Will our clean air last after COVID-19? Study says it's possible
by Lauren Miura, University of California, Los Angeles
 

UCLA researchers show how taking bold action on climate change will benefit local residents. Credit: Nurit Katz/UCLA

Since millions of Californians began staying at home and off the roads in March, air quality in the Golden State has visibly improved. Once life returns to normal, however, air pollution levels are likely to return to their prepandemic levels.

A team of UCLA researchers argues this does not have to be our fate.

In a peer-reviewed study published May 4 in the journal Nature Sustainability, they describe a pathway for California to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution by 2050. Taken together, these actions would prevent about 14,000 premature deaths from air pollution–related illnesses each year, all while helping to reduce climate change, the researchers say.

Air pollution is linked to a host of health problems, including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, neurological problems, cancers, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. People exposed to elevated levels of air pollution also have a higher chance of getting sick with influenza and are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

"It doesn't need to take a global pandemic to create cleaner air and healthier lives," said Yifang Zhu, one of the study's lead authors and a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "Climate action directly benefits people at a local and regional scale by creating cleaner air. The public health benefits are both immediate and long-term, and we can save the economy billions each year."

To limit the rise in global temperature to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2100—the threshold for avoiding the most severe effects of global warming—the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that human-caused emissions will need to be reduced to nearly zero, and any remaining emissions will need to be captured and stored. This is known as net-zero emissions, or carbon neutrality.

Achieving this globally is no easy feat, but the study shows how it can be done in California—creating the first-ever roadmap for the state to get there by 2050 using existing policies and technologies.

"Nothing we are suggesting is science fiction, but it will take a lot more than what we're doing now," said study co-author Tony Wang, an engineer with the California Air Resources Board who recently received a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from UCLA.

Collaborators from the UCLA Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering contributed state-of-the-art modeling to analyze how ambient air quality would change under a net-zero emissions scenario. Then, the researchers combined the model with epidemiological data and information to estimate the impact of cleaner air on public health.

In addition to the finding that approximately 14,000 premature deaths could be avoided each year in California by 2050, achieving net-zero emissions could also:
Reduce acute respiratory symptoms in 8.4 million adults.
Reduce asthma exacerbation in 1 million children.
Decrease the number of lost work days by 1.4 million.
Decrease cardiovascular hospital admissions by 4,500.

While all communities would benefit, the state's top 25% most-polluted census tracts would receive approximately 35% of the health benefits resulting from the projected improvements in air quality, according to the study.

"We were happy to see that when you cut down on these emissions, you bring disproportionately higher levels of air-quality benefits to disadvantaged communities," Zhu said.

Unlike with the current COVID-19 crisis, achieving net-zero emissions postpandemic would benefit the economy. By 2050, the monetary savings of greenhouse gas reductions will exceed the cost by $109 billion a year, the study found.

The study's authors intend for their research to help state and local policymakers visualize how taking bold action on climate change will directly benefit people.

"Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our state will not only slow down global climate change, but more importantly, will improve the air quality and protect people's health in our local community," said co-author Bin Zhao, a former UCLA researcher who is now an earth scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.


Explore further  Concrete solutions that lower both emissions and air pollution

More information: Tianyang Wang et al. Health co-benefits of achieving sustainable net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in California, Nature Sustainability (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0520-y

Journal information: Nature Sustainability


Provided by University of California, Los Angeles

April 2020 tied for warmest on record: EU climate service
by Marlowe Hood
The five last years have been the hottest on record, as was the decade from 2010-2019

Last month tied 2016 for the hottest April on record worldwide, with particularly high temperatures over western Europe and north-central Asia, the European Union's climate monitoring network said Tuesday.


Temperatures were also well above average over parts of Greenland and Antarctica, accelerating the disintegration of kilometres-thick ice sheets that have become the main drivers of sea level rise, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.

April 2020 was a statistically insignificant 0.01 degrees Celsius cooler than the same month in 2016, the warmest April registered since the late 19th century, when reliable records began.

"The average temperature for the 12 months to April 2020 is close to 1.3C above the pre-industrial level," the benchmark by which global warming is often measured, Copernicus said.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nearly 200 countries have pledged to cap the rise in Earth average surface temperature to "well below" 2C, and to 1.5C if possible.

The country that probably saw the warmest April compared to the past was Switzerland, where the thermometer last month rose a blistering 5C above the 1871-1900 average.

Siberia, central and northwest Africa, western Australia and Mexico all saw a warmer-than-usual April, as did the Arctic Ocean and the coast of Alaska.

By contrast, southern and southeast Asia were cooler than usual, while temperatures were especially chilly in central Canada.

The five last years have been the hottest on record, as was the decade from 2010-2019.

2019—the second warmest year ever—was only 0.04C below 2016, when temperatures were boosted by a powerful El Nino, a periodic natural weather phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean.

Overall, global temperatures have risen more than one degree Celsius since mid-19th century levels, driven mostly by the burning fossil fuels. They have increased by about 0.2C per decade since the 1970s.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2—which causes global warming—are now at their highest level in at least 800,000 years.

The United Nations said last year that manmade greenhouse gas emissions needed to tumble 7.6 percent annually over the next decade to cap global warming at 1.5C.

Current pledges to cut emissions put Earth on a path of several degrees warming by the end of the century.


Explore furtherJanuary 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

Culling and carcass removal key to containing African swine fever, model shows

by Sarah McDaid, Heriot-Watt University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

While countries like Denmark are building walls to prevent the spread of African swine fever, a new mathematical model has identified two effective tactics.


A team of scientists in Scotland and Spain has reported that culling and fast removal of animal carcasses are critical for the eradication of the disease.

Professor Andy White and his Heriot-Watt University mathematics research team worked with the SaBio group of the Spanish Game Resources Institute (IREC), UCLM & CSIC (Ciudad Real, Spain) to develop the new model.

African swine fever is a highly infectious virus that causes severe, usually fatal disease in domestic pigs and wild boar. There is no treatment or vaccine.

African swine fever is not a threat to humans, but the virus can have a profound socioeconomic impact on areas with outbreaks.

Wild boar are free-ranging and can carry and spread ASF.

Professor Andy White said: "African swine fever can rapidly devastate pig populations, there are outbreaks in China, Poland, Belgium and the Baltic states at the moment. In China, it has wiped out around 40% of the country's pig population.

"Wild boar transmit the disease and their numbers are on the rise in Europe. There are several populations in the UK and here too numbers are increasing.

"Our mathematical model was used to understand the different ways that the virus could be transmitted.

"To match the data, we showed that infection needed to occur in three ways. Through contact between susceptible and infected wild boar, through contact between susceptible wild boar and infected carcasses and via individuals that survive the initial infection, but succumb to the disease after several months.

"Our new model also considered biosecurity measures that can help mitigate the spread of an outbreak.

"A combination of culling and the removal of infected carcasses is the most effective way to eradicate the virus without also eradicating the host population.

"It is important to act quickly: early implementation of these measures will reduce infection levels while maintaining a higher host population density. In some cases, this could prevent the virus from establishing in a wild boar population."

The model also suggests that it may be easier to control ASF in warmer climates.

"Higher temperatures lead to faster degradation of infected carcasses, which also reduces the severity of an outbreak."

In some regions, wild boar are supplementary fed to increase their density. The model suggests this should be avoided when ASF is a threat, as it leads to a more pronounced epidemic outbreak and persistence of the disease in the long-term.

The scientists reported the findings of their new model in Scientific Reports.

Explore further   African swine fever kills more than 20 wild boar in Poland

More information: Xander O'Neill et al. Modelling the transmission and persistence of African swine fever in wild boar in contrasting European scenarios, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-62736-y

Journal information: Scientific Reports 

Provided by Heriot-Watt University

New book shows how ancient Greek writing helps us understand today's environmental crises

by Jodi Heckel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Credit: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The way ancient Greeks thought about the natural environment and their relationship to it is relevant to how we respond to environmental crises today. In her new book, "Other Natures," Clara Bosak-Schroeder, a classics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, looks at how the ethnographies written by ancient Greeks reveal how they explored ideas about consumption and their use of natural resources.

The book focuses on two Greek writers, Herodotus, writing in the 5th century B.C., and Diodorus, writing a few centuries later, and considers their work from the perspective of concern about our current climate emergency. Their ethnographies were the travel writing of their day, describing the habits and customs of people in other places—Africa, India and parts of the Middle East—and how they used natural resources.

"What I found was these Greek and Roman writers weren't doing this kind of reflection on natural resources when they were writing about their own homelands," Bosak-Schroeder said.

One of their major concerns was diet and the connection between diet and health.

"When they looked at other people, they saw them eating very different types of foods, and they were curious about how those foods could promote health and the ways they might be superior to the Greek diet," Bosak-Schroeder said.

Their writing also was a window into systems of consumption and how people are involved in growing food and killing animals, she said. Herodotus and Diodorus were particularly interested in how people related to animals, and their stories reflect that. Diodorus wrote about an African community with a close relationship to seals, where humans and seals hunted together and shared childcare.

While the story is fabricated, "it helps to see that the writers were curious about boundaries between humans and animals, and whether it is possible to have some sort of shared community," Bosak-Schroeder said. "I saw the Greek writers experimenting with how to live with other species, perhaps in more productive ways."

Diodorus also wrote about ancient Egyptians who honored their sacred animals by giving them rich, refined foods—a way to worship the animals with the side effect that Egyptians stayed healthier by not eating that food themselves.

"The idea underlying the story is that we can live richer, fuller lives if we take the well-being of other species into account," Bosak-Schroeder said. "The Greek writers were not environmentalists and not interested in animal welfare for its own sake, but they saw humans depending on other species. It was a pragmatic approach to their own well-being that was connected to other beings on the planet."

They also expressed concerns about consumption, she said.

"Even though they weren't living in a global environmental crisis the way we are, they still seem to be anxious about their consumption of luxury items and whether they should be importing things from other places. They didn't cast those questions exactly in environmental terms, but they saw that their choices could have bigger, unintended consequences," she said.

The writers focused on the role of women and their perspectives on the world as something different and valuable, with insights into what is possible. Diodorus wrote about an Assyrian queen who invaded India, then realized she could not conquer the country because Indians had war elephants. She had huge elephant puppets made from wooden frameworks covered in ox skins, and they were drawn up to the battle lines to fool the Indians.

That idea of listening to diverse viewpoints translates to looking for solutions to climate change, as well as holding leaders accountable for finding a centralized approach to big problems, Bosak-Schroeder said.

"That's a powerful idea right now when a lot of environmental work is being done by people in marginalized communities," she said. "The parts of the world already experiencing climate change have this perspective that we in richer, more industrialized nations really need to listen to."

The final part of "Other Natures" moves from ancient Greece to modern museums of natural history and looks at the way people are educated about environmental issues when they go to museums. Bosak-Schroeder studied exhibits at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and other natural history museums throughout the country. She suggests they can take a cue from the ancient writers in how they display their collections of artifacts and plant and animal specimens by integrating their stories.

"Museums can do more to show how humans relate to other species and are interdependent with them, and they can do that in the way they put collections together," she said. "They have really great practices that can help people understand our climate emergency."

Explore furtherPlant specimens provide powerful data about life in the A

Seabird nests are full of discarded plastic debris

by University of Glasgow
  

Credit: University of Glasgow

Researchers have found that plastic debris is incorporated in up to 80% of seabird nests.

For the first time, it has now been identified where that plastic might come from—at least for some of the species studied.

Surveys carried out in 2018 on an uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland found that more than a quarter of all nests contained plastic, while the presence of plastic debris in nests of European shags (Phalacrocorax aristotelis) was as high as 80%.

But in other species that build new nests every year, like gulls, only around a third of the nests contained plastic debris. The large difference between species in the proportion of nests with plastic is probably due to their different nest-building behaviours; shags reuse their nests year after year so plastic builds up over time.

The difference between species may also be explained by the way that plastic debris ends up in their nests. Plastic in nests has been identified as being mostly from consumer waste thrown away in built-up areas.

"They end up in seabird nests, not because seabirds actively pick them up in built-up areas and carry them to their nest, but because are brought there passively by marine currents." says Dr. Ruedi Nager, a seabird ecologist and senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow.

Danni Thompson, a researcher volunteering with Dr. Nager, looked more closely at the herring gull (Larus argentatus), the most numerous species nesting on Lady Isle.
 

Credit: University of Glasgow

"As herring gulls often forage in landfills, we wanted to see if they were swallowing plastic whilst eating and then bringing it back to the nest," said Ms Thompson.

From photographs of the nests and plastic found in pellets of regurgitated food remains at the nest site, they were able to compare types and colour of ingested plastic and plastic incorporated in the nest. If the likely source of plastic in nests is from plastic debris that birds ingest while foraging in populated areas, then the researchers would have expected a high similarity between plastic debris in pellets and nests.

"But the plastic types in their diet were different from those found in the nest, which tells us that the plastic in nests arrived by different means," Said Dr. Nager.

The researchers also mapped all nests on the island and tested whether nests with plastic were equally distributed across the island. Results showed that nests on the north of the island, which are closer to the outgoing tide from the mainland, were more likely to contain plastic. This suggests that the plastic in the nests came originally from the mainland and was washed up on the shore where the birds could collect it from the immediate surrounding of their nest.

Seabird populations are facing a global decline so it is important to understand all the pressures that they face. Seabirds interact with plastic pollution through ingestion, entanglement and nest incorporation. Plastic debris in nests may affect the birds in different ways. It can potentially affect the quality and properties of the nest with detrimental effects for the eggs and chicks.

Plastic in the nest can also lead to fatal entanglement of adults and chicks. Monitoring plastic in nests using photographs to assess the type and quantity of plastic in nests can allow scientists to monitor changes over time as well as tell them where the plastic came from. Identifying the potential sources of plastic can inform conservationists, allowing them to develop management actions, such as targeted beach cleans, which may reduce any negative impacts on our struggling seabird populations.

Seabirds are building and rebuilding their nests just now as British people—responsible for putting their debris in the environment in the first place—are in lockdown.

"It will be interesting to see what seabird nests are made of this season," said Dr. Nager.

Explore furtherBalloons the number one marine debris risk of mortality for seabirds

Provided by University of Glasgow

Demographic expansion of several Amazonian archaeological cultures by computer simulation

by Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona

Computer simulation of the expansions of several archaeological cultures in South America. Credit: UPF

Expansions by groups of humans were common during prehistoric times, after the adoption of agriculture. Among other factors, this is due to population growth of farmers which was greater than of hunter-gatherers. We can find one example of this during the Neolithic period, when farming was introduced to Europe by migrations from the Middle East.


However, in South America, it was not clear whether the same would have occurred as it was argued that no cultural group had expanded across such long distances as in Europe or Asia. In addition, it was believed that the type of agriculture practised by pre-Columbian peoples in the Amazon would not allow them to expand at the same rate.

Research conducted by three members of the Culture and Socio-Ecological Dynamics Research Group (CaSEs) at the UPF Department of Humanities shows that expansions by some archaeological cultures in South America can be simulated by computer through population growth and migration in the same way as the Neolithic in Europe. This is the case of so-called Saladoid-Barrancoid culture, which spread from the Orinoco to various parts of Amazonia, even reaching the Caribbean.

The article, published on 27 April in the journal PLOS ONE, involved Jonas Gregorio de Souza, a Marie Curie researcher, as first author, together with Jonas Alcaina Mateos, a predoctoral researcher, and Marco Madella, UPF-ICREA research professor and director of the CaSEs Research Group.

"The use of computer simulations to test human migrations in prehistoric times is an approach that has proved productive in other continents, but had not been applied to the area of the tropics of South America. We have shown that some cultural expansions that have taken place from Amazonia may be the result of similar demographic processes to the Neolithic in Eurasia," says Jonas Gregorio de Souza.

A computational model to simulate the expansions of four archaeological cultures

The article uses a computational approach to simulate human expansions in prehistory. "We use parameters derived from the ethnography of farmers in the Amazon to simulate the rate of population growth, the fission of villages, how far and how often they moved," the authors state. Based on these parameters, they created a computer model to simulate expansions from different points and dates and compare the results with archaeological data.

The researchers used radiocarbon dates from different archaeological cultures over a large area of territory in the last 5,000 years, which were compared with the prediction of the model, to assess whether their rate of territorial expansion could be explained as being a demographic phenomenon (rather than another type, such as cultural diffusion).

The four archaeological cultures or traditions analysed were the Saladoid-Barrancoid, the Arauquinoid, the Tupiguarani, and the (closely related) Una, Itararé and Aratu traditions. In most regions where they settled, these cultures introduced the cultivation of domesticated plants, marked the transition towards more permanent settlements, and spread an economic model called "polycultureagroforestry."

However, the authors warn that some expansions could not be predicted by the simulations, suggesting that they were caused by other factors: "Although some archaeological expansions can be predicted by the simulations as demographic processes, others are not easily explained in the same way. This is possibly due to different processes that drive their dispersal, such as cultural diffusion, or because the archaeological data are inconclusive or sparse," they conclude.


Explore further  Genetic study pushes back timeline for first significant human population expansion

More information: Jonas Gregorio de Souza et al, Archaeological expansions in tropical South America during the late Holocene: Assessing the role of demic diffusion, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232367

Journal information: PLoS ONE


Provided by Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona

A hydrological model leads to advances in the creation of a world water map
by University of Córdoba
 

The research Rafael Pimentel during his field work. Credit: University of Córdoba

Water is a global resource which is essential for life on our planet, thus hydrological research and the study of its management has also become crucial work for the continuity of life on Earth. The availability of public data on water behavior such as data about river flow and rainfall are key for the research community in order to create a world water map. When drawing this map, the public and people who manage water resources on local scales also play important roles. By means of carrying out citizen science, they provide and verify data.


The research community works on this task with hydrological models, which are tools that enable them to represent processes in the hydrological cycle, and are able to obtain, for example, predictions about river flow using primarily rainfall data (though also other atmospheric variables such as temperature, solar radiation, land features and plant development can be used). These tools usually use a hydrological basin as a unit of measurement, with a basin being a unit of land whose water flows toward the same point.

Researcher Rafael Pimentel from the Fluvial Dynamics and Hydrology research group at the University of Cordoba, worked for two years at the Hydrology Unit of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) where he participated in shaping the first global model on a basin scale. The model used was HYPE, a model designed in said unit for comprehensive water management in Sweden and previously used on a European scale.

The modelling process was challenging but feasible according to the research staff since it was applied to more than 130,000 basins that cover the world's land mass (except for Antarctica). The main challenge was compiling data and evaluating their quality, as well as calibrating the model, that being the process of testing the river flow model data and the observed data to assess whether or not the model was working properly. Due to the complexity of representing the great array of global hydrological processes, the model's performance varied. Generally speaking, the model provides good results, with an average value of over 0.4 in the Kling-Gupta Efficiency metric (KGE), which is an index used to quantify the goodness of a hydrological model which classifies models of 0.4 or more as good. The Eastern US, Europe, Japan and areas of Russia, Asia, Canada and South America were the areas with the best results, with KGE values of over 0.6, demonstrating a high potential for its use in performing seasonal forecasts of river flow in these areas. Using these weather data in a six-month period, it is possible to predict river flow data for the next six months. This prediction is quite useful for staff at reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants who could, with the help of these data, manage and plan their resources better and more precisely.

The challenge of scaling and quantifying the goodness of this model, in addition to verifying the geographical location of lakes, rivers and reservoirs so that it all coincides when scaling the model, was possible thanks to the amount of free access hydrological data that are available to the research community as well as to the general public, though the river flow data in this case was scarce in many areas. This shows how open access and shared knowledge helps hydrology progress. Nevertheless, there is a lack of information, especially regarding river flow, in many areas of the world with which to carry out this verification. Thus, the idea of creating a network of collaborative science has been proposed. Using this network, researchers, managers, consultants and students working in these areas with hydrological information on a local scale could assess the model in those areas. The corresponding part of the model would be provided to those interested, with the idea of working together to verify and adjust the model by means of workshops during which the locals would give their feedback. In this way, the model's representation of reality on a global scale would improve.


Explore further Global database for Karst spring discharges

More information: Berit Arheimer et al, Global catchment modelling using World-Wide HYPE (WWH), open data, and stepwise parameter estimation, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.5194/hess-24-535-2020 

Provided by University of Córdoba

Cut-and-paste enters era of augmented reality

by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore


It was in 1901 that an author of children's books imagined an electronic image that could float over people and provide information about them. L. Frank Baum, who a year earlier penned "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," referred to that image as a character marker. In fact, it is the first known reference to what 120 years later would commonly be referred to as augmented reality.

From SnapChat's whimsical face filters to daily evening weather forecast maps on TV, digital overlays upon real world scenes have become ubiquitous.

The pace of advances in augmented reality will only increase in coming months and years.

Some of those advances will be relatively simple. One such example was unveiled last month. Cyril Diagne, a designer and programmer currently in residence at the Google Arts and Culture Lab in Paris, showed that as mundane an operation as cut-and-paste can be turbocharged in the era of augmented reality.

He posted demonstration videos of his smartphone camera process that singles out an object, isolates it from the background and, when pointed to a desktop computer, inserts the image into a document. This is all done in under 10 seconds.

Diagne explained that he utilizes BASNet to trace the outline of an image and smoothly wipe out the background. He uses other image-tracking technology to determine precisely where the phone's camera is pointing.

4/10 - Cut & paste your surroundings to Photoshop
Code: https://t.co/cVddH3u3ik
Book: @HOLOmagazine
Garment: SS17 by @thekarentopacio
Type: Sainte Colombe by @MinetYoann @ProductionType
Technical Insights: ↓#ML #AR #AI #AIUX #Adobe #Photoshop pic.twitter.com/LkTBe0t0rF— Cyril Diagne (@cyrildiagne) May 3, 2020

"This is a prototype that uses the phone camera to capture, extract and paste objects from your surroundings directly to Photoshop," Diagne explained. "Thanks to OpenCV SIFT, an image-tracking technology, the app is able to detect where the phone is pointing at the screen, making it a seamless experience. It's part of a series of experiments I'm doing every weekend to explore how machine learning and AI can help create more digital interactions that are more natural."

His demonstration video shows him pointing his camera at three items in succession—a plant, a book and a blouse—and in each instance pointing the camera at a desktop computer, where each image flies into the document.

Images require 2.5 seconds to capture and 4 seconds to paste.

Other video examples show him capturing still images hanging on a wall transferred to a computer where they initiate video clips, and capturing the logo of hard rock band Iron Maiden on the T-shirt of his wife that, when transferred to the computer, instantly plays "Drifter" from their "Killers" album.

Diagne says there is room for improvement, including a reduction in times needed for transfer. But for now, he offers AR Cut and Paste only as a prototype and has uploaded all details and code on GitHub. A local server must be established to link the smartphone to Photoshop on the desktop computer.

Augmented reality fuels some of the most intriguing apps available today. Aside from its obvious application to innumerable games, it offers many practical uses for personal, educational and commercial needs.

Froggipedia projects a lifelike 3-D frog on any surface you point your camera at, offering a highly detailed—and pain-free—step-by-step dissection, conducted with your fingertip motions. HairStyle Pro captures your image and presents you with hundreds of hairstyles and differing colors precisely positioned over your face (including beards and sideburns for men). YouCam Makeup-Magic does the same for women seeking the perfect shade of cosmetics.

For the craftsmen or craftswoman in the home, AR Measure Kit lets you point your camera at any two targets and returns a precise measurement. If you prefer to purchase ready-made furniture, IKEA allows you to project images of its inventory of furniture and other home accessories right into your living room or kitchen.

And perhaps best of all, with an AR Visualizer, you can check out that Porsche 911 Carrera 4S that you always wanted, listing at a mere $120,600 today, and place its image on your own driveway in front of your home as you select colors, interiors and rim style and then watch the car drive off and down the road.

L. Frank Baum would be impressed.

Explore furtherEngineers develop computerized camera without optics that instead uses an ordinary window as the lens

More information: www.theverge.com/2020/5/4/2124 … world-photoshop-demo

© 2020 Science X Network

Electrical activity in living organisms mirrors electrical fields in atmosphere
by Tel Aviv University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Most electrical activity in vertebrates and invertebrates occurs at extremely low frequencies, and the origin—and medical potential—of these frequencies have eluded scientists. Now a Tel Aviv University study provides evidence for a direct link between electrical fields in the atmosphere and those found in living organisms, including humans.


The study's findings may change established notions about electrical activity in living organisms, paving the way for revolutionary, new medical treatments. Illnesses such as epilepsy and Parkinson's are related to abnormalities in the electrical activity of the body.

"We show that the electrical activity in many living organisms—from zooplankton in the oceans, to sharks and even in our brains—is very similar to the electrical fields we measure and study in the atmosphere from global lightning activity," explains Prof. Colin Price of TAU's Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, who led the research for the study, published in the International Journal of Biometeorology on February 8.

Colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Alaska also contributed to the study.

"We hypothesize that over evolutionary timescales living organisms adapted and evolved to actually use the electricity in the environment—global lightning," Prof. Price continues. "This has likely not changed over billions of years and is similar to the evolution of our eyes, which evolved using the sunlight nature gave us."

As living organisms evolved over billions of years, the natural electromagnetic resonant frequencies in the atmosphere, continuously generated by global lightning activity, provided the background electric fields for the development of cellular electrical activity. Prof. Price's research found that, in some animals, the electrical spectrum is difficult to differentiate from the background atmospheric electric field produced by lightning.

"Neither biologists nor doctors can explain why the frequencies in living organisms (0-50 Hz) are similar to those in the atmosphere caused by lightning," adds Prof. Price. "Most of them are not even aware of the similarity we presented in our paper."

"Our review of previous studies revealed that lightning-related fields may have positive medical applications related to our biological clock (circadian rhythms), spinal cord injuries and maybe other bodily functions related to electrical activity in our bodies," says Prof. Price. "The connection between the ever-present electromagnetic fields, between lightning in the atmosphere and human health, may have huge implications in the future for various treatments related to electrical abnormalities in our bodies."

The study comprised a retrospective review of previous studies on the link between lightning-related fields in the atmosphere and human and animal health. "We collected many different studies over the years to build a clear picture of this link," concludes Prof. Price. "Going forward, we need to design new experiments to see how these extremely low frequency fields from lightning may impact living organisms, and to investigate how these fields can be used to benefit us. One new experiment we are now planning is to see how these fields may impact the rate of photosynthesis in plants."


Explore furtherLightning's electromagnetic fields may have protective properties
More information: Colin Price et al, Natural ELF fields in the atmosphere and in living organisms, International Journal of Biometeorology (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s00484-020-01864-6
Journal information: International Journal of Biometeorology


Provided by Tel Aviv University

Yellow-legged gull adapts its annual lifecycle to human activities to get food

by University of Barcelona

The experts warn it is necessary to better know the ecological impact of opportunist species in natural ecosystems Credit: Isabel Afán (EBD-CSIC)

The yellow-legged gull has a high ability to adapt to human activities and benefit from these as a food resource all year. This is stated in a scientific article published in the journal Ecology and Evolution whose first author is the researcher Francisco Ramírez, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

Other participants in the study are the experts Josep Lluís Carrasco (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB); Isabel Afán y Manuela González Forero (Doñana BIological Station, EBD-CSIC); Joan Navarro (Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC)) and Willem Bouten (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands). This research is part of a Talent-Hub project funded by Agencia Andaluza del Conocimiento.

Opportunist species with great spread abilities

The yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) is an opportunist species which feeds from a great range of preys (fish, crustaceans, annellids, organic material from dumping sites, etc.). As part of the new study, experts analysed—with remote monitoring devices—the movement of thirty gulls that nest in the Marismas del Odiel Natural Site (Huelva).

The animals were marked with GPS devices to obtain their location every five minutes for a year, from the moment of breeding—also during winter season—until the next reproductive season. The exact location of each animal enabled experts to identify their use of the land and the relationship with human activity. As a result, the research team could obtain a detailed map of their movements in space and time.

Changes in the eating pattern over the year
The conclusions of the study reveal a tight relation between the space distribution of the gulls and the human-origin resources during the year. "The preferences of the gulls in the use of habitat changed over their annual cycle as a possible response to the restrictions the species suffer over the course of their phenological cycle: physiological restrictions due to the differences of energetic demand of each period, and time restrictions resulting from the fluctuations in the availability of food resources," notes researcher Francisco Ramírez (UB-IRBio). The expert notes that "The extreme ability to adapt allows these species to modify their eating habits and the exploitation of different habitats to manage both limitations."

In the study, the location of the gulls was compared to the information on the occupation of the land obtained in high-resolution databases. The use of information of the satellite sensors—to quantify the intensity of artificial night lights—enabled researchers to relate the habitats of gulls with the close activity to urban sites.

The large potential for spread of these individuals, covering cross-border areas of Spain, Portugal and Morocco during their annual cycle, shows the need for international efforts to limit the availability of human food resources and improve the management of this species.

"The knowledge of behavioural patterns over the year in opportunist species with a wide spread, such the yellow-legged gull, is important in order to assess potential impacts such species can have on the ecosystem," concludes Ramírez.


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More information: Francisco Ramírez et al, Humans shape the year-round distribution and habitat use of an opportunistic scavenger, Ecology and Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6226

Journal information: Ecology and Evolution

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