Uber loses French case, driver declared employee

One lawyer said the ruling puts Uber's business model at risk over the long term in France

France's top civil court dealt ride-hailing giant Uber a setback on Wednesday with a key ruling that it had effectively employed one of its drivers.

Uber has long argued it is merely a platform linking self-employed drivers with riders, a model which allows for avoidance of certain taxes and social charges as well as paid vacations.

However that practice, which underpins the gig economy, has increasingly come under legal attack in many countries.

The French Court of Cassation ruled against Uber's appeal of a 2019 decision that a former driver who sued the firm effectively had a work contract.

The court found that Uber BV had control over the driver by his connection to the app which directs him to clients, and thus should not be considered an independent contractor but an employee.

"This is a first and it will impact all platforms inspired by Uber's model," said Fabien Masson, the lawyer for the former driver.

The ruling does not force Uber to automatically sign contracts, and drivers will have to go to court to obtain requalification as employees.

But for the estimated 150 Uber drivers who have already filed cases, "these drivers will benefit from this ruling", said Masson.

Another lawyer who represents a dozen Uber drivers, Kevin Mention, said the ruling will eventually put the gig economy model at risk in France as it clearly described practices that are common to all firms that use it.

"If they don't change their model today they are heading straight for the wall as it is certain qualification" for those who challenge their status as contractors.

Uber said the ruling missed many of the changes it has made.

"During the past two years we have made many changes that give drivers more control over how they use the app as well as better social protection," said a spokeswoman.

She said drivers choose Uber for the independence and flexibility it allows them and noted the Court of Cassation ruling contradicted its earlier decisions that said without an obligation to work there was no effective employment.

In the French case, the driver, who stopped working for Uber in 2016 after providing some 4,000 trips in under two years, sued to have his "commercial accord" reclassified as an employment contract.

He was seeking reimbursement for holidays and expenses as well as payment for "undeclared work" and unfair contract termination.

The former driver sued after Uber deactivated his account, "depriving him of the possibility to get new reservations", according to the court.

French court backs Uber driver in key gig-economy case (Update)


French court rules against Uber to class drivers as employees, not independent contractor

Issued on: 04/03/2020
 

An advert for the Uber ride-sharing service is seen on a bus stop in Paris, France, March 11, 2016. © Charles Platiau, REUTERS
Text by:NEWS WIRES

France’s top civil court dealt ride-hailing giant Uber a setback on Wednesday with a ruling that it had effectively employed one of its drivers.

Uber has long argued that it is merely a platform linking self-employed drivers with riders, a model which allows it to avoid paying certain taxes and social charges as well as provide paid vacations.

However that practice, which underpins the gig economy, has increasingly come under legal attack in many countries.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the French Court of Cassation rejected Uber’s appeal against a 2019 decision that found a former driver who sued the firm effectively had a work contract.

The court found that Uber BV had control over the driver by his connection to the app which directs him to clients, and thus should not be considered an independent contractor but an employee.

“This is a first and it will impact all platforms inspired by Uber’s model,” said Fabien Masson, the lawyer for the former driver.

The ruling does not force Uber to automatically sign contracts, and drivers will be forced to go to court to obtain requalification as employees.

But for the estimated 150 Uber drivers who have already filed cases, “these drivers will benefit from this ruling”, said Masson.

Gig economy at risk

Another lawyer who represents a dozen Uber drivers, Kevin Mention, said the ruling will eventually put the gig economy model at risk in France as it clearly described practices that are common to all firms that use it.

“If they don’t change their model today they are heading straight for the wall as it is certain qualification” for those who challenge their status as contractors.

Uber, for its part, said the ruling missed many of the changes it has made.

“During the past two years we have made many changes that give drivers more control over how they use the app as well as better social protection,” said a spokeswoman.

She said drivers choose Uber for the independence and flexibility it allows them and noted the Court of Cassation ruling contradicted its earlier decisions that said without an obligation to work their was not effective employment.

In the French case, the driver, who stopped working for Uber in 2016 after providing some 4,000 trips in under two years, sued to have his “commercial accord” reclassified as an employment contract.

He was seeking reimbursement for holidays and expenses as well as payment for “undeclared work” and unfair contract termination.

The former driver sued after Uber deactivated his account, “depriving him of the possibility to get new reservations”, according to the court.

(AFP)

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Careful With That Axe, Eugene - 8:46

12:00 / 1:26:25

Pink Floyd Ummagumma

Who was… Peter Kropotkin?


The Russian nobleman-turned-anarchist was also a biologist whose research in Siberia laid the groundwork for modern biological studies of co-operation, writes Tom Ireland

The Biologist 66(3) p26-31

Kropotkin was away for five years and travelled 50,000 miles, mostly on horseback and with few possessions

Kropotkin initially wondered if nature in Siberia was just different to that in the rest of the world

Although he believed intelligence was one of the great advantages that higher animals had in terms of their ability to co-operate, Kropotkin recognised that co-operation occurred “even amidst the lowest animals”

Nowadays, co-operation is recognised as fundamental in order for evolution to construct new levels of organisation

Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin was born in Moscow in 1842 to a family of Russian aristocrats. At a time when Russia’s archaic feudal system was creaking under pressure to reform, the Kropotkin family ‘owned’ nearly 1,200 peasant labourers, or serfs. According to his memoirs, the young Kropotkin’s life was one of lavish feasts, country retreats, horse-drawn sledges, and parlour games in ‘jewel-covered costumes'.

Half a century later Kropotkin would be a celebrated anarchist philosopher who had spent many years in exile in remote communes or disguised as a peasant.

However, he was also a naturalist and biologist who made an important contribution to the controversial theory that society was still trying to understand and interpret – evolution by natural selection.

As a young man Kropotkin excelled in exactly the sort of career path expected of him, attending an elite military academy in St Petersburg and rising to various senior positions in the army of the Russian emperor, Alexander II. However, Kropotkin, like many of his generation, was becoming disillusioned by the cruelty of serfdom and imperial rule in Russia. He secretly began reading and writing for revolutionary journals and newspapers.

Kropotkin in 1864. He served in various senior military and state positions during the reign of Alexander II, before moving into a role that allowed him to join geographical expeditions to Siberia.

An opportunity arose for him to take a government role that would require him to travel to a recently annexed corner of eastern Siberia, one of the most inhospitable and far-flung regions of the Russian empire. According to Kropotkin biographer Oren Harman, it would become his polar version of Darwin’s voyage aboard the Beagle [2].

Kropotkin was away for five years and travelled 50,000 miles, mostly on horseback and with few possessions.

He at first intended to work on a geological theory of mountain chains and high plateaus but was also keen to find evidence of Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in 1859. As well as being fascinated by the theory, he was aghast that philosophers and politicians were increasingly misusing Wallace and Darwin’s concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ to justify the horrors of slavery, poverty and war in their own countries.

Such ideologies exaggerated the degree to which evolution was driven by conflict between members of the same species, Kropotkin believed. It “raised the pitiless struggle for personal advantage to the height of a biological principle,” he wrote.

In his travels through the Siberian wilderness Kropotkin saw little to no conflict between animals of the same species. What he did see, everywhere, was collaboration: wolves hunting in packs, birds helping one another feed or stay warm, deer finding new pastures in unison, horses forming defensive formations against predators. “Wherever I saw animal life in abundance, I saw mutual aid and mutual support ”, [3] he wrote.

Kropotkin embarked on epic surveys of eastern Russia and Siberia. Although he was expected to help enact administrative reforms in the far-flung region, he soon began to focus on his scientific studies.

Kropotkin initially wondered if nature in Siberia was just different to that in the rest of the world.

Darwin and Wallace had formed their theory through studying nature in the “shrieking hullabaloo of the tropics” [2], and in this land of brutal winters, where snow storms would glaze the vast, featureless tundra in miles of ice, collaboration rather than conflict seemed to be the best strategy for survival.

In On the Origin of Species, Darwin had recognised that “the struggle for life” could be a battle against any number of things, from competition with members of one’s own species or attacks from predators to a lack of nutrients or damage from the elements. Naturalists before Kropotkin had also noted many instances of animals co-operating, from social insects to packs of dogs. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus, had written in the previous century about how the common crab stations ‘sentinels’ to guard fellow crabs that are moulting and therefore vulnerable.

However, Kropotkin wanted to ensure the significance of co-operation in “the struggle for existence” was recognised. He theorised that if the environment in which animals lived was harsh enough to be the main enemy, animals might seek ways other than conflict to manage such struggle.

In Russia particularly, perhaps the fight against the elements was so great it had led to co-operation and collaboration, rather than the bloody squabbles that ensued where heat, light, water and food were bountiful.

Like Darwin, Kropotkin returned from his long adventure with his overarching theory not yet fully coalesced. His observations of nature had also unquestionably become entangled with his political views, with each seemingly driving the other.

When the death of his father allowed him to abandon any pretence that he was still in a government role, Kropotkin became a full-on revolutionary, declaring himself an anarchist. He believed that people should live in small, self-organised communities with no central rule, and preached co-operation instead of conflict. He began attending meetings in disguise and continued his writing in exile from within various communes in Europe.

Kropotkin, pictured in 1900, aged 57.

When Darwin died in 1882, Kropotkin wrote an obituary for his own revolutionary paper Le Révolté, writing that Darwin’s work surely proved that “animal societies are best organised in the community-anarchist manner”.

Kropotkin went on to write five essays between 1890 and 1896 that would be published as the book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution in 1902. His research had expanded from the Siberian steppes to consider eusocial insects such as bees and ants, co-operating lizards, hierarchies of hyenas and shoaling fish. “I saw mutual aid and mutual support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and evolution,” he wrote.

There were endless tales from around the globe to support his theory – of top predators such as white-tailed eagles crying out to others when a meal was spotted; pelicans hunting together; penguins huddling en masse; and, of course, the great hordes of mammals and birds gathering in indescribable numbers across the Americas – “for all of whom, mutual aid is the rule” [3].

Although he believed intelligence was one of the great advantages that higher animals had in terms of their ability to co-operate, Kropotkin recognised that co-operation occurred “even amidst the lowest animals”.

Burying beetles (Nicrophorus) are mainly solitary but work 

together with other individuals when burying large decaying 

animals for their young to feed on.

He was particularly interested in burying beetles (Nicrophorus), a genus of Coleoptera that bury decaying flesh in the ground for their larvae to feed on. They are mostly solitary insects, but occasionally acquire assistance from other beetles in order to bury lumps of flesh that are too big for them to deal with single-handedly. “As a rule, they live an isolated life,” wrote Kropotkin, “but when one of them has discovered a corpse of a mouse or bird, which it can hardly manage to bury itself, it calls four, six, or 10 other beetles to perform the operation with united efforts.”

Many decades before the complexity of microbial communities was understood, Kropotkin’s speculations about organisms he could not see were also prescient. “We must be prepared to learn, some day, from the students of microscopic pond-life, factors of unconscious mutual support, even in the life of microorganisms.” Microbiologists have since found fascinating examples of co-operation within microbial communities, including mutualism, symbiosis, altruism, and dynamic shifts between selfish and selfless strategies.

The opening chapters of Mutual Aid compile evidence of co-operation in the animal world, but later chapters look at mutual aid among what Kropotkin calls “savages” and “barbarians” and in medieval cities, and how the concept of mutual aid could be applied in Russia and the rest of the world. As such, the book became a fundamental text in anarchist communities, but was also read with cautious interest by many natural scientists. In the second edition of his book Kropotkin writes that “12 years have passed since the first edition and it can be said that its fundamental idea – the idea that mutual aid represents in evolution an important progressive element – begins to be recognised by biologists”.

However, a simplistic view of evolution as ‘survival of the fittest’ in a ruthless, individualistic sense persisted – and to some extent persists to this day in the parlance and understanding of evolution. It would take many decades for co-operation to be fully accounted for in evolutionary theory.

In the 1930s and 1940s ecologists began to study co-operation more methodically, with entomologists such as William Morton Wheeler considering how ants seemed to act together as a ‘superorganism’. During the Cold War game theorists studied the logic behind co-operation and altruism in terms of optimal decision making and behaviour.

It was not until the 1960s and 1970s, when evolutionary biologist William Hamilton explored the genetics of co-operative and altruistic behaviours, that mechanisms were deduced to explain how such behaviour could evolve in families even when it lessens the reproductive fitness of the actor doing it (for example, a squirrel sounding an alarm call that draws attention to itself). Sociobiologist Robert Trivers expanded on this to help explain how co-operation between unrelated individuals could evolve.

Nowadays, co-operation is recognised as fundamental in order for evolution to construct new levels of organisation.
The emergence of genomes, cells, multicellular organisms, social insects, complex ecosystems and, indeed, human society are all based on co-operation. The idea of biological systems working in alignment with others is such a basic aspect of ecology and evolution that it is remarkable to think its importance might have been overlooked for even longer were it not for a nobleman-turned-anarchist wandering the snowy steppes of Siberia.

Kropotkin’s contribution was important, although the interconnectedness of his evidence gathering with his political views would be frowned upon in today’s world; he went looking for something to prove that life was more than “a war of each against all” [3]. Yet the evidence he compiled was undeniably clear, and helped recalibrate Darwin’s great theory when it was on the verge of being irredeemably distorted by politics.

His observations of nature, in turn, only strengthened his radical political views, which determined how he lived the rest of his life. As well as being an interesting case of ‘riches to rags’, there can be few biologists in the history of science who have sought to emulate, so literally, the natural processes they studied.

References
1) Kropotkin, P. Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Houghton Mifflin, 1899).
2) Harman, O. & Dietrich, M. R. (eds). Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
3) Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902).


 Royal Society of Biology, 1 Naoroji Street, London WC1X 0GB
Registered Charity No. 277981, Incorporated by Royal Charter

Excerpt on Kropotkin from ‘Rollback’
Noam Chomsky
International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 43, Issue 6, December 2014,
Page 1688, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyu208

Published:
21 October 2014

The editors of the Times Book Review, mostly committed liberals no doubt, selected three books on science in their annual list of “Best Books” for 1994, all devoted to a single science. The choices were so obvious that there was little dispute, they report. “The science is, broadly, evolutionary biology or specifically, sociobiology, which, once it gets into your brain, can really spook you about genetics.” What “spooks you” is human sociobiology, not the study of complex molecules and ants, about which science actually has something to say.

One choice is a memoir by Edward Wilson, “one of the founders of sociobiology” with “his seminal 1975 book `Sociobiology'” – which has interesting material on simpler organisms, and ends with a few pages of speculations on human sociobiology. The field was actually founded 85 years earlier by the leading anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin, also a natural scientist, in seminal work that led to his classic Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution, published in 1902. His studies criticized the conclusions on “struggle for existence” drawn by the noted Darwinian T.H. Huxley, who never responded publicly, though in private he wrote that Kropotkin's prominently-published work was “very interesting and important.” Kropotkin's Darwinian speculations about the possible role of cooperation in evolution, with their implications for anarchist social organization, remain about as solid a contribution to human sociobiology as exists today. But somehow this work has not entered “the canon”; one can hardly imagine why.

1 From Chomsky, N. Rollback, Z Magazine January–May, 1995. URL: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199505–.htm [accessed 26.9.14]. Reprinted with permission.

© The Author 2014; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association

Songbird study reveals changes in fall migration
By
Brooks Hays
(0)


New research suggests black-throated blue warblers, a passerine species that travels back and forth between the Caribbean and the forests of the Eastern United States, have shifted the timing of both their spring and fall migrations during the last fifty years. Photo by Kyle Horton

 (UPI) -- As a number of previous studies have revealed, the timing of spring bird migrations in North America has shifted in response to climate change over the last several decades. Now, new research suggests fall migrations are being affected, too.

The new analysis, published this week in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances, showed the fall migration of black-throated blue warblers is getting longer.

"This means that some birds are leaving earlier while others are leaving later," lead researcher Kristen Covino, an avian biologist at Loyola Marymount University, told UPI in an email. "So while the peak of fall migration is staying the same, the period during which these birds are migrating is getting longer."

For the study, Covino and her colleagues utilized data from the North American Bird Banding Program. The program, administered jointly United States Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service, boasts one of the most expansive historical data sets on migratory birds.

RELATED DNA from ancient packrat nests reveals Earth's ecological history

Scientists decided to study movement patterns of the black-throated blue warbler because the long-distance traveler may be representative of other species. The wealth of data on the species was also a motivating factor. Covino and her research partners were able to analyze more than 150,000 records of individual black-throated blue warblers.

"Also for this species, it is relatively straightforward to determine age and sex of individuals during both spring and fall, so we were confident in the reliability of those pieces of information since the data were initially collected by so many different field researchers," Covino said.

Scientists confirmed -- as previous studies have shown -- that birds have been flying north to their breeding grounds earlier and earlier each spring, an average of a day earlier each decade.

RELATED Study pinpoints the timing of earliest human migration

Researchers suspect that the changes in the bird's spring migratory patterns could be responsible for the lengthening of the species' fall migration period.

"One possibility is that the early departures are young from the first brood -- chicks from a nest -- of the earlier arriving adults and the later departures are a product of some adults attempting, and some succeeding, in a second brood or reproductive attempt in the same season," Covino said. "This species does not always attempt two nests in the same season so it is possible that the breeding season is getting longer and allowing for an increase in this behavior."

Because spring migration patterns are a significant driver of reproductive success, scientists have focused exclusively on the links between climate change and spring migration shifts. Covino hopes their latest research while inspired future studies to consider changes in both fall and spring migrations together.

RELATED Feeding bluebirds helps the songbirds fight off parasites

"We stress that investigations into migratory phenology should include both migratory seasons in order to holistically encompass all the changes occurring within a species," she said. "Our follow-up study is to expand this approach to include several additional species."

RELATED Tropical ecosystems face perfect storm of threats

Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Climate Activist Greta Thunberg


THE 16-YEAR-OLD ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST GRETA THUNBERG, AND NEWLY ELECTED TIME MAGAZINE'S PERSON OF THE YEAR, NOW HAS A NEW SNAIL SPECIES NAMED AFTER HER. 

A newly identified species of land snail has been discovered in the southeast island nation of Brunei by a group of citizen scientists. Its sensitivity to drought, temperature extremes, and forest degradation sparked a creative namesake for the mollusk: Craspedotropis gretathunbergae, named for the famous Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

“We name this species in honor of the young climate activist Greta Thunberg, because caenogastropod microsnails from tropical rainforests, like this new species, are very sensitive to the droughts and temperature extremes that are likely to be more frequent as climate change continues,” write the researchers in Biodiversity Data Journal.
C. gretathunbergae was discovered by participants of Taxon Expeditions, a company that organizes scientific trips for citizen scientists, during a field course near the northern Borneo research facility Kuala Belalong Field Studies Centre. All of the specimens were found at the foot of a steep hill next to a riverbank and are characterized by a high spiraling conical shell. This group of land snails are important to the Bornean ecosystem but may be threatened due to their environmental sensitivities – much like future generations of global species facing climate change impacts.

The new species of snail has a high spiraling conical shell. Biodiversity Data Journal

"Naming this snail after Greta Thunberg is our way of acknowledging that her generation will be responsible for fixing problems that they did not create. And it's a promise that people from all generations will join her to help,” said citizen scientist J.P. Lim, who found the first individual snail, in a statement. In addition to the snail namesake, Thunberg has been named Time's 2019 person of the year and had a new species of beetle named after her.

So far, the team notes that they have recorded over 25 species of snail but expect there could be as many as 85.

“Taxon expeditions are a new concept in which a group of taxonomic experts and laypeople work together in a hybrid work form of field course and biodiversity discovery expedition to discover unknown species from a given area,” write the authors.

The same group named a water beetle species found in Malaysia after Leonardo DiCaprio, Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, in 2018.Craspedotropis gretathunbergae. Taxon Expeditions

Taxon Expeditions participant J.P. Lim collecting snails. Taxon Expeditions - Pierre Escoubas

New tiny 44 million year old bird fossil links Africa and Asia to Utahby Midwestern University

Graphic reconstruction of the habitat of a new small-sized

 middle Eocene pangalliform discovered in the Uinta Basin

 Credit: Dr. Thomas Stidham

A new species of quail-sized fossil bird from 44 million year old sediments in Utah fills in a gap in the fossil record of the early extinct relatives of chickens and turkeys, and it shows strong links with other extinct species from Namibia in Southern Africa and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

In their paper in the online scientific journal Diversity, the authors Dr. Thomas Stidham (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Dr. Beth Townsend (Midwestern University, Arizona), and Dr. Patricia Holroyd (University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley) describe the fossil of a distinct tiny bone from the shoulder girdle of an extinct quail-like bird from 44 million year old rocks in eastern Utah. While it is a unique fossil, the authors have not given it a formal scientific name, waiting until they find more bones of the skeleton. This new Utah bird appears to be the oldest fossil of the extinct group called Paraortygidae, a relative of the living Galliformes (the group that includes the living chicken, turkey, guineafowl, and quail). This fossil fits in a nearly 15 million-year gap in the fossil record of the galliform lineage in North America.

This extinct species is similar in size to the smallest living Galliformes like quail and hill partridges. It likely lived before the evolution of the large crop and gizzard that we see in living chickens and turkeys, and therefore the Utah species likely had a diet different from its living relatives. The earliest fossils of this paraortygid group are from arid habitats, the seashore, and inland forests demonstrating that they had flexibility in their ecology and diet.

Another interesting aspect of this new fossil is that it closely resembles the small size and unique shape of other early paraortygid fossils from sediments with a similar geological age from Namibia in southern Africa and Uzbekistan in Central Asia which were all separated from each other by oceans.

Distinct shoulder bone of extinct species of small-sized 

middle Eocene pangalliform discovered in the Uinta Basin 

Credit: Dr. Patricia Holroyd

Dr. Stidham comments, "I didn't think much of the little fossil at first. It wasn't until I saw a recent paper by a Russian colleague describing a very similar fossil from Uzbekistan that I realized that we were looking at the same group of birds on different continents." The paraortygid fossils from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America show that the group was very widely dispersed early in their evolution and crossed oceans in order to be so widely spread.

By contrast, Holroyd knew the find was something special the moment she turned it over with her pick. "I have worked with Beth Townsend in the Uinta Basin since 2011, and it was the first bird bone I had found there. They are incredibly rare, especially ones this small. I didn't think there was anything like it found there before and so snapped a picture to send to Tom even before we had left the field."

Dr. Townsend, the project leader, notes: "The new Uinta bird fills not only a time gap, but also helps us better understand the animal community at this time. The Uinta Basin is important for understanding ecosystems during times of global warm temperatures, when forests, primates, and early horses were spread across an area that is now desert. The discovery of this new paraortygid shows us that small ground-dwelling birds were part of these ancient forests and may have competed with early mammals for resources."

In summary, Dr. Stidham says, "Even tiny incomplete fossils can provide the data to link global scientific questions together." All of the scientists involved in this project are eager to search for more fossil discoveries in the eastern Utah during the next field season.

Explore furtherChinese Cretaceous fossil highlights avian evolution
More information: Thomas A. Stidham et al, Evidence for Wide Dispersal in a Stem Galliform Clade from a New Small-sized Middle Eocene Pangalliform (Aves: Paraortygidae) from the Uinta Basin of Utah (USA), Diversity (2020). DOI: 10.3390/d12030090

A fast, ecofriendly way of de-icing aircrafts

by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

A close-up shot of the NACA airfoil’s surface taken from above. It was functionalized using DLIP. Credit: Airbus

Ice on an aircraft's surfaces can be a hazard. It increases drag and fuel consumption, disrupts aerodynamic flows, and decreases lift—which impairs the aircraft's ability to fly safely. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS, Airbus and TU Dresden have developed a laser process that fills two needs with one deed. On one hand, accumulated ice falls off by itself and on the other it takes less heat to de-ice surfaces. Direct Laser Interference Patterning permits surfaces to be structured in ways that effectively repel ice.

Ice formation presents a safety risk for aircraft. A thin layer of frost settling on the wings or other neuralgic points such as the tail can adversely affect the aircraft's aerodynamics. Lift may decrease and drag increase. Ice accumulating on probes and sensors can compromise air speed measurements that are critical to in-flight safety. This is why snow and ice have to be cleared from aircraft before they take off. On the ground, this task falls to special vehicles that spray chemical agents onto all vulnerable surfaces. These antifreezes also go to prevent ice from forming. However, fluids of this type are harmful to the environment and expensive. Moreover, a substantial amount—400 to 600 liters—is needed to de-ice a plane. Airborne aircraft also have to be protected against this frosty peril. In most cases, ice protection systems such as heating elements are facilitated on board to do the job. The great drawback of these heaters is that they increase fuel consumption.

Ecologically sustainable

Using a technology known as Direct Laser Interference Patterning (DLIP), a research team at Fraunhofer IWS collaborated closely with project partners Airbus and TU Dresden to develop a process allowing complex, meandering surface structures to be created on the micron and submicron scale to decrease ice accumulation and accelerate de-icing. (More on the DLIP technology in the box below). What sets this process apart is that the researchers combined DLIP with ultra-short pulse lasers to create multilevel, 3-D microstructures on wing profiles in a single step.

As a result, some of the ice simply loses its grip, depending on the conditions under which it froze, and spontaneously detaches after reaching a certain thickness. Also, technical de-icing requires 20 percent less heating energy. Other advantages of the new process are that it potentially reduces the required amount of environmentally harmful de-icing agents and the time passengers spend waiting for the plane to be de-iced. The same goes for in-flight power and fuel consumption. It can even reduce the aircraft's weight if smaller heating units are installed. This combination of these two effects has yet to be achieved with conventional technologies.

Wind tunnel tests with Airbus

This DLIP process was developed in a concerted effort between Fraunhofer IWS and TU Dresden in order to find the optimized DLIP surface structure. Finally, the IWS experts developed the patterning process to transfer the optimized structure onto final demonstrator: a complex three-dimensional NACA airfoil which served as a miniaturized but realistic wing pendant. The NACA airfoil was then tested by AIRBUS experts in the wind tunnel. The performance tests were carried out with a structured NACA airfoil and an unstructured NACA airfoil serving as a reference under realistic conditions at wind speeds ranging from 65 to 120 m/s, with air temperatures below minus ten degrees Celsius and at various humidity levels.

The partners from Airbus were able to demonstrate that ice growth on the functionalized surface is self-limiting. In fact, the ice falls off after a certain amount of time without requiring added surface heating. Additional experiments also showed that it took 70 seconds for the ice on an unstructured airfoil to melt at 60 watts of applied heat. The ice on the structured airfoil receded completely after just five seconds at the same amount of applied heat. The DLIP technology accelerated the process by more than 90 percent. It took 75 watts, or 25 percent more heating power compared to the DLIP surface, to remove the ice on the unstructured demonstrator. "In this wonderful collaboration with Airbus, we demonstrated for the first time and in a realistic way the great anti-icing potential that can be tapped with large-scale laser surface patterning. With our DLIP approach, we realized biomimetic surface structures on a complex component like the NACA airfoil, and demonstrated its distinct advantages over other laser processes", says Dr. Tim Kunze, Team Leader Surface Functionalization at Fraunhofer IWS. His colleague Sabri Alamri adds, "The application of micro- and nanostructures on metal prevents water droplets from adhering. Inspired from nature, this is widely known as the lotus effect. With our new DLIP process, we can create a fragmented surface to significantly reduce the number of adhesion points for ice. We will soon publish a paper on the results." Project partner Elmar Bonaccurso, Research Engineer for Surface Technology / Advanced Materials at Airbus, adds, "Ice formation is particularly dangerous during landing. Water on the surface freezes within milliseconds when the aircraft flies through the clouds at sub-zero temperatures. This can disrupt the functions of control elements such as landing flaps and slats, which impairs the aerodynamics. Today, we use hot air sourced from the engines to heat wing surfaces. The water-repellent structure, which we developed with our partner Fraunhofer IWS in the EU project Laser4Fun, is an attempt to replace conventional technologies with ecofriendly, more cost-effective alternatives." The partners' next step will be to optimize the method and adapt it to various air zones. They will take into account the results obtained in real-world flight tests currently underway with an A350 aircraft whose surfaces have been treated with DLIP.

The NACA airfoil with the water-repellent structured surface. Credit: Airbus

A comparison showed that water adheres to the unstructured NACA airfoil and freezes within seconds at sub-zero temperatures. Credit: Airbus

Tests in the wind tunnel at AIRBUS showed that the ice falls off the structured surface by itself after a defined time. Credit: Airbus

A key technology

The research team has established a key technology by using short and ultrashort pulse lasers for Direct Laser Interference Patterning. It can serve many applications, for example, to structure functional surfaces on wind turbines or other components that can ice over in cold regions. This technology can be also applied to very different fields such as product protection, biocompatible implants and improved contacts for electrical connectors. "We can apply functional microstructures over large areas and at high process speeds, thereby achieving benefits for a number of applications that, until now, had been inconceivable," says Tim Kunze.

Laser system prevents contamination on aircraft surfaces

Provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

'Smart water' may aid oil recoveryby Mike Williams, Rice University

Low-salinity brine injected into crude oil forms nanoscale droplets that help separate oil from rock in reservoirs, according to Rice University engineers. The black ring around the droplets, seen in a cryogenic electron microscope image, is asphaltene. Credit: Wenhua Guo/Rice University

Now there's evidence that oil and water do mix. Sort of.

Scientists at Rice University's Brown School of Engineering show that microscopic saltwater droplets emulsify crude oil when each has the right composition. Understanding how they combine is important to enhanced oil recovery.

Rice chemical and biological engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and her colleagues went to great lengths to characterize the three elements most important to oil recovery: rock, water and the crude itself.

They confirmed wells are more productive when water with the right salt concentration is carefully matched to both the oil and the rock, carbonate or sandstone formation. If the low-salinity brine can create emulsion droplets in a specific crude, the brine appears to also alter the wettability of the rock. The wettability determines how easily the rock will release oil.

The team's work appears in the open-access Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Co-lead author Jin Song said the first hints of seawater's effect came from wells in the North Sea. "Oil companies found that when they injected seawater, which has relatively low salinity, oil recovery was surprisingly good," he said.

Even with that understanding, he said research has been limited. "Usually in the oil and gas industry, when they're looking into low-salinity water, they tend to focus on the effect of the brine and ignore the effect of the oil," said Song, who earned his Ph.D. at Rice this year and is now a researcher at Shell.
High-salinity brine mixed with crude oil does not appear to emulsify like low-salinity brine does, according to Rice University engineers studying the phenomenon. Their results have implications for enhanced oil recovery. Credit: Wenhua Guo/Rice University

"So people haven't been able to find a good indicator or any correlation between the effectiveness of low-salinity water and experimental conditions," he said. "Our work is the first to identify some of the properties of the oil that indicate how effective this technique can be in a specific field.

The team tested how injected brine is dispersed and how it affects oils' interfacial tension and electrostatic interactions with rock.

"How to characterize wettability accurately is a challenge," Biswal said. "Oftentimes, we assume that reservoir rock underground are under a mixed-wet state, with regions that are oil-wet and regions that are water-wet.


"If you can alter your oil-wet sites to water-wet sites, then there's less of a driving force to hold the oil to the mineral surface," she said. "In low-salinity water injection, the brine is able to displace the trapped oil. As you change from oil-wet to water-wet, the oil is released from the mineral surface."

The researchers tested two brines, one high-salinity and one with a quarter of the salinity of seawater, on Indiana limestone cores against six crude oils from the Gulf of Mexico, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and a seventh oil with added asphaltene. They found that high-salinity brine clearly inhibited water droplets from emulsifying in crude, unlike the low-salinity samples.

To better understand the thermodynamic nature of the emulsion, Rice research scientist Wenhua Guo took cryogenic electron microscope images of about 100 mixtures of oil and water. Because oil is opaque, the samples had to be placed in very thin containers, and then frozen with liquid nitrogen to keep them stable for imaging.

"This is the first time anyone has seen these water droplets inside crude oil," Biswal said. "They spontaneously arise inside the crude oil when you expose it to a low-salinity brine."

The images revealed droplets varying in size from 70 to just over 700 nanometers. Biswal said chemical surfactants—aka soap—are also good at loosening oil in a reservoir, but are prohibitively expensive. "You can change the salt concentration to modify the composition of the brine and get the same effect as in including the detergent," she said. "So it's basically a low-cost technique trying to achieve the same goal as detergent."

Nanoparticle-based solution pulls last drops of oil from well water
More information: Jin Song et al, Evaluating physicochemical properties of crude oil as indicators of low-salinity–induced wettability alteration in carbonate minerals, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-60106-2