Care for cats? 

So did people along the Silk Road more than 1,000 years ago

Common domestic cats, as we know them today, might have accompanied Kazakh pastoralists as pets more than 1,000 years ago. This is indicated by new analyses done on an almost complete cat skeleton found during an excavation along the former Silk Road in southern Kazakhstan. An international research team has reconstructed the cat's life, revealing astonishing insights into the relationship between humans and pets at the time.

Date:July 9, 2020

Source:Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

FULL STORY

Person stroking kitten (stock image).
Credit: © kulkann / stock.adobe.com

Common domestic cats, as we know them today, might have accompanied Kazakh pastoralists as pets more than 1,000 years ago. This has been indicated by new analyses done on an almost complete cat skeleton found during an excavation along the former Silk Road in southern Kazakhstan. An international research team led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Korkyt-Ata Kyzylorda State University in Kazakhstan, the University of Tübingen and the Higher School of Economics in Russia has reconstructed the cat's life, revealing astonishing insights into the relationship between humans and pets at the time. The study will appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

The tomcat -- which was examined by a team led by Dr Ashleigh Haruda from the Central Natural Science Collections at MLU -- did not have an easy life. "The cat suffered several broken bones during its lifetime," says Haruda. And yet, based on a very conservative estimate, the animal had most likely made it past its first year of life. For Haruda and her colleagues, this is a clear indication that people had taken care of this cat.

During a research stay in Kazakhstan, the scientist examined the findings of an excavation in Dzhankent, an early medieval settlement in the south of the country which had been mainly populated by the Oghuz, a pastoralist Turkic tribe. There she discovered a very well-preserved skeleton of a cat. According to Haruda, this is quite rare because normally only individual bones of an animal are found during an excavation, which prevents any systematic conclusions from being drawn about the animal's life. The situation is different when it comes to humans since usually whole skeletons are found. "A human skeleton is like a biography of that person. The bones provide a great deal of information about how the person lived and what they experienced," says Haruda. In this case, however, the researchers got lucky: after its death, the tomcat was apparently buried and therefore the entire skull including its lower jaw, parts of its upper body, legs and four vertebrae had been preserved.

Haruda worked together with an international team of archaeologists and ancient DNA specialists. An examination of the tomcat's skeleton revealed astonishing details about its life. First, the team took 3D images and X-rays of its bones. "This cat suffered a number of fractures, but survived," says Haruda. Isotope analyses of bone samples also provided the team with information about the cat's diet. Compared to the dogs found during the excavation and to other cats from that time period, this tomcat's diet was very high in protein. "It must have been fed by humans since the animal had lost almost all its teeth towards the end of its life."

DNA analyses also proved that the animal was indeed likely to be a domestic cat of the Felis catus L. species and not a closely related wild steppe cat. According to Haruda, it is remarkable that cats were already being kept as pets in this region around the 8th century AD: "The Oghuz were people who only kept animals when they were essential to their lives. Dogs, for example, can watch over the herd. They had no obvious use for cats back then," explains the researcher. The fact that people at the time kept and cared for such "exotic" animals indicates a cultural change, which was thought to have occurred at a much later point in time in Central Asia. The region was thought to have been slow in making changes with respect to agriculture and animal husbandry.

The Dhzankent settlement, where the remains of the cat were found, was located along the Silk Road, an ancient network of important caravan routes that connected Central and East Asia with the Mediterranean region by land. According to Haruda, the find is also an indication of cultural exchange between the regions located along the Silk Road.

The study was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the University of Leicester and the Max Planck Society.

Journal Reference:
A. F. Haruda, A. R. Ventresca Miller, J. L. A. Paijmans, A. Barlow, A. Tazhekeyev, S. Bilalov, Y. Hesse, M. Preick, T. King, R. Thomas, H. Härke, I. Arzhantseva. The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road. Scientific Reports, 2020; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67798-6

Why children’s asthma and sleep apnoea has improved in lockdown

Since lockdown began, Jo-Anne Johnson has noticed a strange phenomenon – cases of childhood breathing problems seem to be improving. The clinician explains what might be causing this

SPOILER ALERT

DON'T RUSH INTO CHEMICALLY DISINFECTED SCHOOLS TOO SOON

BEFORE THEY ARE PROPERLY AIRED OUT

SCHOOLS BEFORE THE  PANDEMIC WERE THE WORST PLACE FOR INDOOR AIR QUALITY FOR CHILDREN WHO ARE THERE EIGHT HOURS A DAY 

MORE SO EVEN THAN THE DIESEL POLLUTION FROM THE IDLING SCHOOL BUS

#IEQ        #IAQ

For such a dramatic clinical effect to occur over such a short space of time for so many, there has to be an environmental reason to explain some of it ( AP )

It’s Monday morning and I’m running my regular children’s sleep clinic. Except it’s not a Monday morning like any other I have had in my 20 years of practice. I am running the clinic on my laptop, seeing patients and their families on a video screen rather than in person, in an eerily quiet children’s outpatient department.

After two months of Covid-19 lockdown and working “all hands on deck” to deal with the pandemic surge, I am allowed to resume my outpatient work. One thing that strikes me in this clinic is another new phenomenon. Parents are reporting that their child’s symptoms have dramatically improved over the last few weeks.

Most of the children I see in my clinic have obstructive sleep apnoea, a condition that leads to a disturbed night’s sleep due to the repeated blocking of the upper airways (apnoeas). This leads to daytime symptoms such as tiredness, behavioural issues and poor concentration. Left untreated, these children may not reach their full academic potential and may go on to develop heart failure in later life.

We often see symptoms improving gradually as children get older, but families were reporting a near-resolution of symptoms over just a few weeks. To my amazement, this trend has continued from lockdown into the period of social distancing we are currently facing.

This has led me to reflect on how unexpectedly quiet our paediatric wards have been since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The vast majority of children with Sars-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) have very mild symptoms and are not admitted to hospital. But what about all the other acute conditions that normally fill our wards at this time of year, such as asthma?

Read more

Lockdown prompts drop in children needing emergency asthma treatment
We usually see a surge in children with acute allergic asthma attacks during the period of May-June, which corresponds to the peak tree pollen counts. But we have barely seen any cases in this period.

I’m sure there is an element of increased home-management with parents understandably reluctant to bring their children anywhere near a hospital at this time. But we would still expect to see a significant number of children whose symptoms are severe enough to need specialised hospital treatments.

For such a dramatic clinical effect to occur over such a short space of time for so many children, there has to be an environmental reason to explain at least part of it. The biggest change for children during the Covid-19 pandemic has been the closure of schools and nurseries. Only children of key workers have been allowed to attend primary school and nurseries from late March until early June in the UK.

Whether these effects last remains to be seen. Up to now, our attention has focused on containment of the contagion, but it appears there are other lessons to be learnt

This measure, combined with social distancing policies outside school, is likely to have reduced the spread of not only Sars-CoV-2 among children but also reduced the spread of other viruses. And respiratory viruses are strongly associated with acute asthma and worsening obstructive sleep apnoea symptoms in children.

Another similarity between asthma and obstructive sleep apnoea is their association with allergens. During the period of lockdown, unless making essential journeys for work or school, or to get groceries, the public (including children) were allowed out of their homes only once a day for up to one hour to exercise. This would have reduced their exposure to common airborne allergens such as tree pollen, a potent trigger of allergic asthma and hay fever. Both are positively associated with obstructive sleep apnoea in children.


Nitrogen dioxide emissions in China before and after lockdown (Nasa)

There is also good evidence of a correlation between air pollution and asthma or obstructive sleep apnoea. Fine-particulate matter and gases, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2), are known to trigger airway inflammation. As travel has declined globally during the pandemic, there has already been a significant reduction in air pollution levels, particularly in industrial countries across the world. Data from Nasa suggests a 20 per cent to 30 per cent reduction in NO2 emissions in Europe between March 2019 and March 2020.

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The World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020. Since then, saturation news coverage has emphasised the dangers of the disease. As a clinician, I prepared for these dangers, but have been surprised by some of the unexpected consequences of the lockdown, which seem to be related to wide-scale behavioural change.

Whether these effects last remains to be seen. Up to now, our attention has focused on containment of the contagion, but it appears there are other lessons to be learnt.

Jo-Anne Johnson is a senior lecturer in child and family health at Anglia Ruskin University. This article first appeared on The Conversation

USA 
'Teachers’ union ‘double-dog dares’ 

Trump to sit in class during pandemic

'There’s no one that wants their kids back with us more than teachers... but we want to open it safely'

Louise Hall The Independent JULY 9, 2020

The president of the largest US teachers union has said they “double-dog dare” Donald Trump to sit in one of their classrooms during the pandemic when schools reopen.

Mr Trump has demanded that schools resume in-person classes in fall, and has also criticised the Centre for Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines for re-opening as “expensive” and “tough”.

“There’s no one that wants their kids back with us more than teachers... but we want to open it safely,” National Education Association (NEA) President Lily Eskelsen García told CNN on Wednesday.

“We see what happens when they let bars open prematurely,” she added, referencing a number of states that have seen a surge in cases after re-opening their economies early on.

“This isn’t a bar. We’re talking about second graders. I had 39 sixth graders one year in my class. I double-dog dare Donald Trump to sit in a class of 39 sixth graders and breathe that air without any preparation for how we’re going to bring our kids back safely,” she said.

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ROFLMAO ORWELLIAN LOGIC

AMERIKA THE THEOCRACY

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The NEA has insisted on a number of benchmarks before schools can re-open safely including personal protective equipment, deep-cleaning procedures that meet CDC standards, classroom layouts allowing six feet of distancing alongside hand-washing and sanitising stations.

On Wednesday, Mr Trump threatened to cut federal funding for districts ignoring his demand after suggesting that strict guidelines could lead some officials to decide to continue teaching an online-only curriculum by fall.

“In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS,” Mr Trump wrote on Twitter. “The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if US schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!”

The president has made it clear that he disapproves of the CDC’s new guidelines which aim to keep children safe through social distancing, cloth face coverings, the closing of communal areas like dining rooms and playgrounds, and possible implementation of hygienic barriers.

“I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” he tweeted on Wednesday morning.

Ms Garcia suggested that the “expensive” measures should be funded with the $3 trillion HEROES Act passed by house democrats in May that has not yet been considered by the Republican-controlled Senate.

The US has over three million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and has seen 132,723 deaths as of Thursday, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University.

UK 

The arts are an essential service – as vital as health, education, defence

CUT THE WAR BUDGET FUND THE ARTS

The Tories’ cash injection is not before time, says Mark Hudson, but it’s still a box of band-aids rather than a life-saving transfusion

The National Gallery allowed its first visitors on Saturday ( EPA )

The government’s announcement of a £1.57bn bailout for the culture sector is an acknowledgement – if somewhat belated – of the vital importance of the arts in our national life. “The beating heart of the nation,” boomed the prime minister. And if that’s hardly the subtlest of metaphors, for once Johnson got it essentially right.

There’s a tendency to think of theatres, art galleries and concert halls as optional luxuries in the wider struggle of life: frivolous add-ons that societies can afford to enjoy once they’ve paid for the really important things: health, education, infrastructure, defence. In fact, the arts, culture – whatever you want to call it – performs a vital function in our society, just as essential, in my opinion, as any of the so-called essential services we’ve been hearing so much about.

Indeed, while the past four months have left us feeling profoundly, and entire rightly, grateful to the NHS and the dedicated professionals who have risked – and in some cases given – their lives to keep the system going, this period has equally demonstrated the absolute centrality of the arts to the mental and physical health of the nation.

While we’ve been cooped up in our domiciles, deprived of life-giving social contact, put on furlough, losing our jobs and our loved ones, what have we actually been doing? While some have been driven frantic trying to homeschool children, while maintaining demanding jobs from the kitchen table, many more have been thrown back entirely on their own emotional resources. When final assessments are made, the Covid-19 pandemic and its lockdown will be found to have been as much a crisis in mental as physical health. And the things we’ve found to fill that terrifying spiritual and emotional gap – that sense of the abyss yawning beneath us – have been to a very large extent, and in the broadest sense, cultural.


Watching telly and posting years-old holiday snaps or listening to your favourite albums on Facebook may not be the most elevated of cultural pursuits, but they cater in varying ways to the imaginative and expressive impulse that is at the root of all art forms, and which can manifest itself in extremely destructive – as well as very positive – ways if not properly nurtured: from insanity, murder and suicide, to sexual abuse, drugs and alcohol addiction.
Read more

Covid-19 was a chance for the BBC to strip the Proms of its jingoism

The public has, in addition, been giving concerts via Zoom, often at an exemplary level, writing poetry (very much less exemplary, if my efforts were anything to go by), gardening, reorganising their photo archives, finishing novels, doing table-top art exercises set by famous artists. Many of the latter were piffling – I, for one, can’t wait to be rescued from Grayson Perry’s Art Club – but they show we just need to do this stuff. We’ve been on virtual gallery tours, seen great masterpieces locked away from the public gaze, with the feeling, certainly at the height of the lockdown when we were endlessly hearing that “things will never go back to the way they were”, that this was as close to a gallery visit as we would ever get again.


Now, with lockdown slowly lifting, the museums and galleries are among the first cultural institutions to open their doors – with the National Gallery allowing its first visitors last Saturday – and they’re opening onto a very different world to the one they closed them on in March. Blockbuster exhibitions, those resource-heavy mainstays of the big galleries will be in short supply in the stark and straitened post-Covid landscape, while more than 50 per cent of museum and gallery directors surveyed by the museum charity the Art Fund doubt the future viability of their institutions: from attracting visitors back to maintaining valuable collections.

Read more

Does new Barbican exhibition have important things to say about men?

These are grave questions. We’ve grown used to having culture on tap, as freely available as water or gas, and actually much cheaper to the consumer. The Victorians gave us our big national and municipal galleries, which are still free to enter. The post-war period gave us the Arts Council and all its works, while the late Nineties and early Noughties gave us a whole raft of spanking new, architecturally remarkable provincial galleries – Tate St Ives, Hepworth Wakefield, Margate’s Turner Contemporary – that have added immeasurably not only to the appeal of our towns and cities, but to the creative, cultural, social and, yes, economic vitality of the country.


The future of this great national resource is by no means guaranteed. The idea of museums and galleries going the way of pubs, banks and petrol stations as redundant chunks of real estate is horrible to contemplate.

Last autumn saw a £100m injection of government cash into the crumbling fabric of our national museums and galleries, a gesture that while very much welcomed was seen as more of a sticking plaster than a permanent remedy. In that context, the current £1.57m bailout, across the entire cultural sector – the breakdown of how it will be used has yet to be announced – feels more like a box of band-aids than a life-saving transfusion.

There are desperate times ahead for the cultural sector. Yet, on the question of attracting audiences back, I’m personally optimistic. After four months of online culture under effective house arrest, which has felt like a lifetime, people will be screaming to get back into real-life cultural spaces, with actual, physical works of art, where the injunction “please don’t touch the exhibits” will feel like a wonderful luxury. We need to support our museums and galleries, not just by giving donations and spending money in the cafe and shop, but by using them, making them ours, as their founders intended. It’s only when you’ve been deprived of the experience of being in a gallery or museum with other people, even if you don’t know them, speak to them or even look at them, that you realise what a precious, life-enhancing and essentially social experience that is.

Fast fashion books: Learn the truth behind brands like Boohoo


Garment workers in Leicester's factories have been found to be paid as little as £3.50 per hour and forced to work, even when they've shown signs of coronavirus, while conditions in other countries are terrifying. As consumers, it’s time to rethink and help bring about change
Eva Waite-Taylor THE INDEPENDENT JULY 8,2020

Globally, people consume in excess of 100 billion pieces of clothing a year. ( iStock/The Independent )

The affordability of clothing coupled with #ootd culture leads many of us to think we need a new outfit whenever we leave our homes. And when it comes to fast fashion, we all plead guilty to it one way or another – either by buying Zara’s polka dot dress last summer or copping Mango's Bottega Veneta inspired clutch bag.

The thrill we get after finding a cheap dress or dupe of a designer piece is undeniably problematic. And we needn’t look far to know that the price tag of many of our fashion buys frequently does not reflect the item's true cost.

The ethical and environmental issues surrounding the fashion industry are no secret and have been brought to light in the past few years, namely after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013. Around a third of the 3,122 workers died and the devastation also revealed the horrendous conditions many garment workers are forced to work in.

According to a recent McKinsey report, globally, people consume in excess of 100 billion pieces of clothing a year. And the textile industry is said to be the second biggest polluters, and responsible for 92 million tonnes of waste annually. Fast fashion is causing indisputable environmental implications, but the problems don’t stop there.

On a social level, garment workers remain mired in poverty because of the fast fashion business model to churn out fresh cheap lines of clothing at a frightening rate.

Take for example online retailer Boohoo. At the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, many brands grappled to make sense of how they would survive, Boohoo however seemed to have it nailed. Producing new lockdown inspired lines at lightning speed.

But a recent investigation has revealed the poor working condition in its Leicester based factories, with workers expected to be paid as little as £3.50 an hour, despite Britain’s minimum wage being £8.72 for those aged over 25.

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Labour Behind the Label, garment workers’ rights group, made separate claims in its latest report – stating that those working in the Leicester-based factories that supply to the fast fashion giant were “forced to come into work while sick with Covid-19”.

This news comes after the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) put forward several recommendations in its Fixing Fashion: Clothing consumption and sustainability report, which the government rejected. Points of note include the concerns of child labour, prison labour, and force labour.

Further afield, in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia, it is no secret that garment workers face unsafe conditions, with many brands turning a blind eye to the illegal subcontracting and allowing forced and unpaid overtime. And for there to be any meaningful change, the solution is rather simple, brands must pay garment workers a living wage – yet seem to continually ignore the calls for action.

What’s worse, when the pandemic hit, and spending nosedived, many brands faced changes in levels of demand, causing retailers – including Arcadia and New Look – to cancel orders to the tune of £2.5bn.

Bangladesh was hit hard by this. With garment manufacturing accounting for 84 per cent of the country’s overall exports, it left workers without an income and in destitution. In response, Lock Stock launched – a scheme bridging the gap between garment workers and wasted clothes. Delivering mystery boxes of clothes (costing £35) from a range of high-street brands for half the cost of the normal retail price.

While this was a positive move at a time when workers were under sheer desperation, this simply is not enough, and the fast fashion industry must wake up to its inequalities. This is not to say brands should relocate garment work, since countries rely heavily on it as a source of income. Instead, the big companies need to take more responsibility for change to happen.

As consumers, it’s time to rethink and help bring about change. Ways to do this include joining the #PayUp movement – a campaign demanding that brands pay for completed and in-progress orders, and support Fashion Revolution, Labour Behind The Label, and Fair Wear.

To help you further, we've compiled a round-up of the books that will help you learn the truth behind the fast fashion industry. After all, knowledge is power.

You can trust our independent round-ups. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.

'How to Break Up with Fast Fashion' by Lauren Bravo, published by Headline Publishing Group: £10.65, WHSmith

This book does exactly what it says on the tin: help you be rid of fast fashion once and for all. A guilt-free guide that will change the way you think about clothing for the better. It will inspire you to repair, recycle, and spruce up old items, as well as embrace more sustainable habits when it comes to shopping.


'Slave to Fashion' by Safia Minney, published by New Internationalist Ltd: £13.99, Waterstones

Made up of interviews and micro-documentaries with men, women, and children caught in slavery making clothes for high street brands, this book offers sobering truths and stark realities of the textile industry. While Slave to Fashion does a brilliant job of highlighting the terrible reality of millions of garment workers, it also offers hope of a fairer, more ethical world. lt provides helpful tools on how we should navigate the challenging and difficult fashion world, while also highlighting what governments and businesses should do to call time on this unnecessary suffering.

'Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes' by Dana Thomas, published by Apollo: £7.99, Amazon


Author and journalist Dana Thomas travelled the globe to seek the answers to what we must do about the social and environmental impacts of the fashion industry. As such, the book offers a blueprint for how we must proceed if we are to have a more sustainable future. Filled with eye-opening facts, Fashionopolis exposes the fashion world's toxicity one page at a time.

'To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?' by Lucy Siegle, published by Fourth Estate: £10.65, Amazon

Revealing the inhumane and environmental stories behind the clothes we buy and wear, To Die For is a chilling exposé into the industry. Included within the book are Siegel's conversations with Cambodian garment workers, visits to Bangladesh factories, and the forced teen labour in Uzbekistan. This is a must-read for all.

'The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good' by Elizabeth L. Cline, published by Plume: £10.59, Blackwell's

Journalist and clothing resale expert, Elizabeth L. Cline brings you your definitive guide to building a more ethical and sustainable wardrobe you will love. It begins with guiding you through a sustainable wardrobe clear out, all the way through to how you can mend your clothes. Not just a style guide, The Conscious Closet is also a call to action to transform how we think about clothes.

UK

Coronavirus: Teachers need ‘urgent clarification’ before schools fully reopen, union says

NASUWT calls for ‘coordinated national plan’
Zoe Tidman THE INDEPENDENT JULY 7,2020

School attendance mandatory from September, Gavin Williamson says ( Clive Brunskill/Getty Images )

Teachers need “urgent clarification” over a range of issues for schools to safely reopen in September, a leading union has said.

The NASUWT teachers' union has asked the government for more information, including over how classroom teaching will carry on in the event of staff absences and what extra support will be available to help schools establish a safe return.

Their general secretary said “a significant number of measures” laid out in the guidance for a full reopening in September “require additional resources” in a letter to the education secretary, which urged the government to address the concerns of teachers and school leaders before all students are welcomed back in two months’ time.

“How schools will be able to fund these additional expectations is a key question we are being asked,” Dr Patrick Roach said in the letter to Gavin Williamson.

As well as mentioning extra funding, NASUWT said teachers and headteachers have also raised questions around protections for clinically vulnerable staff and extra cleaning provisions.

Dr Roach also urged Mr Williamson to address concerns over “the logistical challenge” of getting enough school transport so children from different year groups and schools would not have to mix.

He asked the education secretary to design a ”coordinated national plan” for the safe and full reopening of schools in September that addresses the ”many practical and logistical issues” teachers and headteachers have raised.

The Department for Education (DfE) said last week “detailed plans” have been released for schools and colleges in England to welcome back all students from September following disruption due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Certain year groups, including Year 1 and Year 6, were allowed back from the start of June.

Mr Williamson has said it will be “compulsory” for all pupils to go back to school in September.

Read more

Why Gavin Williamson can’t afford to mess up the reopening of schools

“The NASUWT recognises the importance of schools reopening to all children as soon as it is safe to do so,” Dr Roach, the general secretary, said.

“Schools have only a few weeks before they close for the summer break,” he added. “Teachers and headteachers need urgent clarification from the DfE if they are to be able to meet the guidance on September reopening consistently and safely.”
Dr Roach’s letter to the education secretary also called for clarity in the event of a confirmed case of Covid-19 in a school and to ensure the priority for coronavirus testing includes teachers.

DfE said last week guidance published ”provides schools, colleges and nurseries with the details needed to plan for a full return, as well as reassuring parents about what to expect for their children”.

The education secretary said: “The very best place for children to be is in the classroom, which is why we have set out our plans for all young people to return to education full-time from September.”

Mr Williamson added: “I want to reassure parents and families that we are doing everything we can to make sure schools are as safe as possible for children and staff, and will continue to work closely with the country’s best scientific and medical experts to ensure that is the case.”

UK
Climate crisis: ‘Rising chance’ of temperatures exceeding 1.5C global target in near future

Met Office assessment for WMO reveals risk of breaching 1.5C mark has doubled since last major study

A boy cools off at a punctured water supply line on a road as a heatwave continues in Karachi, Pakistan ( EPA )
\

The planet is on course to break the 1.5C warming barrier in the next few years, according to the World Meteorological Organisation, only five years after the limit was agreed at the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The deal, to which almost every country in the world signed up, was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to keep global temperatures this century “well below” 2C of warming and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5C.

“In each of the coming five years (2020-2024) and there is a 20 per cent chance that it will exceed 1.5C in at least one year, according to new climate predictions,” the WMO has now said, adding that the 1.5C mark stood a 70 per cent chance of being exceeded during one or more months during the same time frame.

The last five-year period has been the warmest five years on record, and the global average temperature first surpassed 1C above what it was during the pre-industrial period in just 2015.

Temperatures around the world had been slowly falling for around 6,000 years before the impact of the industrial revolution reversed the trend in less than 150 years.
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   THE THING 1951

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_from_Another_World

UK won't meet climate targets and the risks are ‘bigger than covid’

The new climate assessment, carried out by the UK’s Met Office on behalf of the WMO, is based on the expertise of internationally acclaimed climate scientists as well as the world’s best computer models, and provides a climate outlook for the next five years, updated annually.

The last such assessment suggested the short-term chance of hitting 1.5C of warming stood at 10 per cent. The new study doubles the risk.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said: “This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – the enormous challenge ahead in meeting the Paris Agreement on Climate Change target of keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

The predictions take into account natural variations in weather and climate as well as human influences on the planet and other variables for the coming five years.

But the forecast models do not take into consideration the reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases due to the coronavirus lockdown.

“[The] WMO has repeatedly stressed that the industrial and economic slowdown from Covid-19 is not a substitute for sustained and coordinated climate action. Due to the very long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the impact of the drop in emissions this year is not expected to lead to a reduction of CO2 atmospheric concentrations which are driving global temperature increases,” said Professor Taalas.

“Whilst Covid-19 has caused a severe international health and economic crisis, failure to tackle climate change may threaten human well-being, ecosystems and economies for centuries.

“Governments should use the opportunity to embrace climate action as part of recovery programmes and ensure that we grow back better,” he said.

Professor Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at the Met Office Hadley Centre said: “This is an exciting new scientific capability. As human-induced climate change grows, it is becoming even more important for governments and decision makers to understand the current climate risks on an annually-updated basis.”

Melania Trump statue set on fire in Slovenia

Comes after artwork of US president was destroyed in city east of Ljubljana earlier this year
Rory Sullivan

A life-size wooden sculpture of the US first lady was unveiled in July 2019 ( Reuters )

IT IS SO UGLY I SUSPECT IT WAS BURNT DOWN BY MELANIA'S FAMILY MEMBERS WHO ARE STILL IN SLOVENIA
The Independent employs reporters around the world to bring you truly independent journalism. To support us, please consider a contribution.

A life-size wooden sculpture of Melania Trump has been damaged after being set on fire near her hometown in Slovenia on US Independence Day, the artist who commissioned the work has said.

Brad Downey, an American artist based in Berlin, had the charred sculpture of the US first lady removed on 5 July, a year after it was unveiled.

A police spokesperson told Reuters that the incident, which took place near the town of Sevnica, was being investigated.

The office of Ms Trump in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr Downey, 39, said he had wanted the artwork to encourage a conversation about politics in the US, especially around Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies and his wife’s status as an immigrant.
Speaking of those responsible for the fire, he said: “I want to know why they did it.”

The sculpture, which was carved from the trunk of a linden tree by a local folk artist before being erected in July 2019, does not bear a close resemblance to Ms Trump.

The unconventional work depicts her in a blue dress, similar to the one she wore to her husband’s inauguration in 2017.


Since Ms Trump became the US first lady, her home town has brought out a range of products, including wine and chocolate, named in her honour.
The charred remains of the tree trunk that served as a plinth for the statue (AFP/Getty)

The destruction of the sculpture came as her husband pledged in recent weeks to take firm action against those who damage historical monuments in the US, following the toppling of statues at global anti-racism protests sparked by the death of George Floyd.

Earlier this year, a large wooden statue depicting the US president was burnt in Moravce, a city east of Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana.

Additional reporting by Reuters

A new look at deep-sea microbes

UD study looks at life inside and outside of seafloor hydrocarbon seeps

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE


IMAGE: MICROBES FOUND DEEPER IN THE OCEAN ARE BELIEVED TO HAVE SLOW POPULATION TURNOVER RATES AND LOW AMOUNTS OF AVAILABLE ENERGY. HOWEVER, MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES FOUND DEEPER IN SEAFLOOR SEDIMENTS IN AND... view more

CREDIT: GRAPHIC BY JEFFREY C. CHASE

Microbial cells are found in abundance in marine sediments beneath the ocean and make up a significant amount of the total microbial biomass on the planet. Microbes found deeper in the ocean, such as in hydrocarbon seeps, are usually believed to have slow population turnover rates and low amounts of available energy, where the further down a microbe is found, the less energy it has available.

A new study published out of a collaboration with the University of Delaware and ExxonMobil Research and Engineering shows that perhaps the microbial communities found deeper in the seafloor sediments in and around hydrocarbon seepage sites have more energy available and higher population turnover rates than previously thought.

Using sediment samples collected by ExxonMobil researchers, UD professor Jennifer Biddle and her lab group -- including Rui Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher who is the first author on the paper; Kristin Yoshimura, who received her doctorate from UD; and Glenn Christman, a bioinformatician -- worked on a study in collaboration with Zara Summers, an ExxonMobil microbiologist. The study, recently published in Scientific Reports, looks at how microbial dynamics are influenced by hydrocarbon seepage sites in the Gulf of Mexico.

Biddle and her lab members received the frozen sediments, collected during a research cruise, from ExxonMobil and then extracted the DNA and sequenced it at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute (DBI).

The samples Biddle's lab group studied were ones collected from deeper in hydrocarbon seeps that usually get ignored.

"Most people only look at the top couple of centimeters of sediment at a seep, but this was actually looking 10-15 centimeters down," said Biddle associate professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy in UD's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. "We then compared seepage areas to non-seepage areas, and the environment looked really different."

Inside the seep, the microbes potentially lead a fast, less efficient life while outside the seep, the microbes lead a slower but more efficient life. This could be attributed to what energy sources are available to them in their environment.

"Understanding deep water seep microbial ecology is an important part of understanding hydrocarbon-centric communities," said Summers.

Biddle said that microbes are always limited by something in the environment, such as how right now during the quarantine, we are limited by the amount of available toilet paper. "Outside of the seep, microbes are likely limited by carbon, whereas inside the seep, microbes are limited by nitrogen," said Biddle.

While the microbes found inside the seep seem to be racing to make more nitrogen to keep up and grow with their fellow microbes, outside of the seep, the researchers found a balance of carbon and nitrogen, with nitrogen actually being used by the microbes as an energy source.

"Usually, we don't think of nitrogen as being used for energy. It's used to make molecules, but something that was striking for me was thinking about nitrogen as a significant energy source," said Biddle.
This difference between the microbes found inside the seeps and those found outside the seeps could potentially mirror how microbes behave higher in the water column.

Previous research of water column microbes shows that there are different types of microbes: those that are less efficient and lead a more competition-based lifestyle where they don't use every single molecule as well as they could and those that are really streamlined, don't waste anything and are super-efficient.

"It makes me wonder if the microbes that are living at these seeps are potentially wasteful and they're fast growing but they're less efficient and the organisms outside of the seeps are a very different organism where they're way more efficient and way more streamlined," said Biddle, whose team has put in a proposal to go back out to sea to investigate further. "We want to look at these dynamics to determine if it still holds true that there is fast, less efficient life inside the seep and then slower, way more efficient life outside of the seep."

In addition, Biddle said this research showed that the deeper sediments in the seepages are most likely heavily impacted by the material coming up from the bottom, which means that the seep could be supporting a larger amount of biomass than previously thought."We often think about a seep supporting life like tube worms and the things that are at the expression of the sediment, but the fact that this could go for meters below them really changes the total biomass that the seep is supporting," said Biddle. "One of the big implications for the seepage sites with regards to the influence of these fluids coming up is that we don't know how deep it goes in terms of how much it changes the impact of subsurface life."Summers added that these are interesting insights "when considering oil reservoir connectivity to, and influence on, hydrocarbon seeps."

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http://www.udel.edu
More on this News Release
A new look at deep-sea microbes

 #ABIOGENIC #ABIOTIC #ABIOGENICHYDROCARBONS

The abiotic hypothesis is that the full suite of hydrocarbons found in petroleum can either be generated in the mantle by abiogenic processes, or by biological processing of those abiogenic hydrocarbons, and that the source-hydrocarbons of abiogenic origin can migrate out of the mantle into the crust until they escape ...
Abiogenic petroleum origin - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

Abiogenic Deep Origin of Hydrocarbons and Oil and Gas ...
https://www.intechopen.com › books › hydrocarbon › abiogenic-deep-ori...

by VG Kutcherov - ‎2013 - ‎Presence of abiotic hydrocarbon fluids in the Mantle of the Earth is scientifically proved evidence. 7. Petroleum in meteor impact craters. Petroleum reserves in ...

Abiogenic Origin of Hydrocarbons - AGU Publications
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com › pdf › j.1751-3928.2006.tb00271.x
On this basis, the Soviet theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins was never the driving force in the discovery of the major oil fields in the Soviet Union as its ...
[PDF]  

n the Origins of Deep Hydrocarbons - Mineralogical Society ...
www.minsocam.org › msa › rim › RiMG075 › RiMG075_Ch14
by MA Sephton - ‎2013 - ‎

ABIOTIC ORIGINS OF DEEP HYDROCARBONS. Deep gas theories. The hypothesis that at least some components of petroleum have a deep abiotic origin.

Abiogenic origin of petroleum hydrocarbons: Need to ... - jstor
https://www.jstor.org › stable
by AL Paropkari - ‎2008 - ‎the origin of petroleum is not 'biogenic', but 'abiogenic'2. The Russian geologist. Nikolai Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev was the first to propose2 the modern abiotic.

Special Edition on The Future of Petroleum - CSUN.edu
www.csun.edu › ~vcgeo005 › Energy
That hypothesis has been replaced during the past forty years by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins which has ...


Origin and Formation of Petroleum
connect.spe.org › blogs › donatien-ishimwe › 2014/09/11 › origin-and-for...
Sep 11, 2014 - Abiogenesis-inorganic origin of petroleum, is an oldest theory which ... That theory, lately became known as the abiotic oil formation (AOF) ...


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https://richardheinberg.com › richard-heinberg-on-abiotic-oil
Aug 29, 2004 - The debate over oil's origin has been going on since the 19th century. ... Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum

THIS THEORY IS DISMISSED BY AMERICAN COWBOY OIL  GEOLOGISTS 

BECAUSE OF ITS RUSSIAN UKRAINIAN ORIGIN. EVEN BEFORE THE COLD WAR.

MYSELF AS AN AMATUER GEOLOGIST AND ROCK HOUND AS WELL AS HAVING GROWN UP WITH ENGINEERS IN MY FAMILY WHO ASCRIBED TO HUBERTS THEORY OF THE DECLINE OF OIL, WHICH HAS YET TO BE PROVEN. BUT IT ALL ADDED UP TO MY HERESIOLOGICAL VIEW IN LATER LIFE, WHICH LED ME TO THIS THEORY WHICH DESPITE THE WISHFUL THINKING OF MANY AUTHORS HAS NOT BEEN DISPROVEN AT ALL IN FACT THE CURRENT STUDIES OF MICROBIAL HYDROCARBONS IN THE DEEP SEA ADD EVIDENCE FOR THE THEORY .

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Feeling with the heart 

Scientists find that the brain's sensitivity to sensory stimuli depends on the cardiac cycle and the brain's perception of it

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS  

A person's sensitivity to external stimuli depends not only on the state of their nervous system, but also on their cardiac cycle. Usually we do not notice our heartbeat, paying attention to it only in unusual situations, such as in moments of excitement before a performance or while experiencing arrhythmia. The brain actively suppresses the perception of our heartbeat, but as a result, our perception of other sensory stimuli may also be affected. This conclusion was made in a paper by a team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Leipzig) with the participation of Vadim Nikulin, a leading researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences at HSE University.

A cardiac cycle consists of two phases: systole and diastole. During systole, the heart muscles contract, and during diastole, they relax. It has been suggested earlier that a person is more susceptible to various stimuli during diastole and less sensitive during systole.

To find out what happens to the brain during different phases of the cardiac cycle, the scientists conducted an experiment by stimulating the fingers of 37 subjects with a barely perceptible electrical current. After each test, participants were asked if they felt any stimulation. At the same time, their brain and heart activity was monitored with EEG and ECG, respectively.

As expected, during systole, participants often did not notice the presence of stimuli. A decrease in sensitivity was accompanied by a change in brain activity. EEG recordings can show the P300 potential associated with the detection of the stimuli. During systole, this potential was less pronounced. Interestingly, the amplitude of the pre-stimulus heart-beat evoked potential correlated negatively with the detection and localization of somatosensory stimuli. Thus, the greater the potential caused by the heartbeat, the lower the potential of P300, and the more likely the subject would not sense the current.

Researchers believe that the brain predicts when the next contraction of the heart will occur, and suppresses the perception of stimuli more strongly in the systole phase, so that we are not distracted by our heart rhythm or confuse it with an external stimulus.

'These results are interesting since they show that our conscious perception of the external world can change within every heartbeat cycle, which is a rhythmic event that we mostly don't pay attention to,' says Esra Al, the lead author of the study. 'Therefore, these findings suggest that not only the brain but also the body plays an important role in shaping our consciousness.'

The results of the study may provide new insight into the understanding of neuronal processes associated with anxiety conditions. Such conditions are associated not only with a change in the heart rate, but also with a change in one's perception of their heartbeat.

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