NIMBY

Renewable energy OK, but not too close to home

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Research News

IMAGE: WHEN IT COMES TO TRANSITIONING FROM CARBON-BASED TO RENEWABLE SOURCE ENERGY SYSTEMS, AMERICANS ARE ON BOARD. THEY'RE LESS KEEN, HOWEVER, HAVING THESE NEW ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURES BUILT CLOSE TO THEIR HOMES.... view more 

CREDIT: ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/UGA

When it comes to transitioning from carbon-based to renewable source energy systems, Americans are on board. They're less keen, however, having these new energy infrastructures--wind turbines or solar farms--built close to their homes, which creates hurdles for policymakers. That's according to a study from University of Georgia researcher Thomas Lawrence.

Lawrence and an international team conducted surveys in the United States, Germany and Ireland to assess people's attitudes about renewable energy technologies and their willingness to have the necessary infrastructures built nearby.

"People in Germany and Ireland were more open to having renewable energy technologies closer to where they lived, perhaps because they have less space than in the U.S.," said Lawrence, professor of practice in the College of Engineering. "In the U.S., I was happily surprised to see overall support for a transition of power sources--especially to solar and wind--in the electrical grid, and it was stronger than I would have guessed."

Chilly reception for fossil fuels

Respondents in each country were asked to evaluate five energy sources--wind turbines, solar power technology, and more traditional electrical power generation using biomass, coal or natural gas as the power source. They also were asked questions about what distance from their home would be acceptable for the corresponding infrastructure and these energy sources. (The surveys were conducted using the local unit system of the three countries--miles for the U.S. and kilometers for Ireland and Germany. Five kilometers is roughly 3 miles.)

In all three countries, respondents were overwhelmingly opposed to having coal-fired or natural gas power plants located close to their residences. More than 80% chose "greater than 5 km/miles" and "reject regardless of distance" as their preferred distance for coal-fired power plants (89% in Ireland, 91% in the U.S. and 81% in Germany). More than 50% chose "greater than 5 km/miles" and "reject regardless of distance" as their preferred distance for natural gas power plants (80% in Ireland, 77% in the U.S. and 51% in Germany). They were generally more in favor of having renewable energy technologies located closer to their homes.

Respondents in Ireland and the U.S. were less willing to accept biomass power technology in their immediate vicinity, with more than 70% choosing "greater than 5 km/miles" or "reject regardless of distance" options. German respondents were somewhat more accepting, with 55% accepting biomass at distances less than 5 km/miles from their homes. According to Lawrence, the U.S. result may be because people here do not understand "biomass power," which is in essence burning biomass such as wood scraps to power a more traditional electrical generation facility.

A warmer response for renewable energy

Americans were more open to having renewable energy technologies located near their homes, compared to traditional energy technologies, with 24% agreeing to solar infrastructure and 17% agreeing to wind turbines located 0-1 km/miles from their residences. Irish respondents had higher acceptance rates for solar, with 42% agreeing to solar infrastructure 0-1 km/miles from their homes, and slightly lower rates for wind turbines, with 13% agreeing to wind turbines at the same distance. German respondents were far more open to these energy sources, with 74% agreeing to solar and 33% agreeing to wind turbines located 0-1 km/miles from their homes.

Greater acceptance of renewable energy sources in Germany is not a surprise, according to Lawrence.

"Germany has been leading the charge in transitioning away from carbon-based energy sources," he said. "Over 30% of their power right now is through wind or solar. People there are used to seeing wind farms and solar panels on rooftops."

The study, published in The Energy Journal, also examined preferences related to different national energy policy objectives: economic viability, environmental sustainability, reliability of energy supply and social acceptance.

Results revealed that social acceptance is a more significant energy policy concern for Ireland compared to either Germany or the U.S. Respondents in Ireland rank social acceptance as more important than environmental sustainability or reliability of supply. They also place more importance on those three variables compared to economic viability.

In contrast, German respondents rank all the national policy objectives examined as more important than social acceptance, though similarly, they place greater importance on environmental sustainability and reliability of supply than economic viability. Respondents from the U.S. place much lower importance on social acceptance as a national policy objective, compared to the other three policy objectives.

"Respondents in all three countries were generally more in favor of having renewable energy technologies close to their homes--unlike conventional energy technologies like coal and natural gas--but 'close to my home' was different in the U.S. than Europe," Lawrence said. "Five miles was the cutoff, at least in the U.S. Once you get beyond that point, it's out of sight, out of mind. People in Germany and Ireland often don't have the luxury of five miles."

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Co-authors include Jason Harold, National University of Ireland Galway and Trinity College Dublin; Valentin Bertsch, Trinity College Dublin and Ruhr-University Bochum; and Magie Hall, University of Nebraska Omaha (now with the Vienna University of Economics and Business).

This project was funded in part by the CREDENCE Project (Collaborative Research of Decentralisation, Electrification, Communications and Economics), a U.S.-Ireland Research and Development Partnership Program (centre to centre), funded by the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland (USI 110), Science Foundation Ireland (16/US-C2C/3290) and the National Science Foundation (0812121). Bertsch and Harold acknowledge funding from the ESRI's Energy Policy Research Centre. The U.S. study was funded in part through a grant from Georgia Power/The Southern Company.

 

DNA duplication linked to the origin and evolution of pine trees and their relatives

FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Research News

IMAGE: NEW RESEARCH SHOWS GENOME DUPLICATION IN THE ANCESTOR OF MODERN GYMNOSPERMS, A GROUP OF SEED PLANTS THAT INCLUDES CYPRESSES AND PINES, MIGHT HAVE DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTED TO THE ORIGIN OF THE... view more 

CREDIT: KRISTEN GRACE/FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Plants are DNA hoarders. Adhering to the maxim of never throwing anything out that might be useful later, they often duplicate their entire genome and hang on to the added genetic baggage. All those extra genes are then free to mutate and produce new physical traits, hastening the tempo of evolution.

A new study shows that such duplication events have been vitally important throughout the evolutionary history of gymnosperms, a diverse group of seed plants that includes pines, cypresses, sequoias, ginkgos and cycads. Published today in Nature Plants, the research indicates that a genome duplication in the ancestor of modern gymnosperms might have directly contributed to the origin of the group over 350 million years ago. Subsequent duplications provided raw material for the evolution of innovative traits that enabled these plants to persist in dramatically changing ecosystems, laying the foundation for a recent resurgence over the last 20 million years.

"This event at the start of their evolution created an opportunity for genes to evolve and create totally new functions that potentially helped gymnosperms transition to new habitats and aided in their ecological ascendance," said Gregory Stull, a recent doctoral graduate of the Florida Museum of Natural History and lead author of the study.

CAPTION

Some gymnosperm traits, such as cone structure, color, shape and size, may have arisen as a result of multiple genome duplications. This is a female cone of the species Callitris pancheri.

CREDIT

Nicolas Anger

Taking a closer look at gymnosperms

While having more than two sets of chromosomes - a phenomenon called polyploidy - is rare in animals, in plants it is commonplace. Most of the fruits and vegetables we eat, for example, are polyploids, often involving hybridization between two closely related species. Many plants, including wheat, peanuts, coffee, oats and strawberries, benefit from having multiple divergent copies of DNA, which can lead to faster growth rates and an increase in size and weight.

Until now, however, it's been unclear how polyploidy may have influenced the evolution of gymnosperms. Although they have some of the largest genomes in the plant kingdom, they have low chromosome numbers, which for decades prompted scientists to assume that polyploidy wasn't as prevalent or important in these plants.

Gymnosperm genetics are also complex. Their large genomes make them challenging to study, and much of their DNA consists of repeating sequences that don't code for anything.

"What makes gymnosperm genomes complex is they seem to have a proclivity for accumulating lots of repetitive elements," said study co-author Douglas Soltis, Florida Museum curator and University of Florida distinguished professor. "Things like ginkgos, cycads, pines and other conifers are loaded with all this repetitive stuff that has nothing to do with genome duplication."

However, a recent collaborative effort among plant biologists, including Soltis, to obtain massive numbers of genetic sequences from more than 1,000 plants has opened new doors for scientists attempting to piece together the long history of land plant evolution. Stull, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Kunming Institute of Botany, and his colleagues used a combination of these data and newly generated sequences to give gymnosperms another look.

Genome duplication gave rise to gymnosperms

By comparing the DNA of living gymnosperms, the researchers were able to peer back in time, uncovering evidence for multiple ancient genome duplication events that coincided with the origin of major groups.

Gymnosperms have undergone significant extinctions throughout their long history, making it difficult to decipher the exact nature of their relationships. But the genomes of all living gymnosperms share the signature of an ancient duplication in the distant past, more than 350 million years ago. More than 100 million years later, another duplication gave rise to the pine family, while a third led to the origin of podocarps, a group containing mostly trees and shrubs that today are primarily restricted to the Southern Hemisphere.

In each case, analyses revealed a strong link between duplicated DNA and the evolution of unique traits. While future studies are needed to determine exactly which traits arose due to polyploidy, possible candidates include the strange egglike roots of cycads that harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria and the diverse cone structures found across modern conifers. Podocarp cones, for example, are highly modified and look deceptively like fruit, said Stull: "Their cones are very fleshy, have various colors and are dispersed by different animals."

CAPTION

Some conifer and cycad species have highly restricted distributions and are at risk of going extinct due to climate change and habitat loss. These conifers, Araucaria goroensis, also known as the monkey puzzle tree, and Dacrydium araucarioides are unique to New Caledonia.

CREDIT

Nicolas Anger

Competition and climate change led to extinction and diversification

Stull and his colleagues also wanted to know whether genome duplications influenced the rate at which new gymnosperm species evolved through time. But instead of a clear-cut pattern, they found a complex interplay of extinction and diversification amidst a backdrop of a significantly changing global climates.

Today, there are about 1,000 gymnosperm species, which may not seem like many when compared with the 300,000 or so species of flowering plants. But in their heyday, gymnosperms were much more diverse.

Gymnosperms were still thriving prior to the asteroid extinction event 66 million years ago, best known for the demise of dinosaurs. But the dramatic ecological changes brought about by the impact tipped the scales: After the dinosaurs disappeared, flowering plants quickly began outcompeting gymnosperm lineages, which suffered major bouts of extinction as a result. Some groups were snuffed out entirely, while others barely managed to survive to the present. The once flourishing ginkgo family, for example, is today represented by a single living species.

But the results from this study indicate that at least some gymnosperm groups made a comeback starting around 20 million years ago, coinciding with Earth's transition to a cooler, drier climate.

"We see points in history where gymnosperms didn't just continue to decline, but they actually diversified in species numbers as well, which makes for a more dynamic picture of their evolutionary history," said co-author Pamela Soltis, Florida Museum curator and UF distinguished professor.

While some gymnosperms failed to cope with the dual specter of climate change and competition, others had an advantage in certain habitats due to the very traits that caused them to lose out in their ancient rivalry with flowering plants. Groups such as pines, spruces, firs and junipers got fresh starts.

"In some respects, gymnosperms maybe aren't that flexible," Pamela Soltis said. "They kind of have to 'wait around' until climate is more favorable in order for them to diversify."

In some environments, gymnosperms adapted to live at the extremes. In pine forests of southeastern North America, longleaf pines are adapted to frequent fires that incinerate their competition, and conifers dominate the boreal forests of the far north. But take away the fire or the cold, and flowering plants quickly start to encroach.

While gymnosperms are still in the process of diversifying, they've been interrupted by human-made changes to the environment. Currently, more than 40% of gymnosperms are threatened by extinction due to the cumulative pressures of climate change and habitat loss. Future studies clarifying how their underlying genetics enabled them to persist to the present may give scientists a better framework for ensuring they survive well into the future.

"Even though some conifer and cycad groups have diversified considerably over the past 20 million years, many species have highly restricted distributions and are at risk of extinction," Stull said. "Efforts to reduce habitat loss are likely essential for conserving the many species currently threatened by extinction."

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Other co-authors of the study are Xiao-Jian Qu of Shandong Normal University; Caroline Parins-Fukuchi of the University of Chicago; Ying-Ying Yang, Jun-Bo Yang, Zhi-Yun Yang, De-Zhu Li and Ting-Shuang Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Yi Hu and Hong Ma of Pennsylvania State University; and Stephen Smith of the University of Michigan.

Making clean hydrogen is hard, but researchers just solved a major hurdle

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE TEAM'S EXPERIMENTAL WATER-SPLITTING APPARATUS. view more 

CREDIT: COCKRELL SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

For decades, researchers around the world have searched for ways to use solar power to generate the key reaction for producing hydrogen as a clean energy source -- splitting water molecules to form hydrogen and oxygen. However, such efforts have mostly failed because doing it well was too costly, and trying to do it at a low cost led to poor performance.

Now, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have found a low-cost way to solve one half of the equation, using sunlight to efficiently split off oxygen molecules from water. The finding, published recently in Nature Communications, represents a step forward toward greater adoption of hydrogen as a key part of our energy infrastructure.

As early as the 1970s, researchers were investigating the possibility of using solar energy to generate hydrogen. But the inability to find materials with the combination of properties needed for a device that can perform the key chemical reactions efficiently has kept it from becoming a mainstream method.

"You need materials that are good at absorbing sunlight and, at the same time, don't degrade while the water-splitting reactions take place," said Edward Yu, a professor in the Cockrell School's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "It turns out materials that are good at absorbing sunlight tend to be unstable under the conditions required for the water-splitting reaction, while the materials that are stable tend to be poor absorbers of sunlight. These conflicting requirements drive you toward a seemingly inevitable tradeoff, but by combining multiple materials -- one that efficiently absorbs sunlight, such as silicon, and another that provides good stability, such as silicon dioxide -- into a single device, this conflict can be resolved."

However, this creates another challenge -- the electrons and holes created by absorption of sunlight in silicon must be able to move easily across the silicon dioxide layer. This usually requires the silicon dioxide layer to be no more than a few nanometers, which reduces its effectiveness in protecting the silicon absorber from degradation.

The key to this breakthrough came through a method of creating electrically conductive paths through a thick silicon dioxide layer that can be performed at low cost and scaled to high manufacturing volumes. To get there, Yu and his team used a technique first deployed in the manufacturing of semiconductor electronic chips. By coating the silicon dioxide layer with a thin film of aluminum and then heating the entire structure, arrays of nanoscale "spikes" of aluminum that completely bridge the silicon dioxide layer are formed. These can then easily be replaced by nickel or other materials that help catalyze the water-splitting reactions.

When illuminated by sunlight, the devices can efficiently oxidize water to form oxygen molecules while also generating hydrogen at a separate electrode and exhibit outstanding stability under extended operation. Because the techniques employed to create these devices are commonly used in manufacturing of semiconductor electronics, they should be easy to scale for mass production.

The team has filed a provisional patent application to commercialize the technology.

Improving the way hydrogen is generated is key to its emergence as a viable fuel source. Most hydrogen production today occurs through heating steam and methane, but that relies heavily on fossil fuels and produces carbon emissions.

There is a push toward "green hydrogen" which uses more environmentally friendly methods to generate hydrogen. And simplifying the water-splitting reaction is a key part of that effort.

Hydrogen has potential to become an important renewable resource with some unique qualities. It already has a major role in significant industrial processes, and it is starting to show up in the automotive industry. Fuel cell batteries look promising in long-haul trucking, and hydrogen technology could be a boon to energy storage, with the ability to store excess wind and solar energy produced when conditions are ripe for them.

Going forward, the team will work to improve the efficiency of the oxygen portion of water-splitting by increasing the reaction rate. The researchers' next major challenge is then to move on to the other half of the equation.

"We were able to address the oxygen side of the reaction first, which is the more challenging part, " Yu said, "but you need to perform both the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions to completely split the water molecules, so that's why our next step is to look at applying these ideas to make devices for the hydrogen portion of the reaction."

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This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation through the Directorate for Engineering and the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) program. Yu worked on the project with UT Austin students Soonil Lee and Alex De Palma, along with Li Ji, a professor at Fudan University in China.

 

Researcher's work with flies could be birth control boon

New testing technique could quickly find new ways to suppress ovulation with few side effects.

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

Research News

When it comes to making eggs, female flies and female humans are surprisingly similar. And that could be a boon for women seeking better birth control methods, a UConn researcher reports in the July 5 issue of PNAS.

There are about 61 million women of reproductive age in the US, and about 43 million of them are sexually active but don't want a pregnancy right now, according to the Guttmacher Institute. And while there are a dozen or so different methods of birth control available, most have undesirable side effects for some of the women who try them. Despite the need, pharmaceutical companies are not investing in new birth control research. Private funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have stepped up to fill the gap, and their efforts are bearing fruit in the lab of UConn physiologist and geneticist Jianjun Sun, an associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Neurobiology.

Sun and his colleagues have shown that compounds that stop fruit flies from ovulation (the process of releasing a viable egg) also prevent mice from doing so. And if a drug stops ovulation in both flies and mice, it's likely to work in humans, too. And that could make it much easier to screen potential birth control drugs quickly and effectively.

Several years ago, Sun's lab figured out how fruit flies ovulate. In a fly, as in a mouse or a human, many potential eggs mature inside the ovary. But to be fertilized, the eggs need to break out of the little cocoons, called follicles, they've been developing inside. Not all the eggs do this successfully; in humans it's usually just one per cycle. Sun's lab figured out exactly how successful eggs break out. Then he had a thought: now that we know how they break out, might it be possible to stop them? Stopping the egg from breaking out of the follicle would be a brand new form of birth control.

He applied for the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges Explorations Award for birth control research, and won $100,000 in 2016 for a proof of principle experiment: could fruit flies really be used to screen potential birth control drugs?

The answer, Sun found, is yes. He and collaborators at UConn Pharmacy, Northwestern University, University of Rutgers, and Michigan State University put fruit fly follicles in a dish and tested compounds from FDA's drug library. If the drug inhibited the fruit fly eggs from ovulating, they then tested it on mice follicles. Of the 1,170 drugs they tried, six worked in flies. When they tested four of those in mice, three of them worked! And two seemed to work without affecting hormone levels. And one of those two drugs, chlorpromazine, is classified as a presumed human reproductive toxicant by the Netherlands due to its potential damage to human fertility; all the work so far has involved animal models.

Chlorpromazine, usually used to treat schizophrenia, is not a good candidate for birth control because of its psychoactive effects. But it does prove the concept: fruit fly ovaries can be used effectively to screen compounds for non-hormonal birth control.

Sun went on to win $1 million from the Gates Foundation to broaden his work and test many more candidate compounds. He has also received grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). His lab is now partnering with Calibr at Scripps Research in San Diego to test 13,000 compounds in their library as potential non-hormonal birth control drugs.

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Angry politicians make angry voters, new study finds

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Research News

Politicians may have good reason to turn to angry rhetoric, according to research led by political scientists from Colorado--the strategy seems to work, at least in the short term.

In a new study, Carey Stapleton at the University of Colorado Boulder and Ryan Dawkins at the U.S. Air Force Academy discovered that political furor may spread easily: Ordinary citizens can start to mirror the angry emotions of the politicians they read about in the news. Such "emotional contagion" might even drive some voters who would otherwise tune out of politics to head to the polls.

"Politicians want to get reelected, and anger is a powerful tool that they can use to make that happen," said Stapleton, who recently earned his PhD in political science at CU Boulder.

He and Dawkins, an assistant professor, published their results this month in the journal Political Research Quarterly.

The researchers surveyed roughly 1,400 people online from across the political spectrum, presenting them with a series of mock news stories about a recent political debate. They discovered that when it comes to politics, anger may lead to more anger. Subjects who read about an enraged politician from their own party were more likely to report feeling mad themselves than people who didn't. Those same steaming partisans also reported that they were more likely to get involved in politics, from attending rallies to voting on Election Day.

"Anger is a very strong, short-term emotion that motivates people into action," said Stapleton. "But there can be these much more negative implications in the long term. There's always the potential that anger can turn into rage and violence."

Tempers rising

Anger and politics in the U.S. have long gone hand-in-hand--the nation's second president, John Adams, once referred to Alexander Hamilton as a "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler." But Stapleton and Dawkins' findings come at a time when American politics has grown especially divisive.

According to the Pew Research Center, in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, "around nine-in-ten Trump and Biden supporters said there would be 'lasting harm' to the nation if the other candidate won." That anger boiled over with deadly results when a mob of supporters of then-President Trump stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Stapleton, who is not related to the Colorado political family, wanted to find out just how contagious those kinds of emotions could be. He will start a position as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame in the fall.

"Most political science research to date has focused on what we do when we feel an emotion like anger, rather than how our emotions affect other people," Stapleton said.

Fighting words

To find out how the emotions of politicians might rub off on their supporters, he and Dawkins ran an experiment. The duo wrote a series of news stories about a debate on immigration policy between two candidates for an open Congressional seat in Minnesota. Unbeknownst to the study's subjects, neither the candidates nor their debate were real.

In some cases, the faux politicians used language that tipped into outrage (although it might still look tame in the current political landscape). "When I look at our borders, I'm enraged by what I see," as an example. In other cases, the soap boxers stuck to more neutral language.

The team's results are among the first to show what many Americans have long known--that political anger can be a powerful force.

"We report being angrier after seeing our fellow partisans being angry," Stapleton said. "When the other side is angry, it doesn't seem to affect us much at all."

If Democrats read about a fellow Democrat getting mad, for example, they often reported feeling angry themselves. In contrast, blue voters who encountered neutral information or saw an angry quote from a Republican didn't experience the same swings in emotion.

The study also brought a twist: The people who were the most susceptible to those shifts weren't the die-hard partisans on either side of the aisle. They were more moderate voters.

"The really far left and right are already so amped up," Stapleton said. "But these weakly-aligned partisans who are notoriously less likely to participate in elections were more susceptible to changing their emotions."

For Stapleton, the results carry an important lesson for ordinary voters: When watching the news, people should pay attention to how politicians may try to appeal to or even manipulate emotions to get what they want. But, he added, anger is only part of the picture. In a previous study, he and his colleagues discovered that optimistic people are much more likely to be politically active than pessimists.

"Anger is one way we can get people to vote and get engaged in politics, but it's not the only way," he said. "It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom."

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Firefighters found to have persistent lung damage from Fort McMurray wildfire

Risk of developing asthma is more than doubled, says University of Alberta occupational health researcher who used the same parameters as a study on 9-11 first responders.

UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA FACULTY OF MEDICINE & DENTISTRY

Research News

IMAGE: DR. NICOLA CHERRY LED A STUDY SHOWING THAT FIREFIGHTERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE FORT MCMURRAY WILDFIRE IN 2016 HAVE SIGNS OF PERSISTENT LUNG DAMAGE, AND MORE THAN DOUBLE... view more 

CREDIT: RICHARD SIEMENS

(Edmonton, AB) Firefighters at the centre of the battle against the massive Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016 have persistent lung damage, according to new findings published by a University of Alberta occupational health research team.

"Those who were dealing with burning organic matter were exposed to a barrage of small particles in the smoke, and the ones with the highest exposure have long-term consequences," said principal investigator Nicola Cherry, an occupational epidemiologist, professor of medicine and Tripartite Chair of Occupational Health in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.

The firefighters had more than double the risk of developing asthma compared with the general population. They also exhibited a number of changes in lung function tests supportive of an effect on the lungs, including greater lung hyperreactivity and increased thickening of the bronchial wall.

"The impact was correlated to exposure--those who had more exposure had more effects," said Cherry.

For three years after the fire, Cherry's team followed 1,234 Alberta firefighters.The firefighters' exposure to fire-related particles was estimated based on the hours they worked on the blaze, the dates they were there, the firefighting tasks they were performing, and Alberta Environment estimates of particulate matter at different locations.

The Fort McMurray fire broke out in May 2016 and was under control by the fall, but it was not officially declared out until the following year. The highest exposure to particulate matter happened during the first week, Cherry said. Firefighters were deployed from across Alberta from crews that specialize in structural fires (i.e., buildings), oil and gas industry fires and wildland fires.

Many did not have sufficient supplies of specialized lung protection equipment or were not able to wear it while fighting the Fort McMurray fire, Cherry said.

"It was an extraordinarily violent fire," she said. "It's very difficult to rush uphill pulling equipment behind you if you have a heavy mask on that doesn't let you breathe."

Cherry modelled her study, which was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Government of Alberta, on studies that examined the respiratory health of first responders following the World Trade Center collapse in New York City in September 2001.

"It's not easy to do this kind of study during a catastrophe," said Cherry, who had serendipitously taken delivery of a mobile lung assessment lab the week before the Fort McMurray fire broke out.

"At the World Trade Center, the exposure was mainly to inorganic dust, whereas in Fort McMurray it was burning vegetation, as well as buildings," Cherry said. "It's interesting that we saw similar results from very different exposure."

Cherry's research team looked at three main sources of evidence about the lung health of the firefighters before and after the fire. First, they asked for permission to link to their administrative health record, which showed doctor's visits and diagnoses. The records for each firefighter were matched with five patients from the general population of similar age, sex, geographic location and health status as a control group for comparison.

The team also measured the firefighters' lung function, which shows how much air goes in and out of the lungs. Finally, some of the firefighters with no history of chronic respiratory disease or smoking were randomly selected for clinical followup, including CT scans of their lungs and methacholine challenge testing, used to check for asthma.

This is one of several papers Cherry has published on the mental and physical health of the Fort McMurray firefighters.

"They take enormous risks," she said. "This study shows clearly that it is possible for exposures to cause changes in the lung that don't get better over time."

Cherry said she will continue to study the occupational health of firefighters--including crews currently fighting wildfires in the interior of British Columbia and Alberta--in hopes of recommending ways to make the work safer. She is studying whether wearing a mask or washing skin more often could reduce exposure to chemicals from smoke. Putting more crews through shorter rotations at fire scenes might also help to lessen health impacts, she said.

"We are trying to come up with clinical indicators that could be helpful to firefighters whose lungs have been damaged, such as the combination of bronchial reactivity and thickening that we see in this study," she said.

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Opinion: Germany's know-it-all attitude after the floods helps no one

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But accusing politicians and disaster management officials of "system failure" underestimates the forces of nature, DW's Fabian Schmidt writes.

Nobody could have predicted that heavy flooding would entirely wipe out the centers of century old towns like Schuld.

It's all too human to look for someone to blame after a huge natural disaster, but that doesn't help anyone — certainly not the victims, the survivors or the people whose livelihoods were washed away by the masses of water within minutes.

This know-it-all attitude gets on my nerves: Just like Germany has 80 million football coaches after the national team loses a game, now everyone seems to be a disaster relief expert.

And not just in Germany.

The British hydrologist Hannah Cloke argued in the British newspaper The Sunday Times and later on German public broadcaster ZDF that the warnings of the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), had not reached the people in Germany in time. This, she said, was a "monumental system failure." Michael Theurer, deputy parliamentary group chairman of the pro-market Free Democrats, joined in and said that Interior Minister Horst Seehofer bore "direct personal responsibility" for this. Granted, we are in the midst of election campaigning, but the claim is simply not true.

German public broadcaster WDR 5, for example, had aired the following message at 8 a.m. last Tuesday, more than 24 hours before the disaster struck: "The German Weather Service warns of severe thunderstorms with heavy rain, in some areas extremely heavy rain. ... Locally, hail, high water and flooding must be expected."

Anyone who had been following the weather report could guess what was coming. Those who had also followed the precipitation radar, or simply looked out the window, knew it all the more.
Warning systems only go so far

What no one could have known, and what no one could have prepared for, were the flash floods in places such as Schuld on the Ahr river in Rhineland-Palatinate. There are, quite simply, forces of nature that are so unpredictable that we cannot forecast their devastating power, even with all the advanced engineering and technology at our disposal. And neither can EFAS.

DW science editor Fabian Schmidt

Early warning systems can alert us to relatively slowly rising floodwaters, but not to the rapid torrents we saw last week. Our centuries of experience with floods are, by human standards, the yardstick for flood protection and for where housing construction is allowed in the first place.

In Schuld, on the other hand, centuries-old timber-framed houses that had survived many previous floods were washed away. Bridges were destroyed that had been built and renewed in recent decades to the best of our knowledge and belief, taking into account possible floods.
Even the best flood protection reaches its limits

The argument that river straightening, canalization and soil sealing are responsible for the catastrophe is not true in the case of the Ahr. The Ahr is a river with few obstructions that largely follows its natural course.

Likewise, the extent of the disaster in the town of Erftstadt in North-Rhine Westphalia could not have been predicted, neither by the disaster control experts nor by the inhabitants. There, a river had first flooded a gravel pit in short time and then softened it to such an extent that parts of an adjacent village were literally swallowed up by it — the legacy of the former lignite surface mining area in the Rhineland region, where Erftstadt is located, which has been heavily dug up over thousands of years. I expect this won't be the last disaster of its kind there.
Don't rely solely on electronic gadgets

There is also criticism of the sometimes late and contradictory warnings from public warning apps such as KATWARN or NINA. Detractors argue that these apps prompted people to stay at home rather than flee the floods. And they say that the recommended evacuation area was too narrow. In addition, the apps failed when the power failed.

Germany floods: Could the catastrophe have been prevented?

But an app can't know where exactly a house will be destroyed by the floods. Perhaps those responsible can even learn from this crisis and improve the apps even further. But the most important lesson we can take away from this is that we shouldn't rely primarily on flashy new digital toys in severe weather situations. Instead we should use all of our senses and our common sense.

And sometimes it might not be a bad idea to stick with proven analog technology, such as the former telephone network, which would have continued to function even in the event of a power outage — in contrast to Voice over IP.
Who will be hit by the next disaster?

Following reconstruction, the people on the Ahr river will certainly also benefit form a much-improved early warning system. But the next deadly floods may hit a completely different river and village, which is not as well prepared, for example somewhere in the Thuringian Forest, the Harz Mountains or the Alps. It's unpredictable and that is in the nature of things.

The bitter truth remains: There are simply forces of nature that are stronger than us and that strike so quickly that not even the best early warning system in the world can predict them.

So what can we do? In terms of architecture and urban planning, we have to learn from past experience in the hope of being to mitigate the damage next time — and simply accept that playing the blame game won't help.

Germany and digitalization: Why can't Europe's richest country get up to speed?

Why, they wonder, can't Europe's richest country modernize and digitize its administration?

DW | 16.07.2021 |

Chancellor Angela Merkel's digital adviser has called for far-reaching reforms to help catch up with the US, China and others, saying the division of power enshrined in the constitution is hampering much-needed progress.

Why is Germany behind on tech? - Interview with Katrin Suder (E10)

Schools with outdated computers. Health authorities relying on fax machines. Town offices that offer few or none of their services online — that's the reality in Germany in 2021.

Eight years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel was famously ridiculed for referring to the internet as "uncharted territory," the response to the coronavirus pandemic exposed how digital shortcomings continue to plague Germany's public sector — perplexing observers around the world.

Germany's decentralized political system is partly to blame, Merkel's top digital adviser says.

"The system was designed when there were no platforms … no digitalization, no IT," Katrin Suder, the chair of the Digital Council government advisory board, says in the latest episode of DW's "Merkel's last dance" podcast.

As a safeguard enshrined in West Germany's post-war constitution in 1949 to prevent concentration of power, Germany's 16 states shape their own policies on areas including health, culture, and education.

But this division of power has prevented the country from pushing ahead with the modernization of its public sectors, Suder argues. She believes, therefore, that more clout should be given to the federal government in Berlin.

"This is a redistribution of power, of course, but it is for a better cause," Suder believes.

The tech-unreadiness of Germany's schools in particular 'is a huge problem,' says Merkel's digital affairs advisor Katrin Suder
An eye-opening pandemic

For years, experts have warned that Germany's public sector is lagging behind when it comes to technological innovation. In a recent EU report, Germany was ranked 21st out of the bloc's 27 member countries plus the UK when it comes to offering online services to its citizens.

But it wasn't until coronavirus contact restrictions pushed large parts of work and life online that this reality began to affect many Germans.

Several months into the pandemic, health authorities were still reporting case numbers using fax machines.

People had problems working from home due to patchy internet connections. And across the country, schools lacked basic technology for remote learning.

"This is a huge problem," Suder said about the situation at schools: "It's about our children — the R&D of our nation."

The "root cause" of the problem, she argues, is that states oversee education in Germany.

This has prevented the country from pooling resources and developing one national e-learning platform which all states can adapt to their purposes, she says. Instead, a patchwork of various e-learning tools is used across the country, resulting in vast differences in the quality of learning.

"We have to find ways to change that," Suder urges, "including in our constitutional setup."

Town halls across Germany were slow to adapt during the pandemic, offering few -- or none -- of their key services online

Could a digital affairs ministry be the solution?

More political reforms are needed to bring Germany's public sector up to date, Suder is convinced.

She believes a dedicated ministry for digital affairs could be part of the solution. "But we have to be super careful how we set it up," she warns, "because if we set it up in the wrong way, we create a bunch of new problems."

The office should have its own budget and staff, she believes. It should coordinate efforts across all ministries while also taking the lead on selected policy initiatives. Soon, the ministry could, for example, oversee efforts like developing Germany's data strategy — something that has so far been one of the many tasks for Merkel's chancellery.

"But one new ministry alone will not change the game," Suder cautions.

Germany also needs to get better at hiring digital experts for government jobs, she says.

People working in administration need to become more enthusiastic about the new possibilities that come with digital transformation.

"If we can bring people a bit to this mindset … that it can be fun, then I think we have a chance," Suder says.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society, with an eye toward understanding this year's elections and beyond. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing, to stay on top of developments as Germany enters the post-Merkel era.

 

Explainer: Why does Germany rely heavily on voluntary fire services?

In Germany, volunteer firefighters perform the bulk of rescue operations, as the recent floods showed. That’s because full-time fire services are expensive to maintain.

  

Voluntary fire services are at the forefront of rescue operations in Germany's devastating floods

Fire brigades usually carry out rescue and recovery operations, extinguish fires and protect life and property. In much of Germany, however, this work is mainly performed by volunteers who often have a normal, paid job.

The volunteers carry a pager with them at all times that alerts them when there is an emergency. When it beeps, they quickly head to the local fire station and then to the scene of the emergency.

This is because most small towns and villages in Germany cannot afford a full-time fire brigade since equipment and personnel are expensive to buy and maintain. That means full-time professional fire services are often stretched thin in many regions and they can't be relied on to attend to each emergency, especially since they could be far away and need a long time to reach the site.

Volunteer firefighters, however, can often be at the scene of an emergency in just a few minutes. 

Volunteer firefighters play a crucial role in areas where professional fire brigades are stretched thin

In large cities, that is those with more than around 100,000 inhabitants, there are also professional fire departments. According to statistics from 2018, there are 104 of these in the country. But they too are often supported by volunteers. There are more than 22,000 voluntary fire services in Germany and their ranks are steadily rising.

Being part of a voluntary fire service, however, is not a hobby. Volunteers are required to take courses and participate in extensive and regular training to be able to actively fight fires or get a grip on challenging situations such as a flood disaster. They usually undergo training in their free time.

However, if there aren't enough volunteers to staff a fire brigade, a compulsory fire service is deployed. Residents between the ages of 18 and 50 are required to get trained and temporarily do the work of the fire service.

Germany's THW service is a familiar sight during emergency situations such as floods or landslides

Another organization that is similar in structure to the voluntary fire service is the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW). It's officially part of Germany's Interior Ministry, but only two percent of its employees are permanent employees. The rest are volunteers.

More than 80,000 people are engaged in 668 local branches of the THW. They work voluntarily to help people in distress, performing important services like providing clean drinking water or clear roads. The work of the THW and the fire services often complement each other.

This article has been translated from German.

#NOTOKYOOLYMPICS

Tokyo 2020: Major sponsor Toyota distances itself from Olympic Games

Japanese carmaker Toyota has announced it will not run Olympics-related TV commercials during the Tokyo Games. The decision underlines how polarizing the Olympics have become in Japan as COVID-19 infections rise.

Toyota signed on as a major IOC sponsor in 2015

"There are many issues with these Games that are proving difficult to be understood,'' Toyota Chief Communications Officer Jun Nagata told reporters in Tokyo on Monday.

Nagata also announced that company executives including CEO Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the founder of Japan's biggest carmaker, would not attend Friday's opening ceremony.

The decision comes against a backdrop of less than enthusiastic support among the Japanese public for the Games while COVID-19 infections continue to rise in the country. A weekend poll published by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper found that 55% of respondents were opposed to holding the Olympics this summer, with just 33% in favor.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has pledged that the Games will be "safe and secure," but 68% of those who responded in the Asahi poll said they thought that was impossible.

Tokyo 2020 spokesman Masa Takaya responded to the Toyota decision by asserting that sponsors generally remain supportive – although the lack of public support for the Games hasn't made it easy for them.

"I know those partners and sponsors must have been struggling to support Tokyo 2020," he told reporters on Monday. "Of course, considering the public sentiment ... there must be a decision by each company in terms of how they should be able to advertise, how they should be able to convey their messages to the public audiences."

The Toyota Motor Corp. signed on as a worldwide Olympic sponsor in 2015, in an eight-year deal reportedly worth nearly $1 billion. The sponsorship, which started globally in 2017, runs through the 2024 Olympics, covering three consecutive Olympics in Asia, including the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the Tokyo Games and the forthcoming Winter Games in Beijing in 2022.

Olympic organizers on Sunday reported the first COVID-19 cases among competitors in the athletes' village in Tokyo where 6,700 athletes are expected to stay during the Games. Since July 2, Tokyo 2020 organizers have reported dozens of positive cases among athletes, officials and journalists.

pfd/mf (Reuters, AP)


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