Papillon the bear must be set free, says Italy’s environment minister

After being recaptured after 42 days on the run, the bear’s fate is the subject of intense debate

Papillon’s nickname derives from Henri Charrière’s memoir about escaping from a French penal colony. Photograph: AP

Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo

@lorenzo_tondo

Wed 9 Sep 2020

Italy’s environment minister has waded into the debate over the future of the country’s most famous bear, declaring that the animal – recaptured this week for a third time – must be returned to the wild.

Sergio Costa said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that the bear, nicknamed Papillon after Henri Charrière’s memoir about escaping from a French penal colony, did not deserve to be repeatedly put back into captivity.

“Papillon must live free,” the minister wrote. “I am wholeheartedly against the senseless treatment of this poor animal, whose only fault is that it is a bear. I’m on the side of Papillon, and we should all be ashamed of what is happening. A bear that has never been aggressive toward humans shall not and must not be treated like a hardened criminal.”

Codenamed M49, the 149kg (23st) bear was captured on Monday by rangers in the Italian province of Trento, having fled on 27 July from an enclosure in the Casteller centre that had been reinforced following previous escapes, including one where he managed to climb over three electric fences and a four-metre-high barrier before disappearing into the woods.

The first order for the bear’s capture was issued in June 2019 by the president of Trento province, Maurizio Fugatti, who declared that the animal posed a a hazard to humans after it was seen close to inhabited areas.

On that occasion the authorities granted permission to rangers to shoot the bear if it came close to inhabited areas. “The fact that the bear managed to climb over an electric fence with seven wires at 7,000V demonstrates that this specimen is dangerous and a public safety problem,” Fugatti stated in 2019.

Since then, the bear, which has been implicated in the killing of livestock, has escaped and been recaptured at least three times. After its last breakout, its enclosure was reinforced and the bear was fitted with a radio collar to monitor its movements in case of another escape. It was all in vain as Papillon managed to break free again and remove its collar, making its capture even more difficult.

Its time on the run came to an end on Monday around the area of Lagorai, after the animal was caught in a so-called “tube trap” – a device commonly used to capture bears, according to a note from local authorities.

The capture incurred the wrath of environmental groups, which have vowed to take legal action. According to the WWF, the accusations against the bear are unfounded.

Ornella Dorigatti, the Trento representative of the International Organization for Animal Protection, has pledged to go on hunger strike for Papillon’s release. “I’ve just taken this decision,” she told the Guardian. “We must save these bears. We are their voice, and we will fight until M49 is free.”

On Facebook, Costa explained that the national government had little authority over Papillon’s future, as the province of Trento’s autonomous status granted it the right to decide unilaterally whether to order the bear’s capture or to allow it to return to the wild.

Last August a young male bear attacked a police officer in northern Italy, knocking him to the ground and pouncing on him in what witnesses described as an unprovoked attack.

The incident rekindled the debate on the presence and number of such animals in the region. After their population dwindled to just four in Trentino, Alpine brown bears were reintroduced to the area in 2000, and the population currently stands at about 90.

Coming up for air: Extinct sea scorpions could breathe out of water, fossil detective unveils

by West Virginia University
 

Through computed tomography (CT) imaging, WVU geologist James Lamsdell led a team that found evidence of air breathing in a 340 million-year-old sea scorpion, or eurypterid. This is one of the scans of the specimen. Credit: James Lamsdell

Scientists have long debated the respiratory workings of sea scorpions, but a new discovery by a West Virginia University geologist concludes that these largely aquatic extinct arthropods breathed air on land.


James Lamsdell dug into the curious case of a 340 million-year-old sea scorpion, or eurypterid, originally from France that had been preserved at a Glasgow, Scotland museum for the last 30 years.

An assistant professor of geology in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, Lamsdell had read about the "strange specimen" 25 years ago while conducting his doctoral studies. Existing research suggested it would occasionally go on land.

Yet nothing was known on whether it could breathe air. The closest living relative to the eurypterid is the horseshoe crab, which lays eggs on land but is unable to breathe above water.

These details puzzled Lamsdell through the years until he reached out to a colleague, Victoria McCoy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and asked, "Do you have access to a CT scanner?"

"We wondered if we could apply new technology to look further into what was preserved of this specimen," said Lamsdell, who heads a paleobiology lab at WVU. "I like the science and detective work that goes into research. And this was a cold case where we knew there was potential evidence."

Through computed tomography (CT) imaging, Lamsdell and his team found that evidence, which is published in Current Biology.
 

Images of the eurypterid specimen fossil that led to Lamsdell's discovery. Credit: Melanie Hopkins

Researchers managed to study the respiratory organs of the three-dimensional eurypterid, leading to two findings that stood out to Lamsdell. First, he noticed that each gill on the sea scorpion was composed of a series of plates. But the back contained fewer plates than the front, prompting researchers to question how it could even breathe.

Then they zeroed in on pillars connecting the different plates of the gill, which are seen in modern scorpions and spiders, Lamsdell said. These pillars, or small beams of tissue, are called trabeculae.

"That props the gills apart so they don't collapse when out of water," Lamsdell explained. "It's something that modern arachnids still have. Finding that was the final indication.

"The reason we think they were coming onto land was to move between pools of water. They could also lay eggs in more sheltered, safer environments and migrate back into the open water."

WVU geologist James Lamsdell stands in front of a giant eurypterid fossil. Credit: James Lamsdell

The discovery of air-breathing structures in the eurypterids indicate that terrestrial characteristics occurred in the arachnid stem lineage, the researchers wrote, suggesting that the ancestor of arachnids were semi-terrestrial.


In addition to Lamsdell and McCoy, co-authors include Opal Perron-Feller of Oberlin College and Melanie Hopkins of the American Museum of Natural History.

Now that Lamsdell has cracked the case living in the back of his head for 20-plus years, he believes there's more to unearth from the fossil. He noted that the sea scorpion's back legs expand into a paddle shape, which he suspects would have been used to swim. The bases of their legs also had spikes that ground up food for them that they maneuvered into their mouths, Lamsdell added.

"One of the things that would be really cool to do is to flesh out this model and try to reconstruct exactly how the legs could move and how they were positioned," Lamsdell said, "like reconstructing the fossil as a living animal."


Explore further  Meet Pentecopterus, a new predator from the prehistoric seas
More information: James C. Lamsdell et al. Air Breathing in an Exceptionally Preserved 340-Million-Year-Old Sea Scorpion, Current Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.034
Journal information: Current Biology


Provided by West Virginia University

 

In ancient giant viruses lies the truth behind evolution of nucleus in eukaryotic cells

by Tokyo University of Science

DNA exchange between ancient giant viruses and ancient biological cells might have been the key to the evolution of nuclei in eukaryotic cells Credit: Tokyo University of Science

Perhaps as far back as the history of research and philosophy goes, people have attempted to unearth how life on earth came to be. In the recent decades, with exponential advancement in the fields of genomics, molecular biology, and virology, several scientists on this quest have taken to looking into the evolutionary twists and turns that have resulted in eukaryotic cells, the type of cell that makes up most life forms today.

The most widely accepted theories that have emerged state that the eukaryotic cell is the evolutionary product of the intracellular evolution of proto-eukaryotic cells, which were the first complex cells, and symbiotic relationships between proto-eukaryotic cells and other unicellular and simpler organisms such as bacteria and archaea. But according to Professor Masaharu Takemura of the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, "These hypotheses account for and explain the driving force and evolutionary pressures. But they fail to portray the precise process underlying eukaryotic nucleus evolution."

Prof Takemura cites this as his motivation behind his recent article published in Frontiers in Microbiology, where he looks into the recent theories that, in addition to his own body of research, have built up his current hypothesis on the subject.

In a way, Prof Takemura's hypothesis has its roots in 2001 when, along with PJ Bell, he made the revolutionary proposal that large DNA viruses, like the poxvirus, had something to do with the rise of the eukaryotic cell nucleus. Prof Takemura further explains the reasons for his inquiry into the nucleus of the eukaryotic cell as such: "Although the structure, function, and various biological functions of the cell nucleus have been intensively investigated, the evolutionary origin of the cell nucleus, a milestone of eukaryotic evolution, remains unclear."

The origin of the eukaryotic nucleus must indeed be a milestone in the development of the cell itself, considering that it is the defining factor that sets eukaryotic cells apart from the other broad category of cells—the prokaryotic cell. The eukaryotic cell is neatly compartmentalized into membrane-bound organelles that perform various functions. Among them, the nucleus houses the genetic material. The other organelles float in what is called the cytoplasm. Prokaryotic cells do not contain such compartmentalization. Bacteria and archaea are prokaryotic cells.

The 2001 hypothesis by Prof Takemura and PJ Bell is based on striking similarities between the eukaryotic cell nucleus and poxviruses: in particular, the property of keeping the genome separate in a compartment. Further similarities were uncovered after the discovery and characterization of a type of large DNA virus called "giant virus," which can be up to 2.5 μm in diameter and contain DNA "encoding" information for the production of more than 400 proteins. Independent phylogenetic analyses suggested that genes had been transferred between these viruses and eukaryotic cells as they interacted at various points down the evolutionary road, in a process called "lateral gene transfer."

Viruses are "packets" of DNA or RNA and cannot survive on their own. They must enter a "host" cell and use that cell's machinery to replicate its genetic material, and therefore multiply. As evolution progressed, it appears, viral genetic material became integrated with host genetic material and the properties of both altered.

In 2019, Prof Takemura and his colleagues made another breakthrough discovery: the medusavirus. The medusavirus got its name because, like the mythical monster, it causes encystment in its host; that is, it gives its host cell a 'hard' covering.

Via experiments involving the infection of an amoeba, Prof Takemura and his colleagues found that the medusavirus harbors a full set of histones, which resemble histones in eukaryotes. Histones are proteins that keep DNA strands curled up and packed into the cell nucleus. It also holds a DNA polymerase gene and major capsid protein gene very similar to those of the amoeba. Further, unlike other viruses, it does not construct its own enclosed 'viral factory' in the cytoplasm of the cell within which to replicate its DNA and contains none of the genes required to carry out the replication process. Instead, it occupies the entirety of the host nucleus and uses the host nuclear machinery to replicate.

These features, Prof Takemura argues, indicate that the ancestral medusavirus and its corresponding host proto-eukaryotic cells were involved in lateral gene transfer; the virus acquired DNA synthesis (DNA polymerase) and condensation (histones) genes from its host and the host acquired structural protein (major capsid protein) genes from the virus. Based on additional research evidence, Prof Takemura extends this new hypothesis to several other giant viruses as well.

Thus, Prof Takemura connects the dots between his findings in 2019 and his original hypothesis in 2001, linking them through his and others' work in the two decades that come in between. All of it taken together, it becomes clear how the medusavirus is prime evidence of the viral origin of the eukaryotic nucleus.

Takemura says, "This new updated hypothesis can profoundly impact the study of eukaryotic cell origins and provide a basis for further discussion on the involvement of viruses in the evolution of the eukaryotic nucleus." Indeed, his work may have unlocked several new possibilities for future research in the field.

New giant virus may help scientists better understand the emergence of complex life

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More information: Masaharu Takemura, Medusavirus Ancestor in a Proto-Eukaryotic Cell: Updating the Hypothesis for the Viral Origin of the Nucleus, Frontiers in Microbiology (2020). DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.571831

Provided by Tokyo University of Science 

Shotgun-like meteoroid impacts and thermal stress trigger asteroid ejections

9 September 2020 Astronomy Now

Two images from the OSIRIS-REx probe’s NavCam 1, with different exposure lengths and adjusted for contrast and brightness, are superimposed to show asteroid Bennu and a stream of small rock fragments spewing into space. Image: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin

After NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft began orbiting the asteroid Bennu in 2019, its navigation camera witnessed multiple episodes where small rocks were being ejected from the surface at speeds up to 10 feet per second (3 metres per second). More than 300 particle ejection events have been seen to date.

Surprised by the observations, the science team came up with three possible explanations: meteoroid impacts, thermal stress and the release of water vapour. In research papers published 9 September in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the team has concluded the most likely explanation is a combination of thermal stress and meteoroid impacts.

“We thought that Bennu’s boulder-covered surface was the wild-card discovery at the asteroid, but these particle events definitely surprised us,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator. “We’ve spent the last year investigating Bennu’s active surface, and it’s provided us with a remarkable opportunity to expand our knowledge of how active asteroids behave.”

Bennu rotates every 4.3 hours. As the temperature rises and falls, rocks can crack and break down, possibly ejecting smaller fragments from the surface in the extreme low-gravity environment. The observed particle showers occurred more often in the late afternoon on Bennu, when surface rocks heat up.

The timing of the events also matches up well with head-on meteoroid impacts in the inner solar system thanks to an unseen population of small fragments released from comets as they near the Sun and heat up or even break apart.

“One of the most significant things we’ve noticed is that the asteroid is frequently ejecting materials into space,” said Southwest Research Institute scientist William Bottke, lead author of a paper in JGR: Planets. “Tiny rocks are just flying off its surface, yet there is no evidence that they are propelled by sublimating ice, as one might expect from a comet.”

Using a computer model developed by NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Bottke found that sand-size meteoroids, hitting with the force of a shotgun blast, could explain many of the ejection events seen on Bennu. The model works best for asteroids with weak, porous surfaces, which pebble-strewn Bennu resembles

Sand-sized meteoroids are peppering asteroid Bennu

A new study posits that the major particle ejections off the near-Earth asteroid Bennu may be the consequence of impacts by small, sand-sized particles called meteoroids onto its surface as the object nears the Sun.

Date:September 9, 2020Source:Southwest Research Institute

FULL STORY



A new study published this month in JGR Planets posits that the major particle ejections off the near-Earth asteroid Bennu may be the consequence of impacts by small, sand-sized particles called meteoroids onto its surface as the object nears the Sun. The study's primary author is Southwest Research Institute scientist Dr. William Bottke, who used data from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.


Launched in 2016, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is currently orbiting Bennu with the aim of briefly touching on the surface and obtaining a sample from the asteroid in October 2020, and then returning to Earth.

"While in orbit, the spacecraft has been sending images of Bennu back to Earth," Bottke said. "One of the most significant things we've noticed is that the asteroid is frequently ejecting materials into space. Tiny rocks are just flying off its surface, yet there is no evidence that they are propelled by sublimating ice, as one might expect from a comet. The biggest events launch rocks as large as a few centimeters."

Even more curious is the fact that the observed major ejection events tend to occur in the late afternoon on Bennu. Determined to get to the bottom of these events, Bottke reached out to Althea Moorhead at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Moorhead is a member of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, a group that monitors and models meteoroids that may be hazardous to spacecraft.

"Over the years, Althea and her team have built a computer model that determines the number of tiny particles impacting spacecraft," Bottke explained. "We used this software to calculate the number of meteoroid impacts Bennu would face in its current orbit."

Many meteoroids originated on comets. As comets approach the Sun, pieces break off as a consequence of solar heating. Some comets even break apart, producing far more small particles than asteroid collisions in the asteroid belt. For this reason, comet fragments are thought to be the major source of meteoroids that fill the inner solar system.

Interpreting their modeling results, Bottke's study suggests that as Bennu draws closer to the Sun in its orbit, it experiences a higher number of meteoroid impacts. Moreover, sand-sized meteoroids are predicted to hit Bennu with the force of a shotgun blast about once every two weeks, with most striking in the head-on direction. Their impact location on Bennu corresponds to late afternoon and early evening.

Furthermore, Bottke's study points out that the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) previously made similar observations about impacts on the Moon. As with Bennu, most meteoroids hit the Moon head-on (with head-on defined with respect to the motion of the Earth-Moon system around the Sun). The key difference between Bennu and the Moon is how they rotate around their spin axes. The Moon spins west to east, so head-on impacts correspond to sunrise. Bennu spins in the opposite direction, so head-on impacts hit near dusk.

At first, Bottke's modeling work seem to predict that meteoroids would eject too little material from Bennu to explain the OSIRIS-REx observations. However, a better match could be obtained if Bennu has a weak porous surface. The possibility that Bennu has this property was recently strengthened by studies of the Bennu-like asteroid Ryugu, the target of Japan's Hayabusa2 sample return mission. Using explosives to launch a small projectile into Ryugu, the Hayabusa2 team produced a crater that was larger than expected by most impact experts. If Bennu's surface is indeed similar to Ryugu's, meteoroid impacts should be capable of ejecting relatively large amounts of debris.

 

Increase seen in hydroxychloroquine Rx by nonroutine specialists

(HealthDay)—In March 2020, compared with March 2019, there was an 80-fold increase in new prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine by specialists who did not typically prescribe these medications, according to research published in the Sept. 4 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In response to reports of notable increases in prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential treatment and prophylaxis for COVID-19, Lara Bull-Otterson, Ph.D., from the CDC COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, and colleagues analyzed outpatient retail pharmacy transaction data to examine potential differences in prescriptions dispensed by provider type during January to June 2020 versus the same period in 2019.

The researchers found that primary care providers and specialists who routinely prescribed hydroxychloroquine, including rheumatologists and dermatologists, accounted for about 97 percent of new prescriptions before 2020. New prescriptions by specialists who did not typically prescribe these medications increased from 1,143 to 75,569 prescriptions from February to March 2020, an 80-fold increase from March 2019.

"Although dispensing of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine prescriptions has been declining since March 2020, continued attention to updated clinical guidance, especially by nonroutine prescribers, will help safeguard supplies and ensure safe use of these medications for patients with approved indications," the authors write.

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Explore further

February to March 2020 saw surge in hydroxychloroquine prescriptions

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More information: Abstract/Full Text

Journal information: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 

Copyright © 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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The number of children in the US who have

 been diagnosed with the coronavirus floored me

Mother placing a protective mask on the face of her daughter. Image source: hedgehog94/Adobe

By Andy Meek @aemeek

September 9th, 2020 at 12:21 PM

• The American Academy of Pediatrics has provided a coronavirus update showing how many children have been diagnosed in the US with COVID-19 so far during the coronavirus pandemic.
• That number of infected children now stands at 513,415.
• While children seem to be spared the worst outcomes associated with the COVID-19 virus, they can still spread it to people like vulnerable family members.

---

Every daily coronavirus update we get is a reminder that we’re still living in a pandemic, that our normal lives have been put on pause, and that we’re still paying a terrible price as a result of the COVID-19 virus that’s resulted in more than 6.3 million confirmed infections thus far in the US. That’s according to the latest data we have from Johns Hopkins University.

Whenever we talk about metrics like that, including the fact that more than 189,000 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus have been reported in the US, as awful as that is it still doesn’t even convey the full breadth of the pandemic’s impact. For example, the financial toll of the virus is probably incalculable, including as it does everything from the tens of millions of newly unemployed workers in the US to the lost business from risk-averse consumers too afraid to do things like get on a plane, go see a movie, or eat inside a restaurant. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics has just released yet another data point conveying the scope of the pandemic so far — according to a new report from the group, more than half a million children in the US have been diagnosed with the coronavirus thus far.

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Though children have represented only 9.8% of all cases in states reporting cases by age, according to the new report, 513,415 total child COVID-19 cases have nevertheless been reported. In a statement about the report, academy president Dr. Sara Goza said that “these numbers are a chilling reminder of why we need to take this virus seriously.”

The report is a product of collaboration between the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, and it was generated by data collected from states. Other key data points from the report include the following:

• Children made up between 4%-14.3% of total state tests, and between 3%-17.3% of children tested were tested positive
• Children were 0.7%-3.7% of total reported hospitalizations, and between 0.3%-8.3% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization
• Children were 0%-0.3% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 18 states reported zero child deaths

Some other interesting numbers to note — according to this report, which you can read in full here, nine states reported more than 15,000 cases of children with the coronavirus, while half of states reported more than 7,000 cases and six states reported fewer than 1,000 cases.

The more than 513,000 total cases of children with the virus represents almost 10% of the more than 6 million cases reported so far in the US.

Among the things we know about how children are affected by the virus — it’s rare that we see the worst outcomes of COVID-19 in children, but they can nevertheless still spread the virus to other people, including to family members vulnerable to bad COVID-19 outcomes.

Tags: coronavirus

Andy is a reporter in Memphis who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When he’s not writing about technology, he can be found hunched protectively over his burgeoning collection of vinyl, as well as nursing his Whovianism and bingeing on a variety of TV shows you probably don’t like.

Greenland Ice Sheet Reached Tipping Point 20 Years Ago, New Study Finds

BY GRACE PALMER |SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 CLIMATE, GLACIERHUB BLOG

At the turn of the 21st century, unbeknownst to the world, the Greenland ice sheet likely entered a state of sustained mass loss that will persist for the foreseeable future, according to a new study. Though the finding has raised concern over the future of the ice sheet, scientists emphasize that reducing emissions remains critical.

The study, which looked at 40 years of satellite data, was released on August 13 in Communications Earth & Environment. Second in size only to the Antarctic ice sheets, the Greenland ice sheet covers nearly 80 percent of the vast island. It contains the equivalent of about 24 feet of global mean sea level rise and, due to its accelerated retreat, is considered the largest single contributor to rising sea levels worldwide.

While the ice sheet’s decline has been well-documented over the past two decades, this latest study, led by Michalea King of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, found that widespread glacier retreat helped push the ice sheet from a balanced to an imbalanced state. This work suggests that even if the oceans and atmosphere were to stop warming today, the ice sheet will continue to lose more ice than it will gain.

The Greenland ice sheet likely lies above an ancient tundra landscape with its own complex topography. Photo: Michalea King

In the decades leading up to the turn of the century, the ice sheet was in a state of relative equilibrium. The ice lost in a given year would be replenished by wintertime snowfall, and the sheet maintained a near-constant mass. But beginning around the year 2000, ice discharged through outlet glaciers—channels that flow outward to the sea—started to outpace annual snowfall that, in a balanced year, would replenish lost ice. The authors sifted through 40 years of satellite data, tracking outlet glacier velocity, thickness, and calving front position over time to determine the rate of ice loss. The shift they found represents a tipping point that is unlikely to be reversible in the near future. King told GlacierHub, “It’s like a gear change… we’ve accelerated the drainage at the edge of the ice sheet, and now… we expect mass loss to be the new norm for the ice sheet in the near future.”

Ian Howat, director of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and co-author of the paper, explained to GlacierHub that the dynamics of ice loss through outlet glaciers can be likened to the functioning of a dam. “Those glaciers act just like a spillway on a dam,” he said. “The more you open the spillway… the faster the reservoir gets drawn down.” The study suggests that longer-term thinning throughout the 20th century—likely due to warming oceans—led up to a mass retreat event in the early 2000s. The result was a “step-increase” in the rate of discharge through outlet glaciers; before 2000, 420 gigatons of ice were discharged annually. In the years following, the rate increased to 480 gigatons of ice discharged annually. A gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons, roughly the mass of all land mammals (excluding humans) on Earth. “When all of these glaciers retreated at once, it was enough to significantly increase the rate at which ice flows into the ocean. It’s like the spillway on the dam was opened up,” Howat said.

Members of the research team place equipment atop the ice sheet. Photo: Michalea King

According to King, the significance of this new rate of discharge is that “consistently, more ice is being lost through the flow of these glaciers than is being gained by snow accumulation.” Returning to a balanced state would require an extra 60 gigatons per year of snowfall or reduced melting. Yet under essentially all climate change scenarios, the opposite is expected.

The findings of this study—along with others that document the decline of the Greenland ice sheet—spell worrying news for sea level rise trajectories. Marco Tedesco, research professor of marine geology and geophysics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, explained to GlacierHub that the Greenland ice sheet has been, and will increasingly be, a major contributor to rising sea levels. The two primary causes of sea level rise are thermal expansion—ocean water expands as it warms—and the melting of land-based ice. With sea level rise projected to submerge land home to 150 million people permanently below the high tide line (and that estimate assumes stability of the Antarctic ice sheet), Greenland finds itself in the spotlight. “In terms of direct contribution,” Tedesco said, “Greenland is actually the largest contributor now, with about 20 to 25 percent of sea level rise due to Greenland.” Moreover, the percentage of contribution could increase to 30 or 40 percent by the end of the century, according to Tedesco.

The ice loss shown above has resulted in about 0.8 millimeters per year of sea level rise. Source: NASA

Another study on the Greenland ice sheet, coauthored by Tedesco, made international headlines recently, concluding that 2019 was a year of record ice loss. According to scientists, the ice lost in 2019 was double the yearly average since 2003. Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center, connected the dots between these two major studies. “Nobody really, 20 years ago, was expecting glaciers to speed up as rapidly as what we’ve seen,” he told GlacierHub. In terms of annual loss of ice, “people think of it as melting, but it’s basically the balance between how much snow falls each year, and how much icebergs calve off and how much melting actually occurs on the ice sheet itself.” Ultimately, neither melting nor ice discharge alone can explain the changing ice sheet. They are, rather, two processes in a complex dynamic, which glaciologists are racing to understand using a combination of field work, remote sensing, and modeling.

Coastal waters of Greenland from above. Photo: Michalea King

Rapid international action is needed to limit global warming to 1.5˚C, which would allow more time for adaptation to rising sea levels. Addressing recent headlines declaring that the ice sheet has reached the point of no return, a statement that has since been discussed within the scientific community, Howat said, “I think it’s very important to emphasize that this loss of the ice sheet is not irreversible. We’ve witnessed a step-change that is unlikely to be reversible in the near future, but we still have a long way to go and we still have a lot of say in how quickly the ice sheet will continue to retreat.”

 

Deep Channels Linking Antarctic Glacier's Underside to Ocean Could Hasten Melting

BY EARTH INSTITUTE |SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be pathways for warm ocean water to melt the undersides of the ice, and contribute to sea level rise, say scientists. The scientists have based their conclusions on data from two research missions, using aircraft and a ship.

Researchers from the UK- and U.S.-led International Thwaites Glacier Collaborationcollected the data from the glacier and adjoining Dotson and Crosson ice shelves during January–March 2019. While one team collected airborne data flying over the glacier and its adjoining ice shelf in a British Antarctic Survey aircraft, the other mapped the sea floor at the ice front from the U.S. Antarctic Program’s icebreaker Nathaniel B Palmer. Two research papers published this week in the journal The Cryosphere describe the discovery.

By flying geophysical instruments over the glacier, the researchers were able to map a system of channels and cavities extending some 100 kilometers back from the front of its floating ice shelf to where the ice sits on land, the so-called grounding line. Some of the features are 800 meters deep. The researchers say the maps give them for the first time a clear view of the pathways along which warm water may potentially reach the underside of the glacier, causing it to melt.

Above, a Twin Otter plane belonging to the British Antarctic Survey en route to Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. Below, leading edge of the glacier’s floating ice shelf; at this point, the ice sits about 70 meters above the water, with another 480 meters below the surface. (Both photos: Dave Porter/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)

Dave Porter, a glaciologist at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, who flew over Thwaites Glacier for the airborne survey, said, “Being able to see firsthand the changes occurring [there] was both awe-inspiring and disconcerting.”

Thwaites Glacier covers 192,000 square kilometers (74,000 square miles), equivalent to the area of Great Britain or the state of Florida. It is believed to be particularly susceptible to climate and ocean changes. During the past 30 years, the overall rate of ice loss from the Thwaites and its neighboring glaciers has increased more than fivefold. Already, ice draining from Thwaites into the adjoining Amundsen Sea accounts for about 4 percent of global sea level rise. A runaway collapse of the glacier could lead to an increase in sea levels of around 65 centimeters (25 inches). Scientists want to find out how quickly this could happen.

Lead author Tom Jordan, a geophysicist at British Antarctic Survey, said of the hidden features, “They form the critical link between the ocean and the glacier. The offshore channels, along with an adjacent cavity system, are very likely to be the route by which warm ocean water passes underneath the ice shelf up to the grounding line, where the ice meets the bed.”

Exceptional sea-ice breakup in early 2019 enabled the team on the Nathaniel B Palmerto survey more than 2,000 square kilometers of sea floor at the glacier’s ice front. The area surveyed had previously been hidden beneath part of the floating ice shelf extending from Thwaites Glacier, which broke off in 2002, and in most subsequent years the area was inaccessible due to thick sea-ice cover. The team’s findings reveal that the sea floor is generally deeper and has more deep channels leading toward the grounding line under the ice shelf than was previously thought.

“We found the coastal sea floor, which is incredibly rugged, is a really good analogue for the bed beneath the present-day Thwaites Glacier both in terms of its shape and rock type,” said Kelly Hogan, a British Antarctic Survey marine geophysicist. “By examining retreat patterns over this sea-floor terrain, we will be able to help numerical modelers and glaciologists in their quest to predict future retreat.”

Adapted from a press release by the British Antarctic Survey and the European Geosciences Union.

How to Read That Damning Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 'Superspreader' Study Like a Scientist

Ed Cara
Yesterday 11:20AM

People walking along Main Street during the 80th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota on August 8, 2020.Photo: Michael Ciaglo (Getty Images)

A week-long rally attended by half a million motorcycle enthusiasts last month in Sturgis, South Dakota could have eventually led to an extra 250,000 cases of covid-19, according to new research released by a team of economists. But though it’s certainly likely that the rally was a superspreading event, this particular estimate may be off the mark, as two scientists not affiliated with the study explained to us.


The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is an annual event held since 1938. This year, despite concerns of the large crowds being a conduit for covid-19, the rally ran from August 6 to 19 and is thought to have attracted around 460,000 people from all over the U.S. Infamously, Steve Harwell, the lead singer of Smash Mouth, mocked the seriousness of covid-19 while performing to a packed crowd during the rally.

By early September, at least 260 covid-19 cases were reported to have been linked to people attending the rally, along with one reported death. Most of these cases involved people in South Dakota, though some were traced back to people in 11 other states; the one death was a man in his 60s from Minnesota. But, at least according to this new paper, the true covid-19 spread from the rally is much higher than reported.

The researchers analyzed several different sources of information to come up with their estimates. This included anonymous cell phone location data of locals and travelers who attended the rally, foot traffic data to bars and restaurants, and data on reported covid-19 cases collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The team found that the Sturgis rally was associated with lots of visitors from out of town, more foot traffic to bars and restaurants in the area, and increased movement outside of the home by local residents. These factors combined to promote the spread of the contagious illness during and after the rally, they found, which led to a noticeable jump in cases in South Dakota and in areas where larger numbers of attendees came from


All told, they calculated that Meade County, home of Sturgis, had an extra six to seven cases of covid-19 per every 1,000 people than it would have normally by September 2. Counties with the highest number of residents who went to the rally were also said to have experienced a 7% to 12.5% increase in covid-19 cases, relative to similar counties where no people traveled to the rally. These spikes ultimately amounted to an added 250,000 cases, they concluded, amounting to nearly 20 percent of all cases believed to have occurred in the U.S. between August 2 and September 2.“The 250,000 estimate is a nice headline-grabber but pretty likely to be an overestimate.”

The paper was released recently as a preprint by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a private research group focused on labor markets that’s based in Germany. Its authors include several economists from San Diego State University’s Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies, the University of Colorado Denver, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Preprints are preliminary research, meaning that they haven’t gone through the typical peer review process.

While right-wing folks on social media were quick to dismiss the results as politically motivated, this same group of economists also found little evidence for a spike in cases linked to the Tulsa, Oklahoma rally for President Trump’s reelection held in late June (some experts have argued otherwise, however). They similarly found little data to suggest that the widespread Black Lives Matter rallies held earlier this summer were linked to a substantial increase in cases in the cities where they held.

According to Elizabeth Stuart, a statistician and associate dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the basic methodology used by the team is commonly deployed to evaluate the effects of policy interventions. But there’s a lot of uncertainty in applying these tools to studying how a never-before-seen disease like covid-19 might spread through a population—uncertainty that she felt the researchers could have done a better job of showing.

“I think they did a reasonable analysis. But there were many choices made along the way that could have been made differently,” said Stuart, who is not affiliated with the research.

One example she brought up was how the team compared South Dakota to other states like Vermont and New Hampshire in trying to create a “synthetic control,” a statistical tool that tries its best to imagine what would have happened in the same place had variable A (the rally happening in Sturgis in this case) never occurred. Because the states used were relatively small and may be different from South Dakota in many important ways, Stuart said, the exact numbers produced by the team’s model might not be as stable as they appear, even if the basic finding that the rally created a superspreading event is true.

“So the big, high-level conclusion from the study is that there were over 200,000 cases from this and that it accounted for 20% percent of cases nationwide. But there’s no uncertainty given to that—there’s no confidence interval,” Stuart said, referring to a common statistical method used to present the likely range of possibilities for any one result. “And I really think it’s important in these contexts to convey the uncertainty, both the statistical uncertainty and also the more fundamental uncertainty of their model.”

Joshua Salomon, a health policy researcher and professor of medicine at Stanford University, told Gizmodo via email that the team’s analysis is “thoughtfully designed” and that he agrees with the general conclusion that the rally likely led to a large number of infections. But he said comparing counties that did or didn’t have people who went to Sturgis as a way to estimate the number of cases caused by the rally, as the authors also did, has its shortcomings too.

“A key limitation is that these sets of counties appear to have been on different trajectories before the rally, which makes it much harder to compare the trends after the rally and attribute the difference to the rally,” he said. “So, the 250,000 estimate is a nice headline-grabber but pretty likely to be an overestimate.”


The authors do acknowledge that their numbers may not be a precise accounting of the covid-19 fallout that might have directly come from the rally. It’s possible, for instance, that some people who caught covid-19 during or after the rally would have caught it anyhow in some other way.

“However, this calculation is nonetheless useful as it provides a ballpark estimate as to how large of an externality a single superspreading event can impose, and a sense of how valuable restrictions on mass gatherings can be in this context,” the authors wrote.

The Sturgis gathering had some key differences from other large gatherings that have had people concerned about superspreading. For one, the Sturgis rally lasted far longer than any single protest or political rally and was attended by far greater numbers, with people coming largely from outside of the state. Anecdotally, few people who went to Sturgis were said to have worn masks or practiced much social distancing while there. And perhaps, unlike the BLM rallies, local residents also started relaxing their distancing and staying at home less during and after the rally, as the authors’ earlier research had suggested.

These factors seem to have turned the Sturgi rally into a “situation where many of the ‘worst case scenarios’ for superspreading occurred simultaneously,” the authors wrote. Alternatively, they provide hope that regulations like mandating mask-wearing, limiting the size of gatherings, and restricting indoor dining and drinking in bars can prevent these superspreading events from happening in the first place.

Stuart, for her part, doesn’t disagree there.

“Basically, I don’t have full confidence in how precise their estimate is. But I think it’s highly plausible that there was this spread. And certainly the recommendations around mask wearing, being outdoors, and still letting people gather but doing it in ways where it is safer—I think it’s the right kind of message,” she said.

Mexican journalist who wrote about crime found beheaded

A motorcycle is seen at the site where the body of journalist Julio Valdivia was found in Tezonapa, Veracruz, Mexico, September 9, 2020, in this image obtained via social media. Diario El Mundo via REUTERS

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican journalist who wrote about crime in the violent Gulf Coast state of Veracruz was found beheaded on Wednesday, local media reported, the latest grisly murder of a reporter in one of the world’s most dangerous nations for journalists.

The body of Julio Valdivia, 44, who specialized in the “nota roja” journalism that focuses on gruesome crime and violence, was found in the remote Tezonapa municipality, about 100 kilometers from the state capital, Veracruz.

A staff member at Valdivia’s Diario El Mundo local newspaper in Veracruz said initially it was suspected that Valdivia might have been run over by a train, but that was ruled out by the prosecutor’s office.


“Valdivia was found near the train tracks, beheaded and tortured,” said the newspaper staff member, who did not wish to be identified.

El Universal and several other local news outlets reported that Valdivia was beheaded, the fourth journalist death in Mexico this year.

In 2019, about half of all murders of journalists around the world occurred in Mexico, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.


“We condemn the homicide of Julio Valdivia,” the Veracruz government said on its Twitter account.

A local media protection group known as the CEAPP said in a statement that Valdivia did not have extra protection measures as he had not reported facing threats to his security. But the group demanded the authorities “shed light” on the murder.