Landmark human study is first to reveal strong links between gut microbes, diet and health

Researchers identified microbes that positively or negatively correlate with an individual's risk of certain serious conditions, including diabetes and heart disease

UNIVERSITÀ DI TRENTO

 EWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

Research News

 

Diets rich in certain plant-based foods are linked with the presence of gut microbes that are associated with a lower risk of developing conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to recent results from a large-scale international study that included researchers from King's College London, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the University of Trento, Italy, and health science start-up company ZOE.

Key Takeaways

• The largest and most detailed study of its kind uncovered strong links between a person's diet, the microbes in their gut (microbiome) and their health.
• International study uses metagenomics and blood chemical profiling to uncover a panel of 15 gut microbes associated with lower risks (and 15 with higher risks) for common illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.
• Some of the identified microbes are so novel that they have not yet been named.
• These findings could be used to provide personalized dietary advice for better health, based on gut microbiome testing.

The PREDICT 1 study analyzed detailed data on the composition of participants' gut microbiomes, their dietary habits, and cardiometabolic blood biomarkers. The researchers found evidence that the microbiome is linked with specific foods and diets, and that, in turn, certain microbes in the gut are linked to biomarkers of metabolic disease. Surprisingly, the microbiome has a greater association to these markers than other factors, such as genetics. Their report, authored by Dr. Francesco Asnicar (University of Trento) and Dr. Sarah Berry (King's College London) and coordinated by Tim Spector (King's College London) and Nicola Segata (University of Trento), appears in Nature Medicine.

Dr. Sarah Berry, Reader in Nutrition Sciences at King's College London said, "As a nutritional scientist, finding novel microbes that are linked to specific foods, as well as metabolic health, is exciting. Given the highly personalised composition of each individuals' microbiome, our research suggests that we may be able to modify our gut microbiome to optimize our health by choosing the best foods for our unique biology."

For example, the findings reveal that having a microbiome rich in Prevotella copri and Blastocystis species was associated with maintaining a favorable blood sugar level after a meal. Other species were linked to lower post-meal levels of blood fats and markers of inflammation.

Professor Tim Spector, Epidemiologist from King's College London, who started the PREDICT study program and is scientific founder of ZOE explains, "When you eat, you're not just nourishing your body, you're feeding the trillions of microbes that live inside your gut."

Researchers also discovered that the makeup of subjects' gut microbiome was strongly associated with specific nutrients, foods, food groups and overall diet composition. The researchers found robust microbiome-based biomarkers of obesity, as well as markers for cardiovascular disease and impaired glucose tolerance, which are key risk factors for COVID. These findings can be used to help create personalized eating plans designed specifically to improve one's health.

"I am very excited that we have been able to translate this cutting edge science into an at-home test in the time it has taken for the research to be peer reviewed and published," says Spector. "Through ZOE, we can now offer the public an opportunity to discover which of these microbes they have living in their gut. After taking ZOE's at-home test, participants will receive personalized recommendations for what to eat, based on comparing their results with the thousands of participants in the PREDICT studies. By using machine learning, we can then share with you our calculations of how your body will respond to any food, in real-time through an app."

The researchers found in subjects who ate a diet rich in healthy, plant-based foods were more likely to have high levels of 'good' gut microbes. Conversely, diets containing more highly processed plant-based foods were more likely to be associated with the 'bad' gut microbes.

"We were surprised to see such large, clear groups of what we informally call 'good' and 'bad' microbes emerging from our analysis," affirmed Nicola Segata, PhD, professor and principal investigator of the Computational Metagenomics Lab at the University of Trento, Italy and leader of the microbiome analysis in the study. "It is also exciting to see that microbiologists know so little about many of these microbes that they are not even named yet. This is now a big area of focus for us, as we believe they may open new insights in the future into how we could use the gut microbiome as a modifiable target to improve human metabolism and health."

PREDICT 1 was an international collaboration to study links between diet, the microbiome, and biomarkers of cardiometabolic health. The researchers gathered microbiome sequence data, detailed long-term dietary information, and results of hundreds of cardiometabolic blood markers from just over 1,100 participants in the U.K. and the U.S. PREDICT 2 completed its primary investigations in 2020 with a further 1,000 U.S participants, and PREDICT 3 launched a few months ago.

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About King's College London

King's College London is one of the top 10 UK universities in the world (QS World University Rankings, 2018/19) and among the oldest in England. King's has more than 31,000 students (including more than 12,800 postgraduates) from some 150 countries worldwide, and some 8,500 staff.

King's has an outstanding reputation for world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), eighty-four per cent of research at King's was deemed 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent' (3* and 4*).

Since our foundation, King's students and staff have dedicated themselves in the service of society. King's will continue to focus on world-leading education, research and service, and will have an increasingly proactive role to play in a more interconnected, complex world. Visit our website to find out more about Vision 2029, King's strategic vision for the next 12 years to 2029, which will be the 200th anniversary of the founding of the university.

World-changing ideas. Life-changing impact. Kcl.ac.uk

About ZOE

ZOE is a healthcare science company helping people understand their body's responses to food. By using machine learning combined with large scale human studies, ZOE is decoding the impact of nutrition on health. ZOE leads the PREDICT Studies and the COVID Symptom Study, which are the world's largest community research programmes of their kind in nutrition and COVID-19 respectively.

Located in London and Boston, ZOE was founded by Professor Tim Spector of King's College London, data science leader Jonathan Wolf and entrepreneur George Hadjigeorgiou. ZOE was named one of the Deloitte Fast 50 Rising Stars in 2019 for the company's contribution to science enabled by technology and machine learning.

For more information on ZOE's mission and science, visit joinzoe.com.

About the University of Trento

The University of Trento is a dynamic, research-oriented university, with excellent teaching and research opportunities and top-notch facilities. Today, the University (founded in 1962) is still small-medium in size, but great in quality, capable of playing a high-profile role at European and international level.

Moreover, the University's 11 Departments and 3 Centres cover a wide range of academic subjects and specializations. Most of the courses offered at the UniTrento are taught in English. This broad academic offer is complemented by a proven experience in the organization of double, multiple and joint degrees.

Additionally, national and international rankings place the University of Trento among the best Italian universities.

Furthermore, UniTrento participates in many research networks and has signed prestigious cooperation agreements with important research centres and universities throughout the world. Researchers and young entrepreneurs from all over the world find fertile ground in Trento to create and develop start-ups.

For further information: https://www.unitn.it/en

Study reveals strong links between gut microbes, diet and metabolic health

A large-scale international study uses metagenomics and blood analysis to uncover gut microbes associated with the risks for common illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

Research News

BOSTON - A diet rich in healthy and plant-based foods is linked with the presence and abundance of certain gut microbes that are also associated with a lower risk of developing conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to recent results from a large-scale international study that was co-senior authored by Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH, from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The report appears in Nature Medicine.

"This study demonstrates a clear association between specific microbial species in the gut, certain foods, and risk of some common diseases," says Chan, a gastroenterologist, chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at MGH, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "We hope to be able to use this information to help people avoid serious health problems by changing their diet to personalize their gut microbiome."

The PREDICT 1 (Personalized Responses to Dietary Composition Trial 1) metagenomic study analyzed detailed data on the composition of participants' microbiomes, their dietary habits, and cardiometabolic blood biomarkers. The researchers found strong evidence that the microbiome is linked with specific foods and diets, and that, in turn, its composition is also associated with levels of metabolic biomarkers of disease. Further, the microbiome has a greater association with these markers than other factors, such as genetics.

"Studying the interrelationship between the microbiome, diet and disease involves a lot of variables because peoples' diets tend to be personalized and may change quite a bit over time," explains Chan. "Two of the strengths of this trial are the number of participants and the detailed information we collected."

PREDICT 1 is an international collaboration to study links between diet, the microbiome, and biomarkers of cardiometabolic health. The researchers gathered microbiome sequence data, detailed long-term dietary information, and results of hundreds of cardiometabolic blood markers from just over 1,100 participants in the U.K. and the U.S.

The researchers found that participants who ate a diet rich in healthy, plant-based foods were more likely to have high levels of specific gut microbes. The makeup of participants' gut microbiomes was strongly associated with specific nutrients, foods, food groups and general dietary indices (overall diet composition). The researchers also found robust microbiome-based biomarkers of obesity as well as markers for cardiovascular disease and impaired glucose tolerance.

Epidemiologist Tim Spector of King's College London, who started the PREDICT study, says: "When you eat, you're not just nourishing your body, you're feeding the trillions of microbes that live inside your gut."

For example, having a microbiome rich in Prevotella copri and Blastocystis species was associated with maintaining a favorable blood sugar level after a meal. Other species were linked to lower post-meal levels of blood fats and markers of inflammation. The trends they found were so consistent, the researchers believe that their microbiome data can be used to determine the risk of cardiometabolic disease among people who do not yet have symptoms, and possibly to prescribe a personalized diet designed specifically to improve someone's health.

"We were surprised to see such large, clear groups of 'good' and 'bad' microbes emerging from our analysis," says Nicola Segata, PhD, professor and principal investigator of the Computational Metagenomics Lab at the University of Trento, Italy and coordinator of the analysis of the microbiome data in the study. "And it is intriguing to see that microbiologists know so little about many of these microbes that they are not even named yet."

Curtis Huttenhower, PhD, a co-senior author who co-directs the Harvard T.H. Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center, adds: "Both diet and the gut microbiome are highly personalized. PREDICT is one of the first studies to begin unraveling this complex molecular web at scale."

Francesco Asnicar, PhD, and Sarah Berry, PhD, are co-first authors of the study. Other collaborators were from health science company ZOE, which supported the research.

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."

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UK

BAME* parliamentary candidates not picked to fight 'winnable seats' in areas with less tolerance towa

BAME parliamentary candidates not picked to fight 'winnable seats' in areas with less tolerance towards diversity, study suggests

*Black, Asian, Middle Eastern

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

 NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

Research News

 

The study found a "systematic and quantifiable pattern" of political parties officers opting against fielding minority candidates where they perceive that their non-white appearance might prevent a win. This includes constituencies already held by the party, and those within reach, requiring just a small swing in the vote to change hands.

Dr Patrick English, from the University of Exeter, who carried out the research, said: "This combination of public opinion and party strategy is one of the most significant blockages to electing parliaments which fully reflect the ethnic diversity of their populations, and works in tandem with and drives other exclusionary forces.

"Though much research has focused on potential voter discrimination, focusing on the behaviour of voters alone misses any discrimination which might occur prior to elections."

There would need to be around non-white 95 MPs would need to 'reflect' the size of the minority-ethnic British population - estimated at around 14.5 per cent in England and Wales, according to the most recent Annual Population Survey results. As it stands, only 65 MPs currently fit this profile.

Traditionally, Labour and Conservative candidate selection for British General Elections is handled by local branches and organisations of political parties, with applicants approved and vetted through national processes.

Dr English used regression analysis to show the relationship between election candidates and public opinion since 1997, using a specially created database. Candidate ethnic minority status was determined using online visual information, including social media, candidate pages and news articles. A seat was considered winnable at a given election if the party already holds the seat or it required less than a 5 per cent swing to change parties.

Local public opinion on diversity was measured by combining questions about race and immigration from five different sources: the European Social Survey, the British Election Study, the British Social Attitudes survey, and the European and World Values studies.

There was a rise in the total number of ethnic minority candidates fielded in British General Elections over the study period, with a particularly sizeable jump between 2010 and 2015. The Labour Party provided more opportunities than their Conservative counterparts in four out of seven of the elections in the study, including in 2017 and 2019.

London was far ahead of all other regions in terms of the percentage of seats there 'opened up' for minority representation. Opportunities were also relatively high in the South East and the West Midlands. There were very few "winnable seat" opportunities given to minority candidates in Wales, the North East, the South West, or the East Midlands.

Attitudes in London and Scotland towards immigration were more positive than other regions, while - with the exception of recent years - attitudes in regions such as Wales and the North East are much less positive on average. Some regions did not see such a dramatic change in recent years as others, with Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West, and the North West remaining fairly low on the scale compared to others such as the South East and the West Midlands in later years.

Dr English said: "Sadly this analysis suggests opportunities for BAME candidates wanting to stand for parliament are not equal, and processes for selecting candidates do not treat everyone fairly. This means electoral success is too often biased away from too many.

"Political parties are charged with being 'gatekeepers' to representation, and while they ultimately provide the vast majority of representational opportunities, they can also create punitive pressures on prospective candidates from 'non-traditional' backgrounds seeking to become representatives."

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THIRD WORLD USA 

Latinx low-income workers hardest hit by SF COVID surge

Ongoing inequality highlights need for community-based test-and-respond strategy to halt spread of infections among most vulnerable, organizers say

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO

Research News

COVID-19 infections are once again rising at an alarming rate in San Francisco's Latinx community, predominantly among low-income essential workers, according to results of a massive community-based testing blitz conducted before and after the Thanksgiving holiday by Unidos En Salud -- a volunteer-led partnership between the Latino Task Force for COVID-19 (LTF), UC San Francisco , the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub), and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH).

Unidos En Salud launched their "Healthy Holidays" initiative the weekend before Thanksgiving (Nov. 22-24) in San Francisco's Mission District, where they have been perfecting their community-based surveillance testing and response program and solidifying relationships with community members through the LTF since April. The initiative then expanded testing after the holiday (Nov. 29-Dec. 1) to three additional highly impacted neighborhoods -- the Bayview, Excelsior, and Tenderloin.

"Cases have been surging for weeks, and it was clear that the holiday season this year was going to present a high risk for accelerating the spread of the virus," said UCSF infectious disease expert Diane Havlir, MD, co-Founder of the Unidos En Salud initiative, who presented initial findings to LTF community partners on December 7, 2020. "Rather than wait and see what would happen, UCSF and the Latino Task Force decided to respond proactively with a surge of our own, in partnership with DPH, focused on the communities where we knew the hammer was going to fall hardest."

"As the region enters a renewed phase of lockdown, these results are a reminder the brunt of this disease is still being felt by Latinos and people without the economic privilege to easily shelter in place. Because existing disparities, it is often those with the least who are being hurt the most, people who are often working multiple jobs just to make rent and keep food on the table for themselves and family," said LTF Health Committee Chair, Jon Jacobo, one of the initiative's organizers. "If we truly want to turn this pandemic around, we need to fundamentally change how we are addressing the pandemic and how we are supporting the most vulnerable among us."

Findings Show Continued Outsize Impact on Latinx Community, Ongoing Asymptomatic Spread

Following six days of intensive and strategic door-to-door community canvassing by LTF volunteers -- which focused on census tracts with the highest number of cases according to SFDPH data -- the Healthy Holidays initiative ultimately tested more than 6800 people before and after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Organizers reported a test positivity rate of 4.4 percent across the initiative's four post-holiday test sites, exceeding the city's 2.9% 7-day average during the current surge, as of December 9.  Although just over half of those tested were Latinx, a disproportionate 79 percent of positive results came from the Latinx community. At the Mission test site at 24^th St. BART Plaza, where overall cases were highest, one in ten Latinx individuals tested positive for the virus. Infection rates were also particularly high among low-income workers, including food and beverage workers and day laborers, as well as among people with indigenous backgrounds, particularly from Mexico and Central America.

The initiative found that about a third of infected individuals were asymptomatic at the time of testing and more than half were unaware of having been exposed to the virus, emphasizing the need for continued vigilance in combating a disease that can spread rapidly without detection.

"These ongoing partnerships for prevalence studies in high-impacted communities continue to inform local health strategy and policies," said Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. "The information and data gathered help guide not only health policy but the city's overall approach to supporting communities disproportionately impacted by this virus."

Rapid Antigen Tests Enabled Results, Quarantine and Support Within Hours

Unidos En Salud previously conducted one of the first field tests of the BinaxNOW rapid antigen test, manufactured by Abbott, in a community setting at their September testing pop-up at the 16^th and Mission BART Plaza. Collaborators at CLIAhub, the joint UCSF/CZ Biohub COVID diagnostic laboratory that has provided test analysis for all of the group's initiatives, compared BinaxNOW results to PCR results from the same individuals and found the rapid test to be extremely reliable at identifying infected individuals during the most infectious phase of the disease.

In the much larger holiday testing event, the group put the BinaxNOW tests to use for the first time as a proof-of-concept of their potential usefulness in broader surveillance testing efforts. As in September, individuals at the group's Mission District test site gave two nasal swabs, one to be sent for standard PCR analysis at CLIAhub, and the second inserted on site into a BinaxNOW card, which is similar to a pregnancy test, providing results within 15 minutes. The speed of the results allowed team members to notify those who tested positive within hours rather than days, and to provide on-site counseling and support for immediate quarantine. The rapid results also allowed SFDPH to quickly initiate contact tracing.

Comparison to PCR results from the same individuals, completed 24 to 48 hours later, showed the tests had accurately identified more than 99 percent of individuals considered to be highly contagious. The researchers also found the tests to perform well in children, contrary to recent reports.

The CLIAhub and Unidos En Salud teams published their analysis of the performance characteristics of the BinaxNow rapid tests in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals in this community setting January 4, 2021 in the Journal of Infectious Disease. The study's corresponding author is CLIAhub director Joe DeRisi, PhD, who is co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a UCSF professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Community Wellness Teams, Home Visits Connect People with Resources to Isolate

For all who tested positive, whether on PCR or rapid tests, LTF Community Wellness Team members followed up to connect infected individuals to support for successful quarantine, including food, cleaning supplies and referrals to resources such as city-funded isolation and quarantine hotels.

"The LTF Community Wellness Teams are unique compared to the traditional test and contract trace approach," said Valerie Tulier-Laiwa, Coordinator of the LTF.  "This additional support from our Community Wellness Teams is essential to make isolation and quarantine successful and stop the spread of the virus among Latinx and low-income people."

The initiative also complemented SFDPH contact tracing with a follow-up home testing program for infected individuals living in large households, connecting as many as possible with resources for effective isolation through LTF's Community Wellness Teams.

"Community members I spoke with at the testing site who tested positive on rapid tests were eager to get close contacts tested out of a sense of responsibility for protecting loved ones, coworkers, and the larger community," said UCSF infectious disease clinical fellow Luis Rubio, MD, who was part of the initiative's clinical response team.

Volunteers provided rapid and PCR-based testing to household members within a day of the initial positive result and then again after a week. These visits included a trusted community health worker who could answer questions and give households specific guidance on how to safely isolate.

"Having rapid COVID-19 test results and dedicated time and space for household contacts to ask the community health worker questions was very much appreciated by families and we hope these services will support people in large households to effectively isolate and quarantine and decrease transmission," said UCSF infectious disease specialist Carina Marquez, MD, who led the household testing program.

To Halt Pandemic: Low-Barrier Community-Based Testing and Rapid Response

Unidos En Salud organizers, who have now provided free COVID-19 testing to 14,000 people since April through their regular weekly and larger pop-up initiatives, believe the community-based test-and-respond approach they have developed in their work in the Mission District could be a model for more effectively controlling the virus amidst the current frightening surge.

"We need to be making it as easy as possible for everyone in communities most affected by the virus to get tested regularly, symptoms or no, and to get people who test positive into isolation as quickly as possible with supportive services to cut off the chain of transmission. This approach will continue to be critical as the new vaccines become available," said Havlir, who is chief of the UCSF Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine.

To reach as many people in affected communities as possible, regardless of symptoms or resources, the group's low-barrier testing is not only free, but requires no reservations, no health insurance, and no identification -- anyone can walk up and get tested. It is also community based and staffed -- located at convenient public transit hubs and community centers in the most affected neighborhoods, and organized, staffed and operated by members of the community being served.

"A critical component of our success is the many volunteers from the community who are involved in initial canvassing, coordinating testing onsite and the Community Wellness Teams that follow up with people who test positive," Jacobo said. "This has let us provide wrap-around services that are tailored to the need of each patient but are also culturally competent, and all are built upon the trust we have been building through our deep relationships with the community."

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About UCSF:

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. Learn more at ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.

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New climate change study: Number of people suffering extreme droughts will double

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021


EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State University is leading a global research effort to offer the first worldwide view of how climate change could affect water availability and drought severity in the decades to come.

By the late 21st century, global land area and population facing extreme droughts could more than double -- increasing from 3% during 1976-2005 to 7%-8%, according to Yadu Pokhrel, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in MSU's College of Engineering, and lead author of the research published in Nature Climate Change.

"More and more people will suffer from extreme droughts if a medium-to-high level of global warming continues and water management is maintained at its present state," Pokhrel said. "Areas of the Southern Hemisphere, where water scarcity is already a problem, will be disproportionately affected. We predict this increase in water scarcity will affect food security and escalate human migration and conflict."

The research team, including MSU postdoctoral researcher Farshid Felfelani, and more than 20 contributing authors from Europe, China and Japan are projecting a large reduction in natural land water storage in two-thirds of the world, also caused by climate change.

Land water storage, technically known as terrestrial water storage, or TWS, is the accumulation of water in snow and ice, rivers, lakes and reservoirs, wetlands, soil and groundwater -- all critical components of the world's water and energy supply. TWS modulates the flow of water within the hydrological cycle and determines water availability as well as drought.

"Our findings are a concern," Pokhrel said. "To date, no study has examined how climate change would impact land water storage globally. Our study presents the first, comprehensive picture of how global warming and socioeconomic changes will affect land water storage and what that will mean for droughts until the end of the century."

Felfelani said the study has given the international team an important prediction opportunity.

"Recent advances in process-based hydrological modeling, combined with future projections from global climate models under wide-ranging scenarios of socioeconomic change, provided a unique foundation for comprehensive analysis of future water availability and droughts," Felfelani said. "We have high confidence in our results because we use dozens of models and they agree on the projected changes."

The research is based on a set of 27 global climate-hydrological model simulations spanning 125 years and was conducted under a global modeling project called the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project. Pokhrel is a working member of the project.

"Our findings highlight why we need climate change mitigation to avoid the adverse impacts on global water supplies and increased droughts we know about now," Pokhrel said. "We need to commit to improved water resource management and adaptation to avoid potentially catastrophic socio-economic consequences of water shortages around the world."

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(Note for media: Please include a link to the original paper in online coverage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00972-w)

Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 160 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

For MSU news on the Web, go to MSUToday. Follow MSU News on Twitter at twitter.com/MSUnews.

Asian water towers on tighter budget despite a warmer and wetter climate

More river runoff won't quench thirst in Indus and Ganges basins

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

Research News

 

IMAGE: MORE RIVER RUNOFF WON'T QUENCH THIRST IN INDUS AND GANGES BASINS view more 

CREDIT: TPE

The Third Pole centered on the Tibetan Plateau is home to headwaters of over 10 major Asian rivers. These glacier-based water systems, also known as the Asian Water Towers, will have to struggle to quench the thirst of downstream communities despite more river runoff brought on by a warmer climate, according to a recent study published in Nature Climate Change.

By constraining earth system models for precipitation projections, together with estimated glacier melt contributions, the study quantified the wet-season runoff of seven rivers at the Third Pole, and found it would increase 1.0-7.2% by the end of the 21st century for warming in the range of 1.5-4°C. However, the study also showed that rising water demands from the growing population will outweigh warming in determining water scarcity in the Indus and Brahmaputra basins, especially at higher warming levels. "Regretfully, a large proportion of the local population will continue to experience severe water stress even with a wetter climate," said WANG Tao, lead author of the study and a professor at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"Estimates of future Third Pole precipitation in earlier IPCC reports vary greatly, indicating huge uncertainties," said YAO Tandong, co-author of the study and co-chair of Third Pole Environment (TPE), an international science program for the interdisciplinary study of the region. "By constraining earth system models on the basis that westerly-monsoon interaction is the main driver of water cycle changes at the Third Pole, we significantly increased the confidence of future precipitation projection," said YAO.

This study also highlighted the need for policies promoting adaptation in the region. "We recommend measures such as increasing crop use efficiency and dam regulations in these basins to secure future water, food security and environmental sustainability under the Paris climate targets" said YAO.

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The study was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP), a TPE related science project.

Impacts of climate change on our water and energy systems: it's complicated

A team of researchers from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara propose a framework for evaluating climate change adaptations, provide a case study of California

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE DOS AMIGOS PUMPING PLANT IN MERCED COUNTY AND CALIFORNIA AQUEDUCT ARE PART OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE WATER PROJECT, AN ENERGY-INTENSIVE PUBLIC WATER PROJECT THAT DISTRIBUTES WATER THROUGHOUT THE STATE.... view more 

CREDIT: CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES

As the planet continues to warm, the twin challenges of diminishing water supply and growing energy demand are intensifying. But because water and energy are inextricably linked, as we try to adapt to one challenge - say, by getting more water via desalination or water recycling - we may be worsening the other challenge by choosing energy-intensive processes.

So, in adapting to the consequences of climate change, how can we be sure that we aren't making problems worse?

Now, researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara have developed a science-based analytic framework to evaluate such complex connections between water and energy, and options for adaptations in response to an evolving climate. Their study, "Evaluating cross-sectoral impacts of climate change and adaptations on the energy-water nexus: A framework and California case study," was published recently in the open-access journal Environmental Research Letters.

"There have been many analyses on how climate change could affect the water and energy sectors separately, but those studies were not typically looking at interactions and feedbacks between the two," said lead author Julia Szinai of Berkeley Lab's Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division. "Our paper develops a generalized framework that identifies how climate change affects these coupled water and electricity systems, and potential adaptations to future gaps in supply and demand. By doing so, we illustrate often-overlooked tradeoffs and synergies in adapting to climate change."

"In developing this project, Julia led a remarkable effort to integrate the climate impacts and feedbacks between the energy and water sectors," said co-author Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley. "What is critical to planning our future under climate change is to capture - in both simplified and full dynamical models ¬- how interdependent are our infrastructure choices."

In applying the framework they developed to California, which relies on the snowpack for a good deal of its water and expends significant amounts of energy to transport water from the northern to the southern part of the state, they found that there are two possible adaptation pathways: one that is energy intensive and one that can actually save both water and energy.

"One of the most important points of the paper is that adapting our water system to climate change can either significantly exacerbate electricity grid stress, or on the flip side, it could help to alleviate it," said co-author and Berkeley Lab climate scientist Andrew Jones. "If we focus on adapting the water system by using big transfers of water across basins, or by using energy-intensive desalination, that's just going to make the electricity problem much more difficult. If, on the other hand, we adapt the water system by conserving water, it's actually a win-win situation because you're also reducing the energy required for water."

Currently, a staggering 19% of California's electricity consumption goes toward water-related applications, such as treating it, transporting it, pumping it, and heating it. Additionally, about 15% of in-state electricity generation comes from hydropower. Such interdependencies are referred to as the water-energy nexus. The state has already seen some impacts that climate change could have on these highly interdependent water-energy systems; for example, extended droughts and reduced snowpack have resulted in spikes in electricity consumption from groundwater pumping and hydropower deficits, which were made up by generating electricity using dirtier fossil fuels.

Looking ahead, the researchers integrated data across a number of fragmented studies to estimate the overall range of possible water and energy futures under various climate scenarios for the state at the end of the century. Their analysis found that the greatest direct climate change impact on the electricity sector in California will likely come from two factors: higher air conditioning loads and decreased hydropower availability. In the water sector, the greatest and most uncertain impact of climate change is on future water supplies. In the worst case, available water supplies could decrease 25%, and in the best case could increase 46%.

Applying their framework to California's water-energy future, they found that, if the state were to adapt to the worst-case water scenario by choosing the most energy-intensive technologies, it could result in an energy imbalance as large as that caused by climate change itself (increased air conditioning use and decreased hydropower availability being the climate change factors having the greatest direct energy imbalance impact).

"I think this is the first study to show that water sector adaptation can have as large of an impact on the electricity sector as the direct effect of climate change itself," said Jones. "So, if we pursued the energy-intensive path to water sector adaptation then it is as large as the direct effect of climate change, in the worst case."

Co-author Ranjit Deshmukh, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab, noted, "Going forward, the electricity sector could leverage its close coupling with the water sector to enable balancing of increasing wind and solar generation in California as the state strives to meet its low-carbon-emission goals. For example, energy-intensive equipment such as water pumps or desalination plants, with adequate water storage, could be operated during times of plentiful solar and wind energy, and turned off at other times."

Next, Szinai, a UC Berkeley graduate student, said she plans to develop detailed models of both water and electricity systems so researchers can run simulations under various climate change and climate change adaptation scenarios, ultimately aiding planners in building out both the electrical grid and water resources.

"This study has highlighted the benefit of coordinated adaptation planning between the two sectors, so we're now linking a more detailed water resources management model and an electricity planning model that can demonstrate resilient pathways for building out electricity infrastructure in the Western U.S. when climate change impacts are included from the water sector," she said.

###

This study was supported by the DOE Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. It is part of DOE's HyperFACETS project.

Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 14 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab's facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Understanding origins of Arizona's Sunset Crater eruption of 1,000 years ago

Explosive past may inform threats of similar volcanoes today

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: AROUND 1085 AD, ALONG THE SOUTHERN RIM OF NORTHERN ARIZONA'S ELEVATED COLORADO PLATEAU, A VOLCANO ERUPTED, FOREVER CHANGING ANCIENT PUEBLOAN FORTUNES AND ALL NEARBY LIFE. TODAY, ASU SCHOOL OF EARTH... view more 

CREDIT: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Around 1085 AD, along the southern rim of Northern Arizona's elevated Colorado Plateau, a volcano erupted, forever changing ancient Puebloan fortunes and all nearby life. Among the 600 or so volcanoes that dot the landscape of the San Francisco volcanic fields, this one blew. It was the very first (and last) eruption for what came to be known as Sunset Crater, aptly named for its multi-hued, 1,000-foot-tall cinder cone.

Today, ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration scientist Amanda Clarke and her team have been working to solve the mysterious root cause of the Sunset Crater eruption and any lessons learned to better understand the threats similar volcanoes may pose around the world today.

"This is a common thing in volcanology, to reconstruct past eruptions to try to understand what the volcano or region might do in the future," said Clarke. "We did the field work and we combined data from a previous study and used some modern techniques to put the story together."

Working alongside several collaborators, they have painstakingly mapped every fissure, eruption deposit, and ancient lava flow of Sunset Crater to reconstruct the complete splatter patterns and geochemical compositions of all ejected materials, or tephra, from the eruption.

An explosive past

"When you visit the site, there are these lava flows that are obvious, but also this big tephra blanket that extends far beyond the volcanic edifice itself, way beyond the vent," said Clarke. "My interest was first piqued when I learned on a field trip many years ago with former ASU professor Stephen Self, that Sunset Crater had an explosive past."

In a previous study, Clarke's group first showed that the volcanic activity developed in seven or eight distinct phases: initial fissure phases, followed by highly explosive phases, and finally, low-explosivity, waning phases. "It's not clear how this happens, but eventually, the eruption settled on this single pipeline to the surface, and that's where a lot of our work picks up the story," said Clarke.

At several points during the explosive phase, the sky was filled with basaltic, cindery ash up to 20 to 30km high, making it one of the most explosive volcanic eruptions of its kind ever documented in the world.

"People in Winslow [100km away] would have been able to see it," said Clarke. To give one an idea of the eruption size, they measured the total volume of eruption material, or 0.52 km3 dense rock equivalent (DRE)----which, by comparison, turned out to be similar to the volume of the infamous 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. "

It was very similar to Mt. St. Helens in terms of height and volume," said Clarke. "You think these things that are cinder cones are going to be something like Stromboli in Italy----a fire fountain of a couple of hundred meters and people might be able to watch it from their terrace----but this peak phase was St. Helens scale."

CAPTION

Chelsea Allison in the ASU Depths of the Earth lab with a high-temperature basalt sample.

Mysterious magma

But as to why it erupted, that has remained a mystery, until now. "The science question is how these more liquidy magmas behave like viscous magmas," said Clarke. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications was the result of a collaboration between SESE PhD alumna Chelsea Allison (now at Cornell University) and research scientist Kurt Roggensack. "Chelsea was a graduate student who did some innovative analysis and Kurt has this expertise in petrology and more small-scale analysis while I am more of a physical volcanologist; so that's where we came together," said Clarke.

Measuring the factors that led to the Sunset Crater eruption 1,000 years later is an extremely difficult task because the gases that make up the magma usually escape into the sky during the eruption, forever lost in time. But to better reconstruct the past, the group have taken advantage of extensive microanalyses from the tiniest blobs and bubbles that are the best representation of the composition of magma from Sunset Crater before the eruption, known as melt inclusions. Roggensack is recognized as a world expert in innovative melt inclusion analysis, especially in basaltic magmas.

How tiny? Melt inclusions are less than a thousandth of an inch across. They become embedded in time within growing crystals of the magma plumbing system that forms before a volcano erupts. "They've been liberated from the magma in the explosion," said Clarke.

They are like a fizzy, soda concoction of trapped gas, frozen in time from the surrounding magma as they crystalize, yet able to reveal the gas composition and secret history of an eruption so long ago.

Think of the basaltic Sunset Crater having more of a maple syrup consistency versus the peanut butter variety of the rhyolite magma of Mt. St. Helens. "Those are viscous magmas that can have a lot of water stuffed in them," said Clarke.

CAPTION

To reconstruct the past, ASU scientists have taken advantage of extensive microanalyses from the tiniest blobs and bubbles that are the best representation of the composition of magma from Sunset Crater before the eruption, known as melt inclusions. How tiny? Melt inclusions are less than a thousandth of an inch across. They become embedded in time within growing crystals of the magma plumbing system that forms before a volcano erupts.

CREDIT

Amanda Clarke, Arizona State University

What were the conditions and ingredients that could lead to the Sunset Crater eruption?

"That leads to the big questions of what is the volatile content of the magma because that is going to control the explosivity," said Clarke. "To answer the questions, you have to dig down deep into the plumbing system, and that's what we did."

Clarke's group is among the first to show the importance of carbon dioxide in volcanic eruptions, partly because it wasn't easy task to measure in the first place. "We think this eruption could have pumped a fair amount of carbon dioxide and also sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere," said Clarke.

"Water is usually the main component [as in Mt. St. Helens] but what we are finding at Sunset is that carbon dioxide is very abundant and that tends to be more critical in the deeper part of the system to get the magma moving toward the surface. We think that played a big role in this. And the carbon dioxide is probably coming from deep in the mantle within the source area."

The melt inclusions (MIs) were specifically chosen to provide a representative sample of textural features observed in the Sunset Crater eruption (e.g., varying bubble volumes, sizes and shapes). Some of the tools of the trade used were microscopes to bring the details of crystallization and bubble formation for each tiny melt inclusion to life, as well as sensitive instruments to measure the amount of volatiles trapped in the quenched glass.

"That can tell us some of the details of the last moments of the magma before it was quenched."

Tiny bubbles

Using a custom-built Raman spectrometer at ASU in the LeRoy Eyring Center for Solid State Science (LE-CSSS), Chelsea Allison set up the melt inclusion analysis in which samples are first excited using a blue sapphire laser. High-quality melt inclusions were polished and imaged with a petrographic microscope in preparation for Raman analysis.

Like a Russian doll, nestled inside the little crystal is this little melt inclusion (now glass), and then inside the melt inclusion is a bubble, and inside the bubble is carbon dioxide.

"Raman spectroscopy can be used to measure the density of carbon dioxide, and then from the volume and density of the bubble, you can use that to calculate a mass," said Clarke. "Allison had to do all kinds of stuff including creating standards to ensure what she was measuring was accurate. She used known amounts of carbon dioxide inside little glass tubes to make a calibration curve."

"People used to ignore the bubbles, thinking there was nothing important inside, but it turns out it was almost all carbon dioxide," said Clarke. "We've added that carbon dioxide inside the bubble to the total carbon dioxide budget of the magma."

"That all ties together, because once you have the volumes of the eruption, and the total volatile content of the magma, you can start understanding how much got ejected into the atmosphere, and what does that look like compared to other eruptions."

It came from the deep

The carbon dioxide gas phase played a critical role in driving the explosive eruption, with the gas stored in the magma of Sunset Crater as deep as 15km below the surface.

"We think that magma was bubbling already at 15km deep, and that's not what people typically think about magma systems with these volcanoes. It has been demonstrated before that you have a bubble phase. And if you have a system that is already bubbly and that deep, it means you might have a really rapid ascent."

Although, the impact of basaltic volcanism on the global atmospheric system is largely unknown, this high carbon dioxide and sulfur from the eruption could have also had a large impact on the atmosphere at the time of the eruption.

They also compared the magmatic volatiles at Sunset Crater to those in explosive caldera-forming silicic eruptions such as the Bishop Tuff to highlight differences in their abundance and composition. This comparison suggested that the carbon dioxide rich phase is a critical pre-eruptive condition that drives highly explosive basaltic eruptions.

Explosive silicic eruptions, although still much larger in terms of erupted volume, are better analogies to the dynamics of the Sunset Crater eruption. Two such historical eruptions, the 1991 eruption at Pinatubo (Philippines) and the 1815 eruption of trachyandesite at Tambora (Indonesia), resulted in profound atmospheric impacts.

The Pinatubo eruption, which had significant impact on global climate for three years post-eruption, erupted 10 times the mass of magma (5 km3 DRE) as Sunset Crater (0.5 km3 DRE), but released just ~3 times the mass of sulfur dioxide. The Tambora eruption was responsible for the "year without a summer", and while it erupted ~60 times the mass of magma (30 km3 DRE) as Sunset Crater, it released only ~9 times the mass of sulfur dioxide.

The lessons learned from Sunset Crater and its type of basaltic volcanism could still inform us today.

"Now we can ask, are the conditions that led to the Sunset Crater eruption really that unusual?" said Clarke. "How common is it for us to see a basaltic cinder cone that we think should be a gentle, observable eruption turn into something that is much more hazardous to aircraft flying overhead or to the people around it? We can start to apply these concepts to active systems."

"And remember, though the vent at Sunset Crater is not going to erupt again, the San Francisco field is still active. There will probably be another eruption there. It could be anywhere, and probably in the eastern sector, but we don't know where and when. It could be on a scale of thousands of years."

###

First human culture lasted 20,000 years longer than thought

Some 11 thousand years ago, Africa's furthest west harbored the last populations to preserve tool-making traditions first established by the earliest members of our species

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY

 NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

Research News

 

IMAGE: FRESHLY FOUND ARTEFACT FROM LAMINIA, SENEGAL view more 

CREDIT: ELEANOR SCERRI

Fieldwork led by Dr Eleanor Scerri, head of the Pan-African Evolution Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and Dr Khady Niang of the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal, has documented the youngest known occurrence of the Middle Stone Age. This repertoire of stone flaking methods and the resulting tools includes distinctive ways of producing sharp flakes by carefully preparing nodules of rock, some of which were sometimes further shaped into tool forms known as 'scrapers' and 'points.' Middle Stone Age finds most commonly occur in the African record between around 300 thousand and 30 thousand years ago, after which point they largely vanish.

It was long thought that these tool types were replaced after 30 thousand years ago by a radically different, miniaturized toolkit better suited to diversified subsistence strategies and patterns of mobility across Africa. In a paper published in Scientific Reports this week, Scerri and colleagues show that groups of hunter-gatherers in what is today Senegal continued to use Middle Stone Age technologies associated with our species' earliest prehistory as late as 11 thousand years ago. This contrasts with the long-held view that humanity's major prehistoric cultural phases occurred in a neat and universal sequence.

The 'Last Eden'?

"West Africa is a real frontier for human evolutionary studies - we know almost nothing about what happened here in deep prehistory. Almost everything we know about human origins is extrapolated from discoveries in small parts of eastern and southern Africa," says Dr Eleanor Scerri, the lead author of the study.

To redress this gap in the data, Scerri and Niang put together a research program to explore different regions of Senegal. The program ranges from Senegal's desert edges to its forests and along different stretches of its major river systems: the Senegal and the Gambia, where they found multiple Middle Stone Age sites, all with surprisingly young dates.

"These discoveries demonstrate the importance of investigating the whole of the African continent, if we are to really get a handle on the deep human past." says Dr Khady Niang. "Prior to our work, the story from the rest of Africa suggested that well before 11 thousand years ago, the last traces of the Middle Stone Age - and the lifeways it reflects - were long gone."

Explaining why this region of West Africa was home to such a late persistence of Middle Stone Age culture is not straightforward.

"To the north, the region meets the Sahara Desert," explains Dr Jimbob Blinkhorn, one of the paper's authors. "To the east, there are the Central African rainforests, which were often cut off from the West African rainforests during periods of drought and fragmentation. Even the river systems in West Africa form a self-contained and isolated group."

"It is also possible that this region of Africa was less affected by the extremes of repeated cycles of climate change," adds Scerri. "If this was the case, the relative isolation and habitat stability may simply have resulted in little need for radical changes in subsistence, as reflected in the successful use of these traditional toolkits."

"All we can be sure about is that this persistence is not simply about a lack of capacity to invest in the development of new technologies. These people were intelligent, they knew how to select good stone for their tool making and exploit the landscape they lived in," says Niang

CAPTION

Lithics from Laminia (A-D) and Saxomununya (E-H). (A) unretouched flake; (B) bifacially retouched flake; (C) Levallois core evidencing a step fracture; (D) side retouched flake/scraper; (E, F) Levallois cores; (G) bifacial foliate point; (H) bifacial foliate

An ecological, biological and cultural patchwork

The results fit in with a wider, emerging view that for most of humanity's deep prehistory, populations were relatively isolated from each other, living in subdivided groups in different regions.

Accompanying this striking finding is the fact that in West Africa, the major cultural shift to more miniaturized toolkits also occurs extremely late compared to the rest of the continent. For a relatively short time, Middle Stone Age using populations lived alongside others using the more recently developed miniaturized tool kits, referred to as the 'Later Stone Age'.

"This matches genetic studies suggesting that African people living in the last ten thousand years lived in very subdivided populations," says Dr Niang. "We aren't sure why, but apart from physical distance, it may be the case that some cultural boundaries also existed. Perhaps the populations using these different material cultures also lived in slightly different ecological niches."

Around 15 thousand years ago, there was a major increase in humidity and forest growth in central and western Africa, that perhaps linked different areas and provided corridors for dispersal. This may have spelled the final end for humanity's first and earliest cultural repertoire and initiated a new period of genetic and cultural mixing.

"These findings do not fit a simple unilinear model of cultural change towards 'modernity'," explains Scerri. " Groups of hunter-gatherers embedded in radically different technological traditions occupied neighbouring regions of Africa for thousands of years, and sometimes shared the same regions. Long isolated regions, on the other hand, may have been important reservoirs of cultural and genetic diversity," she adds. "This may have been a defining factor in the success of our species."

CAPTION

Team fieldwalking along the Gambia River, Senegal

 

AOC cuts to the point: 'We came close to half of the House nearly dying on Wednesday'

Image via Screengrab.

Marissa Higgins and
Daily Kos January 10, 2021

After an incredibly chaotic, exhausting, and, frankly, terrifying week, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on ABC's This Week and talked to host George Stephanopoulos about what we all know is true: "Every minute" that Donald Trump sits in office "represents a clear and present danger." As many on social media have pointed out, if Trump can't even be trusted with a Twitter account, how can he be trusted to run the country, hold nuclear codes, or guide us through a global pandemic?

Still, some people are frustrated at the notion of removing Trump so close to the end of his term, wondering, Well, what's the point? There's symbolism, of course, in impeaching Trump for a second time. But there are also real, tangible benefits to removing Trump from office that can affect the country in both the short and long-term. Let's check out how Ocasio-Cortez breaks them down in the clips below.

"Our main priority is to ensure the removal of Donald Trump as President of the United State," Ocasio-Cortez told Stephanopoulos. "Every minute and every that he is in office represents a clear and present danger not just to the United States Congress but to the country. But in addition to removal, we're also talking about completely barring the president—or rather, Donald Trump—from running for office ever again. And in addition to that, the potential ability to prevent pardoning himself from those charges that he was impeached for."

Here's that clip.




Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backs impeachment, telling @GStephanopoulos “every minute" that Trump is "in office r… https://t.co/IpKVlaqaCm— This Week (@This Week)1610289074.0

Stephanopolous asked Ocasio-Cortez about the concerns of some that having an impeachment trial could slow down getting Biden's agenda underway, including, for example, passing coronavirus relief and confirmations. Ocasio-Cortez argued that the "safety" of the president, Congress, and the "security of our country takes precedence over the timing of nominations" and potential "confirmations."







Asked about some concerns that an impeachment trial in the Senate would delay Biden’s agenda, Rep. Alexandria Ocasi… https://t.co/ls4FDTeaB0— This Week (@This Week)1610289532.0

Stephanopoulos referenced a letter sent on behalf of a number of Republicans who implored President-elect Biden to forego impeachment for the sake of "unity," arguing that it is "unnecessary" and "inflammatory." The group of House Republicans, led by Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, wrote: "In the spirit of healing and fidelity to our Constitution, we ask that you formally request that Speaker Nancy Pelosi discontinue her efforts to impeach President Donald J. Trump a second time."

To that, Ocasio-Cortez hammered down on the point that what happened this past week was an "insurrection against the United States." The New York City progressive argued that "healing" requires "accountability." She pointed out that if we allow insurrection to happen with impunity, "we are inviting it to happen again."


"We came close to half of the House nearly dying on Wednesday," Ocasio-Cortez stated. "If a foreign head of state, if another head of state, came in and ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that should not be prosecuted? Would we say that there should be absolutely no response to that? No. It is an act of insurrection. It is an act of hostility." She stressed that without accountability, "it will happen again."