In 45 years, I've never seen Americans shift this much on Palestine

READ MORE FROM DR JAMES ZOGBY

In the 45 years since launching the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, I have witnessed more tragic wars than I can care to count and defended Palestinians against more heinous crimes than I can bear to list. During all this time, we have had American supporters who have embraced the cause of Palestinian rights and supported our calls for justice. But never have I witnessed the sea of change in opinion and its impact on the policy debate that is now taking place.

Five decades ago, there were a handful of members of Congress who would courageously speak out and there were some Christian churches, peace and civil rights leaders, and small progressive Jewish groups who would endorse our appeals for Palestinian human rights. For their efforts, they, like us, were subjected to intimidation seeking to silence their voices or punish their advocacy.

Change began with the first Intifada, as national television broadcast Israeli troops firing on stone-throwing Palestinian youth, and the horror that greeted then defence minister Yitzhak Rabin’s orders to his soldiers to break the bones of the young protesters. Building on this shifting opinion, the prominent political activist Jesse Jackson elevated the issue of justice for Palestinians during his 1988 presidential campaign. That year, we succeeded in having the issue debated, for the first time, at the Democratic convention. I will never forget the feeling I had as I mounted the convention podium to introduce our platform plank calling for Palestinian rights.

READ MORE FROM DR JAMES ZOGBY

Egypt’s cycle of discontent keeps on turning

The sins and horrors of 1967 are alive today

Diversity should be America’s greatest strength

After the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 and the Oslo Accords between 1993 and 1995, there was another observable shift in US opinion. On closer examination, however, the change was largely on the Democratic side. Then president Bill Clinton and the Democrats backed the “Oslo process", while Republicans, whose party had increasingly come under the influence of the right-wing Christians and Reagan-era neo-conservatives, embraced a hardline pro-Israel stance. Since then, this partisan divide has continued to widen.

As a review of current polling makes clear, this partisan split increasingly masks America’s very real ideological and demographic divide on a range of domestic and foreign policy concerns. On the Democratic side, the largest component group of voters are African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, millennials and college-educated women. While on the Republican side, over 40 per cent of their voters are white, older, less than college-educated, or “born again” Christians. Their respective views on the Palestine-Israel issue are mirror images of one another. More revealing is the divide between self-identified liberals and conservatives.


Polls now show that the majority of Democratic voters hold deeply unfavourable views of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, oppose many Israeli policies, and favour conditioning US aid to Israel based on their treatment of Palestinians. Not only have attitudes changed, but progressive Jewish groups and organised Arab Americans have been empowered by this new political environment and have been engaging their elected officials. This has emboldened members of Congress to speak out. In response to both Israel’s recent policies in Jerusalem and the bombardment of Gaza, this split is having an impact in Congress.

Activists and protesters march in support of Palestine near the Washington monument in Washington. AFP

The result: for the first time in 30 years, a dozen members took to the floor of Congress to denounce Israeli efforts to evict Palestinians from their Jerusalem homes and the killings of civilians in Gaza; more than one-half of the Democratic Senate caucus has called for an immediate Hamas-Israel ceasefire; and progressives in the House of Representatives are calling on President Joe Biden to stop a proposed US arms’ sale to Israel and a bill has been introduced calling for US aid to Israel to be conditioned on their treatment of Palestinians. Also noteworthy has been the muted responses of normally pro-Israel Democratic senators and representatives. They know where their base voters are on this issue and they, therefore, are treading carefully.

The American media has given extensive coverage to this development. I was so proud to see a New York Times front page story, which appeared on May 15, open with the sentence: “In 1988, when James Zogby ... pushed Democrats to include mention of Palestinian sovereignty in their platform they responded with a clear warning ... If the P-word is even in the platform, all hell will break loose.” The article goes on to note how the issue we raised and lost back then, is now centre stage in the policy debate.

That’s the good news. More sobering is the fact, as I noted in the same story, that "the base of the party is in a very different place than where the party establishment is". We haven’t won this policy debate, not by a long shot. But what’s new and important is that we are forcing a debate. And that’s the first step on the road to change.

Dr James Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute and a columnist for The National

Israel Admits to Huge Economic Damage Caused by Gaza Rockets

May, 25, 2021 - 


TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Israel admitted to the huge economic damage sustained by the regime as a result of the barrage of missiles coming from the besieged Gaza Strip during the Palestinian resistance's Operation al-Quds Sword against the Zionist entity.


A Monday report by Israeli Manufacturers’ Association says Israeli businesses lost 1.2 billion shekels ($368 million) during 11 days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian resistance groups based in Gaza.

The association, which represents some 1,500 firms and 400,000 workers, said the loss was mostly due to employees choosing to stay at home due to the nearly nonstop rocket fire from Gaza.

The main industrial group pointed out that about a third of workers were absent from work in southern Israel and about 10% stayed home in areas closer to the commercial hub of central Israel during the war.

"The non-arrival of workers led to a significant decrease in the outputs of industrial companies, a decline in sales and a direct harm to revenues," it said.

Fifty Israeli factories suffered millions of shekels in direct damage from rocket shrapnel, though the manufacturers association did not include in its estimate indirect damage, like cancelled orders.

In the 2014 war that lasted seven weeks, Israel's central bank estimated the Tel Aviv's economy took a 3.5 billion shekel hit, plus nearly the same amount in damages to the tourism sector.

Ron Tomer, president of the association, called on the government to set up a permanent compensation scheme that would more efficiently help businesses in future rounds of fighting.

"It is not time for bureaucracy and procrastination rather for rehabilitation and full support for these companies, which throughout the operation proved they know how to function and produce under rocket fire," he said.

Israel's parliamentary finance committee is slated to debate the issue on Tuesday.

The Palestinians’ victory in the recent war was predictable because the Zionist regime had not won any wars in the last 16 years, neither in Lebanon nor in the Gaza Strip.

Israel sustained a heavy defeat in its latest confrontation with resistance groups in the Gaza Strip. The regime declared a ceasefire early on Friday after 12 days of heavy bombardment of Gaza, to which the resistance responded with firing thousands of rockets into the occupied territories.

At least 248 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including 66 children, while Palestinian rockets killed 12 in Israel.

Finance sector declared as one of UK's biggest contributors to climate change
UK banks and asset managers financed carbon emissions that were 1.8 times the annual net emissions of the UK as a whole

Pedro Gonçalves and Hope William-Smith
25 May 2021

UK banks and asset managers were responsible for financing 805 million tonnes of CO2 in 2019, which would make the City of London the ninth biggest emitter in the world if it were a country, according to a report by Greenpeace UK and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The new research points towards finance as one of the UK's largest contributors to climate change and supports calls for regulation to be introduced across the sector to bring it into line with Paris Agreement targets.

UK banks and asset managers financed carbon emissions that were 1.8 times the annual net emissions of the UK as a whole, the report reveals, placing UK finance at the same level as oil and gas extraction, coal mining, aviation and transport, high-carbon sector.

Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven, said: "Finance is the UK's dirty little secret. Banks and investors are responsible for more emissions than most nations and the UK Government is giving them a free pass.

"How can we say we are 'leading the world on climate action' while allowing financial institutions to plough billions into fossil fuel production every year? The claim is almost laughable.

"As the host of this year's pivotal global climate summit, the government can no longer turn a blind eye. Rather than relying on self-regulation, we need legislation that forces all banks and asset managers to align all financing activities with the goals of the Paris Agreement. That would be genuine climate leadership."

The analysis, carried out by climate solutions and project developer South Pole, used carbon accounting methodology to calculate, for the first time, the carbon emissions associated with the lending and investment activities of the UK's financial sector.

However, the report might just have revealed the tip of the iceberg as the analysis used an indicative sample of the UK's financial institutions - made up of 15 banks and ten asset managers - which excludes certain financing activities such as underwriting.

Despite this, UK financial institutions are not currently regulated in the same way as other high-carbon sectors and, when it comes to cutting emissions, they are not legally required to align their financing activities with the UK's or global climate commitments.

Instead, some banks and other financial institutions are making voluntary pledges to reduce their carbon emissions, which have been dismissed by as greenwashing and alone will not deliver the emissions reductions required to successfully tackle climate change.

WWF UK chief executive Tanya Steele said: "Trying to set a path to net-zero emissions without tackling the UK financial sector is like sticking a plaster when the patient needs open heart surgery.

"Despite seeing ambitious commitments to tackle the climate emergency, our finance sector is still driving global investment towards the old, destructive ways of doing business that are destroying our one shared home.

"The UK financial sector could be the first in the world to be aligned with the Paris Agreement targets - and reap the rewards as global business shifts towards clean, green investments. But it is clear voluntary pledges are not getting the job done.

"The UK government must show the global leadership expected of the COP26 Presidency and commit to mandating all financial institutions to have net-zero transition plans that cover their investments in every corner of the globe."

Greenpeace UK and WWF are now calling for legislation that requires all UK-regulated financial institutions to adopt and implement a transition plan that is in keeping with the goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5°C.
Pension pressure

The findings from Greenpeace and WWF come after The Pensions Regulator (TPR) warned the defined contribution market to pay more attention to climate change back in February. TPR then followed up with the release of its climate strategy, calling specifcially on trustees to "act now" to protect pension savers from climate risk.

The Exorcists Who Are Battling Black Lives Matter

Across the country, right-wing Catholic clerics are weaponizing their rites to own the libs.

ILLUSTRATION BY LIA KANTROWITZ

Audrey Clare Farley/May 25, 2021

THE NEW REPUBLIC

In Elysburg, Pennsylvania, there is a Vatican-trained exorcist and professed expert on spiritual warfare, who lectures and tweets about the “demonic” forces of our times. It might surprise you to learn what these latter-day Regan MacNeils bedeviling our safe suburban homes are: Black Lives Matter, Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and wokeness. And this cleric is not the only exorcist very publicly conflating the Evil One with the left, real and imagined.

Last fall, a Portland archbishop led a procession into a public park, where he conducted a Latin exorcism to dispel the evil spirits left by racial justice activists. The very same day, a San Francisco archbishop performed a similar rite at the site of a felled statue of Father Junipero Serra, an eighteenth-century Spanish friar whose missionaries forced Indigenous people to convert to Christianity, whipping and torturing many to death. Flanked by rosary-praying nuns, priests, and laity, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone asked God to “purify this place … purify the hearts of those who perpetrated this blasphemy.” He later called upon authorities to press felony and hate crime charges against the Native protesters who toppled the statue.

Many locals were outraged. Gregg Castro, an activist of the Salinan and Ohlone tribes, told the National Catholic Reporter, “Exorcisms are a throwback to the thinking of the 1700s, which justified what the Spaniards did to us. To them we are some kind of demonic spirits.” One individual suggested that exorcisms might be better suited at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, where immigrants are kept in cages and women report being forcibly sterilized. A retired priest offered that more wisdom could be gained from listening to the people “for whom Serra is a stumbling block to the church’s credibility.”

But Archbishop Cordileone seems uninterested in defending the racially oppressed or critically examining the church’s history of white supremacy. Like the exorcists writing screeds against Black Lives Matter and the U.S. bishops preparing to formally declare President Joe Biden unfit for communion because of his support for abortion rights, Cordileone is a culture warrior. He has previously made headlines for demanding Catholic schoolteachers sign morality clauses and opposing pandemic-related worship restrictions, which he calls the work of “secular elites.”

It is tempting to view the weaponization of religious rites against one’s political enemies as a product of our hyperpoliticized times, wherein so many prominent officials and even corporations are compelled to wear their persuasions on their sleeve. But such a view obscures how thoroughly Catholic clerical power is tied up in the racist, misogynist politics of the contemporary right. For people like Cordileone, the capitulation to secular politics has become a means to preserve the perverse hierarchy from which priests have long derived their power. Understanding this hierarchy is key to combating the influence of the Catholic far right.

“Clericalism,” as some call the doom-laden cult surrounding priests, has become much talked-about in this era of rampant sexual abuse. Acclaimed Catholic author James Carroll argues it’s been “at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction” since its origins in the late Roman empire. In The Truth at Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul, Carroll writes that the early church was fairly egalitarian, with believers breaking bread in each other’s homes and many recognizing women’s authority to preach the “good news.” It wasn’t until Emperor Constantine desired a more imperial religion in the Fourth Century that an all-male clergy was marked as the “chosen,” through whom believers were compelled to seek salvation. The religion shape-shifted from one based on hospitality and love of neighbor to one fixated on sex—something Carroll blames on the sexual neuroses of theologians like St. Augustine, in addition to the practical need to enforce celibacy. (If priests fathered children, their heirs would lay claim to the church’s wealth; and if they didn’t appear to transcend their flesh, they couldn’t as effectively wield power over the embodied masses.)

It’s no wonder to Carroll that torture, sexual abuse, and colonial violence long pervaded a world in which believers were taught God required their suffering and urged to submit to authorities or else face the fires of hell. But something radical happened in his lifetime: A reformer was elected pope. In 1962, Pope John XXIII convened Catholic hierarchy to “throw open the doors and windows,” and the ecumenical council now known as “Vatican II” ushered in a range of democratizing liturgical changes. The church replaced Latin with the vernacular of congregants and brought the altar down to the people’s level. It formally apologized for centuries of wrongdoing against Jews, which many viewed as laying the groundwork for the Holocaust, and even established a commission to revisit the prohibition of birth control, which promised to elevate women by recognizing the sacredness of sex apart from reproduction. Reflecting on this moment in history, which inspired him to enter the seminary and take his vows with the Paulist Fathers, Carroll writes, “Instead of trusting priests, we began to trust God.”

But he and other progressive Catholics didn’t stand long in the sun, as traditionalists found ways to preserve the old order. After Pope John’s death from stomach cancer in 1963, the birth control commission was disbanded; and after the council’s official conclusion in 1965, other social justice initiatives fell by the wayside. Over the next several decades, during which time a disenchanted Carroll left the priesthood, the church made opposition to abortion the primary marker of Catholic identity.

According to John Gehring, author of The Francis Effect and Catholic director at Faith in Public Life, this “single-issue Catholicism” became especially prominent in the United States, where Pope John Paul II appointed figures like Cardinal John O’Connor and the now-disgraced Cardinal Bernard Francis Law. Both “leaned into a style of culture-war Catholicism by publicly challenging pro-choice Catholic politicians and more broadly viewing progressive strains of Catholicism with suspicion or even contempt.” Gehring tells The New Republic that the 2020 presidential election marked unprecedented partisanship, with bishops and priests becoming “full-throated cheerleaders for Trump … using their Twitter pulpits to audition as Fox News pundits.” These pastors were perfectly willing to “ignore Trump’s racism and contempt for democratic norms” in exchange for his promise to appoint anti-abortion judges.

Gehring believes conservative Catholics’ view of the Black Lives Matter movement as extremist grows out of “a distorted worldview shaped by the far right,” as well as their unwillingness to examine white supremacy within the church—something other critics have linked to the paternalist culture described above. In Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, Father Bryan Massingale, who is a Black priest, chronicles U.S. bishops’ persistent condescension toward civil rights activists, as well as their stubborn framing of racism as a spiritual (individual) problem rather than a social one. The latter allows the church to continue centering whiteness in its aesthetics, music, and theology and avoid the kind of truth-telling needed for real healing and reparation. Truth-telling might involve leaders meaningfully reckoning with the church’s introduction of slavery into the U.S. and its history of segregating African Americans in parishes, schools, hospital, convents, and seminaries—atrocities discussed by other Black Catholic scholars like Shannen Dee Williams and Olga M. Segura.

In Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church, Segura notes the deference that bishops, fewer than 3 percent of whom are Black, pay to police in pastoral letters like “Open Wide Our Hearts,” which was issued in 2018. “We must reject harsh rhetoric that belittles or dehumanizes law enforcement personnel who labor to keep our communities safe,” the clerics urge, utterly dismissing people of color who report traumatic experiences with law enforcement. It surprises neither Segura nor Massingale that priests empathize with the police, given what Massingale calls the “normative whiteness” of the church. With this, Massingale nods toward the parallels between police and priest culture, about which Fr. Daniel P. Horan has more pointedly written: “In many ways, the criminal laws and institutional policies that maintain doctrines like qualified immunity [for abusive officers] provide something of a civil equivalent to the culture of clericalism in the church.” For Horan, men in blue and men in black are inextricably bound together by their each being above the law.

In view of this bond, it’s hard to read the actions of Cordileone and other self-styled demon-chasers as anything other than acts of power, intended to put progressive-minded laity back in their place. If these officials wish to exorcise the bad politics from their parishioners, they have their work cut out for them. Catholics are actually divided on Black Lives Matter, despite priests’ declaring activists “maggots and parasites” (one Indiana priest’s words). This may stun some men of the cloth, who have been taught to view themselves as moral superiors. Conservative clergy are certainly alarmed by Pope Francis, who, while not nearly as progressive as many on the left would like, is steadfastly laboring to shift power away from Rome and return the church’s focus to the vulnerable and dispossessed. Some, like Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, have preposterously tried to implicate Pope Francis in the sexual abuse crisis in order to undermine his agenda.

These extremists do have the benefit of ready-made platforms, thanks to the rise of outlets that, in Gehring’s words, “operate more as propaganda mills for right-wing Catholicism than legitimate news sources.” Case in point: A handful of sites like the National Catholic Register published Viganò’s accusations against Pope Francis, despite their being unfounded. Kaya Oakes, author of The Nones Are Alright, adds that many conservative Catholic news outlets have deep-pocketed donors, which means sensationalistic voices get amplified, while those defending the poor and marginalized are drowned out. “There’s no equivalent to the Koch brothers on the Catholic left,” she tells The New Republic. But, she says, there is something that sensationalists are losing, and that is congregants. “People are leaving the church in droves, particularly Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z Catholics who disagree with these conservative stances.”

Some may reject religion altogether. Others may simply find God in other spaces, where, in Segura’s words, referring to Black Lives Matter, people understand “what it truly means to fight for the most marginalized groups in our society, what it means to truly care about human life.” Carroll urges that Catholics shouldn’t be afraid to abstain from formal rituals, as the first and most enduring church was always the “people of God.” He himself has not gone to mass in several years, all the while declaring his unwavering love of Jesus. “I refuse to let a pervert priest or complicit bishop rip my faith from me.” Others report going to church at night to be with God when no one else is around.

Some conservatives may rejoice in a more homogenous faith community, reasoning that progressives weren’t “real” Catholics anyway. But they will still have to contend with their own dwindling moral relevance at a time when many believers are ready and willing to build a more just world. Further weaponization of rites and sacraments will gain headlines, but as these holy men drink ever deeper draughts from the Gospel of Owning the Libs, they’ll continue to shed congregants and grow more isolated. It would be well for these exorcists to examine their own demons before they cause even further harm to the church.

Audrey Clare Farley @AudreyCFarley
Audrey Clare Farley is the author of the forthcoming book The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewit

 

Does the Milky Way move like a spinning top?

INSTITUTO DE ASTROFÍSICA DE CANARIAS (IAC)

Research News

VIDEO: THE ROTATION OF THE GALAXY IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE VIDEO, ONLY THE PRECESSION WITH RESPECT TO IT. view more 

CREDIT: GABRIEL PÉREZ DÍAZ, SMM (IAC)

An investigation carried out by the astrophysicists of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) ?ofia Chrobáková, a doctoral student at the IAC and the University of La Laguna (ULL), and Martín López Corredoira, questions one of the most interesting findings about the dynamics of the Milky Way in recent years: the precession, or the wobble in the axis of rotation of the disc warp is incorrect. The results have just been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, which means that it is composed, among other components, of a disc of stars, gas and dust, in which the spiral arms are contained. At first, it was thought that the disc was completely flat, but for some decades now it is known that the outermost part of the disc is distorted into what is called a "warp": in one direction it is twisted upwards, and in the opposite direction downwards. The stars, the gas, and the dust are all warped, and so are not in the same plane as the extended inner part of the disc, and an axis perpendicular to the planes of the warp defines their rotation.

In 2020, an investigation announced the detection of the precession of the warp of the Milky Way disc, which means that the deformation in this outer region is not static, but that just like a spinning top the orientation of its axis is itself rotating with time. Furthermore, these researchers found that it was quicker than the theories predicted, a cycle every 600-700 million years, some three times the time it takes the Sun to travel once round the centre of the Galaxy.

CAPTION

The rotation of the Galaxy is not included in the video, only the precession with respect to it.

CREDIT

Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC)

Precession is not a phenomenon which occurs only in galaxies, it also happens to our planet. As well as its annual revolution around the Sun, and its rotation period of 24 hours, the axis of the Earth precesses, which implies that the celestial pole is not always close to the present pole star, but that (as an example) 14,000 years ago it was close to the star Vega.

Now, a new study by ?ofia Chrobáková and Martín López Corredoira has taken into account the variation of the amplitude of the warp with the ages of the stars. The study concludes that, using the warp of the old stars whose velocities have been measured, it is possible that the precession can disappear, or at least become slower than what is presently believed. To arrive at this result the researchers have used data from the Gaia Mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), analysing the positions and velocities of hundreds of millions of stars in the outer disc.

"In previous studies it had not been noticed", explains ?ofia Chrobáková, a predoctoral researcher at the IAC and the first author of the article, "that the stars which are a few tens of millions of years old, such as the Cepheids, have a much larger warp than that of the stars visible with the Gaia mission, which are thousands of millions of years old".

"This does not necessarily mean that the warp does not precess at all, it could do so, but much more slowly, and we are probably unable to measure this motion until we obtain better data", concludes Martín López Corredoira, and IAC researcher and co-author of the article.

###

Article: ?ofia Chrobáková & Martín López Corredoira. "A case against a significant detection of precession in the Galactic warp". The Astrophysical Journal. DOI: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/abf356

- Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.04348

 

China's PM2.5 pathways under carbon neutrality goals

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Research News

IMAGE: ACCESSIBILITY OF FUTURE CLIMATE TARGETS AND AIR QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS OVER CHINA. ESTIMATES OF FUTURE CO2 EMISSIONS AND PM2.5 EXPOSURE UNDER DIFFERENT MITIGATION PATHWAYS IN 2030 (A) AND 2060 (B). THE... view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

China's clean air policies have substantially reduced PM2.5 air pollution in recent years. Yet >99% of Chinese population is still exposed to PM2.5 concentrations in excess of the World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines of 10 μg/m3. Climate actions targeting to reduce fossil fuel consumption also have substantial air quality benefits. The announcement of ambitious climate commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 may fuel the power to long-term air quality improvement in China.

Combining Global/China's climate mitigation pathways (i.e. global 2°C- and 1.5°C-pathways, NDC pledges, and carbon neutrality goals) and local clean air policies, Chinese energy system, anthropogenic emissions and PM2.5 air quality pathways from 2015 to 2060 are assessed. If the government improves the source treatment--promote the renewable energy fraction, push the production peaks of high consumption industries (e.g., iron, steel, cement), accelerate the phasing out of scattered coal; meanwhile continue to promote the in-depth end-of-pipe control in high-polluted industries, diesel-fueled vehicles and engines, and VOC-related industries, China would meet the NDC climate target in 2030, as well as mitigate the national population-weighted PM2.5 concentrations to ~28 μg/m3, achieving the national air quality standards.

However, the benefits of end-of-pipe control reductions are mostly exhausted by 2030, and reducing PM2.5 exposure of the majority of the Chinese population to below 10 μg/m3 by 2060 will likely require more ambitious climate mitigation efforts such as China's carbon neutrality goals and global 1.5°C-pathways. As the solution, by 2060, China will complete the transformation of low-carbon energy, with the dominate role of renewable energy (i.e. the renewable energy power generation would account for more than 70%, the fraction of coal would be less than 15% in industry sector, electricity and hydrogen vehicles would account higher than 60%). Such in-depth energy transition would lower China's carbon emissions by 90%. As a result, the average annual exposure level of PM2.5 will be around 8 μg/m3, lower than the WHO guideline and the air pollution problem has been fundamentally solved.

Cheng et al. proposes practical strategies to address both air pollution and GHGs emissions in the near-term, in which co-control measures focusing on co-emitted sources (i.e. fossil fuel consumption), co-management mechanism on PM2.5 and O3 pollution, and co-development plan on low carbon economy and clean energy transition are prioritized. China's future clean air pathways should transform from end-of-pipe control to energy and economic system optimization. Meanwhile, China should proactively promote the air quality standards to gradually integrate with the relevant WHO standards 10 μg/m3 as a new long-term goal, to accelerate the implementation of carbon neutrality strategy.

###

See the article:

Pathways of China's PM2.5 air quality 2015-2060 in the context of carbon neutrality. Cheng J et al. National Science Review, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab078

 

Brain's memory center stays active during 'infantile amnesia'

YALE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

One trait shared by all humans is that they don't remember specific life episodes that occurred before the age of 3 or 4. Many scientists have attributed this so-called "infantile amnesia" to a lack of development in the hippocampus, an area of the brain located in the temporal lobe that is crucial to encoding memory.

However, a new brain imaging study by Yale scientists shows that infants as young as three months are already enlisting the hippocampus to recognize and learn patterns. The findings were published May 21 in the journal Current Biology.

"A fundamental mystery about human nature is that we remember almost nothing from birth through early childhood, yet we learn so much critical information during that time -- our first language, how to walk, objects and foods, and social bonds," said Nick Turk-Browne, a professor of psychology at Yale and senior author of the paper.

For the new study, the Yale team used a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to capture activity in the hippocampus in 17 babies, aged three months to two years old, as they were presented two sets of images on a screen. One set of images appeared as a structured sequence containing hidden patterns that could be learned. In the other, images appeared in a random order that offered no opportunity for learning. After the babies were shown these two sets of images several times, the hippocampus responded more strongly to the structured image set than to the random image set.

What might be happening, Turk-Browne said, is that as a baby gains experience in the world, their brain searches for general patterns that help them understand and predict the surrounding environment. This happens even though the brain is not equipped to permanently store each individual experience about a specific moment in space and time - the hallmark of episodic memory that is also lost in adult amnesia.

The strategy makes sense because learning general knowledge -- such as patterns of sounds that make up the words in a language -- may be more important to a baby than remembering specific details, such as a single incident in which a particular word was uttered.

The size of the hippocampus doubles in the first two years of life and eventually develops connections necessary to store episodic memories, Turk-Browne said.

"As these circuit changes occur, we eventually obtain the ability to store memories," he said. "But our research shows that even if we can't remember infant experiences later on in life, they are being recorded nevertheless in a way that allows us to learn from them."

Yale's Cameron Ellis is first author of the study, and this research was included in his recently completed and award-winning PhD dissertation.

#

Infants recognize rapid images, just like adults

CHUO UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: INFANTS COULD IDENTIFY TWO FACES WHEN THE TEMPORAL INTERVAL BETWEEN THEM WAS 800 MS, BUT THEY COULD IDENTIFY ONLY THE FIRST TARGET (OVERLOOKED THE SECOND TARGET) WHEN THE SEPARATION WAS... view more 

CREDIT: CHUO UNIVERSITY

It has previously been reported that human visual system has a temporal limitation in processing visual information when perceiving things that occur less than half a second apart. This temporal deficit is known as "attentional blink" and has been demonstrated in a large number of studies. These studies reported that adults could recognize two things when these two were temporally separated over 500 ms, but adults overlooked the second thing when the temporal interval was less than 500 ms. Recently, this attentional blink phenomenon has been observed in even preverbal infants less than one-year old.

In the study from Chuo University, Japan Women's University, and Hokkaido University, infants aged 7 and 8 months were required to identify two female faces among images of sceneries which were presented successively at a rate of 100 ms per image. In one set of images, the faces were placed 200 ms apart; in the other, they were placed 800 ms apart. Researchers found that infants could identify two faces when the temporal interval between these two faces was 800 ms. Furthermore, infants overlooked the second face when the separation was 200 ms, suggesting that they exhibited the attentional blink phenomenon. These results suggest that infants take less than a second to completely process visual information and have the same temporal limitation in processing visual information as seen in adults.

"This is the first study revealing the attentional blink in preverbal infants and provides opportunities to further investigate the visual awareness in infants focusing on the attentional blink phenomenon. This phenomenon is of especial interest as, it has recently been used as a consciousness marker," said Shuma Tsurumi from Chuo University.

Jun-ichiro Kawahara, a professor at Hokkaido University said, "Our study demonstrated what is happening at the first half-second when infants see multiple visual objects. This contrasts sharply against previous studies that mainly focused on visual learning at much longer periods, such as an order of 5 seconds." He continued, "Moreover, our study could provide a new way to test whether existing theories of the attentional blink phenomenon can hold for underdeveloped infants."

###

The study, published in Cognition, was supported by a Grant-in-Aid from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellows (19J21422), a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, ''Construction of the Face-Body Studies in Transcultural Conditions" (17H06343), from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from the JSPS (19H01774).

Joint press release by Chuo University and Hokkaido University

 

First-of-its-kind flower smells like dead insects to imprison 'coffin flies'

First plant found to deceive pollinators by mimicking decomposing insects

FRONTIERS

Research News

 

IMAGE: A. MICROSTOMA FLOWERS HALF-BURIED IN THE GROUND (A) OR INCONSPICUOUS AMONG LITTER (B) OR ROCKS (C,D) view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: T. RUPP, B. OELSCHLÄGEL, K. RABITSCH ET AL.

The plant Aristolochia microstoma uses a unique trick: its flowers emit a fetid-musty scent that seems to mimic the smell of decomposing insects. Flies from the genus Megaselia (family Phoridae) likely get attracted to this smell while searching for insect corpses to mate over and lay their eggs in. When they enter a flower, they are imprisoned and first pollinate the female organs, before being covered with pollen by the male organs. The flower then releases them unharmed.

"Here we show that the flowers of A. microstoma emit an unusual mix of volatiles that includes alkylpyrazines, which are otherwise rarely produced by flowering plants. Our results suggest that this is the first known case of a flower that tricks pollinators by smelling like dead and rotting insects rather than vertebrate carrion," says corresponding author Prof Stefan Dötterl, the head of plant ecology group and the Botanical Gardens at the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria. The study is published in the open access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Between 4-6% of flowering plants use a 'deceptive pollination strategy': they use odor, color, and touch to advertize a reward to pollinators, such as nectar, pollen, or mating and breeding sites, but don't actually give any. The deception works because pollinators are poor at distinguishing between the reward and the mimic. Deceptive pollination is typical of many orchids, but has also independently evolved in other plants, including in the genus Aristolochia (family Aristolochiaceae or birthworths).

"Aristolochia contains over 550 species around the world, especially in the tropics and subtropics. They are mostly woody vines and herbaceous perennials with striking, complex flowers that temporarily imprison their visitors to get pollinated," says Prof Christoph Neinhuis, coauthor of the study, who cultivates one of the largest Aristolochia collections worldwide at TU Dresden Botanical Garden, Germany.

When pollinators enter an Aristolochia flower, they are guided by hairs downwards to a small chamber which holds the sexual organs. Trapped inside, they deposit any pollen they carry onto the female organs, before the stamens ripen and release more pollen. When the hairs that block the entrance to the chamber wither, the pollinators can escape, and a new cycle can begin.

"Many Aristolochia species are known to attract flies with floral scents, for example mimicking the smell of carrion or feces of mammals, decaying plants, or fungi," says first author Thomas Rupp, a PhD student at the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg. "But our curiosity was piqued by A. microstoma, a species known only from Greece: unlike other Aristolochia with their showy flowers, A. microstoma has inconspicuous brownish flowers that lie horizontally, partly buried or close to the ground among leaf litter or rocks. The flowers release an unpleasant, carrion-like smell, noticeable to people at a short distance."

Rupp and colleagues sampled A. microstoma plants from three sites in Greece: one West of Athens and two on the Peloponnese. From 1457 flowers (of which 72% were in the first, female phase) they collected a total of 248 arthropods, ranging from flies from four families to centipedes and springtails. Only female and male Megaselia flies - M. scalaris and members of the M. angusta/longicostalis cluster of closely related species, as determined through DNA barcoding and from morphology - were found carrying pollen inside its flowers, indicating that they are the normal pollinators.

The authors then used gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC/MS) to analyze the flowers' scent 'bouquet'. They found 16 compounds, including strong-smelling nitrogen- and sulfur-bearing volatile molecules. Among the main 'ingredients' were oligosulfides, produced by many plant species whose pollinators are carrion flies or bats: a fetid scent characteristic of decomposing meat. But surprisingly, another was 2,5-dimethylpyrazine (8-47% of total composition), a musty scent typical of cooked rice or roasted peanuts - known in nature to occur in the carapace of decomposing beetles and well as in the urine of rodents. Very few plants are known to produce this compound, strongly suggesting that A. microstoma mimics an unusual fake 'reward' to attract specialist pollinators.

"Earlier studies had suggested that A. microstoma might be pollinated by leaf litter-dwelling insects such as ants, because of the orientation and position of the flowers. But here we show that this isn't correct: instead, the main pollinators are Megaselia 'coffin flies'. As their name suggests, these flies feed on carrion, on which they lay their eggs and which serves as food for the larvae, which is why they are often used as evidence in forensic medicine," says Dötterl.

"We show A. microstoma flowers emit a simple but highly unusual mix of scents that includes 2,5-dimethylpyrazine, a molecule that occurs neither in vertebrate carcasses nor in feces, but does occur in dead beetles. We conclude that A. microstoma likely uses a strategy that has never been reported before: its flowers mimic the smell of invertebrate carrion to attract and imprison pollinators. The peculiar orientation of the flowers close to the ground may also help, as pollinating coffin flies search for breeding sites or food close to the ground, in leaf litter or between rocks," concludes coauthor Prof Stefan Wanke from TU Dresden, Germany.

###

 

Finding the first flower from Northwest China

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Research News

 

IMAGE: A-B. PART AND COUNTERPART OF HOLOTYPE OF GANSUFRUCTUS SALIGNA GEN. ET SP. NOV. SHOWING LEAFY AXES WITH INFRUCTESCENCES AND LANCEOLATE LEAVES. C-D, PART AND COUNTERPART SHOWING AXES WITH ALTERNATE ARRANGED... view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

"Abominable mystery" -- the early origin and evolution of angiosperms (flowering plants) was such described by Charles Robert Darwin. So far, we still have not completely solved the problem, and do not know how the earth evolved into such a colorful and blooming world.

Recently, a new angiosperm was reported based on numerous exceptionally well-preserved fossils from the Lower Cretaceous of Jiuquan Basin, West Gansu Province, Northwest China. The new discovery is the earliest and unique record of early angiosperms in Northwest China. The study has been accepted for publication in the journal National Science Review and is currently available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab084.

The new angiosperm was named Gansufructus saligna, and all the fossil specimens were collected from the grayish green mudstone of the upper Zhonggou Formation in Hanxia Section. Remarkably, the plant fossils are almost completely preserved with branched axes, attached leaves and paniculate infructescences, providing valuable materials for the morphological studies of early angiosperms.

Gansufructus saligna is erect and graceful, three to four times branched, with alternate arranged axes and leaves. Leaves are simple and willow-shaped, leaf margin is entire, leaf apex is acute and leaf base is decurrent and estipulate with short petiole. Leaf venation is poorly organized with low-rank venations, primary vein prominent, secondary veins pinnate, and tertiary veins reticulate. The infructescences are loose panicles bearing fruits in different stages of maturity. Each fruit is formed from four basally syncarpous carpels borne in a whorle arrangement. And each carpel subtended by a small and persistent tepal at the base and contains three to five anatropous seeds.

Gansufructus saligna is supposed to be a small, slender plant with flexible stems, delicate leaves and paniculate infructescences, and is suggested to be a terrestrial herbaceous eudicot based on the morphology of both vegetative and reproductive organs. It probably grew along the lakeshores, where the environment is low-lying and humid. Moreover, the current fossil specimens together with other fossil records of early angiosperms from the Jehol biota and other regions, indicate that the presence of diverse early eudicots of low stature colonizing areas during the middle-late Early Cretaceous. This study is of great significance in exploring the origin, evolution, diversity and habitat preferences of early eudicots.

See the article:

An Exceptionally Well-Preserved Herbaceous Eudicot from the Early Cretaceous (late Aptian-early Albian) of Northwest China  https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab084

CAPTION

A new eudicot, Gansufructus saligna gen. et sp. nov. is reported from the late Early Cretaceous of Gansu, Northwest China, based on numerous exceptionally well-preserved axes with leaves and infructescences. It is the earliest and unique record of early angiosperms in Northwest China. Morphological studies indicated that Gansufructus saligna is a terrestrial herb growing in lowland humid areas. The new discovery is significant for exploring the origin, evolution, diversity, and habitat preferences of early eudicots.

CREDIT

©Science China Press