Thursday, April 01, 2021

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Lack of competition and transparency: challenges in the online advertising market

In 2019, 98.5% of Google's revenues, and 83.9% of those of Facebook, came from online advertising services

UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA (UOC)

The first online advertisement was a banner for AT&T that appeared on the HotWired.com website in 1994, when there were just 30 million internet users worldwide. Today, 57% of the world's population has access to the internet and advertising technology has advanced to the point that by 2018 the digital advertising market in Europe alone was worth 55 billion euros. Of this amount, 16.8 billion euros is accounted for by programmatic advertising, which uses artificial intelligence to automate much of the buying and selling of internet advertising.

A new report, published by Open Evidence, a spin-off of the UOC, whose authors include Francisco Lupiáñez, a member of the UOC's Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences and a partner and director of Open Evidence, examines the current situation and the challenges for online advertising. The results reveal an online market that is increasingly dominated by just a few companies (e.g., Google, Facebook) which occupy strategic roles throughout the advertising chain, affecting free competition. Among these challenges, the authors point to "the opacity and lack of transparency" in the market and the need to tackle this issue by combining self-regulation in the sector with domestic and international regulatory measures.

The personalization of advertising

The automation of the advertising market has enabled a better fit between supply and demand, allowing digital media publishers to sell advertising space and advertisers to easily reach large audiences on many websites. The system is based on users' data which is collected by browsers and cookies, i.e. small fragments of code that are stored on devices and record information including demographic details and online behaviour, such as the type of website visited and purchases made. This data is sold to advertisers, who can then use it to personalize advertising messages and show them at the best time and place.

This personalization of advertising activity has gone hand-in-hand with the growth of Google and Facebook, which headed the sector in 2017 with 33% and 16.2% of global revenues, respectively. "Both companies, and, to a lesser extent, Amazon, profit greatly from users' data and from providing a vast inventory of advertisements through their websites and services that can be monetized, generating most of their advertising revenues". The researchers note that "83.9% of Facebook's revenues and 98.5% of Google's revenues in 2019 were generated from advertising services".

Potentially anti-competitive practices

The report also states that this market leadership allows Google and Facebook to benefit from economies of scale and network effects, thanks to the interdependence of their services. It also details how a single company can operate "simultaneously as both buyer and seller". Google, for example, is involved on both the demand side for advertising space, through its DV360 campaign manager, and on the supply side, through its AdX exchange platform. At the same time, it also has a key role in support technologies such as website analytics and as a shopwindow for advertisements via its search engine.

All these advantages, argue the researchers, mean these platforms may potentially engage in "anti-competitive practices" such as favouring their own products, using their market power in new sectors, or acting as a barrier to access, by charging higher rates to advertisers, publishers or providers of complementary services, for example.

Technological complexity, opacity and fraud

The report highlights the opacity of the online advertising market as one of the gravest issues among the consequences of this type of practice. This lack of transparency is due "in part to the complexity of programmatic advertising, but also to the practices of the online platforms". Within these platforms, so-called "walled garden" companies like Amazon and Facebook can use their dominant positions to limit the release of information on the cost, revenues and effectiveness of advertising placement. These activities make it "very difficult to know how the money is spent and where the advertisements appear, leading advertisers and publishers to question the effectiveness of the online advertisement and hindering decision-making".

Fraud is another effect of this opacity in the value chain of advertising technology, including dependence on algorithms and the large number of intermediary businesses. According to 2017 figures published in the report, fraud cost advertisers around 13.6 billion euros globally.

International cooperation between regulatory authorities

The study's conclusions also set out a number of solutions to these issues, including responses at public policy level and at the level of the sector and the companies involved. With regard to the issues of competition and transparency, these include measures such as "the creation of units within the regulatory authorities to deal specifically with digital platforms, with control and executive powers; the establishment of codes of conduct; regulatory reforms on disclosure and interoperability, and, if necessary, anti-trust measures". Given the transnational nature of the platforms, the researchers also recommend "cooperation between regulatory authorities to share learning, improve cross-border regulation and coordinate measures".

The report also examines various self-regulatory initiatives within the industry, such as the development of standards and practices for measuring and ensuring the quality of advertisements, guidelines for improving transparency on tariffs and programmes governing users' privacy and consent. Finally, it emphasizes that no measure is sufficient "in itself", but "a better implementation of existing initiatives and a combination of the proposed measures could be effective in tackling the problems identified in this sector".

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This research by the UOC supports Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9, Industry, innovation and infrastructure.

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century, by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health. Over 500 researchers and 51 research groups work among the University's seven faculties and two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and open knowledge serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information:research.uoc.edu. #UOC25years

Early Earth's hot mantle may have led to Archean 'water world'

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

Research News

IMAGE: AN ARTIST'S RENDERING OF EARTH DURING THE ARCHEAN EON, WITH A HAZY ATMOSPHERE, FEW LANDMASSES AND A GLOBAL OCEAN. view more
CREDIT: ALEC BRENNER, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

WASHINGTON--A vast global ocean may have covered early Earth during the early Archean eon, 4 to 3.2 billion years ago, a side effect of having a hotter mantle than today, according to new research.

The new findings challenge earlier assumptions that the size of the Earth's global ocean has remained constant over time and offer clues to how its size may have changed throughout geologic time, according to the study's authors.

Most of Earth's surface water exists in the oceans. But there is a second reservoir of water deep in Earth's interior, in the form of hydrogen and oxygen attached to minerals in the mantle.

A new study in AGU Advances, which publishes high-impact, open-access research and commentary across the Earth and space sciences, estimates how much water the mantle potentially could hold today and how much water it could have stored in the past.

The findings suggest that, since early Earth was hotter than it is today, its mantle may have contained less water because mantle minerals hold onto less water at higher temperatures. Assuming that the mantle currently has more than 0.3-0.8 times the mass of the ocean, a larger surface ocean might have existed during the early Archean. At that time, the mantle was about 1,900-3,000 degrees Kelvin (2,960-4,940 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to 1,600-2,600 degrees Kelvin (2,420-4,220 degrees Fahrenheit) today.

If early Earth had a larger ocean than today, that could have altered the composition of the early atmosphere and reduced how much sunlight was reflected back into space, according to the authors. These factors would have affected the climate and the habitat that supported the first life on Earth.

"It's sometimes easy to forget that the deep interior of a planet is actually important to what's going on with the surface," said Rebecca Fischer, a mineral physicist at Harvard University and co-author of the new study. "If the mantle can only hold so much water, it's got to go somewhere else, so what's going on thousands of kilometers below the surface can have pretty big implications."

Earth's sea level has remained fairly constant during the last 541 million years. Sea levels from earlier in Earth's history are more challenging to estimate, however, because little evidence has survived from the Archean eon. Over geologic time, water can move from the surface ocean to the interior through plate tectonics, but the size of that water flux is not well understood. Because of this lack of information, scientists had assumed the global ocean size remained constant over geologic time.

In the new study, co-author Junjie Dong, a mineral physicist at Harvard University, developed a model to estimate the total amount of water that Earth's mantle could potentially store based on its temperature. He incorporated existing data on how much water different mantle minerals can store and considered which of these 23 minerals would have occurred at different depths and times in Earth's past. He and his co-authors then related those storage estimates to the volume of the surface ocean as Earth cooled.

Jun Korenaga, a geophysicist at Yale University who was not involved in the research, said this is the first time scientists have linked mineral physics data on water storage in the mantle to ocean size. "This connection has never been raised in the past," he said.

Dong and Fischer point out that their estimates of the mantle's water storage capacity carry a lot of uncertainty. For example, scientists don't fully understand how much water can be stored in bridgmanite, the main mineral in the mantle.

The new findings shed light on how the global ocean may have changed over time and can help scientists better understand the water cycles on Earth and other planets, which could be valuable for understanding where life can evolve.

"It is definitely useful to know something quantitative about the evolution of the global water budget," said Suzan van der Lee, a seismologist at Northwestern University who did not participate in the study. "I think this is important for nitty-gritty seismologists like myself, who do imaging of current mantle structure and estimate its water content, but it's also important for people hunting for water-bearing exoplanets and asking about the origins of where our water came from."

Dong and Fischer are now using the same approach to calculate how much water may be held inside Mars.

"Today, Mars looks very cold and dry," Dong said. "But a lot of geochemical and geomorphological evidence suggests that early Mars might have contained some water on the surface - and even a small ocean - so there's a lot of interest in understanding the water cycle on Mars."

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AGU (http://www.agu.org) supports 130,000 enthusiasts to experts worldwide in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, we advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.??

Notes for Journalists

This research study will be freely available for 30 days. Download a PDF copy of the paper here. Neither the paper nor this press release is under embargo.

Paper title:

"Constraining the volume of Earth's early oceans with a temperature?dependent mantle water storage capacity model"

Authors:

Junjie Dong, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Rebecca A. Fischer, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Lars P. Stixrude, University of California, Los Angeles, California
Carolina R. Lithgow?Bertelloni, University of California, Los Angeles, California

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Architecture of Eolian successions under icehouse and greenhouse conditions

New study published in Geological Society of America Bulletin

GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Research News

Boulder, Colo., USA: Anthropogenic climate change is one of the foremost scientific and societal challenges. In part, our response to this global challenge requires an enhanced understanding of how the Earth's surface responds to episodes of climatic heating and cooling. As historical records extend back only a few hundred years, we must look back into the ancient rock record to see how the surface of the Earth has responded to shifts between icehouse (presence of ice at the Earth's poles) and greenhouse (no substantial ice at Earth's poles) climates in the past.

In their study published last week in GSA Bulletin, Grace Cosgrove, Luca Colombera, and Nigel Mountney use a novel relational database (the Database of Aeolian Sedimentary Architecture) to quantify the response of ancient eolian systems (i.e., wind-dominated environments, such as sand dune fields) to global climatic shifts between icehouse and greenhouse climates, as registered in the rock record. They analyzed data on thousands of geological features that preserved a record of eolian processes and landforms, from 34 different eolian systems spanning over two billion years of Earth's history.

Their results demonstrate statistically that preserved sedimentary architectures developed under icehouse and greenhouse conditions are fundamentally different. These differences can be tied to contrasting environmental conditions existing on Earth's surface. During icehouse climates, alternations between glacial and interglacial episodes (caused by changes in the Earth's orbit--the so-called Milankovitch cyclicity) resulted in cycles of glacial-episode accumulation and interglacial deflation.

Greenhouse conditions instead promoted the preservation of eolian elements in the geological record due to elevated water tables and the widespread action of biogenic and chemical stabilizing agents, which protected deposits from wind-driven deflation.

In the context of a rapidly changing climate, the results presented in this work can help predict the potential long-term impact of climate change on Earth surface processes.

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Apples to apples: neural network uses orchard data to predict fruit quality after storage

SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH)

Research News

IMAGE: NEURAL NETWORK USES ORCHARD DATA TO PREDICT FRUIT QUALITY AFTER STORAGE. view more
CREDIT: PAVEL ODINEV / SKOLTECH

A researcher from Skoltech and his German colleagues have developed a neural network-based classification algorithm that can use data from an apple orchard to predict how well apples will fare in long-term storage. The paper was published in Computers and Electronics in Agriculture.

Before the fruit and vegetables we all like end up on our tables, they have to be stored for quite some time, and during this time they can develop physiological disorders such as flesh browning or superficial scald (brown or black patches on the skin of the fruit). These disorders contribute to the loss of a substantial amount of product, and a lot of research effort is dedicated to the development of robust methods of disorder prediction - a notoriously difficult task due to the multitude of factors involved, both at the orchard and in the storage facility.

Skoltech Assistant Professor Pavel Osinenko (formerly at Automatic Control and System Dynamics Laboratory, Technische Universität Chemnitz) and his colleagues gathered three years' worth of data on a Braeburn apple orchard in Germany, including weather data and information from non-destructive sensors such as visible and near-infrared spectroscopy. The information gathered included data on chlorophyll, anthocyanins, soluble solids and dry matter content. The team also used assessments of fruit quality post-storage (for instance, consumers like their apples nice and firm, so there is a metric for that).

"The experimental orchard was quite normal and the developed methodology can in fact be implemented in industry without much effort," Osinenko says.

The researchers developed a classification algorithm based on a recurrent neural network and trained it on the orchard data. The algorithm ended up being 80% successful in predicting internal browning of apples, the appearance of cavities on the surface and fruit firmness. "This is definitely a success since we are talking about an automated solution that does not require human experts. Of course, more data and tuning are needed, but as a proof of concept, the achieved results are indeed promising," Osinenko notes.

He adds that thanks to the predictive design of the methodology, farmers can use the information from the classifier to get better yield. And the team has already received inquiries about possible collaboration on other types of fruits and even vegetables since this approach can work for them too.

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Skoltech is a private international university located in Russia. Established in 2011 in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Skoltech is cultivating a new generation of leaders in the fields of science, technology and business, is conducting research in breakthrough fields, and is promoting technological innovation with the goal of solving critical problems that face Russia and the world. Skoltech is focusing on six priority areas: data science and artificial intelligence, life sciences, advanced materials and modern design methods, energy efficiency, photonics and quantum technologies, and advanced research. Web: https://www.skoltech.ru/.

Endangered songbird challenging assumptions about evolution

By looking at this newly emerged bird, a University of Colorado Boulder-led research team found an 'evolutionary shortcut' for speciation

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Research News

Not all species may travel the same path to existence, at least according to new findings from the University of Colorado Boulder and collaborators.

This new research, out now in Science, looked at a newly discovered, endangered songbird located only in South America--the Iberá Seedeater--and found that this bird followed a very rare evolutionary path to come into existence at a much faster pace than the grand majority of species.

By comparing this bird to a closely related neighbor (the Tawny-Bellied Seedeater) in the same group (the southern capuchino seedeaters), the researchers determined that genetic shuffling of existing variations, rather than new random mutations, brought this species into existence--and their own behaviors are keeping them apart.

This species is one of only two known examples across the globe to have traveled this path, challenging the typical assumptions of how new species form.

"One of the aspects of this paper that makes it so cool is that we were able to address this question of how the Iberá Seedeaters formed from multiple different perspectives," said Sheela Turbek, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology (EBIO) at University of Colorado Boulder and the study's lead author.

"Not only did we collect on-the-ground data on who mated with one another and the identity of their offspring, but we also generated genomic data to examine how similar these two species are on a genetic level. We then zoomed out further to look at where the Iberá Seedeater fits in the context of the broader capuchino group."

"Many studies will address one of these aspects or questions but not combine all of these different pieces of information into a single study."

The southern capuchino seedeaters are a group of recently evolved songbirds found throughout South America that is branching rapidly, with many of its species in the early stages of evolution. This family is best known for the dramatic variation with the males in terms of songs and plumage color, while the females are largely indistinguishable even to the most familiar researchers.

The Iberá Seedeater, the most recent member of this family, was first discovered in the remote, swampy grasslands of Iberá National Park in northern Argentina by study co-authors Adrián S. Di Giacomo and Cecilia Kopuchian from Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral, Argentina, in 2001, and then described in scientific literature in 2016.

In that national park, though, are six other closely related species of capuchinos, including the Tawny-Bellied Seedeater, that breed closely beside each other. These species, despite occupying the same environment and eating the same food, rarely interbreed.

And so, researchers wondered why--and how--the Iberá Seedeater even came to be.

They explored these questions in two ways: First, they looked at how this new species may have formed by examining the ways in which its DNA differs from the Tawny-Bellied Seedeater, and second, looking at what mechanisms might be preventing it from interbreeding with the other species that occur in the park.

To do that, Turbek went down to Argentina for the breeding season for three years, staying two and a half to three months at a time, searching for and monitoring nests, collecting blood samples from adults and nestlings, and then, in the final year, performed a behavioral experiment to see whether plumage or song played a roll in terms of species recognition.

"The field work involved in collecting the assortative mating and behavioral data is extraordinarily hard, which is why these kinds of datasets rarely exist. This study and publication are a testament to Sheela's skill and hard work in the field," said Scott Taylor, an assistant professor in EBIO at University of Colorado Boulder, an author on the paper and Turbek's advisor.

What they found is that the two birds are closely related genetically, only distinguishable by the genes involved in plumage coloration. As well, they found that the males responded most aggressively to songs and plumage variations aligning with their own species.

This all means that the species could very well reproduce and hybridize--they just choose not to, therefore reinforcing their own reproductive barriers.

On a broader level, though, when comparing the Iberá Seedeater to other capuchino species, the researchers found that the Iberá Seedeater shares genomic variants with other capuchinos in these regions, but the variants have been shuffled to form a unique combination, which, the researchers argue, could be an evolutionary shortcut that most likely underlies much of the diversity among the different subspecies of this family.

"This is a really beautiful story about a process that we have never seen in quite this way before," says co-author Irby Lovette, director of the Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

"The classic and most common evolutionary model for new species is the accumulation of genetic mutations when those species are separated by a geographic barrier over perhaps millions of years. But here we found that genetic shuffling can happen quickly and without geographical isolation. It's almost like 'instant speciation.'"

Leonardo Campagna, a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the senior author on the paper, agrees:

"This is the clearest example in birds of how reshuffling of genetic variation can generate a brand-new species."

The only other organism where this type of evolution has been seen, according to Turbek, is a group of fish found in Africa called the Lake Victoria cichlids.

"It's interesting to see this mechanism operating in something as different as birds," Turbek commented.

While this study focused in part on the role of male behaviors, the researchers are very interested in taking it one step further, examining the role that female choice may also play in reproduction.

"There are many more questions that we have to address," Turbek said.

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Other researchers on the project include Melanie Browne with Centro de Ecologia Aplicada del Litoral in Corrientes, Argentina; Wesley M. Hochachka with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Dario A. Lijtmaer and Pablo L. Tubaro with Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Luis Fabio Silveira with Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Rebecca J. Safran with CU Boulder.

Floating gardens as a way to keep farming despite climate change

Bangladesh's historic farming systems could offer a way forward

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Bangladesh's floating gardens, built to grow food during flood seasons, could offer a sustainable solution for parts of the world prone to flooding because of climate change, a new study has found.

The study, published recently in the Journal of Agriculture, Food and Environment, suggests that floating gardens might not only help reduce food insecurity, but could also provide income for rural households in flood-prone parts of Bangladesh.

"We are focused here on adaptive change for people who are victims of climate change, but who did not cause climate change," said Craig Jenkins, a co-author of the study and academy professor emeritus of sociology at The Ohio State University. "There's no ambiguity about it: Bangladesh didn't cause the carbon problem, and yet it is already experiencing the effects of climate change."

Bangladesh's floating gardens began hundreds of years ago. The gardens are made from native plants that float in the rivers - traditionally, water hyacinths - and operate almost like rafts, rising and falling with the waters. Historically, they were used to continue growing food during rainy seasons when rivers filled with water.

The farmers - or their families - layer the plants about three feet deep, creating a version of raised-bed gardens that float in the water. Then, they plant vegetables inside those rafts. As the raft-plants decompose, they release nutrients, which help feed the vegetable plants. Those vegetable plants typically include okra, some gourds, spinach and eggplant. Sometimes, they also include spices like turmeric and ginger.

Floating gardens are also in use in parts of Myanmar, Cambodia and India. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization has named Bangladesh's floating gardens a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System.

But as climate change has affected the volume of water in those rivers - creating extreme highs and floods, along with extreme lows and droughts - floating gardens have become a way for rural farmers to keep producing food during unpredictable weather. Climate change increases weather extremes and the severity of flooding, and droughts as well.

The researchers wanted to understand whether Bangladesh's floating gardens could be a sustainable farming practice as climate change continues to cause floods and droughts, and to see whether the gardens bring better food security to individual households.

"They've got to be able to grow specific crops that can survive with minimal soil," said Jenkins, who is also a research scientist and former director of the Ohio State Mershon Center for International Security Studies. "And in Bangladesh, a lot of small farmers that had typically relied on rice crops are moving away from those because of the effects of climate change and better returns from alternative crops."

For this study, the researchers interviewed farming families who use floating gardens, and found strong evidence that floating gardens provide stability, both in the amount of food available to feed rural populations and in a farming family's income, despite the instability created by a changing climate.

They found that farmers typically use hybrid seeds, which must be repurchased each year, to grow a diverse range of vegetables in the floating gardens. The gardens are also susceptible to pests, so farmers end up spending some money on both pesticides and fertilizers. But even with those expenses, they found, benefits outweighed costs.

Generally, entire families work on the gardens, the researchers found: Women, children and the elderly prepare seedlings and collect aquatic plants to build gardens. Men cultivate the gardens and protect them from raiders. Some families also farm fish in the waters around their floating gardens.

One farmer told the research team that he earns up to four times as much money from the gardens as from traditional rice paddies.

Still, the system could use improvements, the researchers found. Farmers often take out high-interest loans to cover the investment costs of building the beds and stocking them with plants. Lower-interest loans from responsible government or non-governmental organizations could alleviate that burden, they found.

Coastal lupine faces specific extinction threat from climate change

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

Research News

IMAGE: CLIMATE CHANGE REPRESENTS A SPECIFIC EXTINCTION THREAT FOR AN ENDANGERED COASTAL LUPINE PLANT KNOWN AS TIDESTROM'S LUPINE (LUPINUS TIDESTROMII), FOUND AT THE POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES. view more
CREDIT: ELEANOR PARDINI, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

Climate change is altering the world we share with all living things. But it's surprisingly difficult to single out climate change as an extinction threat for any one particular species protected under the Endangered Species Act.

To date, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has only formally considered impacts from climate change in listing actions for four animal species and one alpine tree.

But the effects of climate change extend to temperate climates as well. A new analysis of population data published in the journal Ecosphere shows that climate change represents a specific extinction threat for an endangered coastal lupine plant.

Biologists including Eleanor Pardini at Washington University in St. Louis have tracked all of the known stands of Tidestrom's lupine, Lupinus tidestromii, at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco for more than 14 years.

If average temperatures increase by one degree Celsius (1° C, or about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a conservative assumption -- the scientists project that 90% of individual lupine plants could be lost in the next 30 years.

"In general, it is fairly difficult to conclusively say that climate change is a species threat," said Pardini, assistant director of environmental studies at Washington University and senior lecturer in Arts & Sciences.

Modeling the threat of climate change requires long-term population data, which is difficult to collect and thus not available for most species.

"We were able to perform this analysis and show climate change is an important additional threat factor for this species because we have spent considerable effort collecting a long-term dataset," Pardini said.

An overlooked threat

To date, regulators have considered climate change in their listing actions only for four animal species: the polar bear, American pika, American wolverine and Gunnison sage-grouse.

Tidestrom's lupine is different, and not just because it's a plant. It's from a more seasonally mild coastal area -- not someplace that one might think would be rocked by a few degrees of rising temperatures. The animals that have been previously considered all occur in arctic, alpine or arid regions.

"While our results on L. tidestromii could be an isolated case, they suggest that the extinction threat posed by climate change might be overlooked in temperate biomes," Pardini said.

The delicate, purple-flowering lupine is part of a dune ecosystem along the west coast of the United States that is highly disturbed. In many of these coastal places, people have planted exotic plants to be able to develop and farm closer to the beach. Over time, exotic plants have over-stabilized dunes, disrupting wind and sand movement and harming plants and animals.

For the new study, Pardini worked with Tiffany Knight and Aldo Compagnoni, both of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Germany. Pardini and Knight have been tracking populations of Tidestrom's lupine at Point Reyes since 2005. Compagnoni joined the team as an expert in demographic modeling incorporating climate data.

The scientists produced population trajectories for all populations of the species at Point Reyes for the next 30 years.

"Using 14 years of demographic data from 2005 to 2018 and model selection, we found that survival and fertility measures responded negatively to temperature anomalies," said Compagnoni, first author of the new study. "We then produced forecasts based on stochastic individual-based population models that account for uncertainty in demographic outcomes."

If temperatures remain at the 1990-2018 average levels, the scientists expect that the number of individual lupine plants would double over the next 30 years. However, with a 1° C increase in temperature, the number of plants will instead drop off dramatically, with an expected 90% reduction in the number of individual plants.

This scenario is conservative, as even more dramatic increases in temperature than 1° C are projected for this region of California in the next 30 years.

"Despite large uncertainties, we predict that all populations will decline if temperatures increase by 1° Celsius," Compagnoni said. "Considering the total number of individuals across all seven populations, the most likely outcome is a population decline of 90%. Moreover, we predict local extinction is certain for one of our seven populations."

"Our species has a range so small that its response to climate cannot be inferred from its geographic distribution," Pardini said. "In these cases, long-term data collection becomes an important alternative option to assess the climatic vulnerability of a species."

Some rare species that are endemic to coastal habitats are currently protected by the Endangered Species Act and by various state listings.

Many Tidestrom's lupine populations are protected against development because they occur in a national park or state parks. However, Knight expressed general concern about the proposed new regulations that would allow coastal habitats to be excluded in the future because they are economically valuable to developers. Coastal plant communities provide a wide variety of valuable ecosystem services, such as mitigating the effects of coastal erosion and flooding.

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A mouse's bite holds venomous potential, finds new study

Startling new evidence shows mammal salivary glands and snake venom glands share a common genetic foundation.

OKINAWA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (OIST) GRADUATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: THE TAIWAN HABU (PROTOBOTHROPS MUCROSQUAMATUS) IS AN INVASIVE SPECIES THAT HAS BECOME WELL ESTABLISHED IN OKINAWA. view more
CREDIT: OIST/STEVEN AIRD

We are not venomous, and neither are mice - but within our genomes lurks that potential, suggest scientists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and the Australian National University.

Reporting this week in PNAS, the researchers found that the genetic foundation required for oral venom to evolve is present in both reptiles and mammals.

The study also provides the first concrete evidence of an underlying molecular link between venom glands in snakes and salivary glands in mammals.

"Venoms are a cocktail of proteins that animals have weaponized to immobilize and kill prey, as well as for self-defense," said first author, Agneesh Barua, a PhD student at OIST. "What's interesting about venom is that it has arisen in so many different animals: jellyfish, spiders, scorpions, snakes, and even some mammals. Although these animals evolved different ways to deliver venom, an oral system - where venom is injected through a bite - is one of the most common and well-studied."

But scientists are still zeroing in on the origin of oral venom. This latest research into snakes, a group of animals renowned and feared for their potent bite, now reveals oral venom's ancient foundation.

Previously, scientists have focused on the genes that code for the proteins that make up the toxic mixture. "However, many of the toxins currently found in venom were incorporated after the oral venom system was already established. We needed to look at the genes that were present before venom's origin, genes which enabled the rise of venom systems," Barua said.

So instead, the team searched for genes that work alongside and interact strongly with the venom genes. The scientists used venom glands collected from the Taiwan habu snake - a pit viper found in Asia.

The researchers identified around 3,000 of these 'cooperating' genes and found that they played important roles in protecting the cells from stress caused by producing lots of proteins. The genes were also key in regulating protein modification and folding.

When proteins are made, the long chains of amino acids must fold together in a specific way. Just like a wrong fold when doing origami, one misstep prevents the protein from assuming the required shape needed for it to function properly. Misfolded proteins can also accumulate and damage cells.

"The role of these genes in the unfolded protein response pathway makes a lot of sense as venoms are complex mixtures of proteins. So to ensure you can manufacture all these proteins, you need a robust system in place to make sure the proteins are folded correctly so they can function effectively," explained Barua.

The researchers then looked at the genomes of other creatures across the animal kingdom, including mammals like dogs, chimpanzees and humans, and found that they contained their own versions of these genes.

When the team looked at the salivary gland tissues within mammals, they found that the genes had a similar pattern of activity to that seen in snake venom glands. The scientists therefore think that salivary glands in mammals and venom glands in snakes share an ancient functional core that has been maintained since the two lineages split hundreds of millions of years ago.

"Many scientists have intuitively believed this is true, but this is the first real solid evidence for the theory that venom glands evolved from early salivary glands," said Barua. "And while snakes then went crazy, incorporating many different toxins into their venom and increasing the number of genes involved in producing venom, mammals like shrews produce simpler venom that has a high similarity to saliva."

The apparent ease with which the function of salivary glands can be repurposed to be venomous is startling - and could mean that scientists start looking at other mammals in an unsettling new light.

"There were experiments in the 1980s that showed that male mice produce compounds in their saliva that are highly toxic when injected into rats," said Barua. "If under certain ecological conditions, mice that produce more toxic proteins in their saliva have better reproductive success, then in a few thousand years, we might encounter venomous mice."

Whether mice are or are not on this evolutionary path is a matter that requires further investigation, but it certainly blurs the line between venomous and non-venomous species.

And although very unlikely, if the right ecological conditions ever existed, humans too could become venomous. "It definitely gives a whole new meaning to a toxic person," joked Barua.

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POSTMODERN ALCHEMY

Lab-made hexagonal diamonds stiffer than natural diamonds

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

PULLMAN, Wash. -- Nature's strongest material now has some stiff competition. For the first time, researchers have hard evidence that human-made hexagonal diamonds are stiffer than the common cubic diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry.

Named for their six-sided crystal structure, hexagonal diamonds have been found at some meteorite impact sites, and others have been made briefly in labs, but these were either too small or had too short of an existence to be measured.

Now scientists at Washington State University's Institute for Shock Physics created hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure their stiffness using sound waves. Their findings are detailed in a recent paper in Physical Review B.

"Diamond is a very unique material," said Yogendra Gupta, director of the Institute for Shock Physics and corresponding author on the study. "It is not only the strongest -- it has beautiful optical properties and a very high thermal conductivity. Now we have made the hexagonal form of diamond, produced under shock compression experiments, that is significantly stiffer and stronger than regular gem diamonds."

Researchers have long wanted to create a material stronger than natural diamonds, which could have a variety of uses in industry. While many theorized that hexagonal diamonds would be stronger, the WSU study provides the first experimental evidence that they are.

Lead author Travis Volz, now a post-doctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, focused his dissertation work at WSU on the creation of hexagonal diamonds from graphite. For this study, Volz and Gupta used gunpowder and compressed gas to propel small graphite disks about the size of a dime at a speed of around 15,000 miles per hour onto a transparent material. The impact produced shockwaves in the disks that very rapidly transformed them into hexagonal diamonds.

Immediately after impact the researchers produced a small sound wave and used lasers to measure its movement through the diamond. Sound moves faster through stiffer material. Previously sound moved fastest through cubic diamond; in the lab-created hexagonal diamonds it moved faster.

Each process happened in several billionths of a second, or nanoseconds, but the researchers were able to make the stiffness measurements before the high velocity impact destroyed the diamond.

Stiffness is the ability of a material to resist deformation under a force or pressure -- for instance, a rock is stiffer than rubber as rubber will bend when pressed. Hardness is the resistance to scratching or other surface deformations.

Generally stiffer materials are also harder, said Volz. While the researchers weren't able to scratch the diamonds to test hardness directly, by measuring the diamonds' stiffness, they can make inferences about their hardness.

If the science advances to the point where lab-made hexagonal diamonds can be created and recovered, they could have a range of uses.

"Hard materials are useful for machining capabilities," said Volz. "Diamond has been used for a long time in drill bits, for example. Since we found that the hexagonal diamond is likely harder than the cubic diamond, it could be a superior alternative for machining, drilling or any type of application where the cubic diamond is used."

While the industrial advantages are clear, Gupta said it is still possible hexagonal diamonds could one day be used on engagement rings. Currently lab-made cubic diamonds have less value compared to their natural peers, but hexagonal diamonds would likely be more novel.

"If someday we can produce them and polish them, I think they'd be more in-demand than cubic diamonds," said Gupta. "If somebody said to you, 'look, I'm going to give you the choice of two diamonds: one is lot more rare than the other one.' Which one would you pick?"

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Thursday, April 01, 2021

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