Aung San Suu Kyi seen for 1st time in Myanmar since military takeover


Demonstrators set up barriers during a protest in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Sunday opposing the military's government takeover on February 1. 

Photo by Xiao Long/UPI | License Photo

March 1 (UPI) -- The Myanmar military filed two new criminal charges Monday against detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on the one-month anniversary of the coup that removed her and the president from power.

One of the new charges says Suu Kyi violated a law that makes it illegal to repeat "any statement, rumor or report" that will likely induce the public to "commit an offense against the state." The second blames her for using restricted communication equipment without a license.

Both charges were announced at a remote video hearing Monday, at which Suu Kyi made her first public appearance since the Feb. 1 military takeover.

"She said at the hearing that she wanted to meet with her lawyer," Min Min Soe, a member of Suu Kyi legal team, told Myanmar Now. "The judge told her that he is working on it.

RELATED Myanmar police crack down on protests; U.N. ambassador denounces coup

Ousted Myanmar President Win Myint was also charged for making illegal statements.

The new charges add to the case against Suu Kyi. Previously, she'd been charged with violating a disaster management law by interacting with a crowd and import violations for possessing two-way radios.

The charges came a day after the United Nations condemned the military junta's violence against protesters. Nearly two dozen were killed on Sunday in demonstrations nationwide.

"The people of Myanmar have the right to assemble peacefully and demand the restoration of democracy," U.N. Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement. "These fundamental rights must be respected by the military and police, not met with violent and bloody repression.

"Use of lethal force against non-violent demonstrators is never justifiable under international human rights norms."

The United Nations, United States and several other nations have condemned the military's takeover in Myanmar, which was based on the claim that parliamentary elections last fall were fraudulent. Suu Kyi's party picked up great gains in the election.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2021/03/01/myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi-new-charges-coup/9511614599908/

New Kim Jong Un biography spotlights Singapore Summit with Trump


A new North Korean biography of Kim Jong Un mentions Kim's summit with former U.S. President Donald Trump (R) but makes no references to South Korean President Moon Jae-in. File Photo from Pool TV/UPI | License Photo


March 1 (UPI) -- North Korea published a 621-page biography of Kim Jong Un that highlighted nuclear weapons development and the U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore but downplayed the role of South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

North Korean propaganda service Uriminzokkiri on Sunday published the entire book for public viewing in an article that claimed Kim was a "great man" who ushered in an era of great power for the regime.

The hardcover publication from Pyongyang Publishing included sections on Kim's defense policy and diplomacy, the economy, society and culture.

"Nearly 10 years have passed since Marshal Kim Jong Un was recognized as supreme leader," Uriminzokkiri said. "In these quickly passing days, the republic has risen to distant heights."

Kim's early years were marked by isolation and refusal to meet with U.S. negotiators.

The book, first published Dec. 30, cited Kim's summit with former President Donald Trump as the greatest achievement, with 15 pages devoted exclusively to the 2018 Singapore Summit and the informal summit with Trump at Panmunjom in 2019, according to South Korean paper Herald Business.

"Courtesy of our Marshal [Kim], the powerhouse of the century, the political perception and dynamics of the international community are undergoing transformation," the North Korean book said.

RELATED North Korea's informal loan networks can lead to gang violence, research says


The book, which includes no photographs, made no mention of Moon. The South Korean president has been credited with persuading Trump to meet with Kim in 2018, and met with Kim at Panmunjom in April 2018 before Trump had committed to a summit.

According to Herald Business, the book did briefly mention the September Pyongyang Joint Declaration -- an inter-Korean statement signed in 2018.

North Korea remains isolated amid the pandemic, but international aid groups say assistance continues despite recent reports.

RELATED North Korea has at least eight ICBMs, think tank says


Steve Taravella, a senior spokesman for the World Food Program, said last week that the agency has not stopped delivering aid to North Korea, Ethnic Media Services reported Sunday.

The WFP had previously said in a revision to its North Korea Strategic Plan that "residual risk" remains and operations could be suspended in 2021.

CHRISTIANITY IS MISOGYNY

South Korean pastor accused of calling women followers 'prostitutes'

Jun said women in his congregation are like sex workers because they had "already spent the night with Satan."


The Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, former chief of the Christian Council of Korea,

 is accused with making sexist remarks during sermons.

 File Photo by Yonhap/EPA-EFE

March 1 (UPI) -- A South Korean church leader who tested positive for COVID-19 last year is coming under fire for allegedly describing the women in his congregation and in the Bible as "prostitutes."

The women's committee of the National Council of Churches in Korea said Monday that the Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, pastor of Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul, had said all the women in Jesus's family tree were sex workers. The council said it condemns the statement, Hankyoreh reported

According to the group, Jun said the Virgin Mary was "unmarried" and all the other women in Jesus' genealogy were prostitutes.

Jun also said women in his congregation are like sex workers because they had "already spent the night with Satan."

RELATED South Korean President Moon Jae-in calls for improved ties with Japan

"Jun Kwang-hoon has distorted the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the church community, through misleading interpretations of the Bible," the group said. "Jun continues to pour out embarrassing words and false remarks."

Last year, Jun was briefly jailed after being denied bail. Jun was charged with violating social distancing guidelines after his church became the source of South Korea's second-largest coronavirus outbreak.

Jun's misogynistic remarks also may have addressed the issue of "comfort women" forced to serve in Japanese wartime brothels. Jun reportedly said during his sermon brothels are "inevitable" during war.

The council of churches has called on Jun to apologize to former comfort women and to cease all religious activities.

The South Korean cleric previously accused President Moon Jae-in of lying to the public, and he called Moon a "communist" without evidence.

On Monday, Jun again denounced Moon as a "lunatic" while followers demanded the president's resignation during an outdoor gathering without facemasks, Oh My News reported.

Speaking at the same rally, Cho Na-dan, a pastor and a colleague of Jun, condemned North Korea's Kim Jong Un and called him a "young fat pig."

"Let's boil the pig and eat him with shrimp!" Cho said, according to Oh My News.

Jun and Cho have publicly protested the Moon administration. Jun has been charged previously with violation of local election laws and using bribes to recruit followers.

WAR IS RAPE

North Korea slams Harvard Law professor for 'comfort women' article


North Korea addressed the issue of a controversial "comfort women" article on Monday, weeks after Harvard Law professor J. Mark Ramseyer came under criticism for his characterization of former victims of wartime brothels. 

File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo


March 2 (UPI) -- North Korea condemned a Harvard Law professor and his article on "comfort women" in a television documentary that addressed Japan's wartime crimes and featured an alleged descendant of a former victim.

Korea Central Television on Monday aired the film that included denouncements of J. Mark Ramseyer, the Mitsubishi professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, as a "pseudo-scholar" with a "pro-Japanese bias."

The documentary featured previously released footage, including a South Korean interview with Park Yeong-sim, a comfort woman who passed away in 2006. In the interview, Park says a Japanese policeman wearing a red cap coerced her to follow him "to make some money."

The North Korean film also included an interview with a North Korean man identified as Jong Yun Chol. Jong claimed he is Park's grandson. Park lived in the South until the time of her death.

RELATED Activists call for boycott of Mitsubishi amid 'comfort women' uproar

"My grandmother passed away without receiving an apology or compensation from the Japanese government," Jong said in the North Korean program.

State media rarely reports on developments outside the country but has previously covered news related to Japan's colonial past.

Ramseyer's paper has come under criticism at Harvard, where the Undergraduate Council voted to endorse a statement that described the article, "Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War," as "contrafactual," according to the Harvard Crimson on Monday.

RELATED Harvard professor's paper on Kanto Massacre angers South Koreans

Professors at Harvard have also condemned Ramseyer's paper.

"As historians of Japan and Korea, what initially appalled us was Ramseyer's elision of the larger political and economic contexts of colonialism and gender in which the comfort women system was conceived and implemented, and the multiple and brutal ways in which it affected and afflicted the women on a human scale," wrote Andrew Gordon and Carter Eckert.

Gordon and Eckert said Ramseyer failed to find evidence of contracts concluded in Korea with Korean women. Ramseyer used "barmaid" contracts with Japanese women as a substitute source to build his argument about Korean victims of wartime brothels, Gordon and Eckert said.

Activists call for boycott of Mitsubishi 

amid 'comfort women' uproar


Activists are calling for a boycott of Mitsubishi products as controversy grows over an article about "comfort women" by Harvard Law professor J. Mark Ramseyer. File Photo by John G. Mabanglo/EPA-EFE

March 1 (UPI) -- Online activists are calling for the boycott of Mitsubishi products less than a month after a Harvard law professor came under criticism for his article on "comfort women."

Korean Americans affiliated with community groups in California said in the statement on Change.org that they are calling for a comprehensive boycott of products from the Japanese company to protest J. Mark Ramseyer, South Korean news service News 1 reported Monday

Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School.

"Please join us in boycotting all Mitsubishi products, including but not limited to vehicles, TVs, and electronic parts, as well as AC and HVAC systems," the statement read.

"To continue to patronize Mitsubishi would be to give tacit endorsement to the outrageous and insulting claims made by Prof. Ramseyer, who occupies the chair endowed by the Mitsubishi Corporation."

In an article that published online by the International Review of Law and Economics, Ramseyer had said that comfort women, many of them teenage girls, took part in a "consenting, contractual process."

Ramseyer has said he did not cite any Korean sources for the paper. Victims have said they were raped daily and beaten in brothels and witnessed the death of women who fell ill from disease or exhaustion.



The petition, which collected more than 1,000 signatures Monday, is being circulated at a time when other Korean American groups are raising awareness about the issue.

Baik-kyu Kim, chair of the Atlanta Comfort Women Memorial Task Force in Georgia, recently held a rally condemning Ramseyer.

Heather Fenton, mother of U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., took part in the rally in Atlanta, South Korean television network JTBC reported Monday.

The Korean American Society of Massachusetts also said it plans to hold a rally on Saturday outside Harvard University.

Harvard Law students previously have said Ramseyer ignored important research that indicates the women were coerced or kidnapped by agents of the Japanese government during World War II.

Senate Democrats introduce proposal 

for 3% tax on billionaires

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats introduced the "Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act" which would implement a 3% tax on wealth exceeding $1 billion. Pool Photo by Greg Nash/UPI | License Photo

March 1 (UPI) -- Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a proposal Monday to implement a 3% tax on wealth greater than $1 billion.

The "Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act" would implement a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts ranging from $50 million to $1 billion and an additional 1% annual surtax -- for an overall tax of 3% -- for those exceeding $1 billion.


"The ultra-rich and powerful have rigged the rules in their favor so much that the top 0.1% pay a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 99% and billionaire wealth is 40% higher than before the COVID crisis began," Warren, D-Mass., said.

An analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley found that about 100,000 Americans or fewer than 1 in 1,000 families would be subject to the wealth tax in 2023 and that it would raise about $3 trillion over between 2023 and 2032.

RELATED Head of IMF fears COVID-19 crisis will further widen wealth gap


"Wealth at the top has boomed during the COVID crisis. Billionaires wealth has literally exploded while many Americans struggle with job and income loss," University of California-Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman said. "The ultra-millionaire wealth tax is the most direct and powerful tool to curb growing wealth concentration in the U.S. and make sure the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share in taxes."

The bill would also invest $100 billion to rebuild and strengthen IRS systems and personnel, ensure a 30% audit rate for the super wealthy and impose a 40% exit tax on Americans who attempt to renounce their citizenship to avoid a wealth tax.

In addition to Warren, the bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Edward Markey, D-Mass. and Maize Hirono, D-Hawaii.

Novel soft tactile sensor with skin-comparable characteristics for robots

CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

Research News

VIDEO: THE ROBOTIC GRIPPER CAN STABLY GRASP AN EGG EVEN THOUGH THE EXPERIMENTER TRIED TO DRAG IT DOWN. AND WHEN THE EXPERIMENTER STOPS DRAGGING, THE ROBOTIC GRIPPER CAN ADJUST THE MAGNITUDE... view more 

CREDIT: PROVIDED BY DR SHEN'S TEAM

A joint research team co-led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a new soft tactile sensor with skin-comparable characteristics. A robotic gripper with the sensor mounted at the fingertip could accomplish challenging tasks such as stably grasping fragile objects and threading a needle. Their research provided new insight into tactile sensor design and could contribute to various applications in the robotics field, such as smart prosthetics and human-robot interaction.

Dr Shen Yajing, Associate Professor at CityU's Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) was one of the co-leaders of the study. The findings have been recently published in the scientific journal Science Robotics, titled "Soft magnetic skin for super-resolution tactile sensing with force self-decoupling".

Mimicking human skin characteristics

A main characteristic of human skin is its ability to sense the shear force, meaning the force that makes two objects slip or slide over each other when coming into contact. By sensing the magnitude, direction and the subtle change of shear force, our skin can act as feedback and allow us to adjust how we should hold an object stably with our hands and fingers or how tight we should grasp it.

To mimick this important feature of human skin, Dr Shen and Dr Pan Jia, a collaborator from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), have developed a novel, soft tactile sensor. The sensor is in a multi-layered structure like human skin and includes a flexible and specially magnetised film of about 0.5mm thin as the top layer. When an external force is exerted on it, it can detect the change of the magnetic field due to the film's deformation. More importantly, it can "decouple", or decompose, the external force automatically into two components - normal force (the force applied perpendicularly to the object) and shear force, providing the accurate measurement of these two forces respectively.

"It is important to decouple the external force because each force component has its own influence on the object. And it is necessary to know the accurate value of each force component to analyse or control the stationary or moving state of the object," explained Yan Youcan, PhD student at BME and the first author of the paper.

CAPTION

The bottle is stably held in the gripper with the force feedback from the tactile sensor during the process of liquid filling. On the other hand, the bottle slips during liquid filling without force feedback.

Deep learning enhanced accuracy

Moreover, the senor possesses another human skin-like characteristic - the tactile "super-resolution" that allows it to locate the stimuli's position as accurate as possible. "We have developed an efficient tactile super-resolution algorithm using deep learning and achieved a 60-fold improvement of the localisation accuracy for contact position, which is the best among super-resolution methods reported so far," said Dr Shen. Such an efficient tactile super-resolution algorithm can help improve the physical resolution of a tactile sensor array with the least number of sensing units, thus reducing the number of wirings and the time required for signal transmitting.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first tactile sensor that achieved self-decoupling and super-resolution abilities simultaneously," he added.

Robotic hand with the new sensor completes challenging tasks

By mounting the sensor at the fingertip of a robotic gripper, the team showed that robots can accomplish challenging tasks. For example, the robotic gripper stably grasped fragile objects like an egg while an external force trying to drag it away, or threaded a needle via teleoperation. "The super-resolution of our sensor helps the robotic hand to adjust the contact position when it grasps an object. And the robotic arm can adjust force magnitude based on the force decoupling ability of the tactile sensor," explained Dr Shen.

He added that the sensor can be easily extended to the form of sensor arrays or even continuous electronic skin that covers the whole body of the robot in the future. The sensitivity and measurement range of the sensor can be adjusted by changing the magnetisation direction of the top layer (magnetic film) of the sensor without changing the sensor's thickness. This enabled the e-skin to have different sensitivity and measurement range in different parts, just like human skin.

Also, the sensor has a much shorter fabrication and calibration processes compared with other tactile sensors, facilitating the actual applications.

"This proposed sensor could be beneficial to various applications in the robotics field, such as adaptive grasping, dextrous manipulation, texture recognition, smart prosthetics and human-robot interaction. The advancement of soft artificial tactile sensors with skin-comparable characteristics can make domestic robots become part of our daily life," concluded Dr Shen.

CAPTION

The sensor enables teleoperated needle threading.

Dr Shen and Dr Pan are the corresponding authors of the paper. CityU team members include PhD students Yan Youcan and Hu Zhe from BME and Dr Yang Zhengbao, Assistant Professor from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Other collaborating researchers are from Carnegie Mellon University and the Southern University of Science and Technology.

The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Hong Kong Research Grant Council and Shenzhen (China) Key Basic Research Project.

https://www.cityu.edu.hk/research/stories/2021/03/01/novel-soft-tactile-sensor-skin-comparable-characteristics-robots

Sniffing in the name of science

Detection dogs help generate important data for research and conservation

HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH - UFZ

Research News

 

IMAGE: ANNEGRET GRIMM-SEYFARTH WITH BORDER COLLIE "ZAMMY " IN SEARCH OF ENDANGERED CRESTED NEWTS. view more 

CREDIT: DANIEL PETER

The lists of Earth's endangered animals and plants are getting increasingly longer. But in order to stop this trend, we require more information. It is often difficult to find out exactly where the individual species can be found and how their populations are developing. According to a new overview study published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution by Dr Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and her colleagues, specially trained detection dogs can be indispensable in such cases. With the help of these dogs, the species sought can usually be found faster and more effectively than with other methods.

How many otters are there still in Germany? What habitats do threatened crested newts use on land? And do urban hedgehogs have to deal with different problems than their rural conspecifics? Anyone wishing to effectively protect a species should be able to answer such questions. But this is by no means easy. Many animals remain in hiding - even their droppings can be difficult to find. Thus, it is often difficult to know exactly whether and at what rate their stocks are shrinking or where the remaining survivors are. "We urgently need to know more about these species", says Dr Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth of the UFZ. "But first we must find them".

Remote sensing with aerial and satellite images is useful for mapping open landscapes or detecting larger animals. But when it comes to densely overgrown areas and smaller, hidden species, experts often carry out the search themselves or work with cameras, hair traps, and similar tricks. Other techniques (e.g. analysing trace amounts of DNA) have also been attracting increasing interest worldwide. The use of specially trained detection dogs can also be particularly useful. After all, a dog's sense of smell is virtually predestined to find the smallest traces of the target species. While humans have about six million olfactory receptors, a herding dog has more than 200 million - and a beagle even 300 million. This means that dogs can perceive an extremely wide range of odours, often in the tiniest concentrations. For example, they can easily find animal droppings in a forest or plants, mushrooms, and animals underground.

At the UFZ, the detection dogs have already proven their abilities in several research projects. "In order to be able to better assess their potential, we wanted to know how detection dogs have previously been used around the world", says Grimm-Seyfarth. Together with UFZ employee Wiebke Harms and Dr Anne Berger from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, she has evaluated 1220 publications documenting the use of such search dogs in more than 60 countries. "We were particularly interested in which breeds of dogs were used, which species they were supposed to track down, and how well they performed", explains the researcher.

The longest experience with the detection dogs is in New Zealand, where dogs have been tracking threatened birds since around 1890. Since then, the idea has been implemented in many other regions, especially in North America and Europe. The studies analysed focused mainly on finding animals as well as their habitats and tracks. Dogs have been used to find more than 400 different animal species - most commonly mammals from the cat, dog, bear, and marten families. They have also been used to find birds and insects as well as 42 different plant species, 26 fungal species, and 6 bacterial species. These are not always endangered species. The dogs sometimes also sniff out pests such as bark beetles or invasive plants such as knotgrass and ragweed.

"In principle, you can train all dog breeds for such tasks", says Grimm-Seyfarth. "But some of them may require more work than others". Pinschers and Schnauzers, for example, are now more likely to be bred as companion dogs and are therefore less motivated to track down species. And terriers tend to immediately snatch their targets - which is, of course, not desirable.

Pointers and setters, on the other hand, have been specially bred to find and point out game - but not to hunt it. This is why these breeds are often used in research and conservation projects in North America, Great Britain, and Scandinavia in order to detect ground-breeding birds such as ptarmigans and wood grouse. Retrievers and herding dogs also have qualities that make them good at tracking species. They are eager to learn, easy to motivate, enjoy working with people, and generally do not have a strong hunting instinct. That is why Labrador Retrievers, Border Collies, and German Shepherds are among the most popular detection dogs worldwide.

Grimm-Seyfarth's Border Collie Zammy, for example, learned as a puppy how to track down the droppings of otters. This is a valuable contribution to research because the droppings can be genetically analysed to find out which individual it comes from, how it is related to other conspecifics, and what it has eaten. However, even for experienced experts, these revealing traces are not so easy to find. Especially small and dark coloured droppings are easy to overlook. Dogs, on the other hand, sniff even the most unremarkable droppings without distinction. In an earlier UFZ study, they found four times as many droppings as human investigators alone. And the fact that Zammy is now also looking for crested newts makes his efforts even more rewarding.

According to the overview study, many other teams around the world have had similarly good experiences. In almost 90% of cases, the dogs worked much more effectively than other detection methods. Compared with camera traps, for example, they detected between 3.7 and 4.7 fold more black bears, pied martens, and bobcats. They are also often reach their destination particularly quickly. "They can find a single plant on a football field in a very short time", says Grimm-Seyfarth. They are even able to discover underground parts of plants.

However, there are also cases where the use of detection dogs is not the method of choice. Rhinos, for example, leave their large piles of excrement clearly visible on paths so that humans can easily find them on their own. And animal species that know feral dogs as enemies are more likely to find (and fight) the detection dogs than to be found.

"However, in most cases where the dogs did not perform so well, poor training is to blame", says Grimm-Seyfarth. She believes that good training of the animal is the most important recipe for success for detection dogs. "If you select the right dog, know enough about the target species, and design the study accordingly, this can be an excellent detection method". She and her colleagues are already planning further applications for the useful detection dogs. A new project that involves tracking down invasive plant species will soon be launched.

CAPTION

Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth with specially trained detection dog "Zammy", a Border Collie.

CREDIT

USC study shows promising potential for marine biofuel

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Research News

 

IMAGE: DIVER ATTACHES KELP TO AN EARLY PROTOTYPE OF THE KELP ELEVATOR. view more 

CREDIT: MAURICE ROPER

For several years now, the biofuels that power cars, jet airplanes, ships and big trucks have come primarily from corn and other mass-produced farm crops. Researchers at USC, though, have looked to the ocean for what could be an even better biofuel crop: seaweed.

Scientists at the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies on Santa Catalina Island, working with private industry, report that a new aquaculture technique on the California coast dramatically increases kelp growth, yielding four times more biomass than natural processes. The technique employs a contraption called the "kelp elevator" that optimizes growth for the bronze-colored floating algae by raising and lowering it to different depths.

The team's newly published findings suggest it may be possible to use the open ocean to grow kelp crops for low-carbon biofuel similar to how land is used to harvest fuel feedstocks such as corn and sugarcane -- and with potentially fewer adverse environmental impacts.

The National Research Council has indicated that generating biofuels from feedstocks like corn and soybeans can increase water pollution. Farmers use pesticides and fertilizers on the crops that can end up polluting streams, rivers and lakes. Despite those well-evidenced drawbacks, 7% of the nation's transportation fuel still comes from major food crops. And nearly all of it is corn-based ethanol.

"Forging new pathways to make biofuel requires proving that new methods and feedstocks work. This experiment on the Southern California coast is an important step because it demonstrates kelp can be managed to maximize growth," said Diane Young Kim, corresponding author of the study, associate director of special projects at the USC Wrigley Institute and a professor of environmental studies at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The study was published on Feb. 19 in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. The authors include researchers from USC Dornsife, which is home to the Wrigley Institute, and the La Cañada, California-based company Marine BioEnergy, Inc., which designed and built the experimental system for the study and is currently designing the technology for open-ocean kelp farms.

Though not without obstacles, kelp shows serious promise as biofuel crop

Government and industry see promise in a new generation of climate-friendly biofuels to reduce net carbon dioxide emissions and dependence on foreign oil. New biofuels could either supplement or replace gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and natural gas.

If it lives up to its potential, kelp is a more attractive option than the usual biofuel crops -- corn, canola, soybeans and switchgrass -- for two very important reasons. For one, ocean crops do not compete for fresh water, agricultural land or artificial fertilizers. And secondly, ocean farming does not threaten important habitats when marginal land is brought into cultivation.

The scientists focused on giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, the seaweed that forms majestic underwater forests along the California coast and elsewhere and washes onto beaches in dense mats. Kelp is one of nature's fastest-growing plants and its life cycle is well understood, making it amenable to cultivation.

But farming kelp requires overcoming a few obstacles. To thrive, kelp has to be anchored to a substrate and only grows in sun-soaked waters to about 60 feet deep. But in open oceans, the sunlit surface layer lacks nutrients available in deeper water.

To maximize growth in this ecosystem, the scientists had to figure out how to give kelp a foothold to hang onto, lots of sunlight and access to abundant nutrients. And they had to see if kelp could survive deeper below the surface. So, Marine BioEnergy invented the concept of depth-cycling the kelp, and USC Wrigley scientists conducted the biological and oceanographic trial.

The kelp elevator consists of fiberglass tubes and stainless-steel cables that support the kelp in the open ocean. Juvenile kelp is affixed to a horizontal beam, and the entire structure is raised and lowered in the water column using an automated winch.

Beginning in 2019, research divers collected kelp from the wild, affixed it to the kelp elevator and then deployed it off the northwest shore of Catalina Island, near Wrigley's marine field station. Every day for about 100 days, the elevator would raise the kelp to near the surface during the day so it could soak up sunlight, then lower it to about 260 feet at night so it could absorb nitrate and phosphate in the deeper water. Meantime, the researchers continually checked water conditions and temperature while comparing their kelp to control groups raised in natural conditions.

"We found that depth-cycled kelp grew much faster than the control group of kelp, producing four times the biomass production," Kim said.

CAPTION

A USC Wrigley Institute study finds that raising and lowering kelp boosts its growth four-fold. It's the next step toward growing it in the open ocean on giant "kelp elevators" to produce biofuel at commercial scale.

CREDIT

Letty Avila

The push to develop a new generation of biofuels

Prior to the experiment, it was unclear whether kelp could effectively absorb the nutrients in the deep, cold and dark environment. Nitrate is a big limiting factor for plants and algae, but the study suggests that the kelp found all it needed to thrive when lowered into deep water at night. Equally important, the kelp was able to withstand the greater underwater pressure.

Brian Wilcox, co-founder and chief engineer of Marine BioEnergy, said: "The good news is the farm system can be assembled from off-the-shelf products without new technology. Once implemented, depth-cycling farms could lead to a new way to produce affordable, carbon-neutral fuel year-round."

Cindy Wilcox, co-founder and president of Marine BioEnergy, estimates that it would take a Utah-sized patch of ocean to make enough kelp biofuel to replace 10% of the liquid petroleum consumed annually in the United States. One Utah would take up only 0.13% of the total Pacific Ocean.

Developing a new generation of biofuels has been a priority for California and the federal government. The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy invested $22 million in efforts to increase marine feedstocks for biofuel production, including $2 million to conduct the kelp elevator study. The Department of Energy has a study to locate a billion tons of feedstock per year for biofuels; Cindy Wilcox of Marine BioEnergy said the ocean between California, Hawaii and Alaska could contribute to that goal, helping make the U.S. a leader in this new energy technology.

###

The study authors include Ignacio A. Navarrete, Diane Kim, David W. Ginsburg, Jessica M. Dutton, John Heidelberg and Yubin Raut of the USC Wrigley Institute; Cindy Wilcox and Brian Howard Wilcox of Marine BioEnergy; and Daniel C. Reed at the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.

The research was supported by ARPA-E, U.S. Department of Energy Award Number DE-AR0000689 and by Marine BioEnergy, Inc., which has a commercial interest in the research and contributed part of its $2.6 million federal grant to cover the cost of the USC Wrigley Institute study.

You Tube video of diver inspecting open-ocean kelp (via Marine BioEnergy co.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=idHh7P9D2ws&feature=emb_logo

Transmission risk of COVID-19 from sewage spills into rivers can now be quickly quantified

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Research News

 

Scientists have identified that the COVID-19 virus could be transmitted through faecal contaminated river water.

A team of researchers, including water quality, epidemiology, remote sensing and modelling experts, led by Dr Jamie Shutler at the University of Exeter, have developed a fast and simple way to assess the potential risk of water-borne transmission of the COVID-19 virus, posed by sewage spills into open and closed freshwater networks.

The new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology - Water, identifies the relative risk of viral transmission by sewerage spills, across 39 different counties.

The study used information on the environment, a population's infection rate, and water usage to calculate the potential potency of viral loads in the event of a sewerage spill.

The research team believe the new study could provide fresh impetus in identifying new ways in which to prevent the spread of the virus amongst communities and the environment.

Dr Jamie Shutler, lead author of the study and at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall said: "it's important to identify and break all viable transmission routes if we want to stop any future outbreaks".

Airborne water droplets have previously been highlighted as the main route for transmission of the virus which causes COVID-19, but we know that other forms of transmission are likely to exist.

Previous studies have shown that COVID-19 viral pathogens can be found in untreated wastewater, in concentrations consistent with population infection rates. While studies are still relatively early in relation to COVID-19, other human coronaviruses are documented to survive in wastewater, with colder water temperature likely to increase viral survival.

Using this knowledge and existing methods, the research team identified how the transmission risk from water contaminated with sewage reduces over time.

This issue is likely to be especially problematic in parts of the world with a large proportion of temporary settlements, such as shanty towns, favellas or refugee camps, which are less likely to have safe sanitisation systems. Or any densely populated region that has high infection rates that also suffers from a sewage spill.

Modifying established pollution analysis methods, the team were able to estimate the viral concentration in rivers after a sewage spill. This meant they could calculate the relative transmission risk posed to humans by contaminated waterways for 39 countries.

These methods, the team argue, provides a fast way to assess the transmission risk associated to sewage spills through the use of easily available population, infection rate and environmental data, allowing evidence based guidance following a spill.

Dr Shutler added: "we hope that water companies or NGOs will use our simple spreadsheet calculator, that is freely available, to estimate the transmission risk after a spill. They can then use this information to advise the public."

###

This research was partially funded by the European Union project Aquasense, which is focussing on novel methods to study and monitor water quality.

The research resulted from a collaboration between the University of Exeter in Cornwall, the University of Glasgow, the ?ukasiewicz-Institute of Electron Technology in Poland, and the University of Agriculture in Kraków, Poland.

The fully open access paper is available here:
Shutler et al., (2021) Rapid Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Risk for Fecally Contaminated River Water, Environmental Science and Technology Water.

Lake turbidity mitigates impact of warming on walleyes in upper Midwest lakes

PENN STATE

Research News

IMAGE: SLIGHTLY HIGHER WATER TEMPERATURES IN SOME UPPER MIDWEST LAKES HAVE RESULTED IN INCREASED GROWTH RATES FOR YOUNG WALLEYES LIKE THESE, BUT IF WATER TEMPERATURES CONTINUE TO RISE, INFLUENCED BY A... view more 

CREDIT: GRETCHEN HANSEN, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Because walleyes are a cool-water fish species with a limited temperature tolerance, biologists expected them to act like the proverbial "canary in a coal mine" that would begin to suffer and signal when lakes influenced by climate change start to warm. But in a new study, a team of researchers discovered that it is not that simple.

"After analyzing walleye early-life growth rates in many lakes in the upper Midwest over the last three decades, we determined that water clarity affects how growth rates of walleyes change as lakes start to warm," said Tyler Wagner, Penn State adjunct professor of fisheries ecology. "In some lakes, warming actually led to increased walleye growth rates, in others there essentially was no change, and in others, growth rates declined. The different responses of growth rates to increasing water temperatures across lakes appear to be influenced by water turbidity."

The research is significant, Wagner explained, because walleye fisheries in the upper Midwest are important not just ecologically, but also from an economic and cultural perspective. Because walleye fishing is a valued social activity in Minnesota and Wisconsin and hundreds of thousands of walleye fingerlings are stocked there to bolster wild populations, the region is the ideal place to study the effect of warming conditions on the fish.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Midwest has gotten warmer, with average annual temperatures increasing over the last several decades. Between 1900 and 2010, the average air temperature increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the region.

"The rate of increase in air temperature has accelerated in recent decades, and this increase in air temperature will affect the thermal habitat for fishes across the region," Wagner said. "Temperatures are projected to continue increasing across the Midwest -- with the greatest increases in average temperature expected in northern areas -- so we wanted to know what was happening with walleye populations in the upper Midwest."

Using data provided by the Minnesota and Wisconsin departments of Natural Resources, researchers quantified annual walleye early-life growth rates from 1983 to 2015 in 61 lakes in the upper Midwest. Then they estimated the relationship between early-life growth rates and water growing degree days -- an indicator of the temperature the fish are exposed to -- over those 32 years. Importantly, they also examined how water turbidity influenced growth rates across the 61 lakes, correlated to an increased number of growing degree days.

Their findings, published Feb. 23 in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, showed that, on average, early-life growth rates increased with increasing growing degree days in turbid lakes, remained more or less unchanged in moderately clear lakes, and decreased in very clear lakes. This suggests that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to managing walleye populations across a broad landscape may not be effective, according to Wagner.

"Rather, lake-specific characteristics likely will be important in determining how walleye populations respond to climate change," he said.

The analysis also indicated that walleye growth rates varied among lakes of different sizes, explained lead researcher Danielle Massie, who graduated from Penn State in 2020 with a master's degree in wildlife and fisheries science.

"Walleye early-life growth rates, on average, were significantly greater in larger lakes," she said. "Our results provide insights into the conservation of cool-water species in a changing environment and identify lake characteristics in which walleye growth may be at least somewhat resilient to climate change."

The results of the research were surprising, Wagner conceded, because researchers expected to see walleye growth rates in most lakes decrease with more growing degree days -- since walleyes prefer cool water. But that did not happen in most of the lakes they studied.

"It sounds counterintuitive at first, but if we think about fish growth, we can think about it as a performance curve, where growth increases with increasing temperature to a certain point," he said. "But as the lake warms past that optimum temperature, the curve descends, and we'll see declining growth as the temperature increases beyond that point."

Slightly higher water temperatures in some upper Midwest lakes have resulted in increased growth rates for walleyes, but if water temperatures continue to rise, influenced by a warming climate, walleye populations in the region will suffer, predicted Wagner, assistant leader of Penn State's Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, housed in the College of Agricultural Sciences.

"We're going to reach a water temperature tipping point where growth will decline, and then we'll see deleterious effects," he said. "This is why understanding what factors, such as turbidity and lake size, influence how fish populations respond to warming is critical for informing management and conservation efforts."

CAPTION

The findings of this research suggests that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to managing walleye populations across a broad landscape may not be effective. Rather, lake-specific characteristics likely will be important in determining how walleye populations respond to climate change.

CREDIT

Gretchen Hansen, University of Minnesota

Also involved in the research were Gretchen Hansen, Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota; Yan Li, North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, North Carolina Department of Environment Quality; and Greg Sass, Escanaba Lake Research Station, Office of Applied Science, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Sea Grant Program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supported this research.