Sealed, signed and delivered

Hebrew University archaeologists unveil 7,000-year-old seal impressions used for commerce and protection of property

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

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IMAGE: ROUNDED SILOS AT TEL TSAF. view more 

CREDIT: BOAZ GARFINKEL

A team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) made a rare discovery when they unearthed a small clay seal impression dating back some 7000 years. The impression, with two different geometric stamps imprinted on it, was discovered in Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village located in Israel's Beit She'an Valley up north.

The discovery was made as part of a dig that took place between 2004 and 2007 and was led by HU's Professor Yosef Garfinkel along with two of his students, Professor David Ben Shlomo and Dr. Michael Freikman, both of whom are now researchers at Ariel University. One hundred and fifty clay sealings were originally found at the site, with one being particularly rare and of distinct, historic importance. The object was published in the journal Levant.

Sealings, also known as bulla, are made of a small piece of clay were used in historical times to seal and sign letters and to prevent others from reading their contents. The sealing found in Tel Tsaf is particularly significant because it is the first evidence of the use of seals to mark shipments or to close silos or barns. When a barn door was opened, its seal impression would break - a telltale sign that someone had been there and that the contents inside had been touched or taken. "Even today, similar types of sealing are used to prevent tampering and theft," explained Garfinkel. "It turns out that this was already in use 7,000 years ago by land owners and local administrators to protect their property."

Measuring less than a centimeter wide, the fragment was found in great condition due to the dry climate of the Beit She'an valley. The sealing is marked by symmetrical lines. While many sealings found in First Temple Jerusalem (ca. 2,600 years ago) include a personal name and sometimes biblical figures, the sealing from Tel Tsaf is from a prehistoric era, when writing was not yet in use. Those seals were decorated with geometric shapes instead of letters. The fact that there are two different stamps on the seal impression may indicate a form of commercial activity where the two different people were involved in the transaction.

The found fragment underwent extensive analysis before researchers could determine that it was indeed a seal impression. According to Garfinkel, this is the earliest evidence that seals were used in Israel approximately 7,000 years ago to sign deliveries and keep store rooms closed. While seals have been found in that region dating back to 8,500 years ago, seal impressions from that time have not been found.

Based on a careful scientific analysis of the sealing's clay, the researchers found it wasn't locally sourced but came from a location at least ten kilometers away. Other archeological finds at the site reveal evidence that the Tel Tsaf residents were in contact with populations far beyond ancient Israel. "At this very site we have evidence of contact with peoples from Mesopotamia, Turkey, Egypt and Caucasia," Garfinkel added. "There is no prehistoric site anywhere in the Middle East that reveals evidence of such long-distance trade in exotic items as what we found at this particular site."

The site also yielded clues that the area was home to people of considerable wealth who built up large stores of ingredients and materials, indicating considerable social development. This evidence points to Tel Tsaf as having been a key position in the region that served both local communities and people passing through. "We hope that continued excavations at Tel Tsaf and other places from the same time period will yield additional evidence to help us understand the impact of a regional authority in the southern Levant," concluded Garfinkel.

CAPTION

4. Tel Tsaf seal and a modern impression.

CREDIT

Vladimir Nichen

When physics meets financial networks

A review highlights the role of the theory of Complex Networks in predicting crises

IMT SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED STUDIES LUCCA

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Generally, physics and financial systems are not easily associated in people's minds. Yet, principles and techniques originating from physics can be very effective in describing the processes taking place on financial markets. Modeling financial systems as networks can greatly enhance our understanding of phenomena that are relevant not only to researchers in economics and other disciplines, but also to ordinary citizens, public agencies and governments. And the theory of Complex Networks represents a powerful framework for studying how shocks propagate in financial systems, identifying early-warning signals of forthcoming crises, and reconstructing hidden linkages in interbank systems.

In a review article appearing on Nature Reviews Physics, several scholars in Complex Networks have now teamed up to organize and update the knowledge in the field. The article summarizes over 15 years of truly interdisciplinary research, highlighting how the statistical physics approach has shed light on various key properties of these phenomena. The authors represent some of the most internationally active research groups in the field, based at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, the University of Leiden, "Ca' Foscari" University of Venice, University of Zurich, "Tor Vergata" University of Rome, University College London and Bank of England.

The starting point of the analysis is the recognition that financial institutions are linked together in a global web of interactions whose structure can be analyzed quantitatively by means of network theory, the framework that studies the structure and consequences of the relationships connecting different objects in large systems. In fact, the financial system can be viewed as a network whose nodes represent agents - e.g. retail and investment banks, insurance companies, investment funds, central banks but also non-financial firms and households - and whose edges represent dependencies between nodes.

The models traditionally employed by regulators and policymakers consider far too simple representations of financial systems, describing them either as collections of isolated actors or as a homogeneous "mixture" where each actor interacts equally with all the other ones. However, as the 2007-2008 crisis showed dramatically, both representations fail to provide an appropriate description of the highly heterogeneous and intertwined structure of these systems, as well as the implications for society. When the crisis struck, banks that broke down could not repay their debt, causing other banks to go bankrupt, in a cascading effect whose dynamics strongly depended on the details of the interconnection patterns. Policymakers admitted that they felt abandoned by traditional economic models.

Here is where network theory comes into play, by clarifying the interplay between the structure of the network, the heterogeneity of the individual characteristics of financial actors and the dynamics of risk propagation, in particular contagion, i.e. the domino effect by which the instability of some financial institutions can reverberate to other institutions to which they are connected. The associated risk is indeed "systemic", i.e. both produced and faced by the system as a whole, as in collective phenomena studied in physics. "Each bank determines the interest rate for loans to other banks based on their perceived individual riskiness," explains Diego Garlaschelli, Associate Professor at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and at Leiden University, the Netherlands. "However if those banks are in turn interconnected via other loans, then the actual risk of a collective default can be much higher. Since the existence of loans is a matter of confidentiality, one has to devise new techniques to guess the key properties of interbank networks from partial information. This is crucial also for central banks that strive to run reliable stress tests on the financial system. A nontrivial generalization of the statistical physics framework allowed us to address this challenge in an original way."

The publication in Nature Reviews Physics is a recognition of the fact that financial networks are one of the new frontiers of modern physics; besides, it acknowledges the key role played by statistical physics in providing a mathematical description of the relation between microscopic and macroscopic properties of systems composed of many parts, including social and economic ones.

The authors of the review have been working in the field of financial networks for several years. "Our network reconstruction methods have been tested by various groups worldwide, including one uniting researchers from several central banks, and have been found to systematically outperform the alternative ones," says Tiziano Squartini, Assistant Professor in physics at the IMT School. "In collaboration with the Dutch Central Bank, we even found that, while the 2007-2008 crisis came as a surprise to traditional models, a network analysis accounting for the observed heterogeneity of banks could have predicted it three years in advance."

Today, after almost fifteen years from the financial crisis, the role of networks for monitoring financial stability and designing macroprudential regulation is widely recognized. Both policymakers and researchers agree that systemic risk has to be studied and managed by adopting a network perspective. Besides, it is necessary that institutions adopt network models for risk assessment more comprehensively. This is also reflected in the policy action and discourse of the highest financial authorities, both in the US and in the EU.

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Marco Bardoscia, Paolo Barucca, Stefano Battiston, Fabio Caccioli, Giulio Cimini, Diego Garlaschelli, Fabio Saracco, Tiziano Squartini, and Guido Caldarelli, "The Physics of Financial Networks", Nature Reviews Physics (2021).

UK

Economic crime is going uninvestigated as Police hide behind the veil of Action Fraud

UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH

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Fraud is going uninvestigated by police who are "hiding behind the veil" of the Action Fraud national crime reporting agency.

In his paper published this week in Policing, Professor Mark Button, director of the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies at the University of Portsmouth argues that, Action Fraud, which has been widely derided, has become a useful veil from which the police can hide their inadequate response.

Figures from Action Fraud, the arm of the police responsible for recording scams and fraud, show that between 2019 and 2020, over 800,000 people reported being a victim of fraud, with £2.3bn finding its way into criminal hands. However, Professor Button calculated just 0.6 per cent of police officers are dedicated to investigating fraud.

The research focused on reviews and investigations carried out over the past 20 years and found that these have consistently highlighted the low priority given to the investigation of financial crimes in England and Wales. In 2018 the House of Commons home affairs committee said that "the proportion of fraud cases being investigated is shockingly low".

Professor Button says: "Action Fraud is in reality a call centre provided by a private company under contract to the City of London Police.

"The staffs it employs are largely low-skilled and paid at around the minimum wage. It has no capacity to investigate. However, even in the area it does have responsibility for there is an evidence of areas in need of improvement."

"Considering fraud and computer misuse crime amounts to a third to half of all crime against individuals this is a huge mismatch".

Professor Button suggests radical change is required to address the investigative gap through either a move towards regional investigation of economic crime or a national solution, through a National Economic Crime Agency.

Economic crime is the most common type of crime and costs society billions of pounds. In the current policing structures economic crime will always be the 'Cinderella' crime falling behind other policing priorities and lacking the resources required for agencies to effectively tackle it. Much of economic crime requires specialist knowledge.

The paper aims to start a debate around the future structures of policing for economic crime centred around a national body or regional forces rather than the traditional local forces.

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POSTMODERN ALCHEMY

Researchers turned transparent calcite into artificial gold

TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY

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IMAGE: FIGURE SHOWS 3D RECONSTRUCTION OF THE GOLDEN VATERITE AND THE LASER-INDUCED HEATING OF THE SPHERULITES. view more 

CREDIT: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

Breakthrough in metamaterials: for the first time in the world, researchers at Tel Aviv University developed an innovative nanotechnology that transforms a transparent calcite nanoparticle into a sparkling gold-like particle. In other words, they turned the transparent particle into a particle that is visible despite its very small dimensions. According to the researchers the new material can serve as a platform for innovative cancer treatments.

In a new paper published in Advanced Materials, an international team of scientists, coordinated by Dr. Roman Noskov and Dr. Pavel Ginzburg from the Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University, Prof. Dmitry Gorin from the Center for Photonics and Quantum Materials at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) and Dr. Evgeny Shirshin from M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, has introduced the concept of biofriendly delivery of optical resonances via a mesoscopic metamaterial, a material with properties that are not found in nature. This approach opens promising prospects for multifunctionality in biomedical systems, allowing the use of a single designer-made nanoparticle for sensing, photothermal therapy, photoacoustic tomography, bioimaging, and targeted drug delivery.

"This concept is the result of cross-disciplinary thinking at the interface between the physics of metamaterials and bioorganic chemistry, aiming to meet the needs of nanomedicine. We were able to create a mesoscopic submicron metamaterial from biocompatible components that demonstrates strong Mie resonances covering the near-infrared spectral window in which biological tissues are transparent," says Dr. Roman Noskov.

The nanostructures capable of nanoscale light localization as well as performing several functions are highly desirable in a plethora of biomedical applications. However, biocompatibility is typically a problem, as engineering of optical properties often calls for using toxic compounds and chemicals. The researchers have resolved this issue by employing gold nanoseeds and porous vaterite (calcium carbonate) spherulites, currently considered promising drug-delivery vehicles. This approach involves controllable infusion of gold nanoseeds into a vaterite scaffold resulting in a mesoscopic metamaterial - golden vaterite - whose resonance properties can be widely tuned by changing the quantity of gold inside the vaterite. Additionally, high payload capacity of vaterite spherulites allows simultaneous loading of both drugs and fluorescent tags. To exemplify the performance of their system, the researchers demonstrated efficient laser heating of golden vaterite at red and near?infrared wavelengths, highly desirable in photothermal therapy, and photoacoustic tomography.

Prof. Pavel Ginzburg summarizes: "This novel platform enables the accommodation of multiple functionalities - as simple add-ons that can be introduced almost on demand. Alongside optical imaging and thermotherapy, MRI visibility, functional biomedical materials and many other modalities can be introduced within a miniature nano-scale particle. I believe that our collaborative efforts will lead to in-vivo demonstrations, which will pave the way for a new biomedical technology."

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Humans are ready to take advantage of benevolent AI

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN

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Humans expect that AI is Benevolent and trustworthy. A new study reveals that at the same time humans are unwilling to cooperate and compromise with machines. They even exploit them.

Picture yourself driving on a narrow road in the near future when suddenly another car emerges from a bend ahead. It is a self-driving car with no passengers inside. Will you push forth and assert your right of way, or give way to let it pass? At present, most of us behave kindly in such situations involving oth-er humans. Will we show that same kindness towards autonomous vehicles?

Using methods from behavioural game theory, an international team of researchers at LMU and the University of London have conducted large-scale online studies to see whether people would behave as cooperatively with artificial intelligence (AI) systems as they do with fellow humans.

Cooperation holds a society together. It often requires us to compromise with others and to accept the risk that they let us down. Traffic is a good example. We lose a bit of time when we let other people pass in front of us and are outraged when others fail to reciprocate our kindness. Will we do the same with machines?

Exploiting the machine without guilt

The study which is published in the journal iScience found that, upon first encounter, people have the same level of trust toward AI as for human: most expect to meet someone who is ready to cooperate.

The difference comes afterwards. People are much less ready to reciprocate with AI, and instead exploit its benevolence to their own benefit. Going back to the traffic example, a human driver would give way to another human but not to a self-driving car.

The study identifies this unwillingness to compromise with machines as a new challenge to the future of human-AI interactions.

"We put people in the shoes of someone who interacts with an artificial agent for the first time, as it could happen on the road," explains Dr. Jurgis Karpus, a behavioural game theorist and a philosopher at LMU Munich and the first author of the study. "We modelled different types of social encounters and found a consistent pattern. People expected artificial agents to be as cooperate as fellow humans. However, they did not return their benevolence as much and exploited the AI more than humans."

With perspectives from game theory, cognitive science, and philosophy, the researchers found that 'al-gorithm exploitation' is a robust phenomenon. They replicated their findings across nine experiments with nearly 2,000 human participants.

Each experiment examines different kinds of social interactions and allows the human to decide whether to compromise and cooperate or act selfishly. Expectations of the other players were also measured. In a well-known game, the Prisoner's Dilemma, people must trust that the other characters will not let them down. They embraced risk with humans and AI alike, but betrayed the trust of the AI much more often, to gain more money.

"Cooperation is sustained by a mutual bet: I trust you will be kind to me, and you trust I will be kind to you. The biggest worry in our field is that people will not trust machines. But we show that they do!" notes Prof. Bahador Bahrami, a social neuroscientist at the LMU, and one of the senior researchers in the study. "They are fine with letting the machine down, though, and that is the big difference. People even do not report much guilt when they do," he adds.

Benevolent AI can backfire

Biased and unethical AI has made many headlines--from the 2020 exams fiasco in the United Kingdom to justice systems--but this new research brings up a novel caution. The industry and legislators strive to ensure that artificial intelligence is benevolent. But benevolence may backfire.

If people think that AI is programmed to be benevolent towards them, they will be less tempted to co-operate. Some of the accidents involving self-driving cars may already show real-life examples: drivers recognize an autonomous vehicle on the road, and expect it to give way. The self-driving vehicle meanwhile expects for normal compromises between drivers to hold.

"Algorithm exploitation has further consequences down the line. If humans are reluctant to let a polite self-driving car join from a side road, should the self-driving car be less polite and more aggressive in order to be useful?" asks Jurgis Karpus.

"Benevolent and trustworthy AI is a buzzword that everyone is excited about. But fixing the AI is not the whole story. If we realize that the robot in front of us will be cooperative no matter what, we will use it to our selfish interest," says Professor Ophelia Deroy, a philosopher and senior author on the study, who also works with Norway's Peace Research Institute Oslo on the ethical implications of inte-grating autonomous robot soldiers along with human soldiers. "Compromises are the oil that make soci-ety work. For each of us, it looks only like a small act of self-interest. For society as a whole, it could have much bigger repercussions. If no one lets autonomous cars join the traffic, they will create their own traffic jams on the side, and not make transport easier".

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IPBES/IPCC: Tackling the biodiversity and climate crises together, and their combined social impacts

Global experts identify key options for solutions; First-ever collaboration between IPBES- and IPCC-selected scientists

INTERGOVERNMENTAL SCIENCE-POLICY PLATFORM ON BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (IPBES)

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IMAGE: THE PEER-REVIEWED WORKSHOP REPORT IS THE PRODUCT OF A FOUR-DAY VIRTUAL WORKSHOP BETWEEN EXPERTS SELECTED BY A 12-PERSON SCIENTIFIC STEERING COMMITTEE ASSEMBLED BY THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL SCIENCE-POLICY PLATFORM ON BIODIVERSITY AND... view more 

CREDIT: IPBES

BONN, 10 June - Unprecedented changes in climate and biodiversity, driven by human activities, have combined and increasingly threaten nature, human lives, livelihoods and well-being around the world. Biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and mutually reinforce each other. Neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together.

This is the message of a workshop report, published today by 50 of the world's leading biodiversity and climate experts.

The peer-reviewed workshop report is the product of a four-day virtual workshop between experts selected by a 12-person Scientific Steering Committee assembled by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the first-ever collaboration between these two intergovernmental bodies.

The report finds that previous policies have largely tackled biodiversity loss and climate change independently of each other, and that addressing the synergies between mitigating biodiversity loss and climate change, while considering their social impacts, offers the opportunity to maximize benefits and meet global development goals.

"Human-caused climate change is increasingly threatening nature and its contributions to people, including its ability to help mitigate climate change. The warmer the world gets, the less food, drinking water and other key contributions nature can make to our lives, in many regions" said Prof. Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee.

"Changes in biodiversity, in turn, affect climate, especially through impacts on nitrogen, carbon and water cycles," he said. "The evidence is clear: a sustainable global future for people and nature is still achievable, but it requires transformative change with rapid and far-reaching actions of a type never before attempted, building on ambitious emissions reductions. Solving some of the strong and apparently unavoidable trade-offs between climate and biodiversity will entail a profound collective shift of individual and shared values concerning nature - such as moving away from the conception of economic progress based solely on GDP growth, to one that balances human development with multiple values of nature for a good quality of life, while not overshooting biophysical and social limits."

The authors also warn that narrowly-focused actions to combat climate change can directly and indirectly harm nature and vice-versa, but many measures exist that can make significant positive contributions in both areas.

Among the most important available actions identified in the report are:

• Stopping the loss and degradation of carbon- and species-rich ecosystems on land and in the ocean, especially forests, wetlands, peatlands, grasslands and savannahs; coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, kelp forests and seagrass meadows; as well as deep water and polar blue carbon habitats. The report highlights that reducing deforestation and forest degradation can contribute to lowering human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, by a wide range from 0.4-5.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year.

• Restoring carbon- and species-rich ecosystems. The authors point to evidence that restoration is among the cheapest and quickest nature-based climate mitigation measures to implement - offering much-needed habitat for plants and animals, thus enhancing resilience of biodiversity in the face of climate change, with many other benefits such as flood regulation, coastal protection, enhanced water quality, reduced soil erosion and ensuring pollination. Ecosystem restoration can also create jobs and income, especially when taking into consideration the needs and access rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

• Increasing sustainable agricultural and forestry practices to improve the capacity to adapt to climate change, enhance biodiversity, increase carbon storage and reduce emissions. These include measures such as diversification of planted crop and forest species, agroforestry and agroecology. Improved management of cropland and grazing systems, such as soil conservation and the reduction of fertilizer use, is jointly estimated by the report to offer annual climate change mitigation potential of 3-6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

• Enhancing and better-targeting conservation actions, coordinated with and supported by strong climate adaptation and innovation. Protected areas currently represent about 15% of land and 7.5% of the ocean. Positive outcomes are expected from substantially increasing intact and effectively protected areas. Global estimates of exact requirements for effectively protected and conserved areas to ensure a habitable climate, self-sustaining biodiversity and a good quality of life are not yet well established but range from 30 to 50 percent of all ocean and land surface areas. Options to improve the positive impacts of protected areas include greater resourcing, better management and enforcement, and improved distribution with increased inter-connectivity between these areas. Conservation measures beyond protected areas are also spotlighted - including migration corridors and planning for shifting climates, as well as better integration of people with nature to assure equity of access and use of nature's contributions to people.

• Eliminating subsidies that support local and national activities harmful to biodiversity - such as deforestation, over-fertilization and over-fishing, can also support climate change mitigation and adaptation, together with changing individual consumption patterns, reducing loss and waste, and shifting diets, especially in rich countries, toward more plant-based options.

  Some focused climate mitigation and adaptation measures identified by the report as harmful to biodiversity and nature's contributions to people include:

• Planting bioenergy crops in monocultures over a very large share of land areas. Such crops are detrimental to ecosystems when deployed at very large scales, reducing nature's contributions to people and impeding achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals. At small scales, alongside pronounced and rapid reductions in fossil-fuel emissions, dedicated bioenergy crops for electricity production or fuels may provide co-benefits for climate adaptation and biodiversity.

• Planting trees in ecosystems that have not historically been forests and reforestation with monocultures - especially with exotic tree species. This can contribute to climate change mitigation but is often damaging to biodiversity, food production and other nature's contributions to people, has no clear benefits for climate adaptation, and may displace local people through competition for land.

• Increasing irrigation capacity. A common response to adapt agricultural systems to drought that often leads to water conflicts, dam building and long- term soil degradation from salinization.

• Any measures that focus too narrowly on climate change mitigation should be evaluated in terms of their overall benefits and risks, such as some renewable energies generating surges of mining activity or consuming large amounts of land. The same applies to some technical measures too narrowly focused on adaptation, such as building dams and sea walls. Although important options for mitigating and adapting to climate change exist, these can have large negative environmental and social impacts - such as interference with migratory species and habitat fragmentation. Such impacts can be minimized, for instance, by developing alternative batteries and long-lived products, efficient recycling systems for mineral resources, and approaches to mining that include strong considerations for environmental and social sustainability.

The report authors stress that while nature offers effective ways to help mitigate climate change, these solutions can only be effective if building on ambitious reductions in all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. "Land and ocean are already doing a lot - absorbing almost 50% of CO2 from human emissions - but nature cannot do everything," said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. "Transformative change in all parts of society and our economy is needed to stabilize our climate, stop biodiversity loss and chart a path to the sustainable future we want. This will also require us to address both crises together, in complementary ways."

Highlighting the significance of the co-sponsored workshop, Dr. Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC, said: "Climate change and biodiversity loss combine to threaten society - often magnifying and accelerating each other. By focusing on synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation, this workshop advanced the debate on how to maximize benefits to people and the planet. It also represented an important step in collaboration between our two communities."

"It may be impossible to achieve win-win synergies, or even manage the tradeoffs between climate and biodiversity actions in every single patch of a landscape or seascape," said Prof. Pörtner, "But achieving sustainable outcomes becomes progressively easier when integrating a mix of actions at larger spatial scales, through cross-border collaboration and joint consultative spatial planning, which is why it is important to also address the lack of effective governance systems and mechanisms to improve integration between solutions for climate change and biodiversity."

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The Governments of the United Kingdom and of Norway co-hosted the virtual workshop. "This is an absolutely critical year for nature and climate," said Lord Zac Goldsmith, UK Minister of State for Pacific and the Environment. "With the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, and the Glasgow Climate Change Conference in the UK, we have an opportunity and responsibility to put the world on a path to recovery. This hugely valuable report by the experts of IPBES and IPCC makes it clear that addressing biodiversity loss and climate change together offers our best chance of doing so."

Sveinung Rotevatn, Norwegian Minister for Climate and Environment added: "Policies, efforts and actions to solve the global biodiversity and climate crises will only succeed if they are based on the best knowledge and evidence, which is why Norway welcomes this expert workshop report. It is clear that we cannot solve these threats in isolation - we either solve both or we solve neither."

Paying tribute to the work of all the authors and expert reviewers, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, Dr. Anne Larigauderie, also recalled the recent and tragic passing of Prof. Robert Scholes, the other Co-Chair of the workshop's Scientific Steering Committee, and his many contributions to both the IPCC and IPBES.

It is important to note that the workshop report has not been subjected to IPBES or IPCC review, and that IPBES and IPCC co-sponsorship of the workshop does not imply IPBES or IPCC endorsement or approval of the workshop or its conclusions.

The report is available post-embargo at http://www.ipbes.net/biodiversityclimatescience

Study of Harvey flooding aids in quantifying climate change

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

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IMAGE: TOP LEFT (A): SIMULATION OF THE ACTUAL FLOOD DEPTH (METERS) IN A SOUTH HOUSTON NEIGHBORHOOD. BOTTOM LEFT (B): SIMULATION OF THE COUNTERFACTUAL FLOOD IF CLIMATE CHANGE INCREASED PRECIPITATION BY 38%.... view more 

CREDIT: MICHAEL WEHNER, BERKELEY LAB

How much do the effects of climate change contribute to extreme weather events? It's hard to say--the variables involved are plentiful, each event is unique, and we can only do so much to investigate what didn't happen. But a new paper from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) climate scientist Michael Wehner investigates the question for one particular element of one significant storm and makes the results available to those who lived through it.

In the paper, "Attributable human-induced changes in the magnitude of flooding in the Houston, Texas region during Hurricane Harvey," published May 19 in Climatic Change, Wehner and Christopher Sampson from Fathom Bristol used a hydraulic model--a mathematical model that can analyze the flow of fluid through a particular system of natural or human-made channels--to consider the degree to which human-caused climate change may have affected flooding in and around Houston during the massive 2017 storm, and the ways in which that flooding was distributed. Wehner and Sampson used resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) to quantify the increase in Houston flood area and depth from the hydraulic model output and to host a portal where other scientists and the public can access the data for their own use.

From August 26 through August 31, 2017, Hurricane Harvey stalled over the Houston area, flooding 154,000 structures and 600,000 cars; 37,000 people were displaced, and more than 70 died in the floodwaters. Adjusted for inflation, it was the second-most financially expensive tropical storm in United States history, costing between $85 billion and $125 billion.

Using previously published estimates (Risser and Wehner 2017; Von Oldenborg et al 2017; Wang et al 2018) stating a range of a 7% to 38% increase in precipitation during Hurricane Harvey due to climate change, Wehner and Sampson applied a hydraulic model to produce a range of simulations showing the distribution of flooding around the Houston area, illustrating a variety of outcomes for different levels of attribution to climate change.

According to Wehner, the computational simplicity of hydraulic models allows for extremely fine resolution simulations --in this case, about 30 meters (100 feet), or approximately the size of a single house and yard. Because of the granularity of the data, residents themselves can use the model to check the flood status of their homes or blocks in different modeled scenarios and see how climate change may have affected them directly.

"[The amount of flooding you experienced] depends a lot on where you are, whether you were victimized by the flood first of all, and then by whether climate change caused that flooding or not," said Wehner. "That's why this is an interesting data set. It's so high-resolution that people can search for their own houses, or at least their own blocks, and see whether their house was flooded because of climate change--at least according to these simulations."

That's part of the impetus of this study, he emphasized: not just publishing the results, but making them easily available to other professional scientists, community scientists, and any member of the public who wants to look at them. For example, Wehner has already begun sharing his data with a team of social scientists who plan to use the data to study the disproportionate distribution of impacts across ethnic groups in Houston. On a broader scale, a public-facing portal hosted at NERSC offers Wehner and Sampson's data in easily downloadable form, in addition to links to free software.

"It's a scientific paper, but it's really motivated as a public outreach," said Wehner. "I'm trying to empower the public to go out and do their own finding, for people to say, 'I want to know if climate change impacted my neighborhood.'"

In addition to community science and passing data on to other researchers, this study may also contribute to research on the economic impacts of climate change.

"At the end of the day, our best estimate is that 14% to 15% of the cost of flooding during Hurricane Harvey is because of climate change, which doesn't sound like a whole lot...but $13 billion does. And that's going to grow as climate change continues," said Wehner.

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Chamoli disaster could happen again

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

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IMAGE: DESTROYED TAPOVAN VISHNUGAD HYDROELECTRIC PLANT AFTER DEVASTATING DEBRIS FLOW OF FEB 7, 2021. view more 

CREDIT: (IRFAN RASHID, DEPARTMENT OF GEOINFORMATICS, UNIVERSITY OF KASHMIR)

Some four months ago, a devastating flood ravaged the Chamoli district in the Indian Himalayas, killing over 200 people. The flood was caused by a massive landslide, which also involved a glacier. Researchers at the University of Zurich, the WSL and ETH Zurich have now analyzed the causes, scope and impact of the disaster as part of an international collaboration.

On 7 February 2021, a massive wall of rock and ice collapsed and formed a debris flow that barreled down the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga river valleys, leaving a trail of devastation. The flood took more than 200 lives and destroyed two hydropower plants as well as several roads and bridges. A large international team including researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH), the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the ETH Zurich came together immediately after the disaster and began to investigate the cause and scope of the flood and landslide. Their study used satellite imagery, digital models of the terrain, seismic data and video footage to reconstruct the event with the help of computer models.

Avalanche of rock and ice

Twenty million cubic meters of rock had broken off from Ronti peak in Chamoli district in Uttarkhand at about 5,500 meters above sea level, including a steep hanging glacier with about 5.5 million cubic meters of ice. The massive avalanche, made up of rock (80%) and ice (20%), hurtled down the valley and the narrow gorge. Resulting energy from the friction melted almost all of the ice and led to a devastating mudflow.

The international cooperation analyzing the extreme event was coordinated by GAPHAZ, a scientific group of leading experts on glacier and permafrost hazards in mountains. Holger Frey from UZH's Department of Geography and GAPHAZ board member says: "The speed and breadth with which we analyzed the disaster is unprecedented. Only five years ago, having such extensive and high-resolution satellite imagery available so quickly was almost unthinkable."

Research work started immediately

The UZH researchers have been working in the Indian Himalayas for several years and were contacted by the Indian government's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) only hours after the event. In the days that followed, they were able to provide the Indian authorities with initial insights on how the disaster unfolded and the processes involved. "Among other things, our reports and assessments were used to plan the on-site investigation," says Frey.

Hazardous hydropower projects

The deaths of more than 200 people, most of whom were non-local workers, and the destruction of the two hydropower plants added fuel to the ongoing debate about power plant projects in fragile alpine ecosystems. Following the devastating floods in Uttarakhand back in 2013, the hydropower industry was accused by the Supreme Court of India of having exacerbated the consequences of such floods with its practices. "The Chamoli disaster sadly confirms that many hydropower companies operating in the Himalayas are not doing enough to survey and monitor the increasingly unstable alpine environment," says co-author Christian Huggel from the UZH Department of Geography.

Impacts of climate change

The effects of climate change can also be felt below the surface. Temperatures inside mountains are rising in permafrost regions, increasing the likelihood of rockslides in alpine zones. Given the growing energy requirements in the Himalayan states, this problem is expected to get worse. "The Chamoli disaster was a rare extreme event," says Holger Frey. "But it's only a matter of time before the next such massive event will happen somewhere in the Himalayas." With several additional hydropower plants in planning, fast and sustainable solutions are needed - as well as close collaboration with scientists. "We must take advantage of the most advanced technologies and knowledge to better protect human lives and assets in the future," Christian Huggel says. Such rare disastrous events cannot be ruled out for other mountain regions either, and they can have disastrous effects, especially in regions with relative dense infrastructure such as the Alps.

CAPTION

Computer modeling of the Chamoli rock and ice avalanche.

CREDIT

(Ashim Sattar; UZH)

 

'Disagreeable' married men who shirk domestic responsibilities earn more at work

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Research News

 

Married men who don't help out around the house tend to bring home bigger paychecks than husbands who play a bigger role on the domestic chores front.

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that "disagreeable" men in opposite-sex marriages are less helpful with domestic work, allowing them to devote greater resources to their jobs, which results in higher pay.

In contemporary psychology, "agreeableness" is one of the "Big Five" dimensions used to describe human personality. It generally refers to someone who is warm, sympathetic, kind and cooperative. Disagreeable people do not tend to exhibit these characteristics, and they tend to be more self-interested and competitive.

"Why Disagreeableness (in Married Men) Leads to Earning More: A Theory and Test of Social Exchange at Home" is forthcoming in Personnel Psychology from lead author Brittany Solomon and Cindy Muir (Zapata), management professors at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, along with Matthew Hall, the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional Studies and concurrent law professor at Notre Dame, and Elizabeth Campbell from the University of Minnesota.

"Across two studies, we find evidence that disagreeable men tend to earn more money relative to their more agreeable male counterparts because they are more self-interested and less helpful to their wives at home, which allows for greater job involvement and, ultimately, higher pay," Solomon said. "This effect is even stronger among disagreeable men with more traditional gender role attitudes and when their wives are highly conscientious, presumably because in these cases their wives take on more household management and more seamlessly carry out the responsibilities."

The concept may bring to mind the '50s and '60s sitcom "Leave it to Beaver," where Ward Cleaver always arrived home in time for dinner and June Cleaver wore dresses and pearls to clean floors. Did they have advanced understanding of their respective roles?

The study suggests that because these men are able to preserve more time and energy at home, they can invest these resources into their work and earn more. However, the team found that disagreeableness does not predict career success for more egalitarian men, those whose wives are less conscientious or any men outside opposite-sex marriages.

"While disagreeableness in the workplace may lead some employees to success, those hoping to attain higher pay should at least hesitate before leaning into a disagreeable workplace persona," Solomon cautioned. "Indeed, if self-interested and less communal work behavior was the only key to higher pay, then disagreeable men would tend to earn more, regardless of whether they were married, how they viewed gender roles or to whom they were married."

Prior research has shown that disagreeableness predicts financial success (especially for men), and this association is attributed to workplace behavior. However, this effect remains puzzling given that disagreeableness is negatively associated with valued workplace behaviors, such as cooperation and prosocial behavior. In contrast, the team theorizes the male disagreeableness premium can be further understood by considering imbalanced social exchanges at home, specifically with one's spouse. 

"Our findings build on the conventional wisdom that organizations seem to reward disagreeable workplace behaviors and highlight the importance of social exchange at home for success at work," Solomon said. "Our research suggests that organizations acknowledge the role that spousal exchange plays in individual success and points to the potential for organizations to refocus efforts to fuel job involvement on lightening the burden of at-home responsibilities. Doing so could allow employees to preserve resources that could then be invested in their jobs.

"Presumably, this type of initiative would be especially beneficial to those who do not have the persona and gender that, we found, naturally drives individually advantageous spousal exchange -- that is, everyone other than disagreeable, married men," she said. "To help those who do not have the built-in at-home arrangement that enhances job involvement and pay, organizations may consider investing in infrastructure that helps establish more level career-related playing fields."

These may include providing non-work resources, such as lists of reputable providers for home services and maintenance, establishing child care programs, pre-vetting caregivers or having couriers on retainer, which Solomon speculates may enhance job involvement even more than traditional work-focused incentives like bonuses.

"Practices that situate employees more equitably outside of work may offer more employees the opportunity to succeed," Solomon said. "Also, some research shows that men are stigmatized for taking advantage of flex work policies. Changing the organizational culture, in addition to implementing such policies, may influence calculations within a marriage or partnership about whose career should take priority and who should do more at home. Consequently, organizations may also help support initiatives aimed to promote gender diversity and inclusion, especially efforts to reduce male dominance in high-income positions."

The study also carries implications for career self-management. Most notably, the findings may influence how employees view other people's roles in their own success, beyond their boss and other organizational members, and help improve the understanding of how one's choice of romantic partner and social exchange at home can have substantial implications for one's career success.

"Professionals often publicly thank their spouses when receiving achievement awards or earning promotion," Solomon said. "And, at least for disagreeable men, our findings quantify the truth behind this sentiment."

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Link to study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/peps.12454