It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, May 16, 2020
NEWS RELEASE
New Chicago Booth research suggests patients prefer expert guidance for medical decisions
Findings from professors Emma Levine and Celia Gaertig show, now more than ever, people want paternalistic advice -- not autonomy -- for key healthcare choices
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
Over the past several decades, the United States medical system has increasingly prioritized patient autonomy. However, new research from University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professors Emma Levine and Celia Gaertig, and Northwestern Ph.D. candidate Samantha Kassirer, suggests that in times of uncertainty, people want expert guidance when making choices about their medical care.
The study, released by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), examines the important question of how patients, and advisees in general, react to full decisional autonomy when making difficult decisions about their health. The researchers found that advisers who gave advisees decisional autonomy rather than offering paternalistic advice, were judged to be less competent and less helpful. As a result, advisees are less likely to return to and recommend these advisers.
"It's clear that many of us don't want to be responsible for difficult decisions, but doctors seem more concerned than other experts that their advice might infringe on autonomy, and more worried about being blamed later," said Levine, assistant professor of behavioral science and Charles E. Merrill Faculty Scholar at Chicago Booth. "Our results suggest that advisees facing difficult decisions do not perceive autonomy as the gold standard."
The study also indicates that the preference for paternalistic guidance could extend beyond doctors. The researchers asked another set of participants to choose between two hypothetical investments, with some participants receiving recommendations from financial advisers while others did not. In a different experiment, they asked participants to imagine being given feedback from a boss about an upcoming presentation. In both cases, participants continued to prefer paternalistic advice. Moreover, in a final experiment, they didn't get angry at advisers for what turned out to be a bad outcome.
COVID-19 and terrorism: Assessing the short and long-term impacts of terrorism
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY
A new report authored by Pool Re and Cranfield University's Andrew Silke, Professor of Terrorism, Risk and Resilience, reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic is already having a significant impact on terrorism around the world.
The report, 'COVID-19 and terrorism: assessing the short-and long-term impact' reveals:
There is a mixed picture on the level of attacks in the short-term - lockdown measures will tend to inhibit attacks but terrorist propaganda calling for attacks (while authorities are distracted, etc.) will incite some incidents.
Much propaganda - and particularly that connected to far-right extremism - is focusing on conspiracy theories connected to COVID-19 and this has already inspired plots and attacks.
Islamist extremist propaganda is focusing more on the vulnerability of government opponents distracted by the pandemic and the opportunity this presents for attacks.
There is a significant current increase in online extremist activity, raising the risk of increasing short-to-medium term radicalisation.
There are strong long-term concerns that states weakened by the serious economic consequences of the pandemic will be more vulnerable to the emergence/resurgence of terrorist groups in many parts of the world.
Launching the report, Andrew Silke Pool Re and Cranfield University's Professor of Terrorism, Risk and Resilience, said: "The pandemic is likely to have a mixed impact on terrorism trends in the short term. While lockdown measures may represent obstacles to terrorists to carry out real-world attacks, many terrorist groups have also flagged that the pandemic has left government and security resources being severely stretched.
"As a result, the ability of government, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to focus on traditional priorities such as counterterrorism has been undermined."
Commenting on CBRN weapons, Professor Silke continues: "One genuine concern is that COVID-19 may lead to a resurgence in interest among terrorists for using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Historically, a range of terrorist movements have been interested in bioterrorism though there have been very few successful attacks by terrorists using biological weapons. While serious obstacles certainly remain, the huge impact of COVID-19 may re-ignite some interest in biological weapons."
Pool Re's Chief Resilience Officer, Ed Butler said: "This report is very timely and worth digesting at a time when we are quite rightly focussed on the near-term issues and human and economic devastation being caused by this global pandemic. However, Pool Re's core purpose remains the provision of terrorism reinsurance and we need to continue to understand the contemporary terrorist threats as well as horizon scan the future landscape. Pool Re's strategic relationship with Cranfield University underpins the importance we attach to collaborating with academia in understanding and mitigating against catastrophic perils."
COVID-19: Hospital response risks worsening health inequalities
SAGE
Disadvantaged and marginalised people face worsening health inequalities as a result of the difficult choices made by NHS hospitals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Public health doctors, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, say that the restriction of non-urgent clinical services, such as gynaecology, sexual health and paediatrics, and the precipitous decline in emergency department attendances, will affect marginalised groups, disproportionately. Emergency departments, which in March 2020 saw a 44% decline in attendances, are often used for routine care by vulnerable people, such as homeless people and migrants, who can find it difficult to access general practice and other community services.
In their article, the authors explore the nature of health inequalities relating to the response to Covid-19 by hospital trusts and suggest approaches to reduce them. One concern highlighted is the suspension of carbon monoxide screening for pregnant women. Younger women, and those living in more deprived areas, are more likely to smoke during pregnancy. Lead author Sophie Coronini-Cronberg, consultant in public health at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, said: "It remains vital that maternity services continue to ask women (and their partners) if they smoke or have recently quit, and continue to refer those who smoke for specialist cessation support." Official guidance advises postponing face-to-face smoking cessation clinics during the pandemic. Ms Coronini-Cronberg said: "We encourage providers to provide alternative remote services, to ensure these are equitable and to promote these tenaciously."
The authors also point to the problem of inaccurate baseline data for disease prevalence and progression which for many conditions can vary by ethnicity. Miss Coronini-Cronberg said: "It is imperative that we rigorously capture baseline data so that we understand the impact of key risk factors on disease prognosis, including Covid-19." The authors write that while ethnicity data are generally accurately captured for white British patients, for minority groups only 60-80% of hospital records capture ethnicity correctly. "We risk reaching incorrect conclusions based on flawed data", they say.
Other areas of concern highlighted by the authors include the inequalities faced by contracted workers who may provide critical hospital functions such as security, cleaning, portering and catering and who are more likely to be migrants.
The authors conclude: "The NHS has taken swift action to expand capacity and reorganise services to help ensure that health services can help with an influx of seriously ill Covid-19 patients. Difficult choices have been made, and some unintended consequences are inevitable. Policymakers, managers and clinicians should take pause during this phase to protect the most vulnerable groups in our society from negative unintended consequences and avoid worsening health inequalities."
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CFC replacements are a source of persistent organic pollution in the Arctic
Degraded, toxic compounds from CFC replacements found in ice in the Canadian Arctic
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
Substances used to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) may be just as problematic as their predecessors, a new study shows.
In 1987, Canada implemented the Montreal Protocol, a global agreement to protect Earth's ozone layer by ceasing the use of substances like CFCs. Unfortunately, the CFC-replacement substances used to replace them are proving problematic as well, with accumulating levels of their degradation products recently found in the Canadian Arctic.
"In many ways, the degradation products from these substances may be just as concerning as the original chemical they were meant to replace," said Alison Criscitiello, director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL), housed in the University of Alberta's Faculty of Science. "We are seeing significant levels of these short-chain acids accumulating in the Devon Ice Cap, and this study links some of them directly to CFC replacement compounds."
An ice core drilled on the summit of Devon Ice Cap in the Canadian high Arctic shows a tenfold increase in short-chain perfluorocarboxylic acid (scPFCA) deposition between 1986 and 2014. scPFCAs form through atmospheric oxidation of several industrial chemicals, some of which are CFC replacement compounds. scPFCAs are highly mobile persistent organic pollutants and belong to the class of so-called "forever chemicals" because they do not break down. A few preliminary studies have shown toxicity of these substances to plants and invertebrates.
"This is the first multi-decadal temporal record of scPFCA deposition in the Arctic," explained Criscitiello. "Our results suggest that the CFC-replacement compounds mandated by the Montreal Protocol are the dominant source of some scPFCAs to remote regions."
Over the past four years, Criscitiello and colleagues drilled four ice cores across the eastern Canadian high Arctic. This interdisciplinary work is thanks to a strong collaboration between Criscitiello and the labs of York University atmospheric chemist Cora Young and Environment and Climate Change Canada research scientist Amila De Silva.
These same Canadian Arctic ice cores also contain significant levels of perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs). These results demonstrate that both perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) have continuous and increasing deposition on the Devon Ice Cap despite North American and international regulations and phase-outs. This is the likely result of ongoing manufacture, use, and emissions of these persistent pollutants, as well as their precursors and other new compounds in regions outside of North America.
"These results show the need for a more holistic approach when deciding to ban and replace chemical compounds," explained Criscitiello. "Chemicals degrade, and developing a strong understanding of how they degrade in the environment, and what they degrade to, is vital."
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The paper, "Ice core record of persistent short?chain fluorinated alkyl acids: Evidence of the impact from global environmental regulations," is published in Geophysical Research Letters(doi: 10.1029/2020GL087535).
UMD researchers seek to reduce food waste and establish the science of food date labeling
New study highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations to reduce global food waste due to date labeling
Minimizing food waste is top of mind right now during the COVID-19 global pandemic, with the public concerned about the potential ramifications for our food supply chain. But even before COVID-19, given concerns about a rapidly growing population and hunger around the world, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued a global call for zero tolerance on food waste. However, the lack of regulation, standardization, and general understanding of date labeling on food products (such as "best by" and "use by" dates) leads to billions of dollars per year in food waste in the United States alone. Many people don't realize that date labels on food products (with the exception of infant formula) are entirely at the manufacturer's discretion and are not supported by robust scientific evidence. To address this concern and combat global food waste, researchers at the University of Maryland have come together across departments in the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources with the goal of clarifying the science or lack thereof behind food date labels, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary research and global research trends in their new publication in Food Control.
"We have 50 different types of date labels that are currently used in the US because there is no regulation - best by, best if used by, use by - and we as consumers don't know what these things mean," says Debasmita Patra, assistant research professor in Environmental Science and Technology and lead author on the paper. "The labeling is the manufacturer's best estimation based on taste or whatever else, and it is not scientifically proven. But our future intention is to scientifically prove what is the best way to label foods. As a consumer and as a mom, a best by date might raise food safety concerns, but date labeling and food safety are not connected to each other right now, which is a wide source of confusion. And when billions of dollars are just going to the trash because of this, it's not a small thing."
According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS), Americans discard or waste about 133 billion pounds of food each year, representing $161 billion and a 31% loss of food at the retail and consumer level. According to the FDA, 90% of Americans say they are likely to prematurely discard food because they misinterpret date labels because of food safety concerns or uncertainty on how to properly store the product. This simple confusion accounts for 20% of the total annual food waste in the United States, representing more than 26 billion pounds per year and over $32 billion in food waste.
"Food waste is a significant threat to food security," adds Paul Leisnham, associate professor in Environmental Science and Technology and co-author. "Recognition of food waste due to confusion over date labeling is growing, but few studies have summarized the status of the research on this topic."
This was the goal of their latest publication, gathering support and background for their future work to reduce food waste, and providing guidance for future areas of research in this field. In order to achieve this, Patra enlisted Leisnham in her own department, but also relied on computational support and food quality and safety expertise from Abani Pradhan, associate professor in Nutrition and Food Science, and his postdoctoral fellow Collins Tanui, both co-authors on the paper.
"We wanted to see the trends and give some suggestions, because the paper shows that we are some of the very few who are thinking about truly interdisciplinary research connecting food labeling to food waste," says Patra. "In fact, we were joking because one major finding was that environmental sciences and food science departments don't seem to collaborate on this topic, so we are doing something unique here at UMD."
"Our paper underlined the fact that future research on food waste and date labeling needs to take an interdisciplinary approach to better explore the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, adds Leisnham. "Expertise from environmental science, food science, sociology, Extension education, and other disciplines can more effectively develop interventions to reduce behaviors that may increase food waste. This is an environmental issue, but involves the knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and social behaviors of multiple stakeholders, including retailers, food-service providers, and diverse consumers."
The collaboration between environmental sciences and food sciences at UMD is an example of this collaboration in action, with the goal of establishing what science, if any, already underlies date labeling and connecting this to food quality and safety.
"Utilizing my expertise in experimental and mathematical modeling work, we aim to scientifically evaluate the quality characteristics, shelf life, and food spoilage risk of food products," says Pradhan. "This would help in determining if the food products are of good quality beyond the mentioned dates, rather than discarding them prematurely. We anticipate to reduce food waste through our ongoing and future research findings."
Patra stresses the importance of further collaboration through University of Maryland Extension (UME) to have maximum impact on food waste. "Where is the confusion coming from?," says Patra. "If we understand that, maybe we can better disseminate the information through our Extension work."
Patra adds, "Food is something that is involved in everybody's life, and so everyone needs to be a good food manager. But even now, there is no robust scientific evidence behind date labels, and yet those labels govern people's purchasing behavior. People look for something that has a longer 'best by' date thinking they are getting something better. And when you throw that food away, you are not only wasting the food, but also all the economics associated with that, like production costs, transportation from the whole farm to fork chain, and everything else that brought you that product just to be thrown away. Food safety, regulation, and education need to all combine to help solve this problem, which is why interdisciplinary collaboration is so important."
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The paper, entitled "Evaluation of global research trends in the area of food waste due to date labeling using a scientometrics approach," is published in Food Control, DOI: j.foodcont.2020.107307.
IMAGE: SCIENTISTS HAVE USED NASA'S ICESAT-2 TO MEASURE THE THICKNESS OF ARCTIC SEA ICE, AS WELL AS THE DEPTH OF SNOW ON THE ICE. HERE, RIDGES AND CRACKS HAVE FORMED IN...
CREDIT: CREDITS: NASA / JEREMY HARBECK
Arctic sea ice helps keep Earth cool, as its bright surface reflects the Sun's energy back into space. Each year scientists use multiple satellites and data sets to track how much of the Arctic Ocean is covered in sea ice, but its thickness is harder to gauge. Initial results from NASA's new Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) suggest that the sea ice has thinned by as much as 20% since the end of the first ICESat mission (2003-2009), contrary to existing studies that find sea ice thickness has remained relatively constant in the last decade.
Arctic sea ice thickness dropped drastically in the first decade of the 21st Century, as measured by the first ICESat mission from 2003 to 2009 and other methods. The European Space Agency's CryoSat-2, launched in 2010, has measured a relatively consistent thickness in Arctic sea ice since then. With the launch of ICESat-2 in 2018, researchers looked to this new way of measuring sea ice thickness to advance the study of this data record.
"We can't get thickness just from ICESat-2 itself, but we can use other data to derive the measurement," said Petty. For example, the researchers subtract out the height of snow on top of the sea ice by using computer models that estimate snowfall. "The first results were very encouraging."
In their study, published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Petty and his colleagues generated maps of Arctic sea ice thickness from October 2018 to April 2019 and saw the ice thickening through the winter as expected.
Overall, however, calculations using ICESat-2 found that the ice was thinner during that time period than what researchers have found using CryoSat-2 data. Petty's group also found that small but significant 20% decline in sea ice thickness by comparing February/March 2019 ICESat-2 measurements with those calculated using ICESat in February/March 2008 - a decline that the CryoSat-2 researchers don't see in their data.
These are two very different approaches to measuring sea ice, Petty said, each with its own limitations and benefits. CryoSat-2 carries a radar to measure height, as opposed to ICESat-2's lidar, and radar mostly passes through snow to measure the top of the ice. Radar measurements like the ones from CryoSat-2 could be thrown off by seawater flooding the ice, he noted. In addition, ICESat-2 is still a young mission and the computer algorithms are still being refined, he said, which could ultimately change the thickness findings.
"I think we're going to learn a lot from having these two approaches to measuring ice thickness. They might be giving us an upper and lower bound on the sea ice thickness, and the right answer is probably somewhere in between," Petty said. "There are reasons why ICESat-2 estimates could be low, and reasons why CryoSat-2 could be high, and we need to do more work to understand and bring these measurements in line with each other."
ICESat-2 has a laser altimeter, which uses pulses of light to precisely measure height down to about an inch. Each second, the instrument sends out 10,000 pulses of light that bounce off the surface of Earth and return to the satellite and records the length of time it takes to make that round trip. The light reflects off the first substance it hits, whether that's open water, bare sea ice or snow that has accumulated on top of the ice, so scientists use a combination of ICESat-2 measurements and other data to calculate sea ice thickness.
By comparing ICESat-2 data with measurements from another satellite, researchers have also created the first satellite-based maps of the amount of snow that has accumulated on top of Arctic sea ice, tracking this insulating material.
"The Arctic sea ice pack has changed dramatically since monitoring from satellites began more than four decades ago," said Nathan Kurtz, ICESat-2 deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The extraordinary accuracy and year-round measurement capability of ICESat-2 provides an exciting new tool to allow us to better understand the mechanisms leading to these changes, and what this means for the future."
With ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2 using two different methods to measure ice thickness - one measuring the top of the snow, the other the boundary between the bottom of the snow layer and the top of the ice layer - but researchers realized they could combine the two to calculate the snow depth.
"This is the first time ever that we can get snow depth across the entire Arctic Ocean's sea ice cover," said Ron Kwok, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and author of another study in JGR Oceans. "The Arctic region is a desert - but what snow we do get is very important in terms of the climate and insulating sea ice."
The study found that snow starts building up slowly in October, when newly formed ice has an average of about 2 inches (5 centimeters) of snow on it and multiyear ice has an average of 5.5 inches (14 cm) of snow. Snowfall picks up later in the winter in December and January and reaches its maximum depth in April, when the relatively new ice has an average of 6.7 inches (17 cm) and the older ice has an average of 10.6 inches (27 cm) of snow.
When the snow melts in the spring, it can pool up on the sea ice - those melt ponds absorb heat from the Sun and can warm up the ice faster, just one of the impacts of snow on ice.
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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accu
Portland State researcher develops new model to accurately date historic earthquakes
PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Three earthquakes in the Monterey Bay Area, occurring in 1838, 1890 and 1906, happened without a doubt on the San Andreas Fault, according to a new paper by a Portland State University researcher.
The paper, "New Insights into Paleoseismic Age Models on the Northern San Andreas Fault: Charcoal In-built ages and Updated Earthquake Correlations," was recently published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Assistant Professor of Geology at PSU Ashley Streig said the new research confirms what her team first discovered in 2014: three earthquakes occurred within a 68-year period in the Bay Area on the San Andreas Fault.
"This is the first time there's been geologic evidence of a surface rupture from the historic 1838 and 1890 earthquakes that we knew about from newspapers and other historical documents," Streig said. "It basically meant that the 1800s were a century of doom."
Building on the 2014 study, Streig said they were able to excavate a redwood slab from a tree felled by early Europeans, from one meter below the surface in the Bay Area. The tree was toppled before the three earthquakes in question occurred. That slab was used to determine the precise date logging first occurred in the area, and pinpointed the historic dates of the earthquakes. Further, they were able use the slab to develop a new model for determining recurrence intervals and more exact dating.
Streig used the dating technique wiggle matching for several measured carbon 14 samples from the tree slab and compared them with fluctuations in atmospheric carbon 14 concentrations over time to fingerprint the exact death of the tree and confirm the timing of the earthquakes. Because the researchers had an exact age from the slab, they were able to test how well the most commonly used material, charcoal, works in earthquake age models.
Charcoal is commonly used for dating and to constrain the ages of prehistoric earthquakes and develop an earthquake recurrence interval, but Streig said the charcoal can be hundreds of years older than the stratigraphic layer containing it, yielding an offset between what has been dated and the actual age of the earthquake. The new technique accounts for inbuilt charcoal ages -- which account for the difference in time between the wood's formation and the fire that generated said charcoal -- and can better estimate the age of the event being studied.
"We were able to evaluate the inbuilt age of the charcoal incorporated in the deposits and find that charcoal ages are approximately 322 years older than the actual age of the deposit -- so previous earthquake age models in this area using detrital charcoal would be offset roughly by this amount," she said.
New earthquake age modeling using a method to correct for this charcoal inbuilt age, and age results from the tree stump are what give Streig absolute certainly that the 1838 and 1890 earthquakes in question occurred on the San Andreas Fault and during those years.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU
IMAGE: RESEARCHERS BIN PENG, LEFT, AND KAIYU GUAN LED A LARGE, MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL STUDY THAT CALLS FOR A BETTER REPRESENTATION OF PLANT GENETICS DATA IN THE MODELS USED TO UNDERSTAND CROP ADAPTATION... view more
CREDIT: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY FRED ZWICKY
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Crop modeling is essential for understanding how to secure the food supply as the planet adapts to climate change. Many current crop models focus on simulating crop growth and yield at the field scale, but lack genetic and physiological data, which may hamper accurate production and environmental impact assessment at larger scales.
In a new paper published in the journal Nature Plants, researchers identify a series of multiscale and multidisciplinary components - from crop genetics up to global factors - that are critical for finding environmentally sustainable solutions to food security.
Many crop models focus on understanding how plant characteristics such as leaf size play into the crop yield at the field scale, the researchers said. "Modeling at this scale is critical, but we would like to incorporate information from gene-to-cell and regional-to-global scale data into our modeling framework," said Bin Peng, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign postdoctoral researcher and co-lead author.
The study identifies components that could help generate a more informative modeling framework. "Multiscale modeling is the key to linking the design of climate change adaptation strategies for crop and field management with a large-scale assessment of adaptation impact on crop production, environment, climate and economy," Peng said.
The study calls for a better representation of the physiological responses of crops to climate and environmental stressors - like drought, extreme rainfall and ozone damage. "Many physiological processes would be important to simulate the crop growth under stressed conditions accurately," Peng said. Examples include water moving from soil to plant to atmosphere driven by canopy energy balance, he said.
"We should also include a better representation of crop management," Peng said. "That would be extremely important for assessing both crop production and environmental sustainability, as well as their tradeoffs."
The researchers said there are opportunities to close a variety of data gaps, as well. "Integration of remote-sensing data, such as the work performed in our lab, will be extremely valuable for reducing data gaps and uncertainties," said natural resources and environmental sciences professor and project investigator Kaiyu Guan. "One of the advantages of remote sensing is its vast spatial coverage - we can use remote sensing to constrain crop models over every field on the planet."
The authors also propose a model-data integration pathway forward. "Doing the right simulation of crop responses to climate change factors is critically important," Guan said. "The most challenging part is whether crop models can capture those emergent relationships, which can be derived from empirical observations."
"No single scientist or research lab can produce these models on their own," said study co-author and plant biology professor Amy Marshall-Colón. "This type of effort will require patience and collaboration across many disciplines."
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Peng, Guan and Marshall-Colón also are affiliated with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the U. of I. Marshall-Colón also is affiliated with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
The National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the National Center for Atmospheric Research supported this study.
Also contributing to this study were researchers from the U. of I.; the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the University of Florida; the University of Queensland; the University of Chicago; the University of Bonn; the Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research; the University of Alberta; the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; the Center for Atmospheric Research; Beijing Normal University; Corteva AgriScience; the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; and Wageningen University and Research.
The paper "Towards a multiscale crop modelling framework for climate change adaptation assessment" is available online and from the U. of I. News Bureau. DOI: 10.1038/s41477-020-0625-3
Bike commuting accelerated when bike-share systems rolled into town
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
IMAGE: LIMEBIKE, SHOWN HERE, IS A BIKE-SHARE SYSTEM SERVING CYCLISTS IN SEATTLE. view more
CREDIT: JACKSON HOLTZ/U. OF WASHINGTON
In the past couple of years, if you lived in a major, or even mid-sized city, you were likely familiar with bike-share bikes.
Whether propped against a tree, strewn along the sidewalk or standing "docked" at a station, the often brightly colored bikes with whimsical company names promised a ready means to get from Point A to Point B.
But one person's spontaneous ride is another person's commute to work. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in cities where bike-share systems have been introduced, bike commuting increased by 20%, said Dafeng Xu, an assistant professor in the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Xu studied U.S. cities with and without bike-share systems, using Census and company data to analyze how commuting patterns change when bike shares become available.
"This study shows that bike-share systems can drive a population to commute by bike," said Xu, whose study was published May 11 in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Bike-share systems, common in cities in Europe and Asia, were launched in four U.S. cities in 2010 and as of 2016 had grown to more than 50. Not all systems have been successful: Convenience - how easy it is to find and rent a bike - is the key. In Seattle, for example, a city-owned bike-share program failed in 2017 due largely to a limited number of bikes and a lack of infrastructure, but private companies in the same market thrived prior to the pandemic.
Among other interests in transportation and immigration policy, Xu researches the effects of bicycling on the environment and human health, and on the ways bike-share systems can play a role by expanding access to cycling.
"In general, biking is good and healthy, and it means less pollution and traffic, but it can be expensive, and people worry about their bikes being stolen, things like that," Xu said. "Bike share solves some of these problems, because people don't need to worry about the cost and theft."
For this study, Xu sorted through nine years of demographic and commute statistics from the American Community Survey, a detailed, annual report by the Census Bureau. He then examined bike-share company data (through the National Association of City Transportation Officials) from 38 cities with systems, focusing on trips logged during morning and afternoon rush hours. By comparing the number, location and time of work-related bike commutes from Census data against bike-share company records of trips logged, both before and after the launch of bike shares, Xu was able to estimate the use of bike shares for commute trips.
Xu found that in both bike-share and non-bike-share cities, the rate of bike commuting increased, while car commuting decreased, from 2008-2016. However, the rate of bike commuting - and the use of public transportation - was significantly greater in bike-share cities.
For example, in bike-share cities in 2008, roughly 66% of commuters drove to work, about 1% biked, and 22% took transit. That compared to non-bike-share cities, where about 88% of commuters drove, fewer than 1% biked, and 4% took transit.
By 2016 - after many bike-share systems had launched — car commuting had fallen to 59% in bike-share cities, while bike commuting had climbed to 1.7% and transit to 26%. Commuting by car in non-bike-share cities had slipped to 83% in 2016, while bike commuting had grown to 1%, and transit to 6%.
In general, cities with larger bike-share systems also experienced sharper increases in bicycle commuting, Xu said.
"This is not surprising: A large bike-share system means a higher density of public bicycles and is thus more accessible by commuters," he said. "In contrast, sadly, Seattle’s Pronto struggled to attract commuters and was finally doomed only after three years of operation partially due to its relatively small size."
In his paper, Xu points to Chicago, which operates a municipally owned bike-share system called Divvy. Prior to Divvy's launch in 2013, 1.5% of commuters biked to work, Xu said, but afterward, that rate grew to 2%.
The trends held, he said, even when controlling for a city's expansion of protected bike lanes - another significant factor in whether people choose to bike to work, according to other research.
Overall, the numbers before COVID-19 were promising, Xu said. The numbers could grow, he said, if communities and bike-share companies make changes that can boost the appeal of bike commuting: adding bike lanes to city streets, expanding programs to outlying communities, or increasing the allowable rental time. Many bike shares, for instance, last only up to a half-hour before a user has to pay for a new trip.
Xu is also the author of a previous paper analyzed the impact of bike-share systems on obesity rates.
For more information, contact Xu at dafengxu@uw.edu.
Pollinator-friendly flowers planted along with crops aid bumblebees
UMass Amherst, NC State biologists study risks and benefits associated with floral strips
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
IMAGE: A NEW STUDY FROM UMASS AMHERST AND NC STATE SHOWS THAT SUNFLOWERS ARE ONE OF THE PLANTS THAT CAN BE PLANTED AMONG ROWS OF AGRICULTURAL CROPS IN FLOWER STRIPS --... view more
CREDIT: BEN BARNHART
AMHERST, Mass. - A new study reported this week by evolutionary ecologist Lynn Adler at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Rebecca Irwin of North Carolina State University, with others, suggests that flower strips - rows of pollinator-friendly flowers planted with crops - offer benefits for common Eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) colony reproduction, but some plants do increase pathogen infection risk.
As Adler and colleagues point out, pollinator declines affect food security, and pollinators are threatened by such stressors as pathogens and inadequate food. Bumblebees feed on pollen and nectar they gather from such plants as sunflower and milkweed. But bumblebees are also likely to acquire a gut disease pathogen, Crithia bombi, from some of these plant species more than others, the authors note.
Until now, the effect of plant species composition on bee disease was unknown, they add. Study details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In earlier work on flowers and bee infection, Adler explains, "We evaluated 15 plant species by putting the same amount of C. bombi on each, letting a bee forage, and then seeing whether and how bad an infection it developed. We used that to designate plant species as 'high- or low-infection' for this study." Low-infection plants include sunflower and thyme; high-infection plants include swamp milkweed and purple loosestrife.
For this study, the researchers placed bees in tents in three conditions - canola plants only and no flower strips (controls), canola and high-infection flower strips, or canola plus low-infection flower strips - to measure and compare effects on bee infection load and reproduction success. Though bees in the high-infection strips saw double the infection load compared to low-infection flower strips, bee reproduction was higher with any flower strips compared to canola only, no flower strips. "Thus, floral resources in flowering strips benefited bees," the authors state, despite the added disease risk.
Adler says, "The bees were all infected with the same amount of pathogen and then allowed to forage, so the plants could increase or decrease infection." The tradeoff - more bee reproduction but higher pathogen infection rates - may be acceptable, she adds. "It depends on how critical food versus the pathogen is for pollinators," she adds. Irwin, a professor of applied ecology, says, "Flowering strips are becoming more common as people look for ways to mitigate pollinator declines."
Further, Adler points out, "Crithidia is somewhat benign, but if these patterns hold for other pathogens like Nosema, a common honey bee disease, it may be more of a concern. Right now I would not recommend stopping our investment in flowering strips."
The researchers hope to continue investigating the flower strip effects on bee populations and health by including other bee species and pathogens. Adler says, "I think we need a much more comprehensive program to evaluate how pollinator habitat characteristics affect pathogen spread to make informed choices. In the meantime, providing flowering resources in pollinator habitat is still the best path forward."
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Other co-authors include Nicholas Barber at San Diego State University and Olivia Biller at Thomas Jefferson University. This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service.
