cave bear bones are common in caves and sometimes form huge clusters. But the caves were inhabited not only by animals but also by ancient man. Therefore, the joint finding of the bones of a cave bear and artifacts is not uncommon. However, the Pleistocene small cave bear is not a very common type of cave bear. For the first time, its remains were found in Great Britain in 1922. Later, the Russian academician Aleksey Borisyak collected and described more voluminous material in Krasnodar (Russia). He named the new species the Russian cave bear. Subsequently, it became known as the "small cave bear". Both in Russia and the West, "traces" of this species are very rare.

Really large finds are associated with excavations in the 1970s - 1980s in the Kizel Cave in the Perm Region (the finds are stored in St. Petersburg). Ural paleontologists were fortunate enough to discover the Imanay cave, where the bones of a small cave bear turned out to be several times larger than in Kizel Cave. Today, Imanay Cave is the largest deposit of the remains of a small cave bear in the world.

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Fragility fractures cost European health care systems €56.9 billion annually

New International Osteoporosis Foundation report provides unique overview of osteoporosis in Europe, revealing the enormous disease burden and an unacceptable treatment gap; 71% of women at high risk of fracture are not receiving much-needed medication

INTERNATIONAL OSTEOPOROSIS FOUNDATION

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IMAGE: SCOPE 2021 SCORECARD FOR OSTEOPOROSIS IN EUROPE ILLUSTRATES THE SCORES ACROSS FOUR DOMAINS FOR 29 COUNTRIES IN EUROPE (EU27 +2). THE ELEMENTS OF EACH DOMAIN IN EACH COUNTRY WERE SCORED... view more 

CREDIT: INTERNATIONAL OSTEOPOROSIS FOUNDATION

June 7, 2021 - Nyon, Switzerland -- A new report by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) draws attention to the burden of osteoporosis and the gaps and inequalities in the provision of primary and secondary prevention of fractures due to osteoporosis across Europe. 'SCOPE 2021: a new scorecard for osteoporosis in Europe' provides detailed findings for the 27 countries of the European Union as well as Switzerland and the United Kingdom (referred to as 'EU27+2'), covering key indicators for four domains: burden of disease, policy framework, service provision and service uptake.

Professor John A. Kanis, IOF Honorary President and lead author of SCOPE, stated:

"Osteoporosis is a major concern in Europe as it results in 4.3 million fragility fractures and health care costs in excess of €56 billion annually. Seeking to prioritize osteoporosis prevention in the EU27+2 countries, the SCOPE 2021 report has tracked key indicators of burden and service uptake which will help Europeans measure how well their country is able to provide quality care, including access to risk assessment and medications. It also provides a new benchmark to follow trends in osteoporosis management, and to measure future progress."

Osteoporosis is a progressive chronic disease that causes bones to become fragile and weak, leaving individuals at high risk of fragility fractures. Such fractures can have a serious impact on the sufferer, leading to pain, long-term disability and even premature death. In the EU27+2, there were estimated to be more than a quarter of a million fragility fracture-related deaths in 2019. This number is comparable to, or exceeds, other common causes of death such as lung cancer, diabetes, or chronic lower respiratory diseases.

Osteoporosis and fragility fractures place a heavy burden on Europe's population

SCOPE 2021 examined the burden of osteoporosis and fragility fractures in the EU27+2 countries, finding:

• The total direct cost of fragility fractures was immense at €56.9 billion in 2019. This comprises €36.3 billion for direct costs of incident fractures, €19.0 billion for ongoing long-term disability costs (from fractures that occurred before 2019), and €1.6 billion for assessment and pharmacological treatment.

• The average direct cost of osteoporotic fractures was €109.1 for each individual - in comparison, in 2010 the average for the EU27 was €85 (after adjusting for inflation).

• Based on the WHO / bone mineral density criteria, there were approximately 32.0 million individuals with osteoporosis, of which 6.5 million were men and 25.5 million were women (2019).

• An estimated 4.3 million new fragility fractures occurred in 2019--equivalent to 11,705 fractures/day (or 487 per hour).

• Based on ten-year probability of a major fracture, 23.8 million Europeans had a probability of major fracture above the thresholds for high risk.

• There was a marked difference in fracture risk among the countries. The probability of future hip fracture in men and women at the age of 50 years varied from 3.8-10.9% in men and 7.0-25.1% in women.

• Given the projected increase in the aged population, the annual number of osteoporotic fractures in the EU27+2 is projected to rise by +24.8%; from 4.28 million in 2019 to 5.34 million in 2034.

Service provision lags in many countries

SCOPE 2021 also found notable inadequacies in service provision that hinder many Europeans from getting the care they need to prevent osteoporosis and fragility fractures:

• In many countries there is suboptimal availability of DXA scanners, which are used to diagnose and monitor osteoporosis. Ten countries reported having less than the estimated minimum DXA units required, and only 15 of the 29 countries provide full reimbursement.

• A wide variety of approved medications is available for the management of osteoporosis. Less than half of the countries offered full reimbursement for these medications.

• Post-Fracture Care Coordination Programs (or Fracture Liaison Services) in hospitals were lacking in eight countries. Based on expert opinion, approximately half of the remaining countries reported that less than 10% of hospitals had such vital programs in place.

Large treatment gap indicates need for strategies to improve service uptake

Among the most startling findings of SCOPE 2021 is the enormous 'treatment gap' which is leaving the most high risk individuals unprotected against fragility fractures. Other measures of service uptake were also found to be suboptimal:

• In 2019 an average of 71% of women at high fracture risk did not receive therapy for osteoporosis, ranging from 32% (Ireland) to 87% (Bulgaria).

• In 2010 the gap was estimated at 55% (or 10.6 million women) who were eligible for treatment but were untreated - this number has risen to 14.8 million in 2019.

• FRAX, the most commonly used risk assessment tool, is available for 24 of the 29 countries. However, its web-based usage varied widely from 49 to 41,874 sessions per million population. This indicates that the tool is underutilized in most countries.

• Waiting times between admission to hospital and surgical intervention were on average greater than 48 hours in five of the 29 countries. Early surgery within 48 hours of a hip fracture has been shown to significantly reduce mortality and increase the proportion of patients returning to their original residence.

Professor Cyrus Cooper, President of IOF, welcomed the publication of SCOPE 2021 and urged European health authorities to prioritize osteoporosis and fracture prevention:

"This important publication clearly shows that osteoporosis is a major health care burden in Europe, resulting in enormous, and growing, costs to national health care systems. As well as revealing wide discrepancies in service provision and uptake within the EU, SCOPE has exposed an unacceptable treatment gap and poor provision of post-fracture care programs to prevent secondary fractures. Despite the wide availability of treatments to prevent fractures, only a minority of patients at high risk receive treatment even after their first fracture."

"IOF joins national osteoporosis societies in Europe in calling for a Europe-wide strategy and parallel national strategies to provide coordinated osteoporosis care and to reduce debilitating fractures and their impact on individual lives and health care systems. Given the projected increase in fracture burden, urgent action must be taken."

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Further reading

Kanis JA, Norton N, Harvey NC, Jacobson T, Johansson H, Lorentzon M, McCloskey EV, Willers C, Borgström F. SCOPE 2021: a new scorecard for osteoporosis in Europe. Arch Osteoporos 16, 82 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11657-020-00871-9

SCOPE 2021 resources: https://www.osteoporosis.foundation/scope-2021

About SCOPE

The mission of the scorecard for osteoporosis in Europe (SCOPE) project is to raise awareness of osteoporosis care in Europe. SCOPE permits an in-depth comparison of the quality of care of osteoporosis across the 27 member states of the European Union (EU27), together with the UK and Switzerland (termed EU27+2).

SCOPE summarises key indicators of the burden of osteoporosis and its management in each of the member states of the European Union to draw attention to the disparities in healthcare provision that can serve in the setting of benchmarks to inform patients, healthcare providers and policy makers in the EU. This update of the original SCOPE publication and scorecard compares the original results from 2010 to data as recent as 2019. The newer data provides a more recent overview, as well as a way to compare management of osteoporosis over time, within and between the EU27+2 countries.

In developing this scorecard, the aim is to stimulate a balanced, common and optimal approach to the management of osteoporosis throughout the EU27+2.

About IOF

The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) is the world's largest nongovernmental organization dedicated to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis and related musculoskeletal diseases. IOF members, including committees of scientific researchers as well as 268 patient, medical and research societies, work together to make fracture prevention and healthy mobility a worldwide heath care priority. https://www.osteoporosis.foundation @iofbonehealth