Plastic waste in the sea mainly drifts near the coast

UNIVERSITY OF BERN

Research News

 

The pollution of the world's oceans with plastic waste is one of the major environmental problems of our time. However, very little is known about how much plastic is distributed globally in the ocean. Models based on ocean currents have so far suggested that the plastic mainly collects in large ocean gyres. Now, researchers at the University of Bern have calculated the distribution of plastic waste on a global scale while taking into account the fact that plastic can get beached. In their study, which has just been published in the "Environmental Research Letters" scientific journal, they come to the conclusion that most of the plastic does not end up in the open sea. Far more of it than previously thought remains near the coast or ends up on beaches. "In all the scenarios we've calculated," says Victor Onink, the study's lead author, "about 80 percent of floating plastic waste drifts no more than 10 kilometers from the coast five years after it entered the ocean."

Much of this plastic also washes ashore. The study's authors conclude that between a third to virtually all of the buoyant plastic washed into the sea is stranded. This has serious consequences for the environment, as coastal ecosystems are particularly sensitive to plastic pollution. Polluted coasts also dramatically lose their value for tourism.

The Nile pollutes the Mediterranean Sea

The proportion of stranded plastic is highest in the regions of the world with the largest sources of plastic waste. These include areas such as Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean. Concentrations are lowest in sparsely populated regions such as the polar regions, the coast of Chile and parts of the coast of Australia. For physics doctoral student Victor Onink, there are two reasons why there is so much plastic waste in the Mediterranean: On the one hand, a lot of plastic enters the Mediterranean Sea, particularly through the Nile. On the other hand, this sea is relatively small and closed. These factors also contribute to the high concentration of plastic.

Plastic waste must not be allowed to enter the sea in the first place

The Bernese ocean modellers also investigated the question of what proportion of the stranded plastic waste comes from where. Their answer: a lot of beached plastic is from local sources, especially when the local sources are large. Ocean currents also play a major role in the distribution of waste. Regions with a high proportion of plastic originating locally include the coasts of China, Indonesia and Brazil. Conversely, regions were also identified where an above-average proportion of plastic escapes to the open sea. These include the eastern United States, eastern Japan and Indonesia. "In these places, it would be particularly effective to collect plastic waste before it can escape into the open ocean," Victor Onink points out.

The Bernese researcher takes a more skeptical view of initiatives to collect plastic from the ocean itself, which receive a great deal of media attention. "The concentration of plastic appears relatively low in the open ocean," Victor Onink points out. "It makes you wonder if resources are really being used most efficiently with these kinds of projects." Instead, it might be more effective to prevent plastic from reaching the open ocean in the first place, such as by fishing plastic out of large rivers or removing plastic from coastlines.

Rapidly reducing waste volumes

The new research results show where in the world such measures are particularly needed. "With our modelling, we present solid estimates of where the biggest problems with plastic waste in the sea are in the world," says Victor Onink. Now it is first and foremost a matter of finding political solutions to rapidly reduce the amount of waste. A reminder: Depending on the calculations, 1 to 13 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year.

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Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research

The Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) is one of the strategic centers of the University of Bern. It brings together researchers from 14 institutes and four faculties. The OCCR conducts interdisciplinary research right on the frontline of climate change research. The Oeschger Centre was founded in 2007 and bears the name of Hans Oeschger (1927-1998), a pioneer of modern climate research, who worked in Bern.

http://www.oeschger.unibe.ch

 

Less aviation during the global lockdown had a positive impact on the climate

Scientific study by scientists at Leipzig University, Imperial College London and the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in Paris

UNIVERSITÄT LEIPZIG

Research News

 

IMAGE: PORTRAIT OF JOHANNES QUAAS, PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL METEOROLOGY AT LEIPZIG UNIVERSITY view more 

CREDIT: KATARINA WERNEBURG

They studied the extent to which cirrus clouds caused by aircraft occurred during the global hard lockdown between March and May 2020, and compared the values with those during the same period in previous years. The study was led by Johannes Quaas, Professor of Theoretical Meteorology at Leipzig University, and has now been published in the renowned journal "Environmental Research Letters".

Cirrus clouds, known for their high, wispy strands, contribute to warming the climate. When cirrus clouds occur naturally, large ice crystals form at an altitude of about 36 kilometres, in turn reflecting sunlight back into space - albeit to a small extent. However, they also prevent radiated heat from escaping the atmosphere, and thus have a net heating effect. This is the dominant effect in cirrus clouds.

When the weather conditions are right, condensation trails form behind aircraft. These may persist and spread to form larger cirrus clouds. In this case, their effect on the climate is much greater than that of narrow contrails alone.

The researchers led by Professor Quaas analysed satellite images of clouds in the northern hemisphere, between 27° and 68° North, in the period from March to May 2020. They then compared these with images from the same period in previous years. "Crucially, our studies reveal a clear causal relationship. Since clouds vary considerably depending on the weather, we would not have been able to detect the effects of air traffic in this way under normal circumstances. The period of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to compare clouds in air traffic corridors at very different traffic levels.

Analysis of the data collected showed that nine per cent fewer cirrus clouds formed during the global lockdown, and that the clouds were also two per cent less dense," said Professor Quaas. "The study clearly demonstrates that aircraft contrails lead to additional cirrus clouds and have an impact on global warming." According to Professor Quaas, the data collected confirmed previous estimates based only on climate models: "Our study may improve the ability to simulate these effects in climate models."

Despite the team's findings, there has still not been enough research into the impact of aviation on global warming. A European research collaboration involving Professor Quaas's research group is currently investigating the precise mechanisms in detail. "The tough global lockdown has been helpful in terms of our research. In order to mitigate or even avoid the warming effect on the climate, flight routes could be adapted in the future to avoid cirrus cloud formation, for example by separating flight corridors," said the Professor of Theoretical Meteorology at Leipzig University.

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Tree choices important for addressing climate change

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

Research News

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IMAGE: CLOUDS IN THE RAINFOREST VALLEYS OF RWANDA, AFRICA. view more 

CREDIT: JOHAN UDDLING

Tree species in Africa's upland mountain rainforests can adapt both photosynthesis and leaf metabolism to warming. But the ability to do so varies from species to species, according to studies from a new doctoral dissertation.

The vitality and composition of tomorrow's tropical forests depend on how trees can adapt their internal physiological processes to an increasingly hot and - in many places - drier climate.

Myriam Mujawamariya has now demonstrated in a doctoral dissertation that tree species from Africa's upland mountain rainforests can adapt both photosynthesis and leaf metabolism to warming. However, this ability varies among different species groups.

Slow-growing "climax species" trees, such as Carapa grandiflora, which is the favourite species of chimpanzees, and Entandrophragma excelsum, are dominant in older, closed forests. They are not as good at adapting as pioneer species, such as Harungana montana, which is most common early in the development of a forest stand.

"The research findings offer a new understanding of the ongoing shift in species composition that has been observed in tropical forests in several regions in the world," says Myriam Mujawamariya.

Preliminary data suggest that the difference in physiological adaptability between climax and pioneer species is reflected in the corresponding shifts of the trees' growth and survival in a warmer climate.

If so, this has major consequences. Climax species grow slower, but ultimately result in bigger trees than pioneer species. Many animals also rely on the generally larger seeds and fruits of climax species.

A warmer forest with fewer climax species will contain less carbon and fewer species, which is bad for the climate and for biodiversity.

In addition to the importance for the world's climate and biodiversity, the research findings also have more practical significance in Rwanda, where the studies were conducted.

Rwanda's biggest environmental problem is erosion, and right now, major initiatives are underway to plant more trees. Since Rwanda is densely populated, this has to be integrated into the agricultural landscape.

Because the goal is to increase the use of domestic tree species, knowledge of the species' climate sensitivity is important.

"Our results show that some climax species are in fact unsuitable, while most pioneer species and a few climax species have good potential - even in a hotter climate," says Myriam Mujawamariya.

By choosing suitable tree species, Rwanda will be better prepared to face threats to the climate and to support ecosystem services supplied by trees: soil stabilisation, climate regulation, biodiversity, bioenergy and many different products.

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About the research

The dissertation is presented at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, in collaboration with the University of Rwanda

Title: Climate Change sensitivity of Photosynthesis and Respiration in Tropical Trees

Contact: Myriam Mujawamariya, doctoral student who will be defending her dissertation on 16 June, +250-788 422 497 (does not speak Swedish), mmujawamariya@gmail.com

Johan Uddling, professor and supervisor, +46 (0)70-388 1357, johan.uddling@bioenv.gu.se

Facts about the study

The climate sensitivity of trees was studied by planting trees adapted to a cooler climate in Rwanda's upland tropical forests in three places with different climates and elevations above sea level. One step down along the height gradient corresponds with a possible future climate. The field experiment is called Rwanda TREE (TRopical Elevation Experiment) and consists of 20 species and 5,400 trees. To learn more about Rwanda TREE, visit the website http://www.rwandatree.com or watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkDvbwisqlQ.

New study explores link between

economic shock and physical inactivity

It's the first study to examine how job losses during the Great Recession affected levels of physical activity among young adults

DICKINSON COLLEGE

Research News

 

(Carlisle, Pa.) -- A new study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine finds critical links between job loss and physical inactivity in young adults during the U.S. Great Recession of 2008-09 that can be crucial to understanding the role of adverse economic shocks on physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first study to examine how job losses during the Great Recession affected the physical activity of young adults in the United States.

The study by Dickinson College economist Shamma Alam and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health economist Bijetri Bose looked at Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data for young adults age 18 to 27--a phase of development associated with maturation and significant social, psychological and economic changes. They found that job losses experienced by the individual during the Great Recession reduce the likelihood of physical exercise by a significant 6.3 percentage points. This as action plans established by the World Health Organization and United Nations call for a 10 percent reduction in physical inactivity by 2025 and 2030, respectively.

"Our study finds that young adults from the Great Recession, who form the core part of the millennial generation today, suffered from significantly lower physical activity, which typically leads to worse physical health outcomes such as increased obesity," said Alam. "The Great Recession--considered the longest since the Great Depression--presents enormous economic implications and lessons that are relevant for the current COVID-19 induced economic downturn."

While the Great Recession had a disproportionately high 19% unemployment rate among young adults, unemployment for young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic has been much higher, peaking in 2020 at approximately 33 percent for those age 16-19; 26 percent for those age 20-24; and 16 percent for those age 25-29. Additionally, according to Pew Research, young adults age 18-29 also have--more than any other age group-- used money from their savings or retirement account, borrowed money from friends or family and received unemployment benefits since the coronavirus hit in February 2020.

Alam suggested these known decreases in physical activity during significant economic downturns also could have implications for the mental health of young adults. "Physical activity significantly went down following job losses during a major recession like the Great Recession likely because of negative mental health outcomes suffered by the individuals. When individuals are worried about their jobs and livelihood, they do not feel like exercising. Therefore, we are likely to see similar effects on physical activity during the current COVID-19 induced recession," said Alam, adding that in addition to job losses, stay-at-home orders had negative effect on young adults' mental health, which may then negatively affect physical activity.

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About the author

Shamma Alam is an assistant professor of economics at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. His research focuses on different aspects of international development, such as health economics and health measurements, fertility issues, agricultural economics, public finance, and microcredit. He served as a consultant at the World Bank in their economic policy, poverty and gender group, development data group, and East Asia and Pacific region group. He also previously served as a consultant in the agriculture policy team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition to teaching at Dickinson, Alam serves as a research associate at the CEQ Institute at Tulane University and contributes courses at the U.S. Army War College.

About Dickinson College

Dickinson is a nationally recognized liberal-arts college chartered in 1783 in Carlisle, Pa. The highly selective college is home to 2,200 students from across the nation and around the world. Defining characteristics of a Dickinson education include a focus on global education-at home and abroad-and study of the environment and sustainability, which is integrated into the curriculum and the campus and exemplifies the college's commitment to providing an education for the common good. http://www.dickinson.edu

 

Future Pandemic? Consider Radically Altering Animal Agriculture Practices

FAU Bioethicist Offers Plausible Solutions to Mitigate Zoonotic Risk from Agriculture and Food Production for Public Health

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: JUSTIN BERNSTEIN, PH.D., SENIOR AUTHOR AND AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY. view more 

CREDIT: ADAM BERNSTEIN

As early as the Neolithic period (circa 3900 BC), the domestication of animals likely led to the development of diseases including measles and smallpox. Since then, zoonotic disease has led to other major transnational outbreaks including HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS, and H1N1 swine flu, among others. Currently, more than half of all existing human pathogens, and almost three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases, are zoonotic in nature. COVID-19 is the latest and most impactful zoonotic event of the modern era, but it will certainly not be the last.

Given the breadth of these impacts and the fact that other zoonotic pandemics are highly likely - a matter of when and not if - the key public health ethics question that emerges is about whether it is ethically appropriate for governments to intervene to prevent future pandemics. And given that SARS, Swine Flu, and the Spanish Flu of 1918 (among other outbreaks of zoonotic diseases) all came from animal agriculture facilities, a concern with preventing future pandemics suggests re-examining the current global food system - in the name of protecting public health.

In an article published in the journal Food Ethics, Florida Atlantic University's Justin Bernstein, Ph.D., senior author, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy within the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and a member of the FAU Center for the Future Mind, which is sponsored by the FAU Brain Institute, and co-author Jan Dutkiewicz, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow at Concordia University, offer three plausible solutions to mitigate zoonotic risk associated with intensive animal agriculture. They explore incentivizing plant-based and cell-based animal source food alternatives through government subsidies, disincentivizing intensive animal source food production through the adoption of a "zoonotic tax," and eliminating intensive animal source food production through a total ban.

"Modern medicine has not only failed to catch up to the zoonotic threat, but in some ways is losing ground, due in part to growing global antibiotic resistance. So, from a public health ethics perspective, we should assess measures aimed at mitigating zoonotic risks," said Bernstein, whose expertise focuses on questions in moral and political philosophy and bioethics and the intersection of the two. "This is especially the case with systemic, predictable sources of zoonotic risk such as agriculture and food production. We argue that if the government may protect public health generally, then this permission extends to radically altering current animal agricultural practices."

The first, and arguably least intrusive public health intervention the authors offer, involves incentivizing alternative choices. Second, they suggest that public health disincentivizes the relevant behavior that poses a public health risk by attaching costs to it. Given that animal source food production can lead to the outbreak of zoonotic disease that can harm both consumers and non-consumers, the authors argue that the goal of disincentivizing both production and consumption could be achieved by a Pigouvian tax - a "zoonotic tax" - on meat.

The third and most intrusive kind of intervention involves the government restricting or eliminating choices. In the context of mitigating the risk of zoonotic pandemics, the authors say that governments might consider making intensive animal agriculture illegal. Of course, given the disruption to food supply chains and both local and national economies, such a ban would have to be carefully and gradually enacted.

"While there are urgent short-term public health measures that can mitigate the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not lose sight of how to prevent the devastation of a future pandemic. In response to the current pandemic, a natural thought is to focus on what public health agencies and local governments should focus on contact tracing, more tests, social distancing and adequate personal protection equipment," said Bernstein. "Yet, while all of these approaches are invaluable, they are not truly preventative in that they do not address a root cause of future zoonotic risk: intensive animal agriculture."

The authors note that the threat of another pandemic may be the right kind of consideration to motivate people to seriously re-examine current dietary practices, especially when they have witnessed firsthand just how devastating a pandemic can be.

"The risk of infectious disease associated with animal agriculture is often overlooked. The COVID-19 pandemic forces us to pay attention to food production and evaluate how to reduce similar outbreaks in the future in the interest of global, collective public health," said Bernstein. "While the exact causes of this particular pandemic still require further investigation, we have highlighted the causal role of intensive animal agriculture in other pandemics and its contribution to increased risk of future zoonotic disease outbreaks."

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About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit http://www.fau.edu.

Income level, literacy, and access to health care rarely reported in clinical trials

ST. MICHAEL'S HOSPITAL

Research News

 

Clinical trials published in high-profile medical journals rarely report on income or other key sociodemographic characteristics of study participants, according to a new study that suggests these gaps may create blind spots when it comes to health care, especially for disadvantaged populations.

The study, publishing June 2 in JAMA Network Open, analyzed 10 per cent of 2,351 randomized clinical trials published in New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The BMJ, The Lancet and Annals of Internal Medicine between Jan. 1, 2014 and July 31, 2020.

The most commonly reported sociodemographic variables were sex and gender (in 98.7 per cent of trials) and race/ethnicity (in 48.5 per cent). All other sociodemographic data, such as income, literacy or education level, language or housing status were reported in less than 15 per cent of the trials.

"Randomized trials can only work for everyone if they include everyone," said Dr. Aaron Orkin, a researcher and Emergency Physician at St. Joseph's Health Centre of Unity Health Toronto who led the study. "The results of randomized trials affect everybody because they determine how we promote health and how we diagnose and treat disease.

"If trials don't report on the characteristics of the people being studied, there is no way to know that the study's findings will apply to all populations. Trials can only serve populations made vulnerable by social and economic policies if they are included."

The research found that education level or literacy was reported in 14.3 per cent of studies examined, 5.9 per cent reported income or socioeconomic status and 4.6 per cent included participants based on a social determinant of health, such as health insurance or employment status which are social factors that impact health. Of the 237 studies examined, only six (2.5 per cent) reported gender. No studies reported non-binary gender descriptors.

Dr. Orkin used the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine as an example to explain why these findings are important. Public health officials now know that communities who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 tend to also be those who face the most barriers in terms of access to vaccines.

"In Ontario, Manitoba and elsewhere, data on race, ethnicity, income and occupation were collected with cases of COVID-19, and this has informed the vaccine rollout," noted Dr. Andrew Pinto, a Scientist at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions of St. Michael's, who co-led the study and was a co-author. "We need to ensure data on these important social determinants of health are included in COVID-19 treatment and vaccine studies as well," he noted.

Similarly, recently, including women in cardiovascular trials after years of exclusion has led to the discovery that women have different heart disease symptoms and pathologies - something that was not known until women were included in randomized clinical trials about the disease.

"People who face discrimination or disadvantages should have confidence that research being done to benefit them is inclusive," said Dr. Nav Persaud, a scientist at MAP and co-author on the paper.

The authors argue that experiences and outcomes of a disease across cultures, races, income levels, living situations, genders, and other variables will be different. Studying a disease and its treatment in limited groups ultimately limits its applicability.

The authors hope to use the initial information reported in this study to focus on reporting of social determinants in trials in specific disease areas and to change standards in conducting research.

"Trials like the ones we studied have a great impact on clinical guidelines and often determine what gets funded. Inclusivity from the start is essential," Dr. Pinto said.

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Urban crime fell by over a third around the world during COVID-19 shutdowns, study suggests

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Research News

 

A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge and University of Utrecht examined trends in daily crime counts before and after COVID-19 restrictions were implemented in major metropolitan areas such as Barcelona, Chicago, Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv, Brisbane and London.

While both stringency of lockdowns and the resulting crime reductions varied considerably from city to city, the researchers found that most types of crime - with the key exception of homicide - fell significantly in the study sites.

Across all 27 cities, daily assaults fell by an average of 35%, and robberies (theft using violence or intimidation, such as muggings) almost halved: falling an average of 46%. Other types of theft, from pick-pocketing to shop-lifting, fell an average of 47%.

"City living has been dramatically curtailed by COVID-19, and crime is a big part of city life," said Prof Manuel Eisner, Director of the Violence Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

"No drinkers spilling into the streets after nights out at bars and pubs. No days spent in shops and cafés or at the racetrack or football match. Some cities even introduced curfews. It choked the opportunism that fuels so much urban crime."

"We found the largest reductions in crimes where motivated offenders and suitable victims converge in a public space. There would be far fewer potential targets in the usual crime hotspots such as streets with lots of nightclubs," said Eisner.

Falls in crime resulting from COVID-19 stay-at-home orders tended to be sharp but short-lived, with a maximum drop occurring around two to five weeks after implementation, followed by a gradual return to previous levels.

Overall, the team found that stricter lockdowns led to greater declines in crime - although even cities with voluntary "recommendations" instead of restrictions, such as Malmo and Stockholm in Sweden, saw drops in daily rates of theft.

Theft of vehicles fell an average of 39% over the study sites. Researchers found that tougher restrictions on use of buses and trains during lockdowns was linked to greater falls in vehicle theft - suggesting that negotiating cities via public transport is often a prerequisite for stealing a set of wheels.

Burglary also fell an average of 28% across all cities. However, lockdowns affected burglary numbers in markedly different ways from city to city. While Lima in Peru saw rates plunge by 84%, San Francisco actually saw a 38% increase in break-ins as a result of COVID restrictions.

Data from many cities didn't distinguish between commercial and residential. Where it did, burglaries of private premises - rather than shops or warehouses - was more likely to decline, with more people stuck in-doors around the clock.

Reduction was lowest for crimes of homicide: down just 14% on average across all cities in the study. Dr Amy Nivette from the University of Utrecht, the study's first author, said: "In many societies, a significant proportion of murders are committed in the home. The restrictions on urban mobility may have little effect on domestic murders.

"In addition, organised crime - such as drug trafficking gangs - is responsible for a varying percentage of murders. The behaviour of these gangs is likely to be less sensitive to the changes enforced by a lockdown," said Nivette.

However, three cities where gang crime drives violence, all in South America, did see major falls in daily homicide as a result of COVID-19 policies. In Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, homicide dropped 24%. In Cali, Columbia, the drop was 29%, and in Lima, Peru, it plummeted 76%.

Rates of reported assaults also saw striking falls in Rio de Janeiro (56% drop) and Lima (75% drop). "It may be that criminal groups used the crisis to strengthen their power by imposing curfews and restricting movement in territories they control, resulting in a respite to the violence that plagues these cities," said Eisner.

Researchers found Barcelona to be something of an "outlier", with massive falls in assault (84% drop) and robbery (80% drop). Police-recorded thefts in the Spanish city declined from an average of 385 per day to just 38 per day under lockdown.

London saw less pronounced but still significant falls in some crime, with daily robberies dropping by 60%, theft by 44% and burglaries by 29%. The two US cities in the study, Chicago and San Francisco, had their best results in the category of assault, falling by 34% and 36% respectively.

The research team found no overall relationship between measures such as school closures or economic support and crime rates during lockdowns.

Added Eisner: "The measures taken by governments across the world to control COVID-19 provided a series of natural experiments, with major changes in routines, daily encounters and use of public space over entire populations.

"The pandemic has been devastating, but there are also opportunities to better understand social processes, including those involved in causing city-wide crime levels."

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How harm reduction advocates and the tobacco industry capitalized on pandemic to promote nicotine

Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with COVID-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today

BMJ

Research News

 

Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with covid-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today.

Journalists Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyzer report on undisclosed financial links between certain scientific authors and the tobacco and e-cigarette industry in a number of covid research papers.

In April 2020, two French studies (shared as preprints before formal peer review) suggested that nicotine might have a protective effect against covid-19 - dubbed the "nicotine hypothesis."

The stories made headlines worldwide and led to concern that decades of tobacco control could be undermined.

It has since been roundly disproved that smoking protects against covid-19, and several studies show that smoking, when adjusted for age and sex, is associated with an increased chance of covid-19 related death.

Horel and Keyzer point out that one of the study authors, Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux, has a history of receiving funding from the Council for Tobacco Research, whose purpose was to fund research that would cast doubt on the dangers of smoking and focus on the positive effects of nicotine.

From 1995 to 1998, tobacco industry documents show that Changeux's laboratory received $220,000 (£155,000; €180,000) from the Council for Tobacco Research.

Changeux assured The BMJ that he has not received any funding linked "directly or indirectly with the tobacco industry" since the 1990s.

In late April 2020, Greek researcher, Konstantinos Farsalinos, was the first to publish the "nicotine hypothesis" formally in a journal, in an editorial in Toxicology Reports.

The journal's editor in chief, Aristidis Tsatsakis featured as a co-author, as did A Wallace Hayes, a member of Philip Morris International's scientific advisory board in 2013, who has served as a paid consultant to the tobacco company.

Another co-author is Konstantinos Poulas, head of the Molecular Biology and Immunology Laboratory at the University of Patras, where Farsalinos is affiliated.

The laboratory has received funding from Nobacco, the market leader in Greek e-cigarettes and the exclusive distributor of British American Tobacco's nicotine delivery systems since 2018.

Neither Farsalinos nor Poulas has ever declared this Nobacco funding in their published scientific articles.

Yet Horel and Keyzer show that two grants were attributed in 2018 by the Foundation for a Smoke Free World - a non-profit established by Philip Morris International in 2017 - to "Patras Science Park."

The grants, whose amounts are not disclosed on the foundation's website, but tax documents show came close to €83,000, went to NOSMOKE, a university start-up incubator headed by Poulas, which markets an "organic" vaping product.

Last month, the European Respiratory Journal retracted a paper co-written by Poulas and Farsalinos, among others, after two authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest.

The retracted article had found that "current smoking was not associated with adverse outcome" in patients admitted to hospital with covid, and it claimed that smokers had a significantly lower risk of acquiring the virus.

The foundation has invested heavily in the covid-19/nicotine hypothesis, say Horel and Keyzer.

In June 2020 it set aside €900,000 for research "to better understand the associations between smoking and/or nicotine use, and covid-19 infection and outcome."

Its request stated that the pandemic offered "both an opportunity and a challenge for individuals to quit smoking or transition to reduced risk nicotine products."

They conclude: "In 2021, amid a global lung disease pandemic, tobacco industry figures are increasingly pushing the narrative of nicotine as the solution to an addiction that they themselves created, with the aim of persuading policy makers to give them ample room to market their "smoke-free" products. This makes studies on the hypothetical virtues of nicotine most welcome indeed."

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Externally peer reviewed? Yes
Evidence type: Investigation
Subject: Research integrity

 

Declining fish biodiversity poses risks for human nutrition

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - All fish are not created equal, at least when it comes to nutritional benefits.

This truth has important implications for how declining fish biodiversity can affect human nutrition, according to a computer modeling study led by Cornell and Columbia University researchers.

The study, "Declining Diversity of Wild-Caught Species Puts Dietary Nutrient Supplies at Risk," published May 28 in Science Advances, focused on the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, where inland fisheries provide a critical source of nutrition for the 800,000 inhabitants.

At the same time, the findings apply to fish biodiversity worldwide, as more than 2 billion people depend on fish as their primary source of animal-derived nutrients.

"Investing in safeguarding biodiversity can deliver both on maintaining ecosystem function and health, and on food security and fisheries sustainability," said the study's first author Sebastian Heilpern, a presidential postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University.

Practical steps could include establishing and enforcing "no-take zones" - areas set aside by the government where natural resources can't be extracted - in critical habitat; making sure that fishers adhere to fish size limits; and an increased investment in gathering species data to inform fisheries management policies, especially for inland fisheries.

In Loreto, people eat about 50 kilograms of fish annually per capita, rivaling the highest fish consumption rates in the world, and about half the amount of meat an average American consumes each year. Loreto residents eat a wide variety of fish, approximately 60 species, according to catch data. Species include large predatory catfish that migrate more than 5,000 kilometers, but whose numbers are dwindling due to overfishing and hydropower dams that block their paths. At the same time, the amount of fish caught has remained relatively consistent over time. This could be due to people spending more time fishing and smaller, more sedentary species or other predators filling voids left by dwindling larger predator populations.

"You have this pattern of biodiversity change but a constancy of biomass," Heilpern said. "We wanted to know: How does that affect nutrients that people get from the system?"

In the computer model, the researchers took all these factors into account and ran extinction scenarios, looking at which species are more likely to go extinct, and then which species are likely to replace those to compensate for a void in the ecosystem.

The model tracked seven essential animal-derived nutrients, including protein, iron, zinc, calcium and three omega-3 fatty acids, and simulated how changing fish stocks might affect nutrient levels across the population. While protein content across species is relatively equal, smaller, more sedentary fish have higher omega-3 content. Levels of micronutrients such as zinc and iron can also vary between species.

Simulations revealed risks in the system. For example, when small, sedentary species compensated for declines in large migratory species, fatty acid supplies increased, while zinc and iron supplies decreased. The region already suffers from high anemia rates, caused by iron deficiency, that such outcomes could further exacerbate.

"As you lose biodiversity, you have these tradeoffs that play out in terms of the aggregate quantity of nutrients," Heilpern said. "As you lose species, the system also becomes more and more risky to further shocks."

A related paper published March 19 in Nature Food considered whether other animal-based food sources, such as chicken and aquaculture, could compensate for the loss of biodiversity and dietary nutrients in the same region. The researchers found that those options were inadequate and could not replace the nutrients lost when fish biodiversity declines.

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The study was funded by a Columbia University Dean's Diversity Fellowship, a New York Community Trust Edward Prince Goldman Scholarship in Science, and a grant from the Conservation, Food and Health Foundation.

UMaine researchers: Culture drives human evolution more than genetics

UNIVERSITY OF MAINE

Research News

 

In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics.

After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term human evolution, scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a "special evolutionary transition" in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of human evolution.

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

Culture is a stronger mechanism of adaptation for a couple of reasons, Waring says. It's faster: gene transfer occurs only once a generation, while cultural practices can be rapidly learned and frequently updated. Culture is also more flexible than genes: gene transfer is rigid and limited to the genetic information of two parents, while cultural transmission is based on flexible human learning and effectively unlimited with the ability to make use of information from peers and experts far beyond parents. As a result, cultural evolution is a stronger type of adaptation than old genetics.

Waring, an associate professor of social-ecological systems modeling, and Wood, a postdoctoral research associate with the School of Biology and Ecology, have just published their findings in a literature review in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the flagship biological research journal of The Royal Society in London.

"This research explains why humans are such a unique species. We evolve both genetically and culturally over time, but we are slowly becoming ever more cultural and ever less genetic," Waring says.

Culture has influenced how humans survive and evolve for millenia. According to Waring and Wood, the combination of both culture and genes has fueled several key adaptations in humans such as reduced aggression, cooperative inclinations, collaborative abilities and the capacity for social learning. Increasingly, the researchers suggest, human adaptations are steered by culture, and require genes to accommodate.

Waring and Wood say culture is also special in one important way: it is strongly group-oriented. Factors like conformity, social identity and shared norms and institutions -- factors that have no genetic equivalent -- make cultural evolution very group-oriented, according to researchers. Therefore, competition between culturally organized groups propels adaptations such as new cooperative norms and social systems that help groups survive better together.

According to researchers, "culturally organized groups appear to solve adaptive problems more readily than individuals, through the compounding value of social learning and cultural transmission in groups." Cultural adaptations may also occur faster in larger groups than in small ones.

With groups primarily driving culture and culture now fueling human evolution more than genetics, Waring and Wood found that evolution itself has become more group-oriented.

"In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives," Waring says. "The 'society as organism' metaphor is not so metaphorical after all. This insight can help society better understand how individuals can fit into a well-organized and mutually beneficial system. Take the coronavirus pandemic, for example. An effective national epidemic response program is truly a national immune system, and we can therefore learn directly from how immune systems work to improve our COVID response."

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Waring is a member of the Cultural Evolution Society, an international research network that studies the evolution of culture in all species. He applies cultural evolution to the study of sustainability in social-ecological systems and cooperation in organizational evolution.

Wood works in the UMaine Evolutionary Applications Laboratory managed by Michael Kinnison, a professor of evolutionary applications. His research focuses on eco-evolutionary dynamics, particularly rapid evolution during trophic cascades.

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