It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, March 02, 2021
Interior Department promises $260M
for coal communities
Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., is shown speaking during her Senate confirmation hearing on February 23. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said he will support her nomination. Photo by Jim Watson/UPI | License Photo
March 1 (UPI) -- The Biden administration announced Monday more than $260 million available to assist communities struggling with the decreased demand for coal.
The Interior Department said more than $152.22 million is now available through the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act's Abandoned Mine Land grant program. The department said it will also distribute $115 million through the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization grant program.
"The Abandoned Mine Land grant programs provide an important opportunity to revitalize local economies, support jobs and address environmental impacts to communities from these legacy developments," the Interior Department's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Laura Daniel Davis said in a statement.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said there is still "much work to be done" to clean up damage to lands and water in communities negatively affected by coal mining.
"I will be reintroducing legislation to extend the AML fee, which is currently set to expire in September, to ensure this important reclamation work can continue without interruption," Manchin said. "I am also glad that West Virginia will receive $25 million through the AML Economic Revitalization grant program, which provides additional funding for economic development projects on abandoned mind lands."
In the meantime, Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., has faced scrutiny in her bid to become the first Native American secretary of the Interior Department.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., announced Monday that he will support Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe.
"I am committed to working with Rep. Haaland, Republicans and Democrats on policies that help our state's economy grow, honor our outdoor heritage, and ensure that the federal government lives up to its treaty obligations to Arizona's tribal communities," Kelly said in a statement.
Haaland faced two days of intense questioning from Republicans on issues ranging from her views on fossil fuels to past Twitter posts she wrote about Republicans.
Study: 30,000 deaths in U.S. during pandemic linked to unemployment
By Amy Norton, HealthDay News
New research suggests roughly 30,000 people have died because of unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic, which also has increased the number of people lining up at food banks across the country. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo
With U.S. deaths from COVID-19 passing the grim milestone of a half-million, a new study suggests that another 30,000-plus Americans have died due to pandemic-related unemployment.
Using various data sources, researchers estimated that number of deaths between April 2020 and March 2021 could be attributed to pandemic-fueled job losses.
And in a pattern that's been repeatedly seen, Black Americans bore a disproportionate burden: Although they make up 12% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 19% of the unemployment-related deaths.
The findings are published in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Researchers said that while 30,000 is a small number relative to the toll of COVID-19 itself, it's also just one measure of the health impact of pandemic-related unemployment.
"I think there will be a ripple effect that we see for years," said study co-author Kate Duchowny, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
In the near term, she said, widespread unemployment can affect death rates for various reasons -- including lost access to health care and increases in suicides and substance abuse.
But Duchowny said the repercussions could take years to manifest fully: If people skipped care for existing health conditions because they lost insurance or income, what are the long-term effects? If people didn't get cancer screenings, or had delayed diagnoses of other conditions, what will the consequences be down the road?
Stan Dorn is director of the National Center for Coverage Innovation at Families USA, a nonpartisan health care advocacy organization.
He agreed that the full scope of the crisis will take time to understand.
Last April, as COVID-19 surges sparked lockdowns in much of the United States, the national unemployment rate hit a record 14.7%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For many, that also meant their health insurance disappeared.
Last July, Families USA estimated that 5.4 million laid-off workers had become uninsured between February and May 2020.
Losing health insurance in the middle of a pandemic, Dorn said, is clearly bad for individuals. But it's also a public health threat, he added, as people may delay COVID testing or care for potential symptoms.
Unemployment figures have improved since the peak last April. In January, the employment rate stood at 6.3%, according to the BLS. But that is still well above the pre-pandemic level of 3.5%.
A body of research has shown that unemployment increases the risk of death, according to Duchowny. Calculating the number of deaths linked to pandemic job losses is difficult, however.
To begin to get a handle on it, the UCSF researchers used several sources: a published analysis of previous studies on the risk of death associated with unemployment; BLS unemployment figures, and death data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.
Their "best estimate," Duchowny said, is that 30,231 deaths can so far be attributed to pandemic unemployment.
But considering different scenarios, the researchers found that the numbers could range from a low of 8,300 to almost 202,000.
It's hard to gauge, for instance, whether the health toll of unemployment during this pandemic -- and the many stresses it has brought -- would be different compared with other time periods, Duchowny said.
The researchers also found that along with Black Americans, less-educated Americans have likely been disproportionately affected: People with a high school education or less accounted for 72% of the estimated deaths.
Both groups have suffered a high rate of job loss.
These are people, Duchowny said, who have borne a "double burden" of being hard-hit by both COVID-19 and the economic fallout of the pandemic.
Some relief is in sight. Dorn said the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill moving through Congress has some vital provisions for Americans who lack health insurance.
They include federal assistance to help people buy insurance, he said, plus "major incentives" for states to expand their Medicaid programs to more residents.
"Job No. 1 is to minimize the impact [of unemployment] now," Dorn said. But, he added, "these are short-term emergency measures."
Ultimately, Dorn said, the lessons of the pandemic should lead to long-term changes in the U.S. health care system.
"Infectious disease experts have long said the U.S. would be vulnerable during a pandemic," Dorn noted.
One reason, he said, is because it is the only large, wealthy country without universal health care.More information
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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
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.
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
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.
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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.
