It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, November 14, 2020
Indian fossils support new hypothesis for origin of hoofed mammals
Published in the prestigious Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir Series, these landmark findings of over 350 fossils, will become a reference point for the origin of the horse, rhino, and tapir
IMAGE: LIFE RECONSTRUCTION OF CAMBAYTHERIUM (ARTWORK BY ELAINE KASMER) view more
CREDIT: ELAINE KASMER
New research published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describes a fossil family that illuminates the origin of perissodactyls - the group of mammals that includes horses, rhinos, and tapirs. It provides insights on the controversial question of where these hoofed animals evolved, concluding that they arose in or near present day India.
With more than 350 new fossils, the 15-year study pieces together a nearly complete picture of the skeletal anatomy of the Cambaytherium - an extinct cousin of perissodactyls that lived on the Indian subcontinent almost 55 million years ago.
Among the findings includes a sheep-sized animal with moderate running ability and features that were intermediate between specialized perissodactyls and their more generalized mammal forerunners. Comparing its bones with many other living and extinct mammals, revealed that Cambaytherium represents an evolutionary stage more primitive than any known perissodactyl, supporting origin for the group in or near India - before they dispersed to other continents when the land connection with Asia formed.
This new landmark article was selected for publication as a part of the prestigious Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir Series, a special yearly publication that provides a more in-depth analysis of the most significant vertebrate fossils.
Cambaytherium, first described in 2005, is the most primitive member of an extinct group that branched off just before the evolution of perissodactyls, providing scientists with unique clues to the ancient origins and evolution of the group.
"The modern orders Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates), Perissodactyla, and Primates appeared abruptly at the beginning of the Eocene around 56 million years ago across the Northern Hemisphere, but their geographic source has remained a mystery," explained Ken Rose, emeritus professor at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study.
Prof. Rose became intrigued by a new hypothesis suggesting that perissodactyls may have evolved in isolation in India. Then India was an island continent drifting northwards, but it later collided with the continent of Asia to form a continuous landmass.
"In 1990, Krause & Maas proposed that these orders might have evolved in India, during its northward drift from Madagascar, dispersing across the northern continents when India collided with Asia."
Armed with this new hypothesis, Rose and colleagues obtained funding from The National Geographic Society to explore India for rare fossil-bearing rocks of the correct age that might provide critical evidence for the origin of perissodactyls and other groups of mammals.
The first trip to Rajasthan in 2001 had little success, "Although we found only a few fish bones on that trip, the following year our Indian colleague, Rajendra Rana, continued exploring lignite mines to the south and came upon Vastan Mine in Gujarat."
This new mine proved much more promising. Rose added: "In 2004 our team was able to return to the mine, where our Belgian collaborator Thierry Smith found the first mammal fossils, including Cambaytherium."
Encouraged, the team returned to the mines and collected fossilized bones of Cambaytherium and many other vertebrates, despite challenging conditions.
"The heat, the constant noise and coal dust in the lignite mines were tough--basically trying to work hundreds of feet down near the bottom of open-pit lignite mines that are being actively mined 24/7," he said.
Through the cumulation of many years of challenging fieldwork, the team can finally shed light on a mammal mystery. Despite the abundance of perissodactyls in the Northern Hemisphere, Cambaytherium suggests that the group likely evolved in isolation in or near India during the Paleocene (66-56 million years ago), before dispersing to other continents when the land connection with Asia formed.
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The team searches for fossils of Cambaytherium in Tadkeshwar Mine, Gujarat, India (Photo by Ken Rose)
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir series represents one of the few print publishing platforms for monographic treatments like that completed for Cambaytherium by Rose and colleagues. Particularly notable is that this work uses an extensive digital modeling (CT/μCT) approach, with the data accessible to researchers via Morphosource (http://www.morphosource.org); phylogenetic information used in the comprehensive study is accessible via Morphobank (http://www.morphobank.org).
Funding used in support of the field and laboratory research was provided by the National Geographic Society, the L.S.B Leakey Foundation, and the US National Science Foundation.
CAPTION
Hot and dusty work in vast open-pit lignite mines in India provide evidence for origins of Perissodactyls (Photo by Ken Rose).
Newly discovered fossil shows small-scale evolutionary changes in an extinct human species
IMAGE: THE DISCOVERY OF A REMARKABLY WELL-PRESERVED FOSSIL FROM THE EXTINCT HUMAN SPECIES PARANTHROPUS ROBUSTUS SUGGESTS RAPID EVOLUTION DURING A TURBULENT PERIOD OF LOCAL CLIMATE CHANGE, RESULTING IN ANATOMICAL CHANGES THAT... view more
CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY JESSE MARTIN AND DAVID STRAIT
Males of the extinct human species Paranthropus robustus were thought to be substantially larger than females -- much like the size differences seen in modern-day primates such as gorillas, orangutans and baboons. But a new fossil discovery in South Africa instead suggests that P. robustus evolved rapidly during a turbulent period of local climate change about 2 million years ago, resulting in anatomical changes that previously were attributed to sex.
An international research team including anthropologists at Washington University in St. Louis reported their discovery from the fossil-rich Drimolen cave system northwest of Johannesburg in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on Nov. 9.
"This is the type of phenomenon that can be hard to document in the fossil record, especially with respect to early human evolution," said David Strait, professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.
The remarkably well-preserved fossil described in the paper was discovered by a student, Samantha Good, who participated in the Drimolen Cave Field School co-led by Strait.
Researchers already knew that the appearance of P. robustus in South Africa roughly coincided with the disappearance of Australopithecus, a somewhat more primitive early human, and the emergence in the region of early representatives of Homo, the genus to which modern people belong. This transition took place very rapidly, perhaps within only a few tens of thousands of years.
"The working hypothesis has been that climate change created stress in populations of Australopithecus leading eventually to their demise, but that environmental conditions were more favorable for Homo and Paranthropus, who may have dispersed into the region from elsewhere," Strait said. "We now see that environmental conditions were probably stressful for Paranthropus as well, and that they needed to adapt to survive."
The new specimen discovered at Drimolen, identified as DNH 155, is clearly a male but differs in important ways from other P. robustus previously discovered at the nearby site of Swartkrans -- where most of the fossils of this species have been found.
Evolution within a species can be difficult to see in the fossil record. Changes may be subtle, and the fossil record is notoriously incomplete.
Usually, the fossil record reveals larger-scale patterns, such as when species or groups of species either appear in the fossil record or go extinct. So this Drimolen discovery provides a rarely seen window into early human evolution.
The new specimen is larger than a well-studied member of the species previously discovered at Drimolen -- an individual known as DNH 7, and presumed to be female -- but is measurably smaller than presumed males from Swartkrans.
"It now looks as if the difference between the two sites cannot simply be explained as differences between males and females, but rather as population-level differences between the sites," said Jesse Martin, a doctoral student at La Trobe University and the co-first author of the study. "Our recent work has shown that Drimolen predates Swartkrans by about 200,000 years, so we believe that P. robustus evolved over time, with Drimolen representing an early population and Swartkrans representing a later, more anatomically derived population."
"One can use the fossil record to help reconstruct the evolutionary relationships between species, and that pattern can provide all sorts of insights into the processes that shaped the evolution of particular groups," Martin said. "But in the case of P. robustus, we can see discrete samples of the species drawn from the same geographic region but slightly different times exhibiting subtle anatomical differences, and that is consistent with change within a species."
"It's very important to be able to document evolutionary change within a lineage," said Angeline Leece of La Trobe University, the other first author of the study. "It allows us to ask very focused questions about evolutionary processes. For example, we now know that tooth size changes over time in the species, which begs the question of why. There are reasons to believe that environmental changes placed these populations under dietary stress, and that points to future research that will let us test this possibility."
Co-director of the Drimolen project, La Trobe University's Andy Herries said, "Like all other creatures on earth, our ancestors adapted and evolved in accordance with the landscape and environment around them. For the first time in South Africa, we have the dating resolution and morphological evidence that allows us to see such changes in an ancient hominin lineage through a short window of time."
The evidence of rapid but significant climate change during this period in South Africa comes from a variety of sources. Critically, fossils indicate that certain mammals associated with woodland or bushland environments went extinct or became less prevalent -- while other species associated with drier, more open environments appeared locally for the first time.
"P. robustus is remarkable in that it possesses a number of features in its cranium, jaws and teeth indicating that it was adapted to eat a diet consisting of either very hard or very tough foods," Strait said. "We think that these adaptations allowed it to survive on foods that were mechanically difficult to eat as the environment changed to be cooler and drier, leading to changes in local vegetation.
"But the specimens from Drimolen exhibit skeletal features suggesting that their chewing muscles were positioned in such a way as to make them less able to bite and chew with as much force as the later P. robustus population from Swartkrans," he said. "Over the course of 200,000 years, a dry climate likely led to natural selection favoring the evolution of a more efficient and powerful feeding apparatus in the species."
Leece said it was notable that P. robustus appeared at roughly the same time as our direct ancestor Homo erectus, as documented by an infant H. erectus cranium that the team discovered at the same Drimolen site in 2015.
"These two vastly different species, H. erectus with their relatively large brains and small teeth, and P. robustus with their relatively large teeth and small brains, represent divergent evolutionary experiments," Leece said. "While we were the lineage that won out in the end, the fossil record suggests that P. robustus was much more common than H. erectus on the landscape two million years ago."
More broadly, the researchers think that this discovery serves as a cautionary tale for recognizing species in the fossil record.
A large number of fossil human species have been discovered over the past quarter century, and many of these new species designations are based on a small number of fossils from only one or a few sites in small geographic areas and narrow time ranges.
"We think that paleoanthropology needs to be a bit more critical about interpreting variation in anatomy as evidence for the presence of multiple species," Strait said. "Depending on the ages of fossil samples, differences in bony anatomy might represent changes within lineages rather than evidence of multiple species."
Project Co-Director Stephanie Baker of the University of Johannesburg added, "Drimolen is fast becoming a hotspot for early hominin discoveries, which is a testament to the current team's dedication to holistic excavation and post-field analysis. The DNH 155 cranium is one of the best-preserved P. robustus specimens known to science. This is an example of what careful, fine-scale research can tell us about our distant ancestors."
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Fossil shark turns in to mystery pterosaur
Palaeontologists have made a surprising discovery while searching through 100-year-old fossil collections from the UK -- a new mystery species of pterosaur, unlike anything seen before
IMAGE: PTEROSAURS WITH THESE TYPES OF BEAKS ARE BETTER KNOWN AT THE TIME PERIOD FROM NORTH AFRICA, SO IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO ASSUME A LIKENESS TO THE NORTH AFRICAN ALANQA. view more
CREDIT: ATTRIBUTED TO DAVIDE BONADONNA
Palaeontologists have made a surprising discovery while searching through 100-year-old fossil collections from the UK - a new mystery species of pterosaur, unlike anything seen before.
Lead author of the project, University of Portsmouth PhD student Roy Smith, discovered the mystery creature amongst fossil collections housed in the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge and the Booth Museum at Brighton that were assembled when phosphate mining was at its peak in the English Fens between 1851 and 1900. These fossils found while workmen were digging phosphate nodules were frequently sold to earn a little bit of extra money.
It was while Smith was examining the fossils of shark spines that he made the amazing discovery. The fossils were actually fragments of jaws of toothless pterosaurs, which do indeed resemble shark fin spines, but there are many subtle differences that allow them to be distinguished.
Smith says: "One such feature are tiny little holes where nerves come to the surface and are used for sensitive feeding by the pterosaurs. Shark fin spines do not have these, but the early palaeontologists clearly missed these features. Two of the specimens discovered can be identified as a pterosaur called Ornithostoma, but one additional specimen is clearly distinct and represents a new species. It is a palaeontological mystery.
"Unfortunately, this specimen is too fragmentary to be the basis for naming the new species. Sadly, it is doubtful if any more remains of this pterosaur will be discovered, as there are no longer any exposures of the rock from which the fossils came. But I'm hopeful that other museum collections may contain more examples, and as soon as the Covid restrictions are lifted I will continue my search".
Smith's supervisor, Professor Dave Martill, University of Portsmouth, says: "The little bit of beak is tantalising in that it is small, and simply differs from Ornithostoma in subtle ways, perhaps in the way that a great white egret might differ from a heron. Likely the differences in life would have been more to do with colour, call and behaviour than in the skeleton".
"Pterosaurs with these types of beaks are better known at the time period from North Africa, so it would be reasonable to assume a likeness to the North African Alanqa (pictured below). This is extremely exciting to have discovered this mystery pterosaur right here in the UK.
"This find is significant because it adds to our knowledge of these ancient and fascinating flying prehistoric reptiles, but also demonstrates that such discoveries can be made, simply by re-examining material in old collections."
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The results of Roy Smith's discovery have been published in The Proceedings of the Geologists' Association Link.
The third author of the study was Dr David Unwin from the University of Leicester's Centre for Palaeobiology Research.
The Barbegal watermills in southern France are a unique complex dating back to the 2nd century AD. The construction with 16 waterwheels is, as far as is known, the first attempt in Europe to build a machine complex on an industrial scale. The complex was created when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power. However, little is known about technological advances, particularly in the field of hydraulics, and the spread of knowledge at the time. A team of scientists led by Professor Cees Passchier from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has now gained new knowledge about the construction and principle of the water supply to the mills in Barbegal. The research results were published in Scientific Reports.
A mill complex consisting of a total of 16 water wheels in two parallel rows
Watermills were one of the first sources of energy that did not depend on the muscle strength of humans or animals. In the Roman Empire they were used to make flour and sawing stone and wood. As one of the first industrial complexes in European history, the Barbegal watermills are an outstanding example of the development at that time. The mill complex consisted of 16 water wheels in a parallel arrangement of eight wheels each, separated by central buildings and fed by an aqueduct. The upper parts of the complex were destroyed and no traces of the wooden structures have been preserved, which is why the type of mill wheels and how they worked remained a mystery for a long time.
However, carbonate deposits that had formed from the flowing water on the wooden components remained. These were stored in the archaeological museum in Arles and only recently examined in detail. The researchers found an imprint of an unusual, elbow-shaped flume that must have been part of the mill construction. "We combined measurements of the water basins with hydraulic calculations and were able to show that the flume to which this elbow-shaped piece belonged very likely supplied the mill wheels in the lower basins of the complex with water," said Professor Cees Passchier. "The shape of this flume was unknown from other watermills, either from Roman or more recent times. We were therefore puzzled as to why the flume was designed this way and what it was used for."
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Sketch of the Barbegal mill complex with the lower three water basins with mill wheels and water flumes: The lower basins most probably had elbow-shaped flumes
An elbow-shaped flume as a unique adaptation for the Barbegal mills
\At first glance, the team found such a flume unnecessary and even disadvantageous, because it shortens the height from which the water falls onto the mill wheel. "However, our calculations show that the oddly shaped flume is a unique adaptation for the Barbegal mills," explained Passchier. The distribution of the carbonate deposits in the elbow-shaped flume shows that it was inclined slightly backwards against the direction of the current. This created a maximum flow rate in the first, steep leg of the flume, and at the same time the water jet to the mill wheel obtained the correct angle and speed. In the complicated mill system, with small water basins, this unique solution was more efficient than using a traditional, straight water channel. "That shows us the ingenuity of the Roman engineers who built the complex," emphasized Passchier.
"Another discovery was that the wood of the flume was probably cut with a mechanical, water-powered saw, which is possibly the first documented mechanical wood saw - again evidence of industrial activity in ancient times." The research was carried out by a multidisciplinary team of experts in geology, geochemistry, hydraulics, dendrochronology, and archaeology.
The carbonate deposits that formed on the ancient hydraulic structures are an important tool for the researchers for archaeological reconstructions. In an earlier project, the team led by Professor Cees Passchier was able to show that the flour from the Barbegal mills was probably used to make ship biscuits. "The carbonate deposits give us extremely exciting insights into the skills of Roman technicians at a time that can be seen as the direct predecessor of our civilization," added Passchier, Professor of Tectonic Physics and Structural Geology at the JGU Institute of Geosciences from 1993 to 2019, now Senior Research Professor in Geoarchaeology.
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Carbonate deposits from the side wall of the elbow-shaped water flume, which have formed on the inside of the wooden flume. The vertical patterns are imprints of saw marks on the wood.
Measuring the true cost of conservation
Environmental conservation expert discusses how new research will play a key role in promoting a greener future
IMAGE: ESTIMATED FAIR MARKET VALUE OF ALL PROPERTIES IN THE UNITED STATES (3D VISUALIZATION). view more
CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTOPH NOLTE, BOSTON UNIVERSITY.
For decades, scientists have been warning about potential future effects of global climate change, including more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought, and sharp increases in the number, duration, and intensity of tropical storms. And since the start of 2020, we've seen natural disasters in record-breaking numbers, from the wildfires that ravaged California and Colorado, to most consecutive days with temperatures skyrocketing over 100 degrees in places like Arizona. Environmental concerns are continually creeping to a broader, national stage: issues of climate change and conservation received more attention during the first presidential debate on September 29, 2020 than in any other presidential debate in history.
When it comes to the topic of safeguarding the environment, Boston University Earth & Environment Assistant Professor Christoph Nolte is hardly a newcomer. He's spent the majority of his academic career studying the effectiveness of conservation, asking key questions about where concerted efforts take place, and what difference they make for our world at large. To inform future decisions about conservation policy, Assistant Professor Nolte has now created the first high-resolution map of land value in the United states -- a tool he says will better estimate environmental conservation costs, inform policy recommendations, and help peer academics conduct their own research on rebuilding and protecting what's left of our natural resources and the biodiversity within our ecosystems. Boston University interviewed Nolte to learn more about his research and its impact.
You've created the first high-resolution map of U.S. land value. What spurred this research?
I was dissatisfied with the quality of cost data in conservation research. Land conservation decisions are about trade-offs. If we wish to keep forest carbon on the ground, species' habitats intact, wetlands functional, or landscapes beautiful, conservation usually means that we also give up something: the benefits from alternative land uses. Arguments in favor of more conservation are widespread. For instance, Harvard University's E.O. Wilson suggests that 50% of the Earth should be protected. However, those points are incomplete if they are not also explicit about what we should be giving up where, who wins and who loses, and who gets to decide.
Ignoring costs can make us blind to the negative effects of regulation, often borne by those without a voice. In the case of voluntary conservation programs, ignoring cost can mean that we end up with a proposal, but insufficient funding. If we want to make informed societal decisions about conservation efforts, we need reliable, publicly accessible estimates of its cost.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to get good data for conservation cost. Conservation organizations don't freely share their financial records. Land prices can be good substitutes for data on conservation cost, but such data is valuable, sensitive, and unavailable to the public in most countries. So when large-scale land price data in the United States became available to academics for free for the first time, this created an exciting opportunity to create the first high-resolution map of land value and see how well it would predict conservation cost.
CAPTION
Left: differences in policy budgets needed to achieve proposed species protection targets in the United States. "Withey et al." refers to the cost proxy used in previous studies. Right: changes in spatial priorities for species conservation when high-resolution land cost estimates are
What data did you use to generate this map?
There are many datasets behind this map. Perhaps the most important is a nationwide database of properties and their sales. This dataset came from Zillow, the real estate company, which obtains the data from public records and makes it available to academics and nonprofits. In my research group, we developed a system that links this data to digital maps of property boundaries. This allows us to obtain detailed information on land characteristics: buildings, terrain, land cover, road access, water access, flood risk, local demographics, nearby amenities, and so on. This data is fed into a machine learning algorithm, which learns to predict sales prices from its knowledge of the characteristics of each property. After the algorithm is trained, I let it predict the sales prices of every property in the country. The result is this map.
What does this map tell us about environmental conservation costs? Why is it essential to have accurate land value data?
I found that most of the cost estimates that were used in the literature have underestimated the cost of conservation in the United States. This underestimation is particularly large near cities, where land values tend to be much higher than previous proxies suggested. In other words, it means that we will need substantially higher levels of funding than previously assumed if we want to achieve certain environmental goals, such as protecting all floodplains from development or protecting species habitat in the face of climate change.
How can your research help to educate policymakers on future conservation plans and priorities? Why is this important?
I believe that it is good to be realistic about what a given level of funding can achieve. For instance, in August, congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act, a historic bipartisan bill that makes $4.5 billion dollars of federal funding available for land protection. If previous estimates of conservation cost were correct, this budget could help reach us proposed habitat protection needs for all species in the U.S. However, the new cost data suggests that even such an unprecedented budget covers merely 5% of what is actually needed. That's a big difference!
More accurate cost data can also change recommendations about where conservation investments should go. When I reproduced recent work, about one quarter of the sites recommended for species protection shifted from one location to another, for instance, from expensive Long Island to slightly less expensive Southeastern Massachusetts. While this result should be taken with a grain of salt, it shows that the quality of cost data matters. The good news is that the cost map is now published, so anyone can incorporate it in their analyses and revisit their earlier findings.
CAPTION
Estimated fair market value of all properties in the United States
How can people best use this data when thinking about environmental conservation as it relates to their day to day lives?
Data on the cost of conservation helps us be real about the actual magnitude and severity of the conservation problem we are facing as a society. Many of us feel positively about the benefits that conserved lands provide. However, not all of us are willing to make sacrifices to protect these lands, whether it is by reducing our own ecological footprints, or by voting in favor of local land use regulations or measures that increase taxes to fund conservation. In the midst of this, we are exposed to advertising that suggests that we can cheaply "offset" our effects on the environment -- for instance, that we can become "carbon-neutral" for a few dollars by purchasing carbon offsets when we fly.
A closer look at many cheap offsetting schemes suggests that they don't actually reduce emission by very much. But their existence has the side-effect that we are getting our hopes up that there might be a cheap way to get around the conservation problem. In reality, win-win situations are rare, and trade-offs are real. This might be difficult to accept, but we should not ignore it, even if we so desperately want to feel good about our own levels of consumption.
Despite costs being much higher than originally estimated, why is conservation still such an important investment?
Answers to this question have two dimensions: science and values. Science helps us understand the consequences of our actions. If we want to mitigate climate change, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Land conservation can help, for instance, by conserving forests and wetlands, reducing urban sprawl, or increasing opportunities for local recreation. If we want to prevent species extinctions, we need to protect and restore threatened habitat, conserve lands in climate refugia, and build ecological corridors, so species can move as temperatures rise. And if we want to avoid damages from flooding, we should protect more floodplains from development.
Science tells us about the consequences of our actions, but it doesn't tell us what to do. The more difficult question is how much we, as individuals and as a society, care about these outcomes, and what we are willing to give up for them. There are 8 billion of us. What each of us cares about is shaped by our diverse beliefs and morals, our upbringing, the people in our lives, the media we consume, the things we enjoy doing, etc. Given my affiliation, it probably won't be a surprise that I feel positively about policies that reduce our collective human footprint, but it is unwise to elevate anyone's individual worldview to a standard. Instead, I think what it is desirable to have a broader societal conservation of well-informed citizens that make those decisions together. My job, alongside that of thousands of other colleagues, is to provide the tools that can help us gain clarity about what's at stake.
Are there any other surprising findings? Could this data have other applications in areas outside of conservation (for example, real estate)?
I was surprised by the predictive power of the algorithm. As a validation step, I tested whether estimated land values could predict the actual cost of more than 4,000 public land acquisitions for conservation that were distributed all over the country. I expected that the predictions would outperform the proxies used in earlier studies, which they did. But to my surprise, the predictions even outperformed the estimates of tax assessors. Tax assessors are tasked with estimating the value of all properties in a given jurisdiction for taxation purposes, and part of that process often involves estimating the "fair market value" of each property. Because assessors work locally and know their area much better than a national dataset does, I would have expected their estimates to vastly outperform mine. However, instead, I found that mine were 29% more accurate. This does raise the question of why these differences exist and opens up new interesting avenues for scrutinizing existing methods for property taxation.
In your opinion, what is the single most important conservation issue facing the world today?
It would be difficult to answer this question without pointing towards climate change. It affects everything else that we think about in conservation. If we don't stop climate change, conserving species where they are today won't conserve them in the future. Future flooding and sea level rise will be a lot less manageable. And we worry a lot more about the conservation of forests and wetlands today because we know that their loss fuels this fire. At a project level, if you want to persuade people that conservation is a good idea, talking about rare or interesting species, beautiful landscapes, and recreational opportunities might get you more traction. But many of those efforts might be a drop in the bucket if we don't address this massive elephant in the room.
What do you hope people take away from this project? What are you planning to research next?
For me, for my students, and for colleagues at universities all over the country, the synthesis of this rich database has created novel opportunities for empirical research that were unthinkable just a few years ago. We currently support research on the economic risks from flooding, oil spills and hazardous waste, the economic impacts of land regulations, the benefits of water quality and priorities for emissions reduction from forest protection. My own curiosity has mostly to do with projects that help people protect the places and species they love: identifying opportunities for protection, scrutinizing the effectiveness of existing programs, and reducing the informational barriers to get conservation done. It is an exciting time to do this research, and I'm glad that so many fantastic colleagues around the country are interested in advancing the frontiers of knowledge together.
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A cost-effective program to fight COVID-19 in resource-challenged countries
A multifaceted public health strategy can substantially reduce infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 while being cost-effective in low-and-middle-income countries.
BOSTON - A public health strategy that combines contact tracing and community-based screening with isolation and quarantine centers can substantially reduce infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 while being cost-effective in low-and-middle-income countries like South Africa, a study by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has found. In a paper published in The Lancet Global Health, the research team reported that this battery of health interventions, implemented either fully or partially, could offer good value for the money and, in some scenarios, even reduce health care expenditures in South Africa.
"Our results demonstrate to public policymakers that a multi-faceted COVID-19 strategy can prevent infections and save lives even where budgets and resources are constrained," says investigator Krishna Reddy, MD, with the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at MGH, and corresponding author of the study.
By September 2020, 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) had each reported more than 10,000 COVID-19 cases. Raising the health risk to populations in this region are high urban density, limited opportunities for physical distancing, and poor access to hygiene and health care facilities. In the past, the World Health Organization has issued recommendations for disease surveillance and control in low- and middle-income countries, and some have implemented programs like contact tracing and community-based screening in response to previous infectious disease epidemics like Ebola and tuberculosis.
The MGH research team, in collaboration with the Africa Health Research Institute, developed a COVID-19 microsimulation model to evaluate clinical and economic outcomes of various combinations of five complementary epidemic control interventions in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Those interventions are health care testing, where diagnostic testing is performed at designated health care centers; contact tracing to identify those who may have come in close contact with someone with COVID-19; isolation centers for people with COVID-19; mass symptom screening of local populations by community health workers; and quarantine centers for people who have been in close contact with someone with COVID-19 but have tested negative.
A public health program built on all five interventions in response to the pandemic could reduce COVID-19 deaths by 94% compared to the use of health care testing alone over one year, the study found. It also estimated that a program combining all interventions would cost an additional $340 per year of life saved, which represents similar or better value than many other established public health initiatives in South Africa, including tuberculosis diagnostic testing and cervical cancer screening. In some epidemic growth scenarios, combinations of interventions saved health care costs over one year compared with health care testing alone. "Our results show that these upfront investments can both save lives and actually lower health care costs by substantially reducing the need for hospitalizations for COVID-19," says Mark Siedner, MD, MPH, with the MGH Medical Practice Evaluation Center, and senior author of the stud
Many countries have the infrastructures in place for some or all of these interventions, the researchers pointed out. Contact tracing and community-based screening, for example, have frequently been deployed in the past through networks of community health workers. And isolation centers, which are likely to require the greatest investment, have been implemented successfully in response to Ebola epidemics in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where health care resources are among the scarcest in the world. According to the MGH research team, isolation centers would be particularly effective in areas with high household density and limited capacity for in-home isolation. Quarantine centers were also shown by the MGH microsimulation model to be a cost-effective way to reduce the health impact of epidemics, but their implementation must recognize social and human rights issues that have plagued mandatory quarantine in some settings.
"Even where quarantine centers are not feasible due to lack of public support, implementing the other interventions we described can provide major clinical benefits in an economical manner," stresses Reddy. "The bottom line is that prevention goes a long way, and we're hopeful that decision makers will work to translate the evidence we've uncovered into effective public policy and interventions for pandemic control."
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Reddy is an investigator in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at MGH and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Siedner is an investigator in the Division of Infectious Diseases at MGH and an associate professor at HMS, and a faculty member of the Africa Health Research Institute. Co-authors include Fatma Shebl, MD, PhD; Julia Foote; Justine Scott, MPH; Kenneth Freedberg, MD, MSc; and Pooyan Kazemian, PhD, with the Medical Practice Evaluation Center, MGH, and Guy Harling, ScD at the Africa Health Research Institute.
Funding support for the study came from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Royal Society and Wellcome Trust.
About the Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2020, Mass General was named #6 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
When air quality worsens, either from the smoke and ozone of summer or the inversion of winter, most of us stay indoors. But for individuals experiencing homelessness, that's not always an option. In a new study, researchers from the University of Utah document the effect of air pollution on people experiencing homelessness, finding that nearly all notice and are impacted by air pollution, whether or not they reside in shelters.
People experiencing homelessness, particularly those who sleep outdoors at night, are the most vulnerable and exposed population to environmental hazards, says Daniel Mendoza, a research assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and visiting assistant professor in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning. Mendoza also holds appointments as an adjunct assistant professor in the Pulmonary Division in the School of Medicine and as a senior scientist at NEXUS. "Many individuals sleep near a road or under a bridge," he says, "which leads to exposure to high levels of traffic related emissions. Further compounding the issue is the fact that during sleep, many people breathe through their mouth and breathe more deeply."
This life lived outdoors makes homelessness an environmental justice issue, says Jeff Rose, assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.
"People experiencing unsheltered homelessness often live, eat, sleep, socialize, use the bathroom, and other basic human functions outdoors, with close and regular interaction with the environment," he says. Environmental justice research looks at uneven exposures to pollution and other environmental risks. "Increasingly, scholars are considering people experiencing unsheltered homelessness as fitting in this framework."
While other researchers have looked at how people experiencing homelessness experience environmental injustice in the form of access to safe drinking water or parks, the U team says it is among the first to look at how people experiencing homelessness also experience the intermittent poor air quality of Salt Lake County.
Gathering experiences
To collect people's stories, Angelina DeMarco, a doctoral student in anthropology and Rebecca Hardenbrook, a doctoral student in mathematics, went to several Salt Lake City resource centers to meet with people experiencing sheltered homelessness.
"We sat in the dining hall of each center and invited all residents that came by to interview," DeMarco says. In partnership with the Volunteers of America outreach team, they also interviewed people at the Salt Lake City library, on downtown streets, outside the St. Vincent de Paul dining hall and at local parks. Outdoor interviews took place often during harsh winter conditions, DeMarco says.
They interviewed everyone they encountered, 138 people total, and asked them open-ended questions about when and how they knew the air was polluted, and how air pollution make them feel. With the interviewees' permission, the researchers also examined health records kept by the state Homeless Management Information System.
Sheltered and unsheltered
More than half of the participants reported having physical reactions to air pollution including headaches and difficulty breathing, and more than a third reported emotional stress associated with air pollution. 89% reported seeking medical treatment for their symptoms.
But the researchers also wanted to look at whether the duration of homelessness or residing within a shelter would affect individuals' experiences with air pollution. Surprisingly, they found no significant differences in heart and lung health outcomes between sheltered and unsheltered individuals, as well as between people experiencing chronic (more than a year) or non-chronic homelessness.
"These results indicate that sheltered and unsheltered, short-term and long-term homeless populations experience negative health outcomes that are associated with air pollution," DeMarco says. The mental health impacts of air pollution exposure, she says, merit additional study.
The message for governmental leaders, the researchers say, is that shelters and day centers that protect people from the elements may not be shielding them from air pollution and other environmental impacts, which can have a significant effect on their health. Affordable housing policies and efforts to place people experiencing homelessness in housing, they say, may do much more to protect a vulnerable population from an environmental hazard.
IMAGE: YASHU DHAMIJA, MD, IS A FELLOW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. view more
CREDIT: COLLEEN KELLEY/UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
A University of Cincinnati immunologist is recommending that individuals with contact dermatitis choose facial masks made without elastic or rubber that allow them to stay safe in the midst of COVID-19 while avoiding possible allergic reactions.
Yashu Dhamija, MD, a first-year fellow in the UC Division of Immunology, Allergy, and Rheumatology, presented his findings in an abstract while discussing a medically challenging case at the virtual American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) scientific meeting held November 13-15.
"How do you help patients manage a condition that puts them at risk for something like COVID-19?" asked Dhamija. "We definitely want our patients to use masks and apply social distancing. That's a must. But they can avoid elastic components and use face masks that use the knot tie method around the back of the head to keep the masks up."
Dhamija treated a patient who had been diagnosed with contact dermatitis, a reaction to allergens that touch or have contact with the skin. It is different from allergies to things such as dog or cat dander because with contact dermatitis the body's response is not immediate."
"What makes contact dermatitis tricky is that it can be delayed so you may expose your skin to something and a reaction may not occur until days later," said Dhamija. "Intermittent reactions can be tricky because you don't know what the patient is exposing themselves to and the allergen could be at work or home."
The case report Dhamija discussed before the ACAAI involved a patient who visited a hospital emergency room three times during the spring with complaints of a facial rash and eyelid swelling. The patient was sent home with prednisone and was seen one to two weeks later during a telemedicine appointment during which he reported the rash had been going on for two weeks.
Physicians realized the rash occurred where the elastic parts of his facial mask would rest, explains Kristin Schmidlin, MD, an assistant professor in the UC Division of Immunology, Allergy, and Rheumatology and co-author of the abstract at ACAAI.
Schmidlin said physicians reduced the amount of prednisone and advised use of topical triamcinolone, a steroid that helps reduce inflammation and is commonly used in treating mouth sores. She said the patient was also advised to use a cotton-based, dye-free mask without elastic.
The patient was able to find a cloth mask and reported improved symptoms a week later, said Schmidlin.
"Instead of using elastics in a facial mask, I would modify it and use cotton-based knot ties around the back of the head to hold the mask in place," says Dhamija. "We also advise patients to call companies that make facial masks to find out what's in the product if labeling does not contain enough details."
"There are immune reactions to allergens that can be life-threatening but when it comes to contact dermatitis, it doesn't escalate that far. We can quickly identify the allergen and stop the offending agent. But, some cases can be severe," said Dhamija. "Treatment usually means avoiding the agent or we can use a topical or oral steroid if needed. It depends on how severe the reaction is and how much of the body is affected. We also take into account how it is impacting the patient's life or ability to work, for example."
"Patch testing is a tool we use to detect contact dermatitis," said Dhamija. "It's good to speak with your primary care doctor or ask for a referral to an allergist if you have concerns. Patch testing involves placing a compound we suspect is a problem to your skin. We have you return a few days later and we see if there is a reaction."
Dhamija said there is abundant literature documenting patients with contact dermatitis because of allergens such as elastic bands in FFP2 masks, N95 respirators, neoprene rubber masks and medical masks containing formaldehyde or rubber components using carbamates or thiurams.
