Bitcoin is COVID immune

by The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences

Cryptocurrencies have proven to be a safe financial haven during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic has left a significant footprint on the global economy. For this reason, it had a substantial impact on the behavior of all financial instruments, including cryptocurrencies. It turns out that the fluctuations experienced by the virtual currency market during this period reflect changes in other capital and commodity markets. This market has also shown relative stability during this difficult time. It is another proof that cryptocurrencies can be treated as a mature and full-fledged financial instrument.


Social systems are characterized by a vast network of connections and factors that can influence their structure and dynamics. Among these systems, the entire economic sphere of human activity seems to be the most interconnected and complex. All financial markets belong to this sphere, including the youngest of them—cryptocurrencies.

The first cryptocurrency—Bitcoin—appeared in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis. Its creators intended to provide a tool for carrying out transactions via the Internet without the participation of a central unit managing the issue of money. From this perspective, cryptocurrencies can be considered as an independent financial instrument. However, has the cryptocurrency market lived up to the hopes placed in it? How did it react to the situation caused by the emergence of crisis conditions? And have cryptocurrencies already reached the maturity and stability required of a full-fledged financial instrument?

Events related to the outbreak and development of the COVID-19 epidemic provided an excellent opportunity to seek answers to these questions. A group of scientists from the IFJ PAN in Krakow lead by Prof. Stanislaw Drozdz decided to study the behavior of the cryptocurrency market in response to the economic situation caused by the coronavirus.

"Our previous quantitative analyses of the various characteristics of the complexity of the cryptocurrency market and the specifics of its correlation with more traditional world markets, such as stocks, currencies or commodities, showed that this market in these aspects became essentially indistinguishable and independent from them. With the pandemic ahead, however, we seriously considered the possibility that investors would start to get rid of something like Bitcoin in the first place. Due to their virtuality, most potential market participants still perceive cryptocurrencies as quite peculiar items. In times of crisis, during violent economic and political turmoil, people resort to financial resources they consider more reliable. But our comparisons showed that solid instruments recorded drops at the most critical moments, while cryptocurrencies behaved much more stable," says Prof. Drozdz.


In the first phase of the pandemic, when it was not known how the whole situation would develop, there was an escape from risky financial instruments to Bitcoin. One could observe a positive correlation of Bitcoin with financial instruments considered safe, such as the Swiss franc, Japanese yen, gold and silver. Then there was a further increase in the number of infections around the world and the associated sharp drops in global stock markets—especially in the US—due to a total sell-off of all assets, including Bitcoin. Investors resorted to cash, mainly the yen and the dollar. During this period, Bitcoin lost its safe-haven status, but the same was true of gold and silver. Still, it behaved like a regular, traditional, and reliable financial instrument. Particularly significant is the correlation of Bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) with conventional financial instruments during the spikes on global stock exchanges as the epidemic slows down during the summer of 2020.

"This is an intriguing effect because there were no such correlations before the pandemic, and they remain at a significant level. It may be proof that Bitcoin has become a full-fledged element of the financial market. One can say that the COVID-19 pandemic has positively verified cryptocurrencies. It turned out that investors were not afraid of Bitcoin; quite the opposite—they included it in their investment portfolios," Dr. Marcin Watorek describes the research findings.

Scientists from Krakow focused on the dynamic and structural properties of the cryptocurrency market. They analyzed data showing the exchange rates of 129 cryptocurrencies on the Binance platform. The analysis consisted of three parts aimed at examining a different aspect of the market structure.

"We approached the topic from three standpoints: the dynamics of the cryptocurrency exchange rates to other virtual and fiat currencies, coupling and decoupling of cryptocurrencies and traditional assets, and the inner structure of the cryptocurrency market. We used data from January 2019 to June 2020. This period covers the specific time of the COVID-19 pandemic; we paid special attention to this event and examined how strong its impact was on the structure and dynamics of the market. The analyzed data include several other significant events, such as the double bull and bear phase in 2019," Dr. Jaroslaw Kwapien explains the methodology of the work.

The analysis of the cross-correlation between the cryptocurrency market represented by the BTC/USD and ETH/USD exchange rate and the traditional markets of major fiat currencies, major commodities (such as oil and gold) and US stock indices led to the conclusion that the cryptocurrency market was independent of other markets throughout 2019, but temporarily correlated with these markets during several events in the first half of 2020, such as in January, when the first COVID-19 case was reported in the United States, in March during the pandemic outbreak, and from May to July 2020 during the second wave of the pandemic. In the first case, Bitcoin showed anti-correlation with major stock indices such as the S&P500 and Nasdaq100, but in the second and third cases, the corresponding correlations were positive. The correlations between Bitcoin and several fiat currencies and the commodity market were also positive for these phases.

The lack of statistically significant correlations in 2019, when classic financial instruments experienced no turmoil, was presumably due to market cap asymmetry between the cryptocurrency market and conventional markets to the disadvantage of the former, which is still too small to have any significant impact on other markets. However, traditional markets can easily influence the cryptocurrency market when they become turbulent. This is what happened in March and June 2020.

"The most significant result of our analyses of the dynamics of the world's financial markets during the COVID-19 pandemic is that the cryptocurrency market, and especially Bitcoin, turned out to be one of the most resistant to turbulence experienced by all global markets during this period. This observation is in line with and complements our previously published results on the approached stability and maturity of the cryptocurrency market in the past 2-3 years. The COVID-19 period seems to confirm those earlier signals," Prof. Drozdz summarizes the work.


Explore further Virtual gold? Bitcoin's rise sparks new debate amid pandemic
More information: Stanisław Drożdż et al, Complexity in Economic and Social Systems: Cryptocurrency Market at around COVID-19, Entropy (2020). DOI: 10.3390/e22091043
Provided by The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences

COVID-19 a 'perfect storm' for organ trafficking victims

by SciDev.Net

The pandemic has also added to the growing demand in trafficked organs. 

Credit: Antonio Cansino from Pixabay

As global job losses mount due to the COVID-19 pandemic, desperate people are seeking new ways to make money via social media, and evidence points to a resulting deadly surge in illicit organ trafficking.


In April, Shivkumar (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) took out a loan for a power loom, confident in joining the local saree production industry.

And then the pandemic hit.

"I have no choice but to commit suicide if I do not [sell] my kidney to pay the debts," says the 32-year-old from the Southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Shivkumar hasn't worked in six months, and the deadline for his loan of 1,600,000 rupees (US $21,700) has already passed. He also needs funds urgently to support his wife and three-year-old son.

Like millions of other workers this year, Shivkumar has been left without a steady income because of the pandemic. But his case is also emblematic of something more sinister, as restrictions to halt the spread of the virus destroy people's livelihoods and organs become a prized currency on the 'red market."

"The conditions are becoming more ripe for trafficking," says Aimée Comrie, project coordinator at the GLO.ACT anti-trafficking initiative at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Far fewer transplants have been performed over the past six months globally as hospitals closed or diverted resources to treating COVID-19, creating a significant backlog of patients on waiting lists.

Plummeting supplies have only added to an already increasing global demand for organs. Prior to the pandemic, less than 10 percent of the global need for organ donations was met every year, a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson told SciDev.Net.

Meanwhile, wealth inequalities have sharply increased, leaving the poor still more economically vulnerable.

"That group of people who were already uneducated, uninsured, unemployed are now even more desperate to take up offers which they shouldn't take," says Comrie. "It just created a perfect storm."

In recent years, organ 'brokers' had already used Facebook pages as a recruiting medium for the so-called red market. But the financial difficulties and restrictions on movement caused by the pandemic have turbo-charged this illicit use of the platform as a place for sellers to advertise.

Delhi-based Nandram (whose name has also been changed to protect his identity) lost his job as a youth hostel worker in April and is living with his parents again, which he calls "torture" as they vehemently disapprove of his homosexuality.


The 26-year-old posted his wish to sell a kidney on numerous Facebook pages, and says he has seen an uptick in similar posts since the pandemic struck.

The Facebook page which Nandram posted in, entitled Selling of Kidney, has been active for over a year. In the six-month period April to September since lockdowns began, comments from sellers more than doubled compared to the previous eight months.

Nandram says he has spoken to three people who claim to have sold kidneys through these networks in the past three months.

The page was among more than two dozen that SciDev.Net identified, most with names as obvious as kidney buyer or donate a kidney for cash. Comments from users since the pandemic began across this sample of pages have numbered well over 900.

International trade

The red market has both national and international forms.

The difference is often the degree of organization of the brokers, the middlemen who take the lion's share of the fees and coordinate between the medical professionals conducting transplants, recipients and sellers.

At the more sophisticated, international end, this is "very big business," says Comrie.

Egypt has become known for both its highly localized organ trade, and as a prominent hub for international networks.

Recipients in the international networks have historically traveled to the country from wealthier Gulf states and surrounding African countries, often paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in a practice sometimes known as transplant tourism.

Comrie cautiously argues "it could be" that this practice has temporarily subsided due to the travel restrictions imposed this year. Ayman Sabae, a researcher at Cairo-based charity Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) also says it has been a while since he has received reports on organ trafficking.

But he insists that, overall, the trade has stayed the same because of weak enforcement of rules and the economically precarious situation for many.

Refugees in Egypt with limited working and social welfare rights—primarily Sudanese, Eritreans and some Syrians—are most vulnerable to the trade. Sabae says coronavirus has compounded the already severe financial vulnerabilities for them.

Seán Columb is an organ trafficking expert and a University of Liverpool lecturer in law. He also stresses refugees may bear the greatest cost of the pandemic in Egypt.

"The reason that I think migrants, in particular, are being targeted [by brokers] is they can't find work," he says.

Refugees already often find themselves barred from the job market, and Columb argues that rising unemployment and even less support from an Egyptian state crippled by the pandemic may force refugees to consider drastic options.

But the crisis will also affect refugees who had been planning to escape to Europe via the Mediterranean this year.

Since Egypt's lockdown restricted activity on 25 March, until reopening in late June, recorded sea crossings dropped to 8,045 according to UN figures, compared to 16,198 last year—and the lowest for this period in five years. April saw the lowest monthly crossings on record, at 1,187.

But fewer crossings may only have made refugees more vulnerable to the organ trade, according to Columb.

On the one hand, smugglers' prices have gone up because of greater border control, he says. On the other, the build-up of refugees arriving in Libya unable to travel to Europe due to travel restrictions may now mean a "two-to-three-month" wait for an available ship.

"And that ship may never come, then you're in debt," says Columb.

"[If] you've paid that money to the smugglers already in advance, you're never going to get that back because it's illegal," he adds. "Because there's more debt involved, they are being pushed to [these] further extremes."

India was once one of the world's hotspots for the international trade before laws were tightened in 1994. But close family and spouses are allowed to donate organs, a legal loophole which has proven open to exploitation, as brokers forge documents feigning these relationships between sellers and recipients.

Partly because family ties are harder to prove for foreign recipients, central commands for international networks have moved more to neighboring countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

In Kerala, South India, local sales are still "very, very common" says Davis Chiramel, a priest in the Southern Indian district of Thrissur and founder of the Kidney Federation of India, which works to encourage kidney donation after death.

He receives calls from people looking to sell their kidneys who have misunderstood the aim of his charity, and says he has seen a surge since the pandemic struck.

In the past six months, he has received two to three calls a day, or several hundred since India's lockdown, which he claims is twice as many as during the same period in 2019. The vast majority, he says, are driven by financial difficulties.

The pandemic has also added to the growing demand. Sanjay Agarwal, head of nephrology at the All India Institute of Medical Science and convener of India's National Transplant Registry, says the diversion of resources to treating COVID-19 means his public hospital still has not performed a transplant since March at the time of writing.

Yet at any one time, he says, India needs around 300,000 renal transplants—a number climbing year-on-year because of rising hypertension and diabetes. Only 8,000 transplants were performed in the country last year, and supply is not increasing, meaning a huge unmet demand.

Liver, corneas and skin

Kidneys are by far the most trafficked organ, though liver sales too are on the rise. Occasionally, unconfirmed reports also mention corneas, plasma and skin transplants.

While illicit organ sales remain an issue all over the world, the sellers who supply both national and international red markets come disproportionately from countries in the global South.

"It's still a big problem in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt—maybe Syria," says Debra Budiani-Saberi, founder of Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions (COFS), which promotes advocacy, prevention of organ trafficking and support to victims globally.

As well as the Gulf, foreign recipients travel from places such as the United States and Europe for transplants. Sometimes they fly to third countries to which sellers are also transported, and from which these networks operate.

"Israel's been renowned for its sophisticated international rings, in coordinating transplants in South Africa, with Brazilians, and in Turkey," says Budiani-Saberi.

In one case which made headlines around the world, doctors at the Kosovo-based Medicus clinic were found to have carried out at least 24 operations in 2008. Recipients were largely from Israel and paid up to US$100,000 for the operation, while mostly low-income sellers came from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Russia and received sometimes only US$8,500. Other reports show victims have received fees as low as US$2,500.

A 2013 OSCE report argues organ trafficking has been "growing over the last ten to 15 years" and the UN's Comrie agrees, telling SciDev.Net: "In my view, it's getting worse."

While in theory organ sales can be consensual, Comrie admits she is yet to see a case without "deceit or fraud," while she has seen a "good amount" of cases where victims are scammed and receive no money at all.

The typical victim, she says, is male, poorly educated, marginalized and from a rural area, and who is facing financial difficulties. Brokers will often lie and tell potential sellers things such as "your organ will grow back like a fruit on a tree," she says.

As the coronavirus accentuates these vulnerabilities, a WHO spokesperson told SciDev.Net: "We need to remain vigilant and protect affected populations."

According to WHO estimates from 2007, the most recent available, around five to 10 percent of global kidney transplants annually are commercial—which would mean almost 10,000 last year.

The practice is legal only in Iran, where it applies just to nationals and the Iranian diaspora.

Budiani-Saberi says COFS has assisted around 250 victims of organ trafficking per year for the past five years. Though it identifies hundreds of victims each year, it does not have the resources to support any more than this.

She says that although the "clandestine nature" of this abuse prevents her from having accurate data on organs trafficked per year, she estimates it at least in "in the hundreds" and possibly in the thousands.

The UN's most recent Global Report on Trafficking in Persons recorded around 100 cases of organ trafficking from 2014-17.

But Comrie calls this a "vast underrepresentation," as figures are self-reported by member states when local authorities catch people involved in the illicit trade. She argues that the shame accompanying organ removal and criminalisation of victims prevents those affected from speaking out.

"No country wants it to be known that its citizens are selling their body parts to survive," she explains, arguing NGOs are sometimes even disbanded for exposing these issues as national problems.

"Wilful blindness" by authorities who have other priorities also plays a part, while amateur trade in makeshift venues remains too underground to monitor.

"Most of the [data] gathering has been episodic by the occasional researcher who was studying at one place at one time," adds Lawrence Cohen, senior medical anthropologist at UC Berkeley and co-founder of anti-trafficking organization Organs Watch.

Ultimately, he says, it is "data no one wants."

Loopholes

Experts say addressing illegal trafficking will not be easy.

Legislation and law enforcement is one problem. In India, the legal loophole persists while authorisation committees, in charge of monitoring live donations and clearing certain transplants, do not have the authority to check bank accounts for payments.

In Egypt, new legislation from 2010 banned commercial organ sales and imposed penalties for all involved, which were increased further by a 2018 law. But as EIPR's Sabae argues, "it's not a law that would be enforced on its own," but "requires institutions, it requires resources, it requires work … it would require campaigns for public awareness."

Comrie argues that law enforcement is not accustomed to organ trafficking cases and often struggles to investigate these complex crimes. She is leading the development of a UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) virtual simulation toolto be made available next year which will train police to detect key evidence at the scene.

Another option is to boost the supply from deceased donors, which in India for example currently make up just five to 10 percent of organ transplants. Sumana Navin at the MOHAN Foundation, a non-profit organization which seeks to encourage such donations in India, says deceased donations were especially important this year as the risks of spreading COVID-19 made it much more difficult for hospitals to conduct living donor transplants.

"Hospitals are proceeding with deceased donations because you're losing the opportunity to save so many lives if you don't go ahead. It's an opportunity that's never going to come back."

Yet stigma sometimes persists around deceased donations.

As a solution, medical experts cite Spain's opt-out rather than opt-in model for use of organs of those who have died, which the UK also moved to this year. But in countries such as Egypt, despite religious leaders now formally endorsing the practice, citizens have been reluctant to sign up.

Tackling the vulnerabilities of victims could also help eliminate organ trafficking, argues Columb, especially when it comes to refugees who sell their organs as a last resort.

"There should be resettlement and that's not just for one country to do, there has to be real international solidarity," he says, insisting relocation pledges by nations to the UN Refugee Agency's resettlement program need to increase.

Finally, there are few controls on the platforms used for recruitment.

Out of the Facebook pages that SciDev.Net found, some have been active for more than a year and have amassed over a thousand followers. Comments come from users all around the world—spanning India, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa and the Philippines.

"Social media has a responsibility," says the UN's Comrie, "if they were really devoted to tackling this it shouldn't be that hard."

SciDev.Net requested a comment from Facebook on the problem, but Facebook did not reply by the time of publication.

What is clear is that the pandemic has not just brought devastation through the millions infected, it has also created the deadly side effect of an ever more thriving organ trafficking industry.


Explore further Organ transplants drop dramatically during pandemic

Provided by SciDev.Net

When scientific journals take sides during an election, the public's trust in science takes a hit

by Kevin L. Young, Bernhard Leidner and Stylianos Syropoulos, The Conversation
Credit: The Conversation

When the scientific establishment gets involved in partisan politics, it decreases people's trust in science, especially among conservatives, according to our recent research.


In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, several prestigious scientific journals took the highly unusual step of either endorsing Joe Biden or criticizing Donald Trump in their pages.

In September, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science wrote a scathing article titled "Trump lied about science," which was followed by other strong critiques from both the New England Journal of Medicine and the cancer research journal Lancet Oncology.

Several other top publications—including Nature and Scientific American – soon followed, with overt endorsements of Biden. The statements focused on each candidate's impact on scientific knowledge and science-based decision-making.

To evaluate whether political endorsements like these might influence people's attitudes toward science, we ran an online survey experiment.

We asked one group of respondents to read a news article about a scientific journal or magazine. We asked a second group of people to read an article that contained the same description of the publication but with additional details about the political position it took and quotes from its actual statements regarding Biden and Trump. Then we asked respondents about their trust in scientists, scientific journals and science as an institution.

We found that trust in science declined among respondents who learned about a publication's partisan statement. The magnitude of the observed effects is small but statistically significant, holds across a range of controls and is persistent across different ways of measuring trust in science. The finding was most pronounced for conservatives, likely because the endorsements were all supportive of Biden and against Trump.

Furthermore, we also found an interesting indirect effect. As trust in science decreased, so did the reported likelihood of complying with scientific recommendations about health behaviors related to COVID-19—for example, wearing face masks.

Why it matters

There's a lot of new research in the area of trust in science, including large polls of the public. Some findings suggest that there is still confidence in scientific expertise—but this declines as soon as science mixes with policy recommendations in people's minds.

Public policy issues have become highly polarized, reflecting larger political trends. While scientific research itself has not driven such polarization, some areas of scientific research, such as climate change, have become very politicized.

Further, while public trust in scientists and science has remained largely stable over the years, the American public is divided along party lines in terms of trust in, and perceived impartiality of, science. Even more concerning, trust in science and medicine has been on the decline since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our findings suggest there may be costs when scientific institutions take partisan stances on electoral politics.

How we did our work

Because a single survey—even with a sample as large as our initial group of 2,975 demographically diverse Americans—could be a fluke, we ran a second survey. We configured a new sample of 1,000 people to be representative of the U.S. population, allowing us to generalize our findings better. The results lined up with those from the first study, indicating that our findings were not a fluke but robust. We will submit our full analysis to a peer-reviewed journal soon.

Because of the experimental design of our study, the effects we have identified can't be due to people's initial views coming into the survey. That's because participants were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, no matter what their prior beliefs on science or partisan positions.

As with any experimental study, we don't know whether these effects will last or not. The highly partisan environment of the 2020 election may make some of our results specific to this time and place.

Explore furtherLancet blasts Trump's virus 'disaster', urges vote for change

Journal information: Science , New England Journal of Medicine , Nature

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Men feel less powerful in their private lives

by Lund University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Men perceive themselves as having less power in their private than in their public lives, a new study from Lund University has suggested. Furthermore, both men and women agree: power in your private life matters more than that in public life.

Power is often associated with men who possess visible status and money. But it can also be exercised in one's private life to initiate and relationships with a partner, children and friends.

Researchers from Lund University, Stockholm University and Gävle University asked 808 Americans which areas they believe are important in life, and where they felt they had the most power.

"The debate on gender equality tends to focus on topics in the public domain such as salaries, leadership in companies and politics, where women are underrepresented. However, our results influence how we should view power today," says Sverker Sikström, professor of psychology at Lund University in Sweden.

The study showed that men perceive themselves as having more power in public life, while women view themselves as having more power in their private life. Notably, the participants valued private life over public life.

When power in the various areas was weighted by the importance participants assigned to each area, perceived gender differences in power disappeared.

"It is difficult to maintain the position that men have more power than women, when women are perceived as having more power in the areas that are viewed as the most important. The case for equality also needs to be made in the private life, where men often lose custody cases, are more negatively affected by separations, and have weaker networks of friends. Thus, equality needs to be improved both for men and women, in both private and public life," says Sverker Sikström.

It is important to note that the study primarily measured perceptions of power, rather than any objective measure of the concept, the researchers stress.


Explore further Death of female soldiers does not diminish support for war
More information: Sverker Sikström et al. Weighting power by preference eliminates gender differences, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234961
Journal information: PLoS ONE

Provided by Lund University

New maps document big-game migrations across the western United States

by United States Geological Survey

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

For the first time, state and federal wildlife biologists have come together to map the migrations of ungulates—hooved mammals such as mule deer, elk, pronghorn, moose and bison—across America's West. The maps will help land managers and conservationists pinpoint actions necessary to keep migration routes open and functional to sustain healthy big-game populations.

"This new detailed assessment of migration routes, timing and interaction of individual animals and herds has given us an insightful view of the critical factors necessary for protecting wildlife and our citizens," said USGS Director Jim Reilly.

The new study, Ungulate Migrations of the Western United States: Volume 1, includes maps of more than 40 big-game migration routes in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.

"I'm really proud of the team that worked across multiple agencies to transform millions of GPS locations into standardized migration maps," said Matt Kauffman, lead author of the report and director of the USGS Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. 

"Many ungulate herds have been following the same paths across western landscapes since before the United States existed, so these maps are long overdue."

The migration mapping effort was facilitated by Department of the Interior Secretary's Order 3362, which has brought greater focus to the need to manage and conserve big-game migrations in the West. It builds on more than two decades of wildlife research enhanced by a technological revolution in GPS tracking collars. The research shows ungulates need to migrate in order to access the best food, which in the warmer months is in the mountains. They then need to retreat seasonally to lower elevations to escape the deep winter snow.

Big-game migrations have grown more difficult as expanding human populations alter habitats and constrain the ability of migrating animals to find the best forage. The herds must now contend with the increasing footprint of fences, roads, subdivisions, energy production and mineral development. Additionally, an increased frequency of droughts due to climate change has reduced the duration of the typical springtime foraging bonanza.

Fortunately, maps of migration habitat, seasonal ranges and stopovers are leading to better conservation of big-game herds in the face of all these changes. Detailed maps can help identify key infrastructure that affect migration patterns and allow conservation officials to work with private landowners to protect vital habitats and maintain the functionality of corridors.

The migration maps also help researchers monitor and limit the spread of contagious diseases, such as chronic wasting disease, which are becoming more prevalent in wild North American cervid populations such as deer, elk and moose.

"Arizona is excited to be part of this effort," said Jim deVos, assistant director for wildlife management with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. "This collaboration has allowed us to apply cutting-edge mapping techniques to decades of Arizona's GPS tracking data and to make those maps available to guide conservation of elk, mule deer and pronghorn habitat."

Many of these mapping and conservation techniques were pioneered in Wyoming. Faced with rapidly expanding oil and gas development, for more than a decade the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the USGS Cooperative Research Unit at the University of Wyoming have worked together to map corridors to assure the continued movements of migratory herds on federal lands.

Migration studies have also reached the Wind River Indian Reservation, where researchers are collaborating with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Fish and Game to track mule deer and elk migrations and doing outreach to tribal youth. Director Reilly emphasized that the interactions with state agencies and the tribes, especially with the Wind River students, have been a hallmark of this effort and have been remarkably successful.

For example, the mapping and official designation of Wyoming's 150-mile Red Desert as part of the Hoback mule deer migration corridor enabled science-based conservation and management decisions. Detailed maps also allowed managers to enhance stewardship by private landowners, whose large ranches are integral to the corridor. Partners funded fence modifications and treatments of cheatgrass and other invasive plants across a mix of public and private segments within the corridor.

"Just like Wyoming, Nevada has long valued our mule deer migrations," said Tony Wasley, director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife. "This effort has provided us with a new level of technical expertise to get these corridors mapped in a robust way. We look forward to using these maps to guide our stewardship of Nevada's mule deer migrations."

In 2018, the USGS and several western states jointly created a Corridor Mapping Team for USGS scientists to work side-by-side with state wildlife managers and provide technical assistance through all levels of government. With coordination from the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the information-sharing and technical support of the team, agency biologists from Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming collaborated to produce migration maps for the five big-game species. In 2019, the Corridor Mapping Team expanded to include mapping work across all states west of the Rocky Mountains.

In addition to managers from the respective state wildlife agencies, the report was coauthored by collaborating biologists from the USDA Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, among others. The maps themselves were produced by cartographers from the USGS and the InfoGraphics Lab at the University of Oregon.


Explore further New study finds surface disturbance can limit mule deer migration
More information: Matthew Kauffman et al, Ungulate migrations of the western United States, Volume 1, (2020). DOI: 10.3133/sir20205101
Provided by United States Geological Survey

Research finds that UK consumers dislike hormones in beef and chlorine washed chicken

by University of Kent

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

New economic research from the University of Kent, University of Reading and IHS Markit, reveals the extent to which UK consumers dislike food produced using production methods such as hormones in beef and chlorine washed chicken.

The research also reveals that UK consumers highly value food production that adheres to food safety standards set by the EU as well as UK produced food. These findings are particularly relevant for post-Brexit trade deals and the ongoing debates about UK food standards.

The researchers conducted choice experiments for four food products examining UK consumer attitudes for food produced using several agricultural production methods currently prohibited in the UK, including chlorine washed chicken and beef from cattle grown using hormone implants.

These methods of food production are common in the USA but are prohibited under EU food safety regulations.

Results confirm that UK consumers dislike food produced using these production methods. In contrast, participants positively valued EU food safety standards as well as the UK as a country of origin for beef, chicken pork and corn production.

These findings are timely given the status of the UK's post-Brexit agricultural trade negotiations and the ongoing debate in Parliament about legislative basis of future food standards.

Professor Iain Fraser, Principle Investigator and Professor of Agri-Environmental Economics at the University of Kent said: "Our findings are a strong indicator of the expectations placed on food production by UK consumers. Methods of food production that fall short in terms of animal welfare draw a negative response from UK consumers, whilst in contrast the presence of EU food safety standards on packaging results in a positive response from consumers. Data from the same project also suggests that consumers tend to strongly value EU food standards regardless of their attitudes towards Brexit.

"As the UK continues to consider post-Brexit agricultural trade arrangements, as well as how to capture industry and public views within the Agricultural Bill currently going through Parliament, these findings support the need to maintain high UK food standards."

Explore further Shoppers could be left in the dark about hazardous hormone-treated beef
More information: Kelvin Balcombe et al, Do Consumers Really Care? An Economic Analysis of Consumer Attitudes Towards Food Produced Using Prohibited Production Methods, Journal of Agricultural Economics (2020). DOI: 10.1111/1477-9552.12410

Provided by University of Kent

COVID shutdown effect on air quality mixed

by Adam Thomas, University of Delaware

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In April 2020, as Delaware and states across the country adopted social distancing measures to deal with the public health crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19), University of Delaware professor Cristina Archer recalled having a bunch of people tell her that the skies looked bluer than usual.

This simple observation led Archer to investigate an important and complicated research question: Did the social distancing measures adopted in the United States, and the resulting lower number of people using various means of transportation, cause an improvement in air quality across the country?

Unfortunately, unlike those observed clear, blue skies, the answer is a bit murky.

"Just because people stayed at home and just because they drove less, it didn't necessarily mean that the air quality was better," said Archer, professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy in UD's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment (CEOE). "By some parameters the air quality was better, but by some other parameters, it was not. And it actually got worse in numerous places."

The results of the study were recently published in the Bulletin of Atmospheric Science and Technology. The study was led by researchers at UD, Penn State and Columbia University.

From UD, coauthors include doctoral students Maryam Golbazi and Nicolas Al Fahel. Other coauthors on the study are Guido Cervone, professor of geography, and meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State, and Carolynne Hultquist, a former doctoral student in Cervone's laboratory and now a postdoctoral researcher at the Earth Institute of Columbia University.

To assess air quality, Archer focused on nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter, specifically PM2.5. The two pollutants are federally regulated and are both primary and secondary pollutants, meaning they can be emitted either directly into the atmosphere or indirectly from chemical reactions.

Nitrogen dioxide is emitted during the fuel combustion by all motor vehicles and airplanes while particulate matter is emitted by airplanes and, among motor vehicles, mostly by diesel vehicles, such as commercial heavy-duty diesel trucks. They are both also emitted by fossil-fuel power plants, although particulate matter is mostly emitted by coal power plants.

"Nitrogen dioxide is a good indicator of traffic," said Archer. "We had evidence already from some preliminary papers in China that nitrogen dioxide had dropped significantly over the areas of China where a lockdown was in place."

The researchers compared measurements of these two pollutants in April 2020 against those in April over the five previous years—from 2015-2019.

They chose April because pretty much every state had some kind of social distancing measure in place by April 1, which led to changes in lifestyle.

"Even in the states where there were not that many infections, there was a change in the mobility of people," said Archer.

To quantify social distancing, the researchers used a mobility index calculated and distributed by Descartes Labs, a predictive intelligence company that compiles large data sets from around the world. Their algorithms accounted for people's maximum distance traveled in a day by tracing the user's location multiple times a day while using selected apps on their smartphones.

"One of the big uncertainties with trying to forecast future air quality is how the atmosphere will respond to lower emissions of certain pollutants," said Cervone. "COVID-19 gave us some insights into the effects of lower emission rates on the environment. We had this unique situation that showed us what happens if people stop driving."

In addition, they used 240 ground monitoring sites to measure nitrogen dioxide and 480 for particulate matter, as well as satellite data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) to measure the total tropospheric column—the lowest layer of earth's atmosphere—of nitrogen dioxide.

Overall, they found that there were large, statistically significant decreases of nitrogen dioxide at 65% of the monitoring sites, with the NASA OMI satellite data showing an average drop in 2020 by 13% over the entire country when compared to the mean of the previous five years.

The particulate matter concentrations, however, were not significantly lower in 2020 than in the past five years. They were also more likely to be higher than lower in April 2020 when compared to the previous five years.

"Not surprisingly, we found that the air quality improved in terms of nitrogen dioxide at all of the stations. So as soon as people started to stay home, traffic was reduced and the air quality was better for nitrogen dioxide," said Archer. "But when we looked at particulate matter, there was almost no difference. There was no improvement on average with respect to particulate matter and at 24% of the sites, April 2020 was worse than the previous five years for particulate matter concentrations."

Golbazi echoed these sentiments saying that the researchers "were expecting that the reduction in transportation would reduce nitrogen dioxide concentrations. However, our results about PM2.5 were surprising because we learned that this scale of reduction in human mobility did not really reduce the PM2.5 concentrations."

This is significant because while nitrogen dioxide is a precursor to other pollutants, such as tropospheric ozone formation and the formation of nitric acid in acid rain, which will eventually lead to negative impacts on human health, particulate matter is dangerous on its own.

Fine particulate matter is an air pollutant that consists of microscopic particles that pose a great risk to human health because they can directly penetrate into human lungs, the bloodstream and even the heart.

Archer said that they are working on a hypothesis as to why particulate matter might have been elevated while nitrogen dioxide decreased.

One possible explanation is that particulate matter is emitted by diesel vehicles, which handle most of the nation's deliveries. While traffic with regard to gasoline-fueled passenger vehicles was down in April, the diesel trucks and the regular freight traffic didn't change significantly.

In addition, more particulate matter is emitted when individuals use heat to warm their personal homes when compared to office spaces.

"In the office, you're very unlikely to have a stove or a fireplace, whereas at home you are," said Archer. "And in April 2020, even though in many states it's already the warm season, in the Northeast, we had an incredibly cold April. So particulate matter is probably responding to those residential heating changes as well as the normality or even above normality of freight traffic and diesel vehicles."

Archer said the next steps in the research are to perform more studies to confirm their hypothesis. In addition, the work will be presented at the upcoming virtual American Geophysical Union fall meeting.

As for those bright, sunny days observed in Delaware at the start of the shutdown in April, Archer said that it was probably just a matter of perception.

"People were saying to me, 'It seems to me the skies are bluer,' but they were not," she said. "It was probably a coincidence that there were some sunny and clear days. In Delaware, actually, our skies were more polluted in April 2020 because of higher-than-average particulate matter concentrations."


Explore further

Pollution levels in UK cities drop as coronavirus impacts on daily life, new data reveals
More information: Cristina L. Archer et al. Changes in air quality and human mobility in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bulletin of Atmospheric Science and Technology (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s42865-020-00019-0
Provided by University of Delaware

Early-life events linked to lung health in young adulthood

by Anne Maria Hammarskjöld, Karolinska Institutet

Chronic bronchitis was found in 1 in 20 young adults in the BAMSE study, while irreversible airflow limitation was seen in 1 in 50. Childhood exposure to air pollutants as well as a history of asthma were associated with both conditions. Active tobacco smoking was linked to chronic bronchitis. Credit: Fuad Bahram

Early-life events, such as the exposure to air pollutants, increase the risk of chronic lung disease in young adulthood, according to new results by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, published in the European Respiratory Journal and Thorax. The studies add to the growing evidence that chronic lung disease in adulthood can be traced back to childhood.

Chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with the hallmark features of phlegm and irreversible airflow limitation, respectively, are lung diseases known to affect adults with a history of long-term smoking.

"To our surprise, we found the prevalence of chronic bronchitis and irreversible airflow limitation to be rather high (5.5% and 2.0%, respectively), considering the young age of the study participants," says senior author Erik Melen, professor and pediatrician, Department of Clinical Science and Education, Karolinska Institutet, Sodersjukhuset.

"Those diseases are usually diagnosed in patients older than 50 years of age," says co-author Anders Linden, professor and pulmonologist, Institute of Environmental Medicine.

In the present studies, the researchers used data from birth up to age 24 years from the follow-up of the Swedish population-based birth cohort BAMSE (Swedish abbreviation for Child (Barn), Allergy, Milieu, Stockholm, Epidemiological), which includes 4,089 participants from the Stockholm area recruited 1994 to 1996.

Analyses performed by Ph.D. student Gang Wang showed that smoking as well as early-life air pollution exposures and childhood asthma are risk factors for chronic bronchitis, whereas breast feeding was identified as a protective factor.

In addition, the early-life risk factors for development of irreversible airflow limitation were recurrent lung infections, asthma, and exposure to air pollution.

"The levels of air pollutants in the current study mainly reflect local emissions from road traffic, which implies that this preventable risk factor may play an important role in the development of chronic lung disease in young adults," says professor Erik Melen.

Given that air pollution levels in Stockholm are comparatively low by international standards, the current findings are important in a global context. And despite the age of the young participants, active smoking was linked to chronic bronchitis, which underlines the negative health effects from even a limited period of exposure to tobacco smoke.

"In conclusion, our two novel studies demonstrate that chronic bronchitis and irreversible airflow limitation do exist in young adults and emphasize the importance of early-life events for maintaining lung health during adulthood. The take home-message is: If you want to prevent disease, early prevention is the key to success."


Explore further Bronchitis in early childhood linked to later lung disease
More information: Assessment of chronic bronchitis and risk factors in young adults: results from BAMSE,European Respiratory Journal, 12 November 2020,

DOI: 10.1183/13993003.02120-2020.

Early-life risk factors for reversible and irreversible airflow limitation in young adults: Findings from the BAMSE birth cohort, Thorax, November 12 2020, 

DOI: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-215884.

Journal information: Thorax , European Respiratory Journal


Provided by Karolinska Institutet

Curiosity takes selfie with 'Mary Anning' on the red planet

by NASA

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie at a location nicknamed "Mary Anning" after a 19th century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region, which scientists believe preserves an ancient habitable environment. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has a new selfie. This latest is from a location named "Mary Anning," after a 19th-century English paleontologist whose discovery of marine-reptile fossils were ignored for generations because of her gender and class. The rover has been at the site since this past July, taking and analyzing drill samples.

Made up of 59 pictures stitched together by imaging specialists, the selfie was taken on Oct. 25, 2020—the 2,922nd Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission.

Scientists on the Curiosity team thought it fitting to name the sampling site after Anning because of the area's potential to reveal details about the ancient environment. Curiosity used the rock drill on the end of its robotic arm to take samples from three drill holes called "Mary Anning," "Mary Anning 3," and "Groken," this last one named after cliffs in Scotland's Shetland Islands. The robotic scientist has conducted a set of advanced experiments with those samples to extend the search for organic (or carbon-based) molecules in the ancient rocks.

Since touching down in Gale Crater in 2012, Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp to search for conditions that might once have supported life. This past year, the rover has explored a region of Mount Sharp called Glen Torridon, which likely held lakes and streams billions of years ago. Scientists suspect this is why a high concentration of clay minerals and organic molecules was discovered there.

It will take months for the team to interpret the chemistry and minerals in the samples from the Mary Anning site. In the meantime, the scientists and engineers who have been commanding the rover from their homes as a safety precaution during the coronavirus pandemic have directed Curiosity to continue its climb of Mount Sharp. The rover's next target of exploration is a layer of sulfate-laden rock that lies higher up the mountain. The team hopes to reach it in early 2021.


Explore further Curiosity says farewell to Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge

Provided by NASA

This tableware made from sugarcane and bamboo breaks down in 60 days

by Cell Press

A woman handling tableware made from bamboos and food industry waste.

Credit: Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University

Scientists have designed a set of "green" tableware made from sugarcane and bamboo that doesn't sacrifice on convenience or functionality and could serve as a potential alternative to plastic cups and other disposable plastic containers. Unlike traditional plastic or biodegradable polymers—which can take as long as 450 years or require high temperatures to degrade—this non-toxic, eco-friendly material only takes 60 days to break down and is clean enough to hold your morning coffee ordinner takeout. This plastic alternative is presented November 12 in the journal Matter.

"To be honest, the first time I came to the US in 2007, I was shocked by the available one-time use plastic containers in the supermarket," says corresponding author Hongli (Julie) Zhu of Northeastern University. "It makes our life easier, but meanwhile, it becomes waste that cannot decompose in the environment." She later saw many more plastic bowls, plates, and utensils thrown into the trash bin at seminars and parties and thought, "Can we use a more sustainable material?"

To find an alternative for plastic-based food containers, Zhu and her colleagues turned to bamboos and one of the largest food-industry waste products: bagasse, also known as sugarcane pulp. Winding together long and thin bamboo fibers with short and thick bagasse fibers to form a tight network, the team molded containers from the two materials that were mechanically stable and biodegradable. The new green tableware is not only strong enough to hold liquids as plastic does and cleaner than biodegradables made from recycled materials that might not be fully de-inked, but also starts decomposing after being in the soil for 30-45 days and completely loses its shape after 60 days.

A cup made from biodegradable materials. Credit: Liu et al

"Making food containers is challenging. It needs more than being biodegradable," said Zhu. "On one side, we need a material that is safe for food; on the other side, the container needs to have good wet mechanical strength and be very clean because the container will be used to take hot coffee, hot lunch."

The researchers added alkyl ketene dimer (AKD), a widely used eco-friendly chemical in the food industry, to increase oil and water resistance of the molded tableware, ensuring the sturdiness of the product when wet. With the addition of this ingredient, the new tableware outperformed commercial biodegradable food containers, such as other bagasse-based tableware and egg cartons, in mechanical strength, grease resistance, and non-toxicity.

The decomposition of the biodegradable tableware over 60 days. Credit: Liu et al

The tableware the researchers developed also comes with another advantage: a significantly smaller carbon footprint. The new product's manufacturing process emits 97% less CO2 than commercially available plastic containers and 65% less CO2 than paper products and biodegradable plastic. The next step for the team is to make the manufacturing process more energy efficient and bring the cost down even more, to compete with plastic. Although the cost of cups made out of the new material ($2,333/ton) is two times lower than that of biodegradable plastic ($4,750/ton), traditional plastic cups are still slightly cheaper ($2,177/ton).

"It is difficult to forbid people to use one-time use containers because it's cheap and convenient," says Zhu. "But I believe one of the good solutions is to use more sustainable materials, to use biodegradable materials to make these one-time use containers."

Explore further  Biodegradable plastics from palm oil waste
More information: Matter, Liu, Luan, and Li et al.: "Biodegradable, Hygienic, and Compostable Tableware from Hybrid Sugarcane and Bamboo Fibers as Plastic Alternative" www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(20)30558-0 ,  

DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2020.10.004

Journal information: Matter

Provided by Cell Press